Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

A long overdue post about the film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

So Perks is now out on DVD and so I bought it and watched it for the first time since I saw it in theaters way back in September.  One of the biggest things I took away from the film was that having the author write the screenplay meant that the film was every bit as good and in some ways better than the book.  It almost felt like Stephen Chbosky was able to put some distance between him and his book, and then went back and changed the parts of the story that he felt could have been better.

Aside from simply cutting out scenes (to fit in with run-time), there were 5 changes in the film that I thought improved upon the plot. So here they are:


1. Casting Emma Watson as Sam.

Ok, ok, I'm cheating with the first one.  This wasn't really a change to the story.  So call it 4 major changes in the film + 1 brilliant casting choice.  But this casting choice was so appropriate that if Chbosky came out and said that the reason why he never adapted the book to film was because he was waiting for an actress like Emma Watson to come by, I would not be at all surprised.

Perks is told from a first person perspective.  And with any first person account, there is always a question of  the extent to which the narrator is reliable.  In fact, the Aunt Helen element of Perks deliberately addresses Charlie's reliability, so it bears noting to an even greater degree.  So what does this have to do with Emma Watson?

When Charlie starts hanging out with Sam at the beginning of the book, he has a massive crush on her.  As the reader, we only see Sam through Charlie's opinion of who she is and how pretty she looks to him.  But when Sam appears on screen for the first time under the stadium lights of the homecoming game, I realized that most of us grew up with Emma Watson through the HP films.  She's become a sort of media darling that we haven't had in a long time.  And so, by casting her, I think Chbosky knew that most of us would see Emma Watson the way Charlie sees Sam.  And it's quite possibly that no other actress in Hollywood could have produced that effect.


2. Charlie helps Sam with her SATs

This was something that did not happen in the book that I thought added a great touch to the film.  I do remember thinking, when I read Perks, that though I was "cheering" for Charlie, a part of me was conscious of his relative lack of positive action.  And yes, that's 100% in line with him being a wallflower.  However, it did make it seem, at times, like Sam was doing things for Charlie out of pity for him.  And that, as a result, made it harder for me to "cheer" for him to get together with Sam.  There was a part of me that said, "Well, why would she go out with him?  He's a nice kid and all, but... he's not helping his own cause."

Again, I know that the "wallflowery" part of Charlie's personality drives a lot of the plot, but I don't think making him progress from "more wallflower" to "less wallflower" throughout the film detracts from the plot at all.  By having Charlie help Sam with her SATs, Chbosky puts Sam and Charlie on more equal footing, so that it's not just her doing things for him all the time.


3. Bedroom Scene

One of my few beefs with the book was that I didn't like the way Chbosky tackled one of the last scenes in the book, when Charlie helps Sam pack her stuff and they talk about how he should have asked her out.  To me, the scene came out sounding a lot like this:

Sam: Why didn't you ask me out?
Charlie: Because you told me not to?
Sam: I told you that 6 months ago!
Charlie: Yeah.  And?
Sam: I've changed my mind since then!
Charlie: You didn't tell me that.
Sam: You should have read my mind and asked me out if that's what you wanted!  To hell with my explicit instructions that you can't think of me that way.
Charlie: What the fuck?

It's a paraphrase, but that's pretty much what I got from the book.  Fortunately, Chbosky must have read my mind!  Here's the far better rendition from the film:

Sam: Why do I and everyone I love pick people who treat us like we're nothing?
Charlie: We accept the love we think we deserve.
Sam: Then why didn't you ask me out?

Her unspoken question, here, is, "Do you not think you deserve my love?" which is a legitimate question, and it's the direction this conversation should have taken in the book.  It helps that in the film, she never tells him not to ask her out, so that stumbling point never needs to be addressed.  All in all, this was the perfect way for this scene to have unfolded, and I thank the stars the Chbosky made this change.


4. The Tunnel Song

This was a brilliant little addition.  "The Tunnel Song" exists in the book, as does the scene when they all hear it for the first time, but I always found it a little odd that the song just remains unidentified throughout the book.  They hear it once, it inspires that scene, and then it just disappears.  It's not a problem, per se, but wow, was it a brilliant move to have that scene at the end when they're all sitting at Bob's Burger: Sam tells them about how her roommate has the best taste in music, pulls out a mixtape, and says, "I found the Tunnel Song... let's drive."  It's the perfect lead in to...


5. The Final Scene

Best final scene of any film, ever.  Holy crap, the first time I saw Perks, when he gets to the part where he says, "But right now, these moments are not stories.  This is happening.  I am here and I am looking at her.  And she is so beautiful," I started crying in the stupid theater and continued to do so until the end of the film.

Four boys names I will give to any character I want a reader to dislike: Kyle, Chad, Tyler, and Zachery.