The World of A Wrinkle in Time: The Making of the Movie
144
The World of A Wrinkle in Time: The Making of the Movie
144eBook
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Overview
Travel through time and space on an epic adventure with Disney's major motion picture A Wrinkle in Time!
This keepsake book takes readers behind the scenes of Disney's film adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's timeless novel. Complete with interviews and photographs of the cast and crew, it's an exclusive look at the film's production perfect for moviegoers and fans of the iconic book. Discover how acclaimed director Ava DuVernay brought the story to the silver screen; hear firsthand how stars like Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling were transformed into characters; see how sets were built and locations scouted. And discover how one young girl, Meg Murry, finds strength in her flaws, saves her family, and learns that the best way to triumph over fear is to travel by her own light.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle is one of the most beloved children's books of our era, and the major motion picture from Walt Disney Studios brings it alive for both lifelong lovers of the story and a new generation of fans.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466897908 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 02/06/2018 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| File size: | 115 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 3 Months |
About the Author
The Walt Disney Company is one of the world's most beloved creators of family entertainment. Originally founded by Walt and Roy O. Disney in 1923, Disney revolutionized both short and full-length animations before embracing and innovating live-action films and television, theater and theme parks, publishing and music, video games and web portals. The company aims to entertain, inform, and inspire people around the world through the power of storytelling.
Kate Egan’s gifts and talents all involve words. She is the author of a picture book, Kate and Nate Are Running Late!, and a chapter book series, The Magic Shop, both published by Feiwel and Friends. Her work has been named to many state reading lists, selected by the Junior Library Guild, and recognized as “Best of the Year” by Amazon. She is also a freelance editor, a prolific ghostwriter, and an occasional book reviewer. Kate lives with her family on the coast of Maine.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
MADELEINE'S WORLD
"Wild nights are my glory," Mrs Whatsit said. "I just got caught in a down draft and blown off course."
"Well, at least till your socks are dry —"
"Wet socks don't bother me. I just didn't like the water squishing around in my boots. Now, don't worry about me, lamb." (Lamb was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Later in her life, after she had published more than sixty books and become one of the best-loved authors of her time, Madeleine L'Engle said, "Of course I'm Meg," admitting that she had modeled her most famous character on herself.
From the outside, though, her early life bore little resemblance to Meg's, and her family little resemblance to the Murrys.
The only child of older parents, Madeleine L'Engle had no brilliant younger brother like Charles Wallace and no discussion of physics at the dinner table. Her mother was an accomplished musician, her father a journalist and novelist; their New York apartment was crammed with books and bustling with artistic guests.
L'Engle herself, though, was lonely. With few children to keep her company, she turned to the company of stories and characters. Once she decided she wanted to be a writer, she never looked back. "I've been a writer ever since I could hold a pencil," she said. She wrote her first story at the age of five, and she was keeping a journal — a lifelong habit — by the time she turned eight.
L'Engle was not a distinguished student at her New York school, or at the Swiss boarding school where she was abruptly sent at age twelve while her father recovered from an illness in the Alps. It was only when she went to the Ashley Hall School, in Charleston, South Carolina, that she began to grow into her gifts. By the time she enrolled at Smith College, she was exploring a wide range of interests in literature as well as theater and student government. All the time, she was writing.
After her college graduation, L'Engle moved to a tiny apartment in New York's Greenwich Village, where her flexible schedule as an actor allowed some time to write. She published her first two novels, The Small Rain and Ilsa, in 1945 and 1946, and she met her husband, Hugh Franklin, when she was an understudy in a production of The Cherry Orchard. By 1948, the young couple had a new baby and a new plan: they were leaving acting, leaving New York, and starting a brand-new life in small-town Connecticut.
L'Engle published another novel, And Both Were Young, the following year. It drew on her unhappy experiences in the Swiss boarding school, and Charlotte Jones Voiklis, her granddaughter, said, "The novel was an early demonstration of what turned out to be her enormous gift: storytelling as a means to navigate and transform pain and hardship."
"It's a true hero's journey, a true epic journey, warriors fighting the darkness with light."
— AVA DUVERNAY DIRECTOR
From the outside, this period of L'Engle's life would not have seemed painful. Together, she and Hugh ran a general store in the center of town. They were raising three small children, and L'Engle was the choir director at their church — their life was full and busy.
For L'Engle, however, it was also full of disappointment. After her early success, her career began to slow. While she did publish two more novels during these years — Camilla and A Winter's Love — she struggled to find time to write, and when she did find the time, she often wondered if her work was worthwhile. She was not paid well, not widely read, and always mindful that time spent writing was time not spent doing something else. But if she didn't write, L'Engle wondered, what would she do? Who would she be?
These were big questions that needed big answers. The minister at L'Engle's church suggested she might find guidance in the work of some German theologians, but their books put her right to sleep. Instead, she found herself reading about science.
Physicists Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Werner Heisenberg were articulating new theories that spoke to L'Engle. As her granddaughter put it, "Their work revealed a new vision of the universe, a less conventional view not visible through our everyday experiences, which resonated with her own beliefs. In their writings she found a reverence for the beauty of the laws of the universe and for the complex and ever-unfolding understanding of it, which gave her a sense of importance and acceptance."
As she read, L'Engle developed a new concept of her own place in the cosmos — and a new direction for her fiction. Jones Voiklis remembered, "My grandmother didn't have a great scientific background. Her love of science was in the metaphors they provided. She loved the idea that in opening the heart of the atom we released something we didn't have the knowledge to control. There was great creative potential — as well as great destructive potential — in that."
By 1959, L'Engle and her family were ready for another change. Hugh decided to return to his acting career in New York; before the move, the family embarked on a ten-week cross-country camping trip. It was while they were on the road that three names came to L'Engle: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. She itched to tell their story, whatever it was, and when she sat down to write, it was as if that story were fully formed in her mind, just waiting to be put on paper. It poured from her fingertips over the first few months of the new school year.
By this time, L'Engle had completed another novel, Meet the Austins, which was about to be published. It began with a sudden, tragic death, and early readers were concerned that the novel was too heavy for children or teens to read. But L'Engle felt strongly that difficult subjects should not be sugarcoated for young people.
She brought the same courageous approach to her new project, the book that eventually became A Wrinkle in Time, which incorporated many of the big ideas she'd been mulling over for years.
Later, as she accepted the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifelong achievement from the American Library Association, L'Engle said, "It is still amazing to me that A Wrinkle in Time was considered too difficult for children. ... The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown-ups. Much of the worldview of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown-ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it."
The science alone, however, was not what set L'Engle's work apart. It was the way she combined elements of science with elements of fantasy that made A Wrinkle in Time stand out. She believed firmly that facts were only one part of a true story. To be true in a deeper sense, the story also needed imagination. "Another assumption was that science and fantasy don't mix," L'Engle said. "Why not? ... Often the only way to look clearly at this extraordinary universe is through fantasy, fairy tale, myth."
L'Engle's new manuscript married real science with imagined planets. What's more, the whole story was told from the point of view of a difficult young girl. "One of the unwritten rules of science fiction was that the protagonist should be male," L'Engle said. "Why would I give all the best ideas to a male?"
Meg was smart, stubborn, persistent, and occasionally unpleasant. She had little in common with female characters in other books published at this time, and still less in common with the ideal girl of the early 1960s. Meg was not cheerful, she was not submissive, and she did not focus on fitting in.
"It's a book that pushes your imagination to the next level. It doesn't follow a normal film structure in any way. It's very ethereal and spiritual, and it ... gets in your head."
— JENNIFER LEE, SCREENWRITER
"Meg is a really wonderful role model for girls because she's not perfect," Jones Voiklis said. "She is awkward, she feels out of place, she loses her temper, she gets into fights, and she feels alone and misunderstood. Reading a story about a young person dealing with these things who is able to grow and realize that her anger and stubbornness, things she believed were her faults, are actually the things that are going to help save the universe, can be very powerful."
Because of its unusual nature, perhaps, it took a long time for A Wrinkle in Time to find a publisher. For two years, L'Engle's literary agent shared it with editors and received rejection after rejection. Some of these rejections came with advice to revise the manuscript, but L'Engle didn't want to compromise her vision for the book. Finally, after twenty-six editors turned it down, John Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux decided to take a risk on it. He expected only modest sales for the book, but he saw the quality of L'Engle's writing and the potential in her story. Maybe it was just different enough from other books that it would find an audience, he hoped.
Published in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time received mixed reviews from critics, but it connected right away with readers.
As of today, A Wrinkle in Time has sold millions of copies in thirty-two languages. In 1963, it won the Newbery Medal, the highest achievement for a children's book, and L'Engle delivered a memorable speech upon accepting her award.
"Up on the summit of Mohawk Mountain in northwest Connecticut," she remembered, "is a large flat rock that holds the heat of the sun long after the last of the late sunset has left the sky. We take our picnic up there and then lie on the rock and watch the stars, one pulsing slowly into the deepening blue, and then another and another and another until the sky is full of them. A book, too, can be a star, 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,' a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."
With her poetic language, her creative blend of science and fantasy, and her unforgettable characters, L'Engle continued to inspire readers and writers for the rest of her life. After A Wrinkle in Time, she wrote a number of interconnected novels that won awards in their own right. A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time track the further adventures of the Murry family, and the Murrys also appear in some of L'Engle's other work. L'Engle published many volumes of nonfiction, became a noted lecturer around the world, and served for decades as the librarian and writer-in-residence at New York's Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Even in the heart of that grand and sacred space, L'Engle's fans sought her out.
Jones Voiklis has this explanation for why her grandmother's book has stood the test of time: "I think it's just as relevant today as it ever was. It's a story about a girl who travels the universe in search of her father, believing that he is going to make everything all better, only to realize that she has the tools herself. She needs to make the changes she envisions herself."
This powerful, universal message guaranteed that the book would resonate with readers for generations.
Also, inevitably, it attracted the attention of Hollywood's finest filmmakers.
CHAPTER 2
THE WORLD OF THE FILM
The bright planet moved out of their vision. For a moment there was the darkness of space; then another planet. The outlines of this planet were not clean and clear. It seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents like pictures in her Social Studies books.
"Is it because of our atmosphere that we can't see properly?" she asked anxiously.
"Nno, Mmegg, yyou knnoww thatt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere," Mrs Which said. "Yyou mmusstt bee brrave."
"It's the Thing!" Charles Wallace cried. "It's the Dark Thing we saw from the mountain peak on Uriel."
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
The Newbery transformed Madeleine L'Engle's life as a writer and gained her a broad new base of readers. And it was because of the award that the book fell for the first time into the hands of film producer Catherine Hand.
Hand was in fifth grade when she was sent to the school library for talking too much in class. The librarian handed her a book to read, pointing out that it had just won the Newbery. Hand had no idea what the shiny medal pasted on the cover meant, but she loved the book from the first page. She saw herself — and her faults — in Meg. She saw her family in Meg's family. And as soon as she finished the book, she began a letter to Walt Disney himself, explaining why this book would make a perfect movie.
Hand never sent that letter, but the idea always stayed with her. When Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, Hand wished she'd told him about her favorite book. She made a promise that day, though: Since Walt Disney couldn't make the movie, she would. Fifty years later — almost to the day — she was on location with the cast and crew.
Hand first negotiated for the film rights when she was working as an assistant to Norman Lear, the iconic producer of television series such as All in the Family. A friend asked her what she would like to produce, if she ever had the chance, and Hand had her answer ready: A Wrinkle in Time. She gave the book to her friend to read, and he liked it. "It's a cross between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz," he said. His response gave Hand the confidence to take the book to Lear himself.
Lear loved the novel, but he cautioned Hand that a visionary filmmaker would be necessary to bring it to life on screen due to its otherworldly settings and serious themes. The first hurdle, though, was obtaining the rights from L'Engle. Others had tried and failed, unwilling to agree to the author's terms. She had developed a fearsome reputation.
But Hand and L'Engle had a connection from the moment they met over lunch at Windows on the World, the restaurant and observatory on the top floor of New York's World Trade Center North Tower. Hand remembers, "The restaurant had the most awesome view of the city, and A Wrinkle in Time had the most awesome view of the universe — I thought it was a perfect match." Within months, Hand and L'Engle had come to an agreement and begun a lasting friendship (though later L'Engle would admit the chief reason she agreed to that first meeting was that she wanted to eat at Windows on the World!).
The road ahead was longer and windier than Hand ever could have imagined. There were many stops and starts, with multiple scripts written and countless people attached to the project over decades. The novel was difficult to adapt because it contained so many elements: science, travel, friendship, good and evil, to name a few. In addition, film companies merged and split, changing the course of production. Through it all, Hand remained steadfast in her belief that a film could — and would — "reflect the beauty and awe of the book," as she put it. A 2003 television version of the story that she produced did not quite fit the bill, Hand felt. So she kept pushing for a major motion picture to be made.
"I am in awe of Catherine's determination, persistence, stubbornness, and faith, all traits that Meg possesses as well," Jones Voiklis said. Even when Hand was working outside the film industry, she was still cultivating potential partners for the film.
A 2004 split between Miramax and The Walt Disney Company left Disney in control of the rights for the film. And when producer Jim Whitaker approached the studio with his interest in A Wrinkle in Time, executive Tendo Nagenda knew the perfect partner for him: Catherine Hand.
Hand was deeply moved by a documentary Whitaker had made for the 9/11 memorial in New York, and the two bonded further about what might work — or not work — in a script for A WRINKLE IN TIME.
They were looking for the perfect writer when the perfect writer came to them. Jennifer Lee, the writer of megahit Frozen, wanted to be considered because A Wrinkle in Time was her favorite book from childhood.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The World Of A Wrinkle In Time"
by .
Copyright © 2018 KATE EGAN.
Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
INTRODUCTION,
CHAPTER ONE MADELEINE'S WORLD,
CHAPTER TWO THE WORLD OF THE FILM,
CHAPTER THREE FIRST STEPS,
CHAPTER FOUR THE MURRYS' WORLD,
CHAPTER FIVE THE MRS.'S WORLD,
CHAPTER SIX THE WORLD OF URIEL,
CHAPTER SEVEN THE WORLD OF ORION,
CHAPTER EIGHT THE WORLD OF CAMAZOTZ,
CHAPTER NINE THE WORLD OF IXCHEL,
CHAPTER TEN THE LEGACY OF A WRINKLE IN TIME,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Copyright,