Trick or Treat

I hope you are enjoying my walk down memory lane when it comes to Harry Potter.

What I've realized is that reading the books and seeing the films have become a larger experience than just sitting in a room reading a book. I have never felt this about any other book or series I've read: this shared anticipation for each book or film to release, such widespread passion for specific characters and their stories. It goes beyond the page.

So, my last Potter memory:

During my final year of college I attended a Halloween party and dressed up as Harry. My friend Katie suggested we go trick-or-treating. It was a ridiculous idea. I had just turned twenty-one years old. I was a senior at a university, on my way to the workplace or to graduate school, to become an adult. I probably had not been trick or treating since I was fourteen.

But I was lucky. I looked very young. Katie did too. This has not always benefited me in my professional and private life. It is hard to be taken seriously when you look like a child. But in that particular situation looking young was an advantage. So we decided to test it. We went trick-or-treating as college seniors. We nodded when people asked us if we went to the local high school, I showed off my Harry costume to a bunch of impressed six year olds, and we got bags and bags of candy. It is one of my fondest memories of college: the day I got to act like a kid.

That's another thing I love about the Harry Potter experience. There's a kind of innocence about the whole craze. A bunch of people who are just excited. About a boy wizard. About a good book.

In anticipation of the release of The Deathly Hallows Part II, check out some other bloggers talking about Potter this week:

Lisa Galek
Jennifer Daiker
Abby Minard
Michael Di Gesu
Laurel Garver
Renae Mercado
Colene Murphy

The Night I Bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I was in Park Slope, Brooklyn, at Down South, a music venue whose cavernous basement looks like a military bunker. My friend Bert, better known as Bob Foxx, was spinning his tunes in the shadows. And I remember creating a spectacle when I tripped on a bar stool and sent it crashing to the cement floor. Everyone thought I was drunk but, in actuality, I was just clumsy, ungraceful.

As midnight approached, I sat next to a girl I didn't know, a friend of Bert's sister. A few beers had left me buzzed and I'm not sure why I turned to her, but I did, I don't know when I'm going to get my Harry Potter book.

She clasped her hand to an open mouth, Holy s***, that's tonight.

I nodded and she looked at her watch, rose up from her seat, Well, come on. We've got to go get one. As if there were no other choice, as if, obviously, this was what we must do.

We left the bar abruptly and came up to the street then looked around, frazzled, trying to figure out where to go. My new Potter companion thought she knew an independent bookstore in the neighborhood and we wandered until we found it, this charming shop, so tiny it looked as if all of the books were spilling out of it. Bookshelves stacked to the ceiling. Towers of books on sturdy wooden tables.

I looked for the kids, the costumes. All of the chain stores were boasting massive parties, expecting lines to curl around the block. But, we were the only ones at this particular shop. They gave us cookies and milk, handed us the heavy book, with it's orange flame cover.

And so we left, victorious, descended into the underground bar. Our adventure was just a little rest stop before we continued on with the night. I remember that we caused quite a stir, the two of us with our hefty books. People were amused, some jealous, Where'd you get that? they asked and when we told them, they went on their way, returning with the book tucked under their arm.

I will always remember how strange and perfect that experience was. The night I got the final Harry Potter book.

In anticipation of the release of The Deathly Hallows Part II, check out some other bloggers talking about Potter this week:

Lisa Galek
Jennifer Daiker
Abby Minard
Michael Di Gesu
Laurel Garver
Renae Mercado
Colene Murphy

It All Ends

I was walking on the Highline this past weekend, a boardwalk along the elevated train tracks on the west side of Manhattan. If there is anything New Yorkers crave it is space and the Highline demonstrates one of the most creative uses of space I've ever seen. The city took the abandoned tracks and turned it into a park. Long wooden planks form a path that spans 15 city blocks lined with runaway flowers and benches.

But, like many things in New York, it has become crowded. I mean, stupid crowded. We're talking stuck in foot traffic, walking at a snails pace, bodies crammed up against one another like Times Square kind of crowded. And so there goes this idea of space. It becomes something else, all of the people in the city stuck together, like we always are, competing for space on sidewalks and streets and subway cars.

At one point, I looked out, past the wildflowers to see this Harry Potter billboard: It All Ends 7.15. And I thought how epic that sounded, how apocalyptic, how catastrophic. I can't believe it, said the girl directly behind me, practically breathing down my neck. Harry Potter. It's all over.

And it does feel that way, doesn't it? This world phenomenon coming to some kind of end.

I remember reading the books for the very first time just outside of London, in my little dorm room on the campus of the University of Westminster. My room was roughly the size of the bathroom in my apartment now. My bed and my desk were about one foot apart from one another. And I had my very own miniscule bathroom where the shower head did not have a proper stall, it just poured down over my toilet and sink.

I sat in that room and read the first three books, each in one sitting, cover to cover. I read the fourth book in a tiny sleeping car on a train in Europe. I don't remember where I was going, only that I lay down with my head on my backpack, feet curled up on the seat, and I kept the overhead light on. At the time, I didn't know very many people who had read the books, except for my Dad (who, in a strange role reversal, introduced me to the books) and my friend Lynn. I would still wait for the release of three more books in the series. None of the movies had come out yet.

I remembered this as I walked on the Highline, listening to the girl behind me say that Daniel Radcliffe was too short to date. Her friend argued, But he's Harry Potter!

And I thought about the idea of space and how we occupy it. From a book in my little room or that tiny train car. To a giant billboard in one of the most crowded places in New York City.

In anticipation of the release of The Deathly Hallows Part II, check out some other bloggers talking about Potter this week:

Lisa Galek

Jennifer Daiker

Abby Minard

Michael Di Gesu

Laurel Garver

Renae Mercado

Colene Murphy

Interpretation vs. Reinvention

On Saturday, I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. I loved it and thought it was a really beautiful interpretation of the books. The colors in the film are gorgeous. All of the blue, grey, and white tones as they wander through winter...so perfect. The emotional beats when portraying the relationship between Harry, Hermione, and Ron are so well done. It is, of course, the darkest of all the books and I thought the film depicted that wonderfully especially with the scenes at the ministry, at Godric's Hollow, and with Bellatrix. The story of 'The Three Brothers' was absolutely amazing. For those of you haven't seen it yet, that part was, for me, a surprising treat.

In reading some reactions to the film so far, I've seen that a lot of people like this seventh film because it is 'the most accurate'. It does not stray far from the books and, because they've split the film in two parts, it is better able to take it's time and tackle more scenes from the book. These kinds of reactions made me think a lot about the expectations we have when we walk into a film adaptation of a popular book.

It sounds to me like a lot of people get really angry if a film strays too far from the original plot of a book. People tend to like a straight interpretation. They don't like a director changing the order that things happen or adding scenes that were not in a book or leaving out important parts of a book or, particularly, changing the ending. They walk in expecting 'the book' and if they don't get 'the book' they are disappointed.

I'm kind of torn about this.

I've loved every Harry Potter film because it's brought the books alive for me. Sometimes characters or environments didn't look the way I expected them to, but I've always accepted the choices they've made in the film and, in most cases, applauded them. It's the filmmaker's vision. Not mine. I haven't done a strict analysis of book to film (have any of you?) but I've never left any of the films in a huff thinking that they destroyed the books or completely misinterpreted them. Sometimes I wondered why they may have left something out or extended a scene that wasn't so long in the book, but, I've never thought that there were giant leaps made from one to the other.

There are also things that the film brought to me that the books did not. Even though Rowling's descriptions are very detailed, the majesty of Hogwarts, characters coming to life in portraits and pictures, moving stairwells, and quidditch arenas were brought to me in ways I couldn't have imagined, in much grander, more magical ways, and I'm grateful for that.

However, there are two film adaptations of books that I struggled with because, in my opinion, they went to far. "The Namesake" which is one of my favorite books of all time. And "My Sister's Keeper" which is a book I didn't love, but found an entertaining read. In "The Namesake" the film follows the mother's story, while the book follows her son's story. That is a major departure and one I didn't like, even though I still enjoyed the film on it's own. In the film version of "My Sister's Keeper" the ending was sold off to Hollywood and is vastly different from what happens in the book, to a point where I found it offensive that the filmmaker would go in such an opposite direction.

For the most part, I am open to film adaptations. I'm open to learning something new about a book, adding some scenes, changing dialogue, perhaps even going off into a new plot direction. Mostly, I can separate a book from a film and judge it on it's own. But a reinvention of the story rather than an interpretation doesn't always work for me.

How important is it for you to see a film that portrays a book accurately? What kinds of changes from book to film can you accept? What can you not accept?