Why am I reviewing a novelization for a movie? Good question. This isn't normally my thing and in case you were wondering, the studio releasing the movie in question isn't paying me to do it either, that's for sure. Being an online journalist for a major movie news website is not as lucrative as it sounds. I still need to supplement my income with additional work. For about, oh, I guess five years now, I've been working weekends at Barnard College/Columbia University here in New York. Basically I work in an all girls dorm and I collect the ID's of their boyfriends as I sign them in and out of the log book. My job's pretty simple and it pays pretty well, but it also gives me the opportunity to meet new an interesting people. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is one of those people whom I happened to meet during the 2009-10 school year, and boy what an interesting individual she is. To be blunt! , Sarah's a nut and as a like-minded nut I say that with great admiration. I'd always joke with her boyfriend Marcus about how she was either going to get him in trouble or killed and so far (thankfully) that doesn't appear to have happened yet.I'm gonna be honest, at an Ivy League school, you meet decent people. You meet clueless snobs who have no idea how the real world works and never will. You meet brilliant minds who one day might change the world for the better. And you meet caring and considerate old souls like Sarah. I can see she's the type who is a loving friend to all those around her, a passionate individual who can even make a stranger feel like an old friend as she gives you her undivided attention. In today's world, those kind of people are few and far between.
I remember not long after Sarah and Marcus graduated las! t year she posted a news report about her mother on Facebook. ! Upon clo ser examination I realized her mother is Ronee Blakley. Wait a minute, the Renee Blakley, singer and actress who fans of Robert Altman's 1975 feature Nashville might remember for her performance as fictional country superstar Barbara Jean? Audiences might best remember her as Nancy's alcoholic mother “Marge†in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, a cult classic my generation adores, but was made before Sarah was born. I do recall meeting Sarah's dad, a really nice gentleman, but not her mom. So many parents of students visit where I work that it sometimes becomes a blur, yet I asked myself, “You mean I might have met Ronee Blakley and didn't realize it?†(Slaps forehead.)
A couple of months back Sarah also posted that she wrote a book and she did so in a manner like it was no big thing. This came as quite a surpr! ise to me since, A: she knew that I write for a living and, B: I never even knew she too was a writer and received the 2008-09 Mary Gordon Fiction Scholarship Award as well as the Lenore Marshall Barnard Prize for Prose. Like I said, Sarah's pretty modest, but those are major accomplishments in my book. Turns out for much of Sarah's life, she's been good friends with Catherine Hardwicke, a filmmaker whose work I've always liked. Even back when she was a production designer, I was a big fan of Hardwicke's work on Tombstone, Three Kings and especially Tank Girl, an underrated film that I cut several classes to watch over and over again in a theater back when I was in college.Hardwicke is perhaps best known as director of the first film adaptation in the Twilight series. As an admirer of Hardwicke's grittier films like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, I can't really say I'm a Twilight fan, but I was sorry to see her leave the series, since I think the ideas she might have had co! uld have taken things in a bolder direction. Hardwicke's lates! t projec t is a new take on the classic story of Red Riding Hood. Over the years we've seen various interpretations of the story, everything ranging from simple kid's fare, to more adult themes like sexual awakening. Hardwicke's film is actually based on an idea that originated with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. It turns out she was impressed by Sarah's writing and came up with the clever notion of having her adapt David Leslie Johnson's screenplay into a novel. It's no easy task and novelizations don't always have strong book sales. But with a good writer, a novelization can also expand and improve upon the original material. The best novelization I can recall reading was acclaimed sci-fi author Orson Scott Card's adaptation of James Cameron's screenplay for The Abyss back in '89. It gave me a better understanding of the story Cameron was trying to tell which wouldn't be seen in it's full finished form until his director's cut arrived several years later.
Funny thing about all this is that when I learned Sarah wrote the novelization for this big studio picture, I wondered when exactly she found the time to do it? As those rusty gears began to turn in my head again it hit me. “Oh, so that's why I kept seeing Sarah and Marcus in the computer lab so much after graduation!†I slapped my forehead yet again, something I tend to do a lot.Now we've all been seeing promotion for Red Riding Hood the film, for quite some time. Some reactions have been skeptical, while others have been downright nasty. I can remember the studio making the mistake of running the film's trailer before a press screening of the latest Harry Potter installment â€" a no-no in this business â€" and the reaction was hisses, laughter and moans. We've all done that at some time or another and after finally seeing a finished film were either proven ! right or pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I don't let ! promotio n influence me â€" no matter what the film is I try to keep an open mind.What intrigued about Red Riding Hood the book was not so much that a friend of mine wrote it, but that the writer was a young woman pretty close to the age of the story's main character. I can see what Hardwicke was getting at when she chose Sarah and it was a brilliant bit of genius on her part.
 
Right next to Judy Blume.
Now I should make it clear, I don't do book reviews. Other than that great social network known as Facebook, I haven't really been in touch with Sarah and no one is paying me to give this book an enthusiastic write-up. If they were, I can assure you, I'd probably quit that weekend job tomorrow, no matter how “easy†the money is. I'm also the type who is brutally honest and despite the fact that I am friendly with Sarah, if her book were to suck, I would tell you straight up. I ran into Guillermo Del Toro at a DreamWorks event this week, and even though I didn't write a glowing review for his first Hellboy movie (I absolutely adore the sequel though) I still consider him a friend. As a lover of books, who often reads two or three at the same time, I just thought to myself “I've never reviewed a book before. Lemme try it.†I took it upon myself to reach into my pocket, step into a Barnes & Noble, and grab a copy of this thing. Took me a bit to find it too, since! I'm not the type to ask for help from pestering store clerks, but there it was, next to the legendary Judy Blume in fact, Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright.
 
After this pic was taken, Guillermo stuck a fork in my back when he remembered my review of his first Hellboy movie.
The first thing that caught my interest in Red Riding Hood is that it's almost entirely told from the point of view of its main character, Valerie. That can often ruin a book, but for a story with a bit of mystery, its a device that can work to its advantage. In the town of Daggorhorn, which has been plagued with brutal attacks by a werewolf, everyone is a suspect, including Valerie. She appears to be just an innocent teen girl faced with the dilemma of being promised to one man while in love with another, but even she questions her own nature and whether or not there is a hidden darkness within her. Valerie's known there's something unique about her ever since she encountered the wolf face to face as a child and survived unscathed. Now as a young woman, she's been promised to Henry Lazar, son of the richest man in her village.Though Valerie has little affection for Henry, it is irrelevant, because she lives in a time when women had choices made for them. The sudden reapp! earance of childhood friend Peter makes her impending marriage even more difficult, since the boy who became a man reawakens a fire within her. She's in love with something she can never have even though she still has no concept of what real love truly is. The news of her engagement results in distrust and envy amongst some of Valerie's girlfriends and though her mother reveals she did not initially love her alcoholic father when she married him, it provides little comfort.
A dark shadow in the shape of a wolf soon descends upon the town, claiming Valerie's older sister Lucie as its first victim. Though Daggorhorn has always lived in fear of the wolf, even appeasing it with monthly animal sacrifices, it has been years since the creature has killed one of their own. As an angry mob forms a party to hunt the beast on Mount Grimmoor, ! Valerie begins to feel tremendous guilt, knowing that Lucie ha! d feelin gs for Henry and that news of the engagement could possibly have resulted in her death. The mob does return with the head of a wolf, though the price of victory is the tragic loss of a significant member of the community. It changes little for Valerie, since she is still promised to Henry and is without a sister who will never return.The story begins to take an even darker turn with the arrival of the legendary Father Solomon, a notorious werewolf hunter with his own garrison, sent by the Vatican to eliminate the unholy threat. Though the villagers believe the werewolf is dead, Solomon assures them that it is not. Their trophy is just the head of a simple wolf and had it been the creature they seek it would have reverted to human form after its death. Solomon may seem like a noble man of the cloth and at one time, he probably was. The loss of a loved one to a werewolf many years ago has made him bitter and vindictive and those traits which run like poison through his veins s! lowly corrupt the town. Eventually Solomon is proven right and the werewolf attacks again with even greater ferocity. His tactics don't just involve a hunt for a beast, but a person. The werewolf hides in human form amongst the townsfolk and as Solomon and his men systematically search, question and violate the rights of the people of Daggorhorn, in time they soon turn on one another. 
Novelizations or literary adaptations of a screenplay, provide the opportunity to flesh out a story and present details that a limited medium such as cinema can not. Red Riding Hood may be about the hunt for a werewolf, but more importantly its about people. Sarah's found a way to set up the intricate lives of these individuals in an entertaining fashion that also engages the reader. Valerie is no doubt the main character, but I also found myself getting deepl! y involved with those that surround her. I was intrigued by he! r grandm other, a mysterious old woman, considered a witch by the townsfolk, whose soothing teas and comforting words just may be a shroud to hide the fact that she could be the wolf. There's not only the love triangle between Valerie, Henry and Peter, (both of whom she suspects of being the wolf), but a thread that still connects her alcoholic father, her mother and the man she gave up many years before. As a male, I found myself caught up in the girlish behavior amongst Valerie and her friends early on in the story. Very few male authors could have made such behavior and conversation amongst young women feel so realistic because they're not a girl like Sarah is. She's made them individuals, but she's been careful not to give them modern voices and except for Valerie, they don't have an independent streak like the women of today.“The devil is in the details†and I also found myself getting caught up in little bits like the layout of the cottage Valerie shares with her parents or! the brief sad glance she exchanges with Solomon's scribe while he draws a sketch of the wolf during an attack, seconds before his untimely demise. Even the tarot cards of Valerie's friend Claude, a dim-witted and slow boy whose nature lands him in trouble with Solomon, are described in vivid detail.
Sarah appears to have a knack for establishing mood and atmosphere as well. Daggorhorn is no fairytale village and though she perfectly describes and sets up how its society functions, it doesn't seem like a place one would enjoy living in. It's no wonder Valerie yearns for the world outside and is tempted by the offer of the wolf to join it. I commend the choice to make Valerie a character whose flaws slowly come to light as the story progresses. At times she can be fickle and there's the possibility that the dark nature! within could turn her into the antagonist of the story. The f! amous re d hood of the legendary character also comes into play in a rather unique fashion.Red Riding Hood has been aimed at young adults and I will admit, it is a quick and easy read. Even a slow reader like me was able to tear through it in a pretty short time. Yet what a pleasant read it is. There were some moments where I could sense the skeletal structure of the screenplay underneath and the book read almost like a film. Still, the book has plenty of bits that wouldn't play out on screen as well if presented in the same fashion.There is one major gripe I have to point out and its something I can't ignore. There's been some controversy surrounding the book and the fact that it does not have a complete ending. Well, not yet. It seems the marketing department at Warner Bros, wouldn't let Little, Brown and Company publish some crucial final bits from the story. That's angered quite a number of people who have read the book with great anticipation of who the werewolf might be only to! discover the final page lists a URL for a website that will present the story's ending following the film's release this weekend. I heard a little about this before I read the book actually, and when I finally got to the end, surprisingly, it didn't bother me. Yeah, being that I read this book before I saw the movie, I wanted to know who the werewolf was, but that revelation is not what this story is about. Sure, the story is a bit of a mystery, but its mainly about people, about how men like Father Solomon can cause unrest and distrust amongst weak-minded people like those in Daggorhorn, ultimately causing them to turn on each other. That aspect of the story does have a resolution in the book, it's just that business with the werewolf is left open.
Seems like a bad move on WB marketing's part, but its ac! tually nothing new. Disney did the same thing a few months bac! k with t heir novelization of Tron Legacy, where the ending was left out. There you were just instructed to see the movie to find out how it ends. I'm sure a later pressing of the book will contain the complete ending. I think it all has to do with timing and if Warner Bros were afraid of letting the “secret†out, they just should have released the completed novel closer to the movie's opening instead of weeks earlier. The book shouldn't have to suffer because of this, because it's a well written story. Sarah's proven to many that she has a voice and in a rather unique way, she's gotten her foot through a very large door. I'm hoping this isn't a one time thing for her, because now that she's a published author, I want to hear what else she has to “sayâ€.As for Red Riding Hood the film, does it measure up to its literary adaptation? Despite their symbiotic relationship, both book and movie are two very different things that exist in two different mediums. So in this case, it wo! uldn't be fair to say. Have I seen the film? Yes I have, and I will have a review of it on opening day.
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