Post 5: Silver Linings Playbook

Adapting My Book:

The knowledge of the reader is very limited when reading The Silver Linings Playbook. The reader only knows what the narrator, Pat Peoples, knows. Pat was recently released from a mental institution after he committed a crime that he forced himself to forget. He believed he was only there for a couple of months when in fact he was there for close to three years. Pat missed a lot of moments with his family, the main one being his brother’s wedding. Missing out on so much but not remembering how long he’d been gone caused confusion and frustration. This causes confusion and frustration for Pat. The reader can empathize with Pat because they too are often confused and unsure of why a character is acting a certain way. When adapting this book, it may be hard to capture the same feeling of not knowing what happened in the past.

Essential Scenes:

1.       In the middle of the book, Pat finds the “Pat Box” in the attic. He does not confront his mother about the “Pat Box” until later in the book, but he is always angry at him mom for not telling him about this. Inside the “Pat Box” are the videos/pictures from Pat and Nikki’s wedding which Pat was told were stolen. When Pat does ask his mom about the “Pat Box” she just breaks down crying leaving Pat both angry and his mother and feeling bad for her. This is the first time the reader is really given the chance to see that something did go horribly wrong in order to cause apart time. Although the reader still does not know what happened, they can see that something bad must have happened for Pat’s mother to hide and lie about the wedding pictures.

2.       Tiffany tells Pat that she is willing help Pat communicate with Nikki and if he agrees to be her dance partner and preform in a dance recital. Pat agrees and they practice countless hours in Tiffany’s dance studio and don’t stop until their routine is perfect. The actual dance recital would be essential to show because first you would get to see the moment that Tiffany and Pat worked tirelessly to perfect. Pat is also able to get all of his friends and family (except for his dad) to come and watch them dance. Pat sacrificed a lot for that moment, including watching or talking about the Eagles and it was a moment when Pat and Tiffany were able to connect, through dance.

3.       After writing fake letters pretending to be Nikki, Tiffany messes up and gets Pat convinced that Nikki will meet him at La Salle. When Pat arrives at La Salle and Nikki does not arrive, he begins to pray and beg that she will come. After he prays he looks up to see Tiffany standing before him apologizing. This is the moment the reader truly knows that Nikki is never coming back and that Tiffany never actually contacted her. The reader feels terrible for Pat because although they knew from the letters they wrote to each other that Nikki was not actually going to show up, they did not expect that Pat never got the chance to even communicate with Nikki. At this moment the reader feels sympathy for Pat because he is unable to move on from Nikki and is stuck in the past.

Scenes To Cut:

1.       Pat and his brother Jake, have season tickets to the Eagles games which means they go to many, many games throughout the story. Only a couple have events that are important to the story, such as Pat’s encounter with the Giant’s fan, and scenes such as the “Asian Invasion” may have to be cut. Although those scenes were nice to read, they do not actually had to Pat’s story about his struggle to find Nikki and would not help the story develop in a movie.

2.       Throughout the book, Pat has many therapy sessions with his therapist, Dr. Cliff. It would take up too much time to show each individual session even though most sessions have something that is important to the story. In order to save time, producers would have to either cut the therapy sessions completely, or they could cut each therapy session as to only mention the important conversation needed to understand the plot and cut the ones that do not give important information.

3.       Once getting in the mental health institute, Pat devotes himself into getting physically fit. He works out for almost five hours a day. It would be important to show one or two of his runs with Tiffany, but a movie could not show every time he worked out because it would be tedious.