America Is Ready for the Real “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

And I wrote a contemporized adaptation of the novella that’s actually faithful to the original story

When Paramount hired screenwriter George Axelrod to adapt Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s in May 1959, he truly had his work cut for him. The novella, which was originally to be published as a series by Harper’s Bazaar, was considered so salacious that Truman was told to revise the story as it was unsuitable for print. Unwilling to compromise, he resold it to Esquire and it debuted in the November 1958 issue -which sales skyrocketed with the stories critical acclaim. It wasn’t long before Random House wanted to publish the novella and Hollywood wanted to purchase the movie rights.

What can I tell anyone about the 1961 film that they don’t already know? It’s legendary! It turned Audrey Hepburn into a cultural icon and is regarded by AFI as one of the greatest cinematic love stories of all time. However, Capote acknowledged the screenplay more as “a creation of its own than an adaptation.” Moreover, he stated that “Paramount double-crossed me in every way” when he learned that the studio miscast Hepburn instead of casting the intended Marilyn Monroe.

The truth is that the novella Axelrod was tasked to adapt to the screen was too ahead of its time regarding the content it explored, despite being set in 1940’s wartime. Axelrod was entrusted to flip a tale about an 18-year-old girl who is a runaway child bride from Texas reinventing herself in New York City and making ends meet the only way she knows how (by being a sugar baby) into a story that could be commercially successful in an America that had yet to experience the sexual revolution.

The novella is essentially about a year or so of her life being witnessed by her male neighbor with whom she develops a deep platonic love. He is a nameless narrator who has no romantic interest during this time in his life, as he is more concerned with pursuing his dream of becoming a successful novelist and working a day job to stay financially afloat. Seeing as though Capote has described Holly as a composite character who embodies the characteristics of so many of the women he’s known and that the narrator shares Capote’s birthday and occupation, we can only assume that the narrator is some semblance of himself -and a queer.

One could even go so far as to suspect Holly herself a bi-sexual woman who - at one point in the story - is acting as a beard for one of her suitors, Rusty Trawler. Suffice it to say, middle America probably wasn’t ready to embrace a cinematic depiction of the gritty cautionary tale full of “sexually deviant” characters that Capote wrote in his novella. Moreover, Axelrod had to contend with the Production Code administration and other censors in an era when even heterosexual sex was taboo. What choice did Axelrod have but to be completely unfaithful to the original plot?

Since the film’s 1961 debut, there has been three unsuccessful spin-off plays. The first was the 1966 Broadway musical written by Edward Albee starring Mary Tyler Moore, which closed before opening. The show was later reprised in London’s West End (2009) and on Broadway (2013) under the direction of Sean Mathias with screenwriter Samuel Adamson penning the former play and Richard Greenberg penning the latter.

Both Adamson and Greenberg were more faithful to the original content than Axelrod, making it more of the cautionary tale it was intended to be than a love story, and both set the plays in 1940’s wartime while Axelrod modernized the novella to be contemporary. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two plays is that Samuelson dropped the first-person narration of the novella while Greenberg retained it. Unfortunately, neither screenwriter was able to adapt the novella to stage in a way that resonated with the masses.

Although many may blame the scripts for the play’s failures, perhaps the biggest curse on the show is that audiences are unable to embrace anyone else in Hepburn’s iconic role. And this is perhaps one of the main reasons Paramount has yet to remake this classic film when other classics have been. Yet the truth is that it’s time for a remake, despite this possible curse looming, if for no other reason than that America is now ready for an adaptation that is faithful to the original story and Capote’s vision of sex and power in a way that the original film couldn’t be.

In the Ms. Brigitte’s Mild Ride blog post “Top 10 Reasons That the Novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s is Better Than the Movie,” the adjunct communications professor Bridgette points out some of the film’s flaws, and you already know Mickey Rooney’s yellow-face depiction of a Chinese American made the list!

As great as the film may be, it could surely stand to be scrubbed of the racist and sexist elements, like Rooney’s Yunioshi and Paul Varjack’s “You belong to me” line -a line in which Holly’s love interest is essentially admitting that he has grown to perceive her as property. In the novella, it’s Holly who has an epiphany that her and her nameless cat belonged to each other when she laments having released the cat into the streets before going on the run. (Up until then, she had been in complete denial as to how attached she was to the stray cat she adopted and refused to name.)

While the Breakfast at Tiffany’s plays take us back to a bygone era, what the cinematic remake must do is breathe new life into the story by contemporizing it into a modern piece for a heroine who was too ahead of her time in the 40’s and 60’s but whose ideas on free love fall right in line with those of us who adhere to the belief that one should be allowed to love whomever they like -regardless of race, gender or class. In an era where gay marriage has been legalized and mixed-raced people are becoming a growing demographic, we’re here for this! And just imagine Mr. Yunioshi recast as someone like Henry Ewan Goldin. Okay, he’s Malaysian and Yunioshi is Japanese, but I think you know where I’m going with this.

Perhaps it is time for American audiences to make the conscious decision to abandon the desire to watch the conventional heterosexual love story they found in the original film play out so that they can embrace the authentic tale in which two people of opposite genders “are bound to each other precisely because their intimacy is platonic, and therefore not transactional,” as Rebecca Renner states in The Paris Review’s “Was Holly Golightly Bisexual” piece. It is a purer love that possesses a more symbiotic emotional connection than ones based on lust and social climbing that is at the heart of the novella.

When the narrator has a false alarm and believes Holly has become engaged to Trawler, he begins to express suicidal thoughts and then ponders, “Was my outrage a little the result of being in love with Holly myself? A little, for I was in love with her just as once I’d been in love with my mother’s elderly, black cook; a postman who let me follow him on his rounds; and a whole family named McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too.” And Joe Bell, the neighborhood bar owner and one of Holly’s few friend’s states, “You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who’s friend,” speaking of his love of Holly. In this story, this is the only love Holly finds.

It could be argued that the narrator and Joe Bell were Holly’s only true friends besides O.J. Berman, (her former Hollywood agent) who bails her out when she gets arrested for her involvement in an international drug-smuggling ring. Holly explicitly says it herself, “I don’t any friends.” And that’s what makes the relationship between Holly and the narrator so endearing. Holly might be surrounded by people, but she’s essentially all alone in the world as she goes from one man to the next in hopes of marrying for money.

In the end, Capote ultimately gave Paramount his blessing. According to Gerald Clarke, Capote’s biographer, Holly Golightly became the author’s favorite literary character out of all the ones he created. And Capote felt that the film captured enough of her essence to satisfy him which was enough to make the film a success in his eyes. I just wished that the picture had captured more of his essence by not making the narrator out to be something he was not: a quasi-gigolo whose desire for Holly is romantic and sexual.

The film gave us a story about two people who forsake their gold-digging tendencies for true love. I wish a remake could give us a more authentic story where sometimes the only love some of us really have at certain points in our lives is that of a good friend and one where scandals befall us, completely change our lives, and force us to strike out into the unknow and reinvent ourselves once again.

As a writing exercise to show-off my screenwriting adaptation skills -and pay homage to Capote and his novella, I adapted the novella into a screenplay. My objective was to be as wholly faithful to the original text as possible.

I didn’t think it was necessary to add anymore of the consumer element of Tiffany & Co. to the film than there already is. (Although I am sure that I would be hard-pressed to find a film producer who would agree with me on that.) When the film debuted, it was the first time that Tiffany & Co. had been a location scene for a major motion picture. This element is missing from the novella and consequently my version of the script. Were someone to compare my version of the script with the original film script, this missing element would likely be one of the biggest criticisms about my adaptation.

Some may also argue that a child-wife in modern times is too far-fetched, but more than 200,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2015 and forty-eight states still have legal loopholes that allow youth under the age of 18 to marry.

Finally, there’s the nameless narrator. What was he to be called? Should he remain nameless, like Cat? Called “Fred,” even though he isn’t Fred (which is done in the plays)? One thing I stole from the original script is the name Axelrod gave the narrator, Paul Varjack. I thought it would give the original script and my adaptation of Capote’s novella more continuity.

Paramount obviously holds the rights to the film and my version of the script isn’t for sale, unless Paramount wants it of course! (Wishful thinking, I know.)

Industry insiders can find my original work The Pawn Game, a cautionary tale about a woman who discovers that she is part of a dangerous extortion ring a little too late, on The Blacklist. The influence of Breakfast at Tiffany’s will not be lost upon anyone familiar with the film.

Do you have any thoughts on a potential remake or my adaptation of Capote’s famous novella? Nikki Minaj has stated that she loves the film and would like to be cast in a remake as Holly. Can you imagine the story being made into a more urban, hip hop inspired one? Who do you think should play Holly or the nameless narrator?

Feel free to go wild in the comment section below critiquing the script and/or playing a game of fantasy dream cast!

Have a story that you’d like adapted to the screen? I can be commissioned to adapt your novel, novella, short story or memoir as well.

Contact me for a quote.