Current mood:	pissed off
Entry tags:	read a book it's better for your brain!

Martian Child.. and why I won't be watching it
An exert from an interview with Martian Child's leading man:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=38671

"CS: Did you have any thoughts on your character not being gay like he is in the book and would it have been more interesting to you if they kept that aspect of the book?

Cusack: I don't know because I didn't develop the project and I wasn't there. The only thing I saw was something that wasn't that way. There was always a relationship with the wife who passed away, and then there was the budding thing with Harlee, Amanda's character, so I never saw any version of it that way. It would have been a totally different film, and then it would all be about the politics of gay rights, which I just don't know if it would have been as interesting. Maybe, if I'd read a script and it was great, yeah, that would have been fun."

An exert from an interview with the screenwriters:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Interview-Martian-Child-Screenwriters-6749.html

"How did this story come to your attention?

Jon: We immediately loved the story and thought it would be a beautiful movie.
Seth: It was magical.
Jon: We’re not science-fiction people, Which may have been one of the things that I thought actually helped in this movie.
Seth: It helped us appreciate the story. There definitely was a science-fiction element. The human side of that was so beautiful in the short story that it captivated us.


How did the character of Harlee come about, and why?

Jon: In the short story there was nothing about his personal life. I said I just think we want to know why this single man, he’s John Cusack, he’s attractive, he’s not too old—why isn’t he getting married or something? We actually entertained the notion, what if he was gay, but there were issues we would have to deal with that actually are not dealt with in the book, and the book doesn’t have to for whatever reason. But for the movie we would have to answer a lot of questions that would lead us another way. We didn’t want it to be about the acceptance of David, we wanted it to be about the acceptance of Dennis. So we wanted there to be another female presence. We started thinking about the kind of role that Jane Alexander played in Kramer vs. Kramer, which is a female source for Dustin Hoffman to have. We already had Liz, who was the practical, not to say negative, but could see all the problems that were coming down the pike. We wanted there to be someone on his other shoulder saying this could actually be really beautiful."



To be fair I can't say I'm any real fan of the original novel. I saw it in passing and didn't really spend time reading a family story of a single parent who just happens to be gay adopting a lonely orphan who believes he is a Martian and how they come to love and trust each other.
But hearing a book I know has been made into a MOVIE of coarse I have to look into it!
And 'of coarse' they made our loving gay parent a straight man!
Why?
Well in the words of the screenwriters and their leading man they didn't want to "complicate" their "beautiful, magical story" by keeping the main character a gay parent as he was written originally IN the beautiful, magical story they fell in love with in the first place.
Why?
Because of simple, ugly prejudice. Bigotry. They don't think the paying public will come to a movie about a nice, single gay man raising a problem child and becoming a family.
If you never MAKE the stories then no one can pay to watch them!