Speaker 1: Like imagine spending millions of dollars to build this meticulously
Speaker 1: crafted television world. Right. You've got the locker rooms built.
Speaker 1: You've hired the best actors. The lighting is totally perfect.
Speaker 2: Scripts are locked.
Speaker 1: And then at the very 11th hour, a corporate lawyer
Speaker 1: sitting in an office 3000 miles away. tells you that
Speaker 1: a single chest tattoo has to be entirely erased from
Speaker 1: the production.
Speaker 3: It sounds totally absurd when you put it like that. But,
Speaker 3: I mean, that is the invisible hand of Hollywood at work. Right.
Speaker 3: It's the friction between a beloved piece of art and, well,
Speaker 3: the legal realities of a television network.
Speaker 1: Which is exactly what we are dissecting today in this
Speaker 1: deep dive. We're looking at the messy, complicated, and honestly
Speaker 1: often entirely accidental process of page-to-screen adaptation.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 1: And our guide for this is a fantastic article from
Speaker 1: Pink News by Emily Maskell. She outlined six major differences
Speaker 1: between Rachel Rees' smash hit hockey romance novel, Heated Rivalry,
Speaker 1: and the HBO television adaptation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she really breaks it down well.
Speaker 1: She does. So we're talking about the transition of characters
Speaker 1: Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Story, and Shane Hollander, played
Speaker 1: by Hudson Williams, from the page to the screen.
Speaker 3: And for you listening, whether you are a writer trying
Speaker 3: to understand the mechanics of screenwriting or... maybe a diehard
Speaker 3: fan of this specific show or just someone fascinated by
Speaker 3: pop culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Understanding these changes. I mean, this isn't just about spotting differences.
Speaker 3: We are going to deconstruct the hidden machinery of television here.
Speaker 3: We're looking at the legal hurdles, the visual demands and
Speaker 3: those narrative sacrifices creators have to make.
Speaker 2: OK, let's unpack this because I want to dive straight
Speaker 2: into that tattoo.
Speaker 1: It perfectly illustrates how a seemingly invisible legal constraint radically
Speaker 1: alters a character's physical presence.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So in Emily Maskell's piece, she points out that in
Speaker 1: Rachel Reed's original novel, our two rivals turned lovers play
Speaker 1: for the Boston Bears and the Montreal Voyagers.
Speaker 3: Which are very thinly veiled stand-ins for real world National
Speaker 3: Hockey League teams, right? Yeah. The Boston Bruins and the
Speaker 3: Montreal Canadiens. And in a novel, you can do that.
Speaker 3: You can play with those real world echoes and to
Speaker 3: ground your fiction in reality.
Speaker 1: But on the HBO show, they play for the Boston
Speaker 1: Raiders and the Montreal Metros. And my initial thought when
Speaker 1: I read that was, wait, HBO has near infinite resources? Yeah.
Speaker 2: If they want to use a Bruins adjacent name.
Speaker 1: Or logo just to keep the book's flavor, couldn't they just,
Speaker 1: I don't know, cut a check to the NHL? Like,
Speaker 1: is this just a budget issue or is there a
Speaker 1: deeper creative friction?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it goes far beyond budget. The National Hockey League,
Speaker 3: like any major sports organization, is an incredibly protective corporate entity.
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
Speaker 3: They heavily guard their intellectual property, and they are notoriously
Speaker 3: strict about the context in which their brand is used.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: And heated rivalry is a very mature, steamy romance. The
Speaker 3: NHL generally aims for that family-friendly, mass-market appeal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So they're not going to license their trademarks or even
Speaker 3: allow something legally confusingly similar to their trademarks to be
Speaker 3: associated with an HBO show that features explicit content.
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
Speaker 3: OK. So the network's legal department just has to step
Speaker 3: in and sanitize the team names to avoid a massive
Speaker 3: trademark dilution lawsuit. They basically force the change to the
Speaker 3: Boston Raiders and Montreal Metros.
Speaker 1: And that legal pivot is what ruins the tattoo.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Because in the book, Ilya is this.
Speaker 1: Brash Russian hockey prodigy. And his defining visual characteristic is
Speaker 1: this massive bear tattoo across his chest. It ties his
Speaker 1: personal identity, his literal skin, directly to his team, the
Speaker 1: Boston Bears.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a physical manifestation of his loyalty and his
Speaker 3: whole persona.
Speaker 1: But on the show, because the lawyers said, you know,
Speaker 1: you are the Raiders now, keeping a giant bear chest
Speaker 1: tattoo makes zero sense.
Speaker 3: Right, right.
Speaker 1: So the legal department literally erased a character's physical traits.
Speaker 1: It's almost like adapting a Superman comic, but the legal
Speaker 1: department says you cannot use the color red.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a great comparison.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't just lose the S on his chest.
Speaker 1: You lose the visual psychology of the character. Taking away
Speaker 1: the Boston Bears took away a piece of Ilya's armor.
Speaker 3: That is a phenomenal way to frame it. The page
Speaker 3: is legally frictionless, right? Rachel Reed doesn't have to clear
Speaker 3: a trademark with corporate sponsors to describe a fictional tattoo
Speaker 3: on a fictional player. Yeah. But a multi-million dollar television
Speaker 3: set is governed by contracts and copyright law. The legal
Speaker 3: reality of television production directly dictates character design. And fans
Speaker 3: often don't realize that the absence of a beloved detail wasn't,
Speaker 3: you know, an artistic slight by the director, but literally
Speaker 3: a mandate from a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Right, which makes me think about how much time I
Speaker 1: spent trying to figure out if there's a deeper meaning
Speaker 1: to the next change Maskell points out.
Speaker 3: Oh, the brother?
Speaker 2: Yes, involving Iliara's brother.
Speaker 1: Because in both versions, Ilya has this incredibly toxic, strained
Speaker 1: relationship with his brother. It's this huge piece of his
Speaker 1: emotional baggage. And in the book, the brother's name is Andrei.
Speaker 1: But on screen, where he's played by Slavic Rogozin, his
Speaker 1: name is Alexei. And I was racking my brain like,
Speaker 1: is Alexei.
Speaker 2: A harsher sounding name?
Speaker 3: Ah, I see what you did there.
Speaker 1: Is it a nod to a specific figure in Russian literature?
Speaker 1: Does it signify a different family dynamic?
Speaker 3: Well, you are falling into the exact cognitive trap that
Speaker 3: almost all dedicated viewers fall into. We assume perfect, top-down
Speaker 3: intentionality for every single frame of a television show.
Speaker 1: So what is the deep, symbolic meaning behind the name change, then?
Speaker 3: There isn't one.
Speaker 1: Wait, really?
Speaker 3: It was a complete accident.
Speaker 1: Oh, wait.
Speaker 3: Seriously. Yeah. In an interview with a Canadian streamer, Crave,
Speaker 3: the show writer and director, Jacob Tierney, was asked about
Speaker 3: this profound artistic pivot from Andre to Alexei, and Tierney
Speaker 3: just laughs and admits, I screwed that up.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: He literally just forgot the name while writing the script.
Speaker 1: A multi-million dollar production. And he just forgot the guy's name.
Speaker 1: That is incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's better. Tierney also pointed out in that same
Speaker 3: interview that Rachel Reed, the author who literally invented The Brother,
Speaker 3: didn't even notice the mistake when she reviewed the material. Oh,
Speaker 3: my gosh. Tierney joked that the oversight was, you know,
Speaker 3: on Rachel Reed.
Speaker 1: That completely bursts the bubble of the auteur theory. I mean,
Speaker 1: we give creators so much credit for these elaborate four-dimensional
Speaker 1: chess moves in their storytelling, and sometimes it really is
Speaker 1: just human error.
Speaker 3: Just someone slipping up?
Speaker 1: Right, like a writer is tired, they type Alexa instead
Speaker 1: of Andre, and suddenly thousands of fans on Reddit are
Speaker 1: writing essays about the sociopolitical implications of the name Alexa.
Speaker 3: It's such a vital lesson for anyone analyzing media. While
Speaker 3: we should look for meaning, we also really have to
Speaker 3: account for the human element. Television is made by exhausted
Speaker 3: people working on really tight deadlines. Mistakes happen, and they
Speaker 3: become canon.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So we've established how corporate lawyers can erase a character's
Speaker 1: physical traits and how human error can change their identity.
Speaker 1: But the medium of television itself is responsible for erasing
Speaker 1: something much more fundamental, which is a character's internal thoughts.
Speaker 3: Right, because you can't film inside someone's head.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You cannot point a camera at a memory. And
Speaker 2: to solve this, the showrunners had.
Speaker 1: To literally bring a ghost back to life, which brings
Speaker 1: us to the character of Sasha.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is where we get into the heavy
Speaker 3: lifting of adaptation theory. Emily Maskell's article highlights how Sasha's
Speaker 3: role is completely overhauled to serve the visual medium.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So let's look at the source material first. In Rachel
Speaker 3: Regan's novel, Sasha is the son of Ilyas' former coach.
Speaker 3: But we, as the readers, never actually meet him in
Speaker 3: the present tense.
Speaker 1: No, not at all.
Speaker 3: Sasha exists entirely as a memory. He is relegated to Ilya,
Speaker 3: recounting his past sexual encounters and conversations with Shane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's basically just a conversational tool. In the book,
Speaker 1: Ilya and Shane are in this intense, isolated bubble. It's
Speaker 1: just the two of them hidden away in hotel rooms,
Speaker 1: navigating this massive secret. And when Ilya talks about Sasha,
Speaker 1: it's this moment of quiet vulnerability, right?
Speaker 2: He's trusting Shane with his history.
Speaker 3: Exactly. But the television rule of show, don't tell, aggressively
Speaker 3: disrupts that bubble.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In the HBO series, Sasha is not a ghost.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: He is a living, breathing character played by Caden Connors.
Speaker 3: And when Ilya returns to Russia, he actually encounters Sasha
Speaker 3: in a bathroom, along with their mutual friend Svetlana, played
Speaker 3: by Ksenia Daniella Karlamova.
Speaker 1: Right, right.
Speaker 3: And Sasha physically approaches Ilya. He leans in, he kisses him,
Speaker 3: attempting to reignite their old dynamic.
Speaker 1: And Ilya has to actively, physically push him away and
Speaker 1: reject him on camera.
Speaker 3: Yes. But.
Speaker 1: I have to push back on the strategy a little bit, though,
Speaker 1: because I understand the mechanics of TV, but doesn't making
Speaker 1: everything so literal kind of rob the audience of their imagination?
Speaker 3: How so?
Speaker 1: Well, by giving Sasha a physical form, by putting him
Speaker 1: right there in the bathroom, they are puncturing that isolated
Speaker 1: bubble that Shane and Ilya share. Doesn't bringing the past
Speaker 1: physically into the present sort of dilute the intimacy of
Speaker 1: Ilya quietly confessing his history in a dark room?
Speaker 3: I mean, I see the loss you were pointing out.
Speaker 3: In literature, intimacy is often built through the sharing of secrets.
Speaker 3: The act of speaking the history is the dramatic event. Exactly.
Speaker 3: But let's look at the constraints of television. If you
Speaker 3: just have two actors sitting on a bed talking about
Speaker 3: a guy named Sasha for 10 minutes, the pacing drags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Television relies on kinetic energy and conflict. To show the
Speaker 3: audience that Ilya has fundamentally changed, that his burgeoning queer
Speaker 3: sexuality is now entirely anchored to Shane... The medium demands
Speaker 3: a physical obstacle.
Speaker 2: So the camera needs proof, essentially.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Rejecting Sasha on screen is a visual shorthand for
Speaker 3: Ilya's internal emotional shift. In a book, Ilya can just think,
Speaker 3: I used to want Sasha, but now I only want Shane.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: On screen, a physical action is required to cross that threshold.
Speaker 3: Sasha becomes the physical manifestation of Ilya's past life. By
Speaker 3: pushing Sasha away, Ilya is visually declaring his loyalty to
Speaker 3: Shane for the audience.
Speaker 1: The show has to build an environment that forces the
Speaker 1: subtext to the surface.
Speaker 3: Perfectly said.
Speaker 1: And we see this exact same strategy of externalizing the
Speaker 1: internal during the dance club scene. which Emily Maskell specifically
Speaker 1: calls out as a masterclass in adaptation.
Speaker 3: Oh, it is a phenomenal sequence. The needle drop alone, T-A-T-R,
Speaker 3: is all the things she said. It sets this incredibly tense,
Speaker 3: nostalgic mood. Yeah. But the staging is radically different from
Speaker 3: the novel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because in the book, Shane is on the dance
Speaker 1: floor with his girlfriend, Rose, and Ilya is just at
Speaker 1: the bar watching them.
Speaker 2: And he is seething.
Speaker 1: It's entirely internal. We are in his head, feeling his jealousy,
Speaker 1: feeling that distance between them. Right.
Speaker 3: Now compare that to the visual ecosystem the show builds. Shane,
Speaker 3: played by Hudson Williams, isn't just dancing with Rose, played
Speaker 3: by Sophie and Elise. He is sandwiched on the dance
Speaker 3: floor between Rose and Rose's gay best friend Miles, played
Speaker 3: by Devante Sr.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the entire club is drenched in what Maskell Year's
Speaker 3: article refers to as perfect bisexual lighting.
Speaker 1: Oh, let's clarify that term for anyone who might not
Speaker 1: be familiar with cinematography tropes.
Speaker 2: What exactly makes lighting bisexual?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a specific cinematic technique that gained massive popularity
Speaker 3: in the 2010s. It uses these high contrast neon hues,
Speaker 3: specifically vibrant pink, deep purple, and rich blue. Oh, right.
Speaker 2: I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When a director watches a scene in these colors, it
Speaker 3: is a subconscious visual code signaling a queer space or
Speaker 3: a character's fluid sexuality to the audience entirely without dialogue.
Speaker 2: So they're painting the scene with queer subtext.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: And then they introduce Miles into that space. And Miles
Speaker 1: actually gestures to Ilya at the bar. He initiates an interaction.
Speaker 1: But Ilya completely ignores Miles' advances to stare exclusively at Shane. Right.
Speaker 3: And think about the mechanics of why Miles was added.
Speaker 3: The book can just tell you that Ilya is jealous
Speaker 3: and hyper-fixated on Shane despite the presence of a woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the TV show has to prove it visually. By
Speaker 3: adding Miles, an attractive, available gay man showing direct interest
Speaker 3: in Ilya, the show creates a physical test. Ah, I see.
Speaker 3: When Illy ignores a willing participant in this neon-drenched queer
Speaker 3: ecosystem to just stare through the crowd at Shane, it
Speaker 3: proves the depth of his fixation. The sexual tension isn't
Speaker 3: just a thought anymore. It's a physical geometry in the room.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating how novel uses the mind as its canvas,
Speaker 1: while television has to use bodies and light. But this
Speaker 1: tension between keeping things locked inside a character's head versus
Speaker 1: blowing them up for the camera... really hits its peak
Speaker 1: during the phone call scene. Maskell rightly identifies this as
Speaker 1: the emotional crescendo of the adaptation.
Speaker 3: It is a devastating sequence.
Speaker 2: Truly.
Speaker 3: Let's establish the context for a second. Ilya suffers a sudden,
Speaker 3: tragic loss in his family. He flies back home to Russia.
Speaker 3: He is grieving, exhausted, and just overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And in a moment of desperate vulnerability, he calls Shane
Speaker 3: just to hear his voice and decompress.
Speaker 1: In Rachel Reed's novel, Shane is on the other end
Speaker 1: of the line and he asks Ilya to just speak
Speaker 1: to him in Russian, knowing he won't understand the words,
Speaker 1: but just wanting to offer a safe space.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And as a reader, we are largely kept out of
Speaker 1: the translation of that monologue until the very end. The
Speaker 1: book gives us this beautifully understated translated line. I am
Speaker 1: pretty sure I'm in love with you and I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do about it.
Speaker 3: It's such a quiet revelation. But what makes the literary
Speaker 3: version so powerful is what happens immediately after he hangs up.
Speaker 2: Yes, the panic.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The novel pivots into Ilya's spiraling internal panic. He sits
Speaker 3: there and thinks, what if Shane recorded that and ran
Speaker 3: it through Google Translate? What if he knows?
Speaker 2: Oh, that fear.
Speaker 3: It's a profound realization of his own vulnerability. The drama.
Speaker 3: The thought process itself. The terror of being understood.
Speaker 1: But you can't film a guy sitting in a quiet
Speaker 1: room panicking about Google Translate for five minutes.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is terrible television.
Speaker 3: Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 1: So the HBO show takes a completely different route. We
Speaker 1: don't get the quiet panic of the aftermath. We get
Speaker 1: a massive powerhouse monologue spoken aloud in Russian.
Speaker 3: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Connor's story delivers this crushing performance where he says,
Speaker 1: I love her, but not like I love you. That's
Speaker 1: the worst effing part of all of this.
Speaker 2: Is that all I want is you. It's always you.
Speaker 1: I am so in love with you and I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do about it.
Speaker 3: And the medium of television requires an actor to physically
Speaker 3: manifest emotion like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Connor's story needs the meat of that monologue to act.
Speaker 3: In a novel, the vulnerability comes from the quiet fear
Speaker 3: of being discovered. But on television, the vulnerability has to
Speaker 3: come from the sheer force of the confession itself. The
Speaker 3: spoken word has to carry the weight of all those
Speaker 3: paragraphs of inner monologue.
Speaker 1: It's like the difference between reading sheet music and standing
Speaker 1: in the front row of a live rock concert.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1: Because in the book, you are reading the sheet music
Speaker 1: of Ilya's mind, right? You can clearly see... The intricate,
Speaker 1: complex structure of his anxiety, the little notes of his
Speaker 1: fear about Google Translate, the delicate pacing of his realization.
Speaker 1: It's technical and deeply internal. But the TV show is
Speaker 1: like plugging into a massive amplifier. It's not about the
Speaker 1: technical anxiety of what happens next. It is purely about
Speaker 1: the raw, undeniable, visceral impact of those spoken words hitting
Speaker 1: you right in the chest.
Speaker 3: That analogy holds up perfectly. The television show prioritizes the
Speaker 3: immediate impact of the declaration. over the lingering anxiety of
Speaker 3: the aftermath.
Speaker 1: But making that choice, deciding exactly when and how to
Speaker 1: unleash these massive emotional payloads, it directly affects the pacing
Speaker 1: of the entire story.
Speaker 3: It definitely does.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the final and definitely the most
Speaker 1: controversial difference Emily Maskell highlights, the missing epilogue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ending is where the biological clocks of these
Speaker 3: two mediums really clash the hardest. Let's outline what the
Speaker 3: HBO viewers got first. Okay. The show ends at a
Speaker 3: very poignant, unresolved note. Ilya and Shane have just told
Speaker 3: Shane's parents that they are together. We see them driving
Speaker 3: back to their cottage, sharing these complex, bittersweet smiles, and
Speaker 3: the screen cuts to black. The credits roll.
Speaker 2: It leaves you breathless, but it is incredibly abrupt.
Speaker 3: Very.
Speaker 1: Especially when you realize what the book readers got. Rachel
Speaker 1: Reed gave her audience a massive, definitive epilogue set 16.
Speaker 2: Months in the future.
Speaker 3: It's a complete life update.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: In the book's epilogue, the landscape has changed entirely. Ilya
Speaker 1: is now playing for Ottawa. Shane is officially out to
Speaker 1: his teammates. They have actively bought homes in Canada to
Speaker 1: be closer to one another.
Speaker 3: So much happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the true emotional climax is this public press
Speaker 1: conference where they announce the Arena Foundation, named after Ilya's
Speaker 1: late mother, which is the very charity they had been
Speaker 1: softly plotting in bed during the final episode of the show.
Speaker 3: Because the novel provides absolute finality. When you close the
Speaker 3: back cover of heated rivalry, you know exactly where these
Speaker 3: men stand. They have conquered their obstacles and achieved their goals.
Speaker 1: But the TV show deliberately cuts all of that out.
Speaker 1: And I have to ask, is this just a cynical strategy.
Speaker 2: By the network?
Speaker 1: Are they withholding the emotional payoff, the triumph of the
Speaker 1: Arena Foundation, just to keep viewers on the hook, guaranteeing
Speaker 1: we all tune in for season two? Or is there
Speaker 1: a genuine artistic reason to leave the audience stranded on
Speaker 1: a bittersweet, unresolved note?
Speaker 3: Well, it's the fundamental reality of the television business. A
Speaker 3: book offers the satisfying sigh of closure. But a successful
Speaker 3: TV show thrives on the dopamine loop of momentum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it needs you to come back.
Speaker 3: It requires anticipation. If the showrunners give you the press conference,
Speaker 3: the houses in Canada, and the public triumph, the story
Speaker 3: is over. There is no narrative engine left for a
Speaker 3: second season.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: By withholding that epilogue, they maintain the tension. As Maskell notes,
Speaker 3: the fan theories are already swirling, that this withheld epilogue
Speaker 3: will actually serve as the opening moments of season two.
Speaker 1: Which makes you question what you actually want from the
Speaker 1: media you consume, you know?
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Do you prefer the neat, absolute closure of a novel
Speaker 1: where the bow is tied and you can put it
Speaker 1: safely on your shelf? Or have we all been conditioned
Speaker 1: by modern streaming to prefer prolonged, serialized tension?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: We are seemingly willing to trade a satisfying ending for
Speaker 1: the mere promise of spending more time with.
Speaker 2: These characters next year.
Speaker 3: A cynic looks at the missing epilogue and says, it's
Speaker 3: a corporate trap for viewership. But an optimist looks at
Speaker 3: it and says, it's a promise that the journey isn't
Speaker 3: over yet.
Speaker 1: That's a great way to look at it. So let's
Speaker 1: pull all of this together. We've looked at these six
Speaker 1: major changes through the lens of Emily Maskell-Rowe's article. And
Speaker 1: what emerges is a complete deconstruction of how art translates
Speaker 1: across mediums.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: We've seen how a character's physical identity can be warped
Speaker 1: by a lawyer protecting NHL trademarks. We've seen how elaborate
Speaker 1: fan theories are humbled by a director simply forgetting a
Speaker 1: character's name.
Speaker 3: We've also seen the deliberate, heavy-handed choices required by the camera.
Speaker 3: Visualizing the invisible by giving a physical body to Sasha.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Externalizing sexual tension with bisexual lighting and the introduction of
Speaker 3: Miles on the dance floor. Translating the quiet panic of
Speaker 3: a novel into the powerhouse Russian monologue of a television performance.
Speaker 3: And finally, manipulating the structural demands of television by withholding
Speaker 3: the final chapter for the sake of momentum.
Speaker 1: The ultimate takeaway here is that an adaptation is not
Speaker 1: and can never be a carbon copy.
Speaker 3: No, never.
Speaker 1: It is a translation of language. It takes a story
Speaker 1: that speaks in the language of internal thoughts and text
Speaker 1: and translates it into the loud, kinetic language of visual
Speaker 1: action and physical performance. The core emotional truth of Ilya
Speaker 1: and Shane survives the journey, but the vehicle delivering that
Speaker 1: truth had to be entirely rebuilt.
Speaker 3: It's a different vehicle navigating a completely different set of physics.
Speaker 1: And I want to leave you with a final thought
Speaker 1: to ponder, something that builds on the strange relationship between
Speaker 1: the page and the screen. We've spent this hour analyzing
Speaker 1: what the TV show gained and lost by adapting Rachel
Speaker 1: Reed's book.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But consider how this works in reverse. Because the HBO
Speaker 1: show is such a massive hit, The novel is completely
Speaker 1: sold out. Thousands of fans are going to read the
Speaker 1: book after having watched the show.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's true.
Speaker 2: When those fans read the.
Speaker 1: Book, how will the massive definitive spoken declarations of Connor
Speaker 1: Story's Earth's performance retroactively alter their reading of Ilya's quiet
Speaker 1: internal panic on the page? Wow.
Speaker 2: Does the sheer.
Speaker 1: Volume of the television show overwrite the subtlety of the
Speaker 1: book in our cultural memory? Or do the two versions
Speaker 1: somehow manage to exist as parallel competing timelines in your mind?
Speaker 3: That is the ultimate paradox of adaptation. Which version becomes
Speaker 3: the truth? It really is.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
Speaker 1: the brilliant, messy waters of page-to-screen translation. Keep questioning what
Speaker 1: you watch, and we'll catch you on the next one.