f the upcoming miniseries of A Wrinkle in Time, author Madeleine L'Engle has said, "I'm so thrilled that Miramax, Fireworks and ABC are bringing my book to television. I still believe that this story which speaks to the infinite possibilities of love is as current today as it was when I wrote it in 1962."
Somewhere deep inside the body and soul of miniseries co-executive producer Catherine Hand is a little girl who is leaping for ecstatic joy. As an 11-year-old, Hand had a dream, and it literally took a lifetime to see that wish come true. As a child, Catherine had read Madeleine L'Engle's book, A Wrinkle in Time, and she was so entranced and captivated by its lyrical images and messages that she wanted to see the book realized as a film.
First published in 1962, the book was immediately popular with young readers, and won the 1963 Newbery Prize, an annual award given to American literary works for children by the American Library Association. It has sold 16 million copies and has been translated into more than 13 languages.
A Wrinkle in Time tells the fantastic tale of what happens when physicist Jack Murry (Chris Potter) and his partner Hank (Kyle Secor) disappear without a trace. His children Meg (Katie Stuart) and Charles Wallace (David Dorfman) and their neighbor and friend Calvin O'Keefe (Gregory Smith) are determined to find him with the help of three strange witchlike beings. Guided by Mrs. Whatsit (Alfre Woodard), Mrs. Who (Alison Elliott) and Mrs. Which (Kate Nelligan), the children travel to two planets before finally reaching Camazotz, where they encounter a repressed society of humans and aliens being controlled by an evil force. The children must use their collective and personal strengths to find Jack and save their own lives.
The book was adapted for television by Susan Shilliday and directed by John Kent Harrison.
Although it was originally prepared as a four-hour (two-part) miniseries, Wrinkle is now a three-hour television event on May 10. It has been "on the shelf" for almost three years. However, in May 2003, the film was screened at the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children, and the audience awarded it the Feature Film Award. It was also screened at the New York International Children's Film Festival in March 2004.
We discussed Hand's personal journey to fulfill her childhood dream on the set of the production.
Reading A Wrinkle in Time as a child apparently affected you profoundly. What are your thoughts on this story that you've helped bring to the small screen?
Catherine Hand: I loved the fantasy, the three incredible beings who came to Earth and asked these kids to go on this great adventure to do something for the father who could not do for himself. It opened up my imagination about the universe. I loved the whole Calvin story. I loved the whole sense that there was something abnormal about the baby brother. I had a brother who had difficulties, and that helped me cope and understand.
I read it around the time, not specifically, when [U.S. President] Kennedy was assassinated. That profoundly affected me. That was something so dark, so horrible. How do you cope?
When I met Madeleine L'Engle for the first time many years later, we had a great conversation. I said, "Your book influenced the way I looked at trying to find the light and darkness."
Your reaction to the book is atypical. You didn't just enjoy the book and carry on with your life. You wanted a movie starring yourself as Meg and produced by Walt Disney. ...
Hand: When Walt Disney died, I was so sad. He was a great hero. That was the night I thought, "Oh, I gotta make Wrinkle. Mr. Disney had died and couldn't do it. I am going to have to grow up and do it."
And so, we jump forward 15 years later, into your adulthood. You're working with TV producer Norman Lear as his executive assistant. While working on that job, which included searching for properties and materials to be produced by the company, this book came up again when someone asked you what was your favorite book.
Hand: I said, "Well, there's A Wrinkle in Time!" I had no idea that anyone else had read it. I just knew that I loved it. I asked several people in the company to read it. They were all different kinds of people. They loved it.
I had the courage and guts to ask Norman to read it. When I ask him to read something, I really have to defend it, really explain how or why we have to make those things. I was a real young punk kid in those days. He loved it! He said, "Go out and see if the rights are available!" I wrote a letter to Madeleine L'Engle. Days later, she called me and said, "I read your letter and I'm interested. When can we meet?" I got on a plane to New York and met with her. I come to discover that in 17 years, hundreds of people have tried to get the rights and she's always turned them down. The only difference was she wanted control over the characters. She was concerned. "Why do you want to make it if you are going to change characters?" That wasn't much of a problem for Norman's company, so they were able to make a deal happen. Norman had a tremendous track record. He was successful. He made it an appealing thing for Madeleine.
The combination of Norman's track record and my take on the material was appealing to her. We had wonderful, talented people working on it.
But there was a hitch. The book had three strikes against it. It was fantasy. It was a children's book, and, with a desire to have a female screenwriter adapt the material, you had a very small pool of writers to choose from.
Hand: It wasn't just fantasy, it was a story about a little girl. Selling a children's story was very tough. There were a handful, maybe two or three female screenwriters. We wanted a female point of view in the writing. There wasn't a lot to choose from. It was completely different from today's world.
After many years of trying, you departed from Lear's company and moved to San Francisco and got on with your life. You served as an assistant to the chairwoman of the 1984 Democratic Convention. You had a stint working at Francis Ford Coppola's company, Zeotrope, where you were an assistant to the executive producers for The Godfather Part III (1990), and you also worked on Wind (1992). Later, in 1993, just as you were in the process of giving birth to your daughter, you received an interesting phone call from Miramax Studios chief Bob Weinstein.
Hand: Bob Weinstein wanted to acquire the rights to the novel. I had heard of Miramax and knew a lot about them. Bob was just so insistent and had a strong interest in it. The timing was good. Norman's rights had expired, and Madeleine had said I could go ahead and try and set it up with someone else. It was a wonderful thing. We had no real formal agreements. She just really believed in me.
When Bob called, I said, "Can you just give me 10 days? I'm having a baby!" So, 10 days later, he calls me and he was just so passionate about Wrinkle. He knew it would be a wonderful movie and wanted me to be a part of it. He didn't care if anyone ever saw it. He just wanted to make it. He was very persuasive. A couple of months later we made a deal.
So Wrinkle was on its way to the big screen. But wait—you had another glitch. After several drafts of writing ... you couldn't crack the screenplay?
Hand: Ultimately, we had to wake up and ask, "Why is this not working?" We had a meeting with the folks at Disney [who owns Miramax] and they said, "Look, I think we can do this the way you want to do it. Be true to the book. Make it for television as a four-hour miniseries."
You must have been surprised. You were preparing, in all that time, to do Wrinkle as a feature film. Although the book is relatively slim at about 200 pages, a feature would have emphasized strong special effects and adventure over television's natural inclination toward intimate characterization, a smaller budget and a longer running time.
Hand: I think the story required it. In the feature script, it was very different. That's why the miniseries works! Because there was so much we couldn't do, trying to cram everything into 100 minutes. Now that we have 240 minutes, we have the time to do it well.
What's really interesting about this book is that because of L'Engle's writing style, which was remarkably restrained and devoid of descriptive detail in this fantasy adventure, readers have to use their imagination to fill in those gaps.
Hand: There are things that are left up to the imagination in the book that makes it special. A lot of people have such a personal reaction to it. They invent and bring so much of their personal story to the experiences that enhances the book.
That's one of the major challenges of the production, isn't it? You have a double-edged sword in your hand. You have to fill in those details, because the camera must show them. However, at the same time, you don't want to telegraph to the viewer everything and crush their imaginations in the process.
Hand: Our job is to fill in so many gaps. We want to do it so you enjoy the experience, but also evoke your imagination. We don't want to fill in all of the gaps. If we had a $180 million budget and do everything, then you wouldn't have your imagination.
When you're going to make a movie, you've got to make a lot of choices. For example, you have to really care about Meg's relationship with her dad. The dad has to be a very important character. You don't see him very much, but he drives the whole story. You have to understand, what is it exactly that would make her travel the universe to find and rescue her dad? Well, we all have our own personal experiences with our dads. And we bring something to it when we read it. We had to create that relationship on film so that we share that experience of her relationship with her dad.
Madeleine's family has read the script. They feel it's a real balance of a good story for a movie and the essence of Wrinkle. You can't do a book. You have to let go of some things, add scenes and create some characters. You have to tell the story that sets the medium. The challenge was always to maintain the essence of the book.
How did it feel for a child to finally live to see her dream become reality?
Hand: It's a wonderful experience, actually. I've often heard that to make a dream come true, you have to believe in it, never give up. That's only half of it. The other half is to help others and make it their dream, too. Watching all of us being here is truly an impressive collaborative experience. It's been a wonderful experience to believe in something, to give it a push, and a breath of life. It's a reflection of so many people's dream. That's the wonderful thing about it.
I just hope that we touched some of the beauty of the story, because so many people have loved it. If we've captured some of it, they're going to have a wonderful time.
It's risky, isn't it, to adapt such a beloved story for television?
Hand: And that's the point. That's the fun of the gambit. Sure, there will be people who are disappointed. There will be people who go, "Yeah! That's great!" There will be others who will go along for the ride. And there will be people who never read the book and, hopefully, will love the movie and inspire them to go and get the book.
It will take away nothing from the experience of reading the book. Of course, it's dangerous to make a choice and make a movie. But the reason people choose to do it is because they have such a passion and love for A Wrinkle in Time to take a risk and say, "We love this story so much that were willing to risk your wrath for doing it wrong and getting it out there. Enjoy it for what it is." And the next day, go read the book and have the experience of reading the book. Get both!
Can you convey any interesting production anecdotes from this experience so far?
Hand: The best one! This is my favorite one! Bob Weinstein, and I hope he doesn't mind me saying this, I don't think he's a very patient man. He was very tough. He had this notion that this was going to be a wonderful movie, and why isn't it happening? I was trying to humor him, saying, "Charles Wallace isn't born yet! We have to wait for him to be born!" Well, I came to find out that David Dorfman [who plays Charles] was born the week that Bob Weinstein and I met! And I thought, "Holy cow! I was right!" I mean, the week we met, David Dorfman was born! I love that story. This was in 1993.
Many of the cast and crew have told me personal anecdotes about Wrinkle. We had one cast member [Kyle Secor] who had a fiance and told him over and over that her favorite book was Wrinkle. I don't know what brought on the conversation, but six months later he said that he got a request to be in this movie based on Wrinkle in Time, and the fiance gasped with excitement. "Ohhh! A Wrinkle in Time!" And that's how it felt for a lot of people. They were responsive. People who had read it in their childhood, that it was one of their most favorite books.
If the ratings are good, any possibilities for more?
Hand: Wrinkle is a trilogy! So if it's successful, maybe we can do the other two!
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Also in this issue:
Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale of Van Helsing
