Blog #4

In terms of authorial voice, A Boy’s Life, The Apartment, and Adaptation all differ from one another in some various ways. In A Boy’s Life and Adaptation, the presence of camera direction in the script shows that the writer is exercising a god-like control over not only the dialogue and action, but also the images that the audience will see. This differs from The Apartment, as there is an almost complete absence of camera direction, making the script read more like a story, making the writer’s control over the script’s universe seem a bit less comprehensive. However, A Boy’s Life differs from Adaptation in that the author’s voice is wholesome and idealist, coming from the perspective of wide-eyed children, while the author’s voice in Adaptation is more bleak, depressive, and down-right adult, coming mainly from the perspective of an unhappy middle-aged screenwriter. The author’s voice in The Apartment falls somewhere in between the innocent optimism of A Boy’s Life and the cynical melancholy of Adaptation, as it is both optimistic and cynical, coming from the perspective of a young wanna-be executive.

Discussion Questions

1. Did you like the prose style that occurred in Kaufmann’s voiceovers in Adaptation? Why or why not?

2. Billy Wilder was not only co-writer of The Apartment, but also was the producer and director. How do you think this affected the authorial voice of the script?