Case in point, I bought myself a ticket to BookCon, the giant literary trade show and convention being held here in New York this week, which provides a forum for books, storytelling and pop culture.
The earlier part of this week at BookCon has been for publishing industry personnel, but the exhibition is open to the public all day tomorrow. BookCon Headquarters are at the Javits Center, a purpose-built exhibition venue in Hell's Kitchen next to the Hudson River, which is abominably large, bedecked in signage that makes no sense at all, and is therefore most likely designed to confuse as many conference delegates as possible. Notwithstanding my frustrations with the host venue (which I will clearly get over), I'm already psyched to spend the whole day tomorrow wandering in and out of the panel discussions and book signings. Stories about all that to follow.
When I bought my ticket to the convention I had the option to spend $10 extra and attend the official BookCon kick-off event tonight (Friday). It was a panel discussion on the bestselling novel, "This Is Where I Leave You" by Jonathan Tropper. I read the book a few months ago and loved it, and the movie version will be out in September. Tropper also wrote the screenplay for the film, and he participated in the panel discussion tonight, as did the movie's director (Shawn Levy) and two of its stars, Tina Fey and Jason Bateman.
So far only the film's trailer has been officially released, but at the panel discussion tonight we got to have a sneak peek at a couple of the scenes in the film. When I love a book, I'm always concerned about how it will translate onto the screen, but Jonathan Tropper said that a movie is its own animal. In his words, "what I get out of going to a movie is different from what I get out of reading a book" and I do think that's true. And given that Tropper was intimately involved in writing the screenplay, he got to have a say in any points of divergence between his book and his script (and there are several).
I liked hearing the insights about how much of the film was scripted, and which scenes were more heavily improvised. Jason Bateman plays the story's protagonist, Judd, and Tropper said that during the table-read he listened to the actors and ended up changing some of Judd's lines in the script because "Bateman wouldn't say it like that". And when Tina Fey changed some of Tropper's words in the script, she emailed him to apologise - but apparently he wasn't offended at all; in fact, he felt fortunate to be getting "free writing" out of her. It sounded like a great collaboration and even though I loved the book as it was, I thought that the edited/adapted scenes we got to see tonight were just as funny.
If the panel discussions I sit through tomorrow are anything like this one, I will love BookCon 2014. I'm not the sort to go autograph-hunting, or have my photo taken with authors or whatever. I just want to sit and listen to banter back-and-forth from people whose work I've really enjoyed reading. I'm just not sure how I'm going to fit it all in though - I mean, take a look at the schedule! While I'm sure I've forgotten a couple of sessions, I know that I want to hear John Grisham, Brandon Stanton (aka Humans of New York), Jason Segel, and my sweet Westley Carey Elwes. If I get to all those sessions, I think I will be able to declare the day a success. Assuming I don't get lost at the Javits Center first, of course.
Stay tuned, fellow book geeks!
Stay tuned, fellow book geeks!
