Suburban Mayhem: Adapting The Slap
Originally a book by Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap has been adapted into an eight part mini series.
Georgina Pearson spoke to its creators about the challenge of adaptation.
The visual translation of print to film is a familiar road, one well travelled by Hollywood. However; delivering a virtually seamless translation requires a tad more finesse – and is an art now increasingly rare. Even more so, if the print in question is a critically acclaimed, award winning novel of international popularity.
Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap is one such rarity. Exploring the morality of middle class Australia, The Slap follows the repercussions of a single event at a family barbeque – told from the viewpoint of eight different characters.
First published in 2008 with more than 800,000 copies sold worldwide, Tsiolkas’s controversial sixth offering has served to ignite discussion around the globe. Touching on several contentious issues including infidelity, racism and family ties, it examines the consequence of slapping another man’s child – and provides a unique window into multicultural suburban Australia. It was precisely this window that attracted director/producer, Matchbox Picture’s Tony Ayres to the project.
Initially drawn by the gritty subject matter, it seemed to Ayres The Slap was an ideal candidate for adaptation. “When I first read Tsiolkas’s book it immediately struck me as fantastic material for a television series, because the content just leaps off the page. It’s a very big concept and touches on a lot of really hot button topics; from parenting issues, to how to be in a long-term relationship, to marriage. It spans across generations and looks at teenage life – and particularly the connections between how teenagers can relate to adults.” Ayres also told Encore the point of difference for this series is the way in which the book explores multiculturalism. “I was also particularly excited by how Christos describes multicultural Australia – which I think everyone knows to be true, but as far as I know it has never been depicted before.”
Honouring the text
Produced by Matchbox Pictures in collaboration with ABC TV, Tsiolkas was on board from the get go saying, “The ABC felt like a natural home for The Slap. It was an opportunity to develop a ground-breaking piece of television that embodies a rawness and a diversity that we haven’t seen on our screens before.” Producer, Matchbox’s Helen Bowden explains that Tsiolkas was directly involved in the process – particularly at the writing table. “We worked quite closely with Christos, we had a writer’s table of five writers and we spent three weeks together nutting out the arc of each episode and of the whole series. He was consulted on the scripts and on the casting, and looked at various cuts of the series – he was very involved.” Likewise, Bowden’s involvement was intrinsic. “As I was the first person in the company to read the book I was immediately very excited about the potential to turn it into a TV series. Christos
has created a fascinating set of characters and a riveting tale. It cries out for adaptation into a major television series.”
With The Slap continuing to reach literary success there is huge TV potential to be found in the audience it already has. That success, however, can be slightly intimidating. Ayres told Encore that though the bar was high, he felt the adaptation process gave justice to the book. “Yes it is daunting when you think that people love the book so much, but I guess that the process that we underwent to adapt the book to screen was a very honourable process. I felt that we had done a really good job. Bringing The Slap to the small screen I felt that we were really honouring the book without necessarily being identical to the book.”
Bowden told Encore it was best not to think about it. “We just didn’t concentrate on that. We were terribly excited about the material itself. What was a really fantastic thing was, because the book had struck such a chord; people were really excited to be involved.”
Fronted largely by Screen Australia and Film Victoria and shot almost entirely in Melbourne, four directors were taken on (Tony Ayres, Jessica Hobbs, Matthew Saville and Robert Connolly) to shoot two one hour episodes each. Ayres said that collaborating with more than one director played an essential part in the overall result. “I think that having different directors added a unique element to the series. I think we had a collection of directors who were all passionate about the material and who really wanted to deliver that on screen. Bowden agreed, saying that although each episode is entirely different, there are strands woven throughout that link the series together. “We didn’t want to make an anthology series where each one was stand-alone, it is a series and we want people to get drawn into the stories, and want to see the next episode. Because they are each from a different view point – they are very different from one another. The character of the person dictates quite a bit of the content, so the style does change somewhat. But there are things which are in common right across the entire series that ultimately unify.”
Complex and edgy
The skill in adapting a novel comes with knowing which scenes will translate visually, and which will not – and with each chapter creating a one hour episode, the challenge lay in producing enough content to fill it. So a delicate balance was struck – Ayres explained that underlying storylines were brought to the forefront to pad out the gaps. “Some of the chapters were a little bit thin so we had to invent story that felt factual and a part of the episode. For instance, in episode two we keep Anouk’s mother Rachael alive. In the book she had died of breast cancer, but we loved the character so much that we thought well, let’s just keep her alive, let’s see what happens when Anouk has to deal with this woman as part of her day to day life. So we brought more stories into it really – rather than the other way around.”
“The biggest hurdle for me was trying to shoot 55min in eight days,” said Bowden. “The episodes were like feature film level dramas in many ways. So that’s an incredibly fast way to shoot drama, and luckily we were able to get the subtly of performance that we were after.”
That balance was achieved perfectly. Visually, The Slap is complex and edgy. The use of interesting camera angles and viewpoints give a depth of character not often seen in a television series. Bowden told Encore that in order to honour the book, time had to be spent developing each character. “The characters were so dynamic and interesting, and to me, very real – it felt like the world that I’m in. So I felt that in order to really do justice to that, we had to perfect each one.”
Highlighting such a range of sensitive topics, it remains to be seen whether The Slap will resonate with Australian and international audiences. Ayres thinks it will capture a specific niche. “I feel that it’s a very satisfying experience for audiences who want complicated adult relationship drama, because it’s not very easy viewing. But I think it’s very satisfying viewing. It’s very emotional material, complex, funny, and gruelling at times. It covers a whole range of the human experience in a contemporary urban Australian landscape. I feel as though it really delivers its promise.” Ultimately, it comes down to the quality of drama delivered on screen. For Ayres it’s already met, and possibly exceeded the bar that was set by the novel. “What I can say un-categorically, there are no weak episodes in this series. Not one. Each is as strong as the first.”
The Slap premieres on ABC1 at 8.30pm on Thursday.
topics
ABC TV
Brendan Cowell
Christos Tsiolkas
helen bowden
matchbox pictures
Robert Connolly
The Slap
Tony Ayres
Found Ep 1 to be comically melodramatic, myself.
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