The Book Thief - Release Day

November 15, 2013 Alethea Allarey

Check out our coverage of the movie release of The Book Thief! This is part of a series by my friend David Yenoki, who also blogs at cleverbee.org. He had the opportunity to meet the lead actors, the director, and the author of the book on which the movie was based.

EDIT: While November 15 is the official release day in the US, some theaters will not get the film until the week of Thanksgiving. It will be showing on up to 400-500 screens by then, so be patient if you don't see it listed at your local theater yet :)

Click here for the other posts:
The Book Thief: Stealer of Hearts & Books
Markus Zusak & Writing The Book Thief

In my younger and more vulnerable years I had wanted to be an actor. At my father’s advice, and this might be unfair to completely suggest that he was the only one who discussed this with me, I didn’t pursue acting as I matured, giving up on these dreams without ever looking at myself and trying to figure out if I had talent, potential or a future. I am quite certain after watching the film adaptation of The Book Thief that I was a mere amateur hobbyist. The film cast is so talented that their performances are so effortless and never asked me to try and suspend my sense of disbelief.

I was invited to a press event of The Book Thief with a group of bloggers including Alethea Allarey from Read Now Sleep Later, Katie from BookYurt and a collection of “Mommy Bloggers” whom I had not the pleasure of meeting previously. One of the highlights of this event was an opportunity to sit and talk with two of the stars of the film, the young Sophie Nélisse who stars as Liesel Meminger, and the acclaimed Geoffrey Rush who plays her Papa Hans.

Sophie Nélisse turned thirteen years old during the production of The Book Thief film. She previously won awards for her role in a French Canadian film, Monsieur Lazhar, an academy award nominated foreign film. She made Monsieur Lazhar when she was just ten years old. Her performance in that film is amazing and her emotional range left me convinced that is what a real child actor can do. Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief saw Monsieur Lazhar and suggested it to the film adaptation production staff who were already considering her. They had seen over a thousand audition tapes before they got to Sophie. Sophie’s mom recorded her audition tape in the backyard using an iPhone. Film director Brian Percival says that Sophie had a presence that he liked to Madonna.

Sophie being so young it should not be a great surprise that she didn’t know about the events of World War II and what happened in those times. Brian gave her a list of things to watch and read including Hana’s Suitcase, a book about the suitcase of Hana Brady, a Jewish orphan who was killed during the Holocaust.

Sophie had no idea whom Geoffrey Rush was and when she was told that she was also going to be in a movie with Emily Watson, Sophie had thought they had said Emma Watson, famous for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. When Sophie told her friends that she was in a movie with Geoffrey Rush, their response was “Who’s that?” which reflects her personal unfamiliarity with him. She was told that he could act and then she watched his Oscar award winning performance in Shine and was afraid that he might be crazy like his portrayal of piano prodigy David Helfgott.

At the U.S. premiere of The Book Thief at the Mill Valley Film Festival the presenters played tribute clips from Geoffrey’s performance in the movie Quills as the Marquis de Sade. He was naked in the clip and in an interview afterwards apologized “Sorry, Soph.” (That is the only part of the movie Quills she’s seen!)

On and off set Sophie and Geoffrey had a lovely time together. Sophie says they had dinner together – but she doesn’t remember it. This was possibly an inside joke between the two of them as there seemed to be many fits of laughter. Sometimes on set Geoffrey might forget a line and she would remind him because she has an excellent memory. But as an actor she found that he had quite a lot to teach her, including his preparations for the role with his copy of the book filled with post-it notes. Sophie hadn’t read the book but instead to get in character she tried to steal some books from a nearby bookstore. She did take the books but this was a conspiracy between Sophie’s mother, who had warned the bookstore staff and paid for the books, and Geoffrey, who encouraged Sophie to do it. Geoffrey did admit that in his younger and poorer days he stole a book himself. Or rather he didn’t return a book from the library. It was a big volume of the lyrics of Cole Porter.

Markus Zusak confessed to being moved to tears at a scene in the movie where Liesel hugs Papa after he discovers that she has stolen a book from a book burning. The onscreen chemistry between them is very tender and moving. This is perhaps assisted by the contrast between Liesel and Emily Watson’s Mama character. Geoffrey and Emily decided to play the roles like characters from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Papa is the “happy woodcutter” and Mama is the “mean stepmother.”

I didn’t get a chance to meet Emily Watson, but I would like to mention the strength of her performance as well. She plays a hard working German mother. She curses loudly and frequently, often berating her loved ones to do better and be better and informing them that their inability to be better is because they are lazy pigs. But this gruff attitude makes her vulnerable moments that much more moving because it is then that the audience realizes that she truly cares deeply for Papa and Liesel. I was very fond of her performance in the film because I had no idea that she was an English actress. I would have thought she was German!

The Book Thief opens in wide release today. You should go see it. And if you see me at the theatre, you can ask me for some tissues. You’ll probably need them.

For more information, check out the official website www.thebookthief.com
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Follow @thebookthiefmovie on Twitter
Use the hashtag #TheBookThief on Twitter and Instagram

Based on the beloved bestselling book, THE BOOK THIEF tells the inspirational story of a spirited and courageous young girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her when she is sent to live with a new family in World War II Germany. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Sophie Nélisse, Ben Schnetzer, and Nico Liersch. It was directed by Brian Percival (Downton Abbey), with a screenplay by Michael Petroni, based upon the novel by Markus Zusak. The film was produced by Karen Rosenfelt and Ken Blancato for Fox 2000.

Markus Zusak and Writing The Book Thief

November 14, 2013 Alethea Allarey

I haven’t read The Book Thief. Well… I haven’t finished it. I did start reading the book, but it’s an intimidating length. And heavy. Full of pages. And full of thoughts.

The Book Thief was written by a charming Australian author named Markus Zusak in 2006. He grew up in Sydney with German and Austrian parents who had immigrated to Australia. His parents’ stories of growing up during World War II provided inspiration for the events written about in The Book Thief, such as stories of cities burning and having to run to bomb shelters during air raids in the middle of the night.

I was lucky enough to attend a talk Markus gave at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove in Los Angeles. He regaled us with amusing anecdotes, including one about his older brother who constantly tormented Markus as older siblings tend to do, and how Markus got revenge by replacing his brother’s hard boiled eggs with raw eggs.

Markus discussed writing and gave us some tips. When he told us about the raw egg prank, he was pulling from personal experience. To be a writer, you don’t need to possess a great intelligence; you just need to do the simple things well. You need to make people believe you when you tell a story: include small details that make the story yours and make audiences believe you. Then he discussed the climax and the unexpected. The climax of the egg prank is not when his brother smashed an egg on his face; instead the audience had the best reaction when Markus told his dad and the audience expects his dad to be upset, but instead his dad is sympathetic and supportive. The last important part of writing was editing. Revision and editing and rewriting. He rewrote the first part of The Book Thief 150-200 times because he believes it makes the writing stronger.

There was a question and answer session where we learned about Markus’ interesting method of writing. He keeps notebooks with him and uses them to make notes. When he starts a book he’ll start by thinking up the beginning and the end of the story. And then in the notebook he’ll make lists of chapter headings. He’ll keep on making these lists and it helps him because he knows what happens in each chapter. “I wish I could write a book that was just chapter headings.” He showed us from a notebook he brought with him.

Early drafts of The Book Thief had narration by an unsympathetic Death character. Having Death as a character made sense because people associate death with war. But this Death started out with a voice that sounded macabre and sleazy. So then Markus tried switching to Liesel narrating the story in first person. He noticed while rewriting that that too had a problem: “Despite having German and Austrian parents, Liesel to me still sounded like the most Australian-sounding German girl in the history of books.”

Next Markus tried writing the story in third person without narration, but that wasn’t compelling enough. He came back to using Death as a narrator but with a twist: “What if Death was actually haunted by us. By humans.” And that’s how the book started to come together. Markus started over yet again and wrote all the way through. (And then revised and revised and revised some more).

Later after the publication of The Book Thief, Markus’ dad had the opportunity to read the book translated in German. His dad read both the English and German texts in parallel to compare and commented: “It’s not exactly that the book is [expletive] in English. It’s just that it’s so much better in German.”

Markus was asked about the The Book Thief film adaptation which he had seen already, and he said that he got very emotional watching the film. He wasn’t directly involved in the production of the film; he reasoned that by imposing opinions and demands on creative people you detract from the art.

“Generally, it’s about how on one hand in that period of time you have Hitler destroying people with words and what you can do with words, and Liesel is stealing the words back and writing her own story with them and it’s a beautiful story.” And he thinks that’s what the film is about too.

I was in a panel with Alethea Allarey of Read Now Sleep Later and we got to talk to the director, Brian Percival, and the actors, Sophie Nélisse and Geoffrey Rush. I’ll get to that later. But in these panels we also got to talk to Markus again and some of this involves spoiler content at the end. So warning, if you don’t know what happens, then stop now, lest the visceral raw emotional content be robbed of your heart when you see the film or read the book.

Markus has been asked about happens next after the book and he doesn’t want to write a second Book Thief book. “They say never say never, but I’ll never write Book Thief Part 2.” People will ask or suggest that Liesel and Max get married after the book. They don’t. Markus has at least four reasons why they don’t; the biggest, and what I think the best reason, is that “her real love in the book is Rudy. He’s sort of like a true love for her, to go the whole corny way. And my feeling was if Rudy can’t have her, no one from the world of the book can have her...”

And at the very end I briefly asked a question. One question. Everyone else had left the room. I wish it had been a better question. When the book was originally published in Australia, it was published as fiction. In the United States, The Book Thief can be found in bookstores as Young Adult Fiction and I asked Markus if he knew why there was a difference. His response, and I should have made better notes, was that the United States is the only market that made the choice to categorize The Book Thief as Young Adult. He did explain that if you go into a bookstore in Australia, you’ll find a separation between children's books and adult books. No separate Young Adult section.

I think it’s important to remember that a book can be categorized as (Adult) Fiction in the rest of the world but in this country it might be placed in Young Adult Fiction. And there are people who think that because a book is in Young Adult it will exclude them because they don’t view themselves as young adults. They might miss out on a book that adults around the world in other countries are reading and enjoying and praising because they don’t realize that Young Adult is inclusive, it includes adult readers and younger readers alike. I would like as many people as possible to join me in finishing this book.

The Book Thief - Stealer of Hearts and Books

November 12, 2013 Alethea Allarey

Check out our coverage of the movie release, The Book Thief! This is the introduction to a series of posts by my friend David Yenoki, who also blogs at cleverbee.org. He had the opportunity to meet the lead actors, the director, and the author of the book on which the movie was based. He will be posting about their interviews over the next few days, so check back again soon!

So there’s this movie, The Book Thief. It’s based on a book.

I think you should go see it.

I saw a sneak preview of this movie and I liked it--definitely in the top ten of the year. Wasn’t animated by Pixar or had 3-D dinosaurs trying to eat people.

Instead this film has heart and soul, and I think that’s pretty important. I don’t do a very good job of describing the film because… it’s a difficult film to describe. I don’t want to give away too much about the story because I think there’s something great or thrilling when you’re surprised by the unexpected and I want you to have that. I really do. And then I also have problems because there are very sensitive subjects to balance because the moment you talk about World War II there’s a definite emotional weight that loads people's expectations.

This is not a film about concentration camps. This is a film about a little girl named Liesel. She’s quite an exceptional little girl. She can’t read, she has no money, and she can’t perform magic. She loses her family at the beginning of the film. But still. She perseveres and she overcomes and she’s a great example of what I want to see in the world. Liesel doesn’t let her disadvantages and misfortunes stop her from living and loving.

It should not be a great plot spoiler that Liesel is the book thief in the movie title. This is not a mystery thriller where a little girl hides in the shadows waiting for people to leave books unattended and swoops in to steal them. When I first heard the title “The Book Thief” I assumed it was about some guy who goes around stealing books. I am prone to make assumptions like this. When I first saw the movie I thought “this is a movie about suffering,” but I think that was because I had a pressing bladder, so I was suffering.

Later I came to the conclusion that the movie is about Liesel and her personal strength and her growth as a person. I found this to be inspiring which is why I feel the need to encourage people to watch the film. See it with your family. It has been rated PG-13 and perhaps may be too much for younger children who may not be ready for book burning, air raid shelters, and German cursing.

People around Los Angeles can watch The Book Thief at the Arclight Hollywood and the Landmark. This Friday, November 15th it opens up to a wider release.

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