Adaptations in Hollywood are nothing new, however they have been on the middle of many of this yr’s biggest pop-culture conversations. Any mental property appears up for reimagining, from books to toys to video games. There are lots of causes behind their enchantment to studios, amongst them that they have a tendency to return with built-in audiences—however as I discovered firsthand over the previous few years, they’ll additionally give tasks new depth and complexity.
On Oct. 11, an adaptation of my 2021 e-book, Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul, premiered as a Netflix sequence referred to as Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul. Along with being interviewed on digital camera, I served as a consulting producer on the sequence. My function concerned serving to translate from web page to display the wild story of Juul Labs, the vaping firm that got down to create an e-cigarette ok to make cigarettes out of date—and as an alternative turned infamous for hooking countless teenagers on nicotine. Via that course of, I watched my reporting tackle new life and turn out to be enriched by much more views on the advanced, controversial story of Juul.
Forward of the sequence’ launch, I spoke with Large Vape’s director R.J. Cutler, the filmmaker behind documentaries together with The September Difficulty and Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, about adapting a piece of nonfiction, the variations between documentary filmmaking and journalism, and capturing nuance on display.
TIME: To begin with, what about Juul you?
R.J. Cutler: What grabbed me, and to this present day has not let go of me, is that this story is an ideal method of exploring the unintended penalties of Large Tech. A few design college students at Stanford have the intense thought to create an e-cigarette that they imagine not solely received’t be dangerous for you, but in addition will provide help to give up smoking flamable cigarettes. And what are you aware? They ignite the epidemic of teenybopper vaping.
How do you strategy adapting nonfiction materials? Did it ever really feel stifling to base the sequence on a e-book as an alternative of ranging from scratch?
Fairly the alternative. It gave us an unimaginable basis for the form of the narrative and the construction of the narrative, but in addition highlighted the place we’d need to add issues that weren’t in your e-book. There was a variety of freedom; this was going to be a cinematic telling of the story versus a prose journalism telling of the story. And what a present, to have any individual who had already been by the expertise, banged your head in opposition to the wall, digested all of it and suffered by the attendant stomachaches, and got here up with a resonant, coherent, dramatic, compelling, character-driven narrative. And guess what? We’re free to make use of all of it!
After we first began working collectively, although, my e-book wasn’t completed. Did that scare you? I imply, what if the e-book turned out terribly?
That didn’t happen to me.
That’s good, as a result of I anxious about it rather a lot!
With a variety of the work I do, it’s a must to have religion that it’s all going to work out. Whenever you get to the opposite facet of the forest, the trail to get by appears fairly clear. However we’re all the time, firstly, taking a look at a forest. If I discovered that daunting, the place would I be? I like to cook dinner, so I typically equate the method to creating a discount. You’re lowering, lowering, lowering to get to the essence of the factor.
As you realize, my huge concern was sustaining the complexity of the story because it transitioned from e-book to sequence. It’s straightforward to see Juul as a villain, they usually deserve a lot of the criticism they get. However, on the identical time, Juul has helped some grownup people who smoke. It’s messy.
One of many issues I get requested rather a lot is what stunned me essentially the most about Juul’s story. And to me, the most important shock was that the rattling factor labored. Despite all of the errors the corporate made and all of the issues that led to the autumn of Juul, they did invent this digital cigarette that had the potential to do all of the issues they got down to do.
This was a narrative that had been instructed earlier than, however, excluding your e-book, it had typically been diminished past the complexity of a positive sauce. It was diminished to runny ketchup. I needed to discover the grey space.
I used to be equally stunned by that whereas writing my e-book. I had lined vaping for a pair years after I began, however after I totally immersed myself within the story, it turned much more advanced to me. It was attention-grabbing to see my thought course of evolve because the e-book got here collectively.
I wish to say movies resonate between the issues that I witness, the issues that I be taught, the issues that I see being skilled, and the expertise I personally have. Even with the identical precise footage, I’d make a totally completely different movie than one other filmmaker. There’s an authorial presence. It’s a part of the story that you simply’re telling.
I agree, although as journalists we’re skilled to attenuate that authorial presence. How do you see your function as a documentary filmmaker in comparison with that of a journalist?
Documentary filmmakers are working in cinematic artwork. And whereas we’re each bit as beholden to the reality as a journalist is, the values of cinematic artwork are completely different from the values of goal reportage. They dwell in a different way. We’re working with mild and colour and sound and picture and construction. We’re coping with an artwork type that’s bigger than life however resembles life. It offers with human emotion in a method you possibly can expertise. You’re on a journey that finds an equilibrium in complexity.
This dialog has been condensed and edited for size and readability.
