Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: A young diver heads deep into the ocean to try and retrieve his diver-father’s remains but in the process gets swallowed up by a whale and has the time it takes for his air to run out (roughly 2 hours) to escape.
About: The rights to this novel sold to Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard) earlier this year. Novelist Daniel Kraus is best known for writing the novelization of “The Shape of Water,” which would go on to win Best Film, after helping del Toro come up with the original concept for his movie. Kraus has a keen eye for picking ideas that both have a level of depth to them but also contain the marketable elements that Hollywood likes. Maybe the coolest thing he did was, after George Romero’s death, completed his unfinished zombie book, “The Living Dead.”
Writer: Daniel Kraus
Details: about 50,000 words (roughly half of most novels)
When I first saw this sale, I thought, “This is the kind of project that would’ve sold as a spec script back in 2004.” It has that “strange attractor” (a man being swallowed by a whale with only 2 hours of air). It fits inside a cost-efficient marketable genre – contained thriller. And it’s not like anything else out there. It’s almost like the Gen-Z version of Moby Dick.
But, unfortunately, these days, if you want to sell something like this, you gotta write it as a book or a short story (ironically, “Whalefall” is both).
The book poses a unique adaptation challenge in that, despite this being a wacky idea, the setting is decidedly tame – we’re inside a stomach the whole movie. I like to place myself in the producer’s stomach for purchases like this and try and figure out what their plan is. Do they stay true to the contained nature of the story and keep it in the whale’s stomach the entire time? Or do they take advantage of the illustrious and unique setting, occasionally taking us outside the whale?
Jay is 17 years old when he loses his father, Mitt. But don’t feel bad for Jay. Jay haaaaaaaaat-ed his father. His dad was a diver and a drunk. He was one of those crusty opinionated dudes who was friends with everyone but would also get into a fight with those friends at the drop of a hat. And he wasn’t a good father. The few times he did pay attention to Jay, it was usually to scold him for being girly or weak.
Mitt got cancer and, instead of fighting it to the bitter end, he took a trip out to where he felt most comfortable – the sea – and simply plunged off the back of the boat, sinking to his demise.
For reasons Jay isn’t even sure of, he decides that he’s going to dive into that same area and retrieve his father’s remains. Jay is not as good of a diver as his dad. But because his dad forced him into so many dives as a kid, he’s good enough. So away he goes, with about 2 hours of air, all by himself. Not advised, by the way.
Not long after he starts diving, Jay sees a fantastical sight. A sperm whale attacks a giant squid! The sperm whale only has one animal it is predator to and that is the giant squid. The squid tries to get away and, in the process, grabs onto Jay. The whale then eats the squid and, with it, Jay.
Jay soon finds himself in one of the whale’s three stomachs. Luckily, the squid gets sucked into another stomach. But it leaves a trail of bioluminescence, which lights up the stomach he’s in. Thank god cause I don’t know how they were going to light this movie otherwise (quick movie fact: The flashlights in Titanic were the sole historically inaccurate element but James Cameron used them because there was no other way he could think of to light the final rescue scene).
As the whale dives deeper into the ocean, Jay must figure out how he’s going to get out of here before his air runs out. Along the way, he develops a close bond with the whale, who is dying himself. Jay begins to see some similarities between the whale and his father, which will allow him, should he not survive this, to at least find closure with his father.
I gotta say: this was one weird book!
For starters, every chapter was 1 and a half pages. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book with chapters that short. It made for a faster read (almost like a screenplay) but it led to an unfamiliar rhythm that I had trouble adjusting to.
One thing I liked, though, was it placed the amount of air (psi) at the top of every chapter. So it starts out as “3000” and then, with each successive chapter, it goes down. So we know exactly how much air he had left.
I bring that up because sometimes writers will assume that the reader knows things that they don’t know. I’ve read versions of stories like this where the writer didn’t give any indication at all of how much air was left, clearly assuming we knew. So you wouldn’t know if the character was totally safe or at the precipice of dying. I always have to remind writers: “If you don’t tell us, we won’t know.” All the better if you tell us in a creative way, which Kraus does.
Kraus also knows he’s battling his own whale here in that the location is limited. So almost every other chapter is a flashback to some moment in Jay and Mitt’s life. There isn’t any real story to these flashbacks. They’re just meant to fill us in – hopefully create a better understanding of their relationship so that we care more about it being resolved.
The author additionally understands that, even in book form, where it’s easier to ignore dialogue, that he needs some sort of interaction in the stomach. So he creates the voice of the whale, who starts talking to Jay. The whale is the most interesting character in the book. There was something very sad about the fact that it was dying and knew it.
That connection Kraus builds between us and the whale helps lead to the book’s best scene, when a group of orcas attack the whale. They know it’s old. They know it’s dying. So they go after it. But we never see it. We only hear it from Jay’s point-of-view. And then, what happens, is this really cool rescue operation by a group of other whales.
Unfortunately, outside of that great scene (and the initial whale-squid attack scene), there isn’t a whole lot here. I’m not even sure if the setup makes sense. First, you establish that this kid hated his dad. So why does he want to find his remains? And second, what are the chances of diving into the ocean and finding the remains of your father? 1 in 500 million? That never made sense to me.
Kraus is clearly searching for this deeper emotional connection between Jay, Mitt’s death, and the whale, but, if I’m being honest, it’s hackneyed. At first, the whale starts talking to Jay. But then, the implication is that it’s not really the whale who’s talking. It’s Mitt. But then there are clearly times where it’s the whale again. It all just felt very convenient. It was Mitt when the author needed it to be. It was the whale when he needed it to be. Readers and audiences don’t respond well to writing conveniences. It may make your writing easier. But it almost always makes the story worse.
Kraus also tries to shove in an environmental theme. It was actually interesting learning about how much plastic whales inhale because of all the litter in the ocean. But we’re already focused on this whole other storyline so it didn’t feel organic at all and seemed to support the idea that Kraus was never really sure what he was writing about.
We all have this issue in the early drafts of our scripts. You’re not quite sure what your screenplay is about yet so you add a bunch of ideas and a bunch of themes. But that’s what rewrites are for, to weed out the stuff that is no longer relevant. I suspect that because this novel is so short as is that Kraus didn’t have the option to get rid of the environmental stuff because he couldn’t afford to. It would’ve made a miniature novel even shorter.
Regardless of the fact that I didn’t love the execution here, I’m still intrigued to see what they do with the movie. It’s too unique of an idea for me not to be curious. Best case scenario, we could be looking at the next Life of Pi, which was a good movie.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You have a couple of options when you do the death of a loved one in a story. Option 1 is that they really loved each other. Option 2 is that they had a contentious relationship. In my experience, option 2 is the better way to go, as was the case in this book. For whatever reason, if your two characters loved each other, it feels too much like a love-fest and therefore inauthentic, potentially even melodramatic. Whereas, if there was contentiousness between them, it feels more like real life. Also, there are more complex emotions involved in option 2, which tends to make the character who matters (our protagonist) more interesting. If our hero loved the person who died with all their heart, and that person loved them, then it’s just straight sad. There’s not a whole lot to do with “straight sad.” I’ve seen option 1 work well for secondary characters, like Sean in Good Will Hunting. But not with primary characters.
