BruceJoelRubin Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Review: The Time Traveler's Wife
Filed under: Romance », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », New Releases », New Line », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters »
It's actually kind of amazing how often the time-travel subgenre marries to romance stories. Longing to return to a simpler past or hoping for a brighter future are staples in any love affair, especially tragic ones. (Not to mention the similarity between a clock's ticking and a human heartbeat.) Just look at Somewhere in Time (1980), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), The Love Letter (1998), Happy Accidents (2000), Kate & Leopold (2001) and The Lake House (2006) for a few interesting examples. What I don't understand is the very soft, goopy tone that most of these movies automatically adopt, with the exception of Brad Anderson's dark, tense Happy Accidents and James Mangold's standard-issue romcom Kate & Leopold.
Consider the new film The Time Traveler's Wife. It comes complete with a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, who won an Oscar for his hugely successful sci-fi romance Ghost (1990) as well as writing very twisty sci-fi stories like Jacob's Ladder. In its favor, Ghost had a very amusing supporting performance by Whoopi Goldberg, and some action and suspense scenes, as well as a show-stopping love scene in front of a pottery wheel, set to the tune of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." In other words, it pleased most of the male dates who were forced to see it. So Rubin turns in his new screenplay, which was based on Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel. And, who knows? It may have once been funny like Ghost or twisty like Jacob's Ladder. Then comes director Robert Schwentke, a German transplanted to Hollywood whose last film was the generic thriller Flightplan (2005).
The Time Traveler's Wife Gets a Re-Write
Filed under: Drama », Romance », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Scripts »
Upon first glance at the title The Time Traveler's Wife, you might curl your lip if you're not a fan of sci-fi. While the novel sounds like a futuristic drama, it's actually more of the heart-wrenching dramatic variety. Sure, at its simplest, it's the story of a man who time-travels due to some particularly rare gene, and the woman he's in love with. However, what makes the novel work is how Audrey Niffenegger plotted out the time-line. It would have been very easy for her to throw it into a post-modern jumble, but instead, the history and future are revealed as they deal with the present.Obviously, this presents a challenge in writing the screenplay -- not only must the screenwriter deal with a jagged time-line, but it also has to come off as smooth and realistic, not jumbled and experimental. The novel is also 518 pages long, which means a lot of cutting in the story. Since the tale isn't linear, cutting any piece means re-jigging the past, present, and future of Henry and Clare. It is, therefore, not surprising that news has come of some script re-writes for the upcoming film.
The original screenplay was written by The Notebook scribe Jeremy Leven, and will now be re-written by Bruce Joel Rubin -- the man responsible for both Ghost and Deep Impact. He's got both romance and strange science under his belt, so this might bode well for the adaptation, which has been in development since 2003, before the novel was even released.
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