HNNNGH-- well, just finished reading & re-watching Tru Confessions, and I've gotta blab about it.
First off, I just wanna put these links here. Now that I'm a pretty adept Googler, I was able to find out information about that awesome song near the end of the movie-- the montage music, and found out it was made specifically for this movie... AND even though it was never officially released, the singer's old deleted website had a HQ copy of the WHOLE song, instead of just 30 seconds of it. IT ROCKS SO HARD.
MP3 DownloadLyricsHooray for old websites! (Speaking of which, I keep trying to find all the old archives of So Weird sites, whether official or non-official... gosh, if only I'd gone to those sites while they were still around.)
The movie is really SURPRISINGLY faithful to the book-- almost all of the best lines from the book get used in the movie, and some of the best lines & scenes in the movie aren't even present in the book. (Eddie saying,
"You used to be my twin... only now you're not,"-- or even the stinkin' KITE scene, for example, isn't present in the book.) Hard to think of many films that can improve on the book, pssh. I dunno, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
In the book, Trudy's dad has been COMPLETELY separated from her since she and Eddie were very little-- and she lies to herself about why he left in order to help her cope. A few compelling moments come out of this in the book, and I think it works for the structure (it's a very concise piece that's very vignette-y)... but I actually feel like Tru's father's subplot is way more compelling than the melodrama in the books. Like... it's way easier to write a father character out (which practically writes itself!) than to show all the nitty gritty of being an "invisible father"-- one who's struggling to be present in his family's life and provide for them. A lot of my favorite scenes in the movie involve Tru's dad-- and gosh, the payoff at the end where he watches his "deleted scenes"...
"I mean, who IS that guy?" I'm sure both versions of this subplot have resonance for different people, but I feel like their choice was a brave one that I'm sure made an impact on a LOT of families struggling to hold together.
(Also, as you can see from this excerpt, they changed the dad's name from Edward Sr. to Bob in the movie.)
I feel like the
deedee (I think that screenname was decided upon because both Trudy & Eddie end in the "dee" sound...) subplot was handled way better in the movie, as well-- in the book, Tru reacts very nonchalantly to the prospect of her mother pretending to be someone else. She also doesn't care to find out if it really is her mom! She sort of winks at her, and then the mom responds,
"Tru, I have no idea what you're talking about." And then Tru writes,
"I [...] realize it doesn't matter if she is deedee or not. Actually, maybe we've stumbled on a good setup--she can leave her opinions on the computer and I don't have to feel like I'm taking advice from my mother." Which... I'm gonna be honest, that isn't how
I would react at all. Tru, throughout the book and movie, comes off as someone who is very concerned with artifice and getting to the heart of the matter. I feel like giving Tru the chance to feel betrayed early on in the story and then forgive her mother is far more realistic and emotionally satisfying.
As far as other characters go, Denise is in both books-- but Tru's other friend, Jake, was created for the movie. There's a dude character that's more like a class clown in the book called Miggs Macrides, but gosh, considering how so many of the guys in the story are jerks (or changed jerks), it's nice to have Jake to balance things out. In the book, Tru also has a long-time babysitter named Mrs. Hannah (
MONKEY MAAAAN--), and there's actually a whole slew of other girls Tru hangs out with casually. Actually, the book makes a point of saying that no one calls Tru "Tru" except for her family members and Denise-- whereas in the movie, almost everyone calls her Tru instead of Trudy! The whole Billy Meier character is almost untouched in the movie, except-- if you can believe it, Billy and his friends PEE in Eddie's cap instead of spit. SHEESHCAKES. But since they're all 12 in the book, I dunno... 12-year-olds do gross things. They're highschoolers in the movie (14, though some sites say 13), which I think makes WAY more sense. I mean, gosh, it really ramps up the changes happening between Tru and her brother. Highschool is a time of serious change and social separation. If there was ever a time to feel worried about Eddie, it'd be then.
The book feels like a precursor to the current generation's Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, etc. It's written in sort of informal TINY TINY "chapters", if you can call them that. It's a delightfully bite-sized read that I got through in a day-and-a-half! It honestly has the feeling of a livejournal blog, which is really brilliant. It has a strong & unforgettable voice that really makes you empathize with all the characters, so I can see why someone at the networks felt like this would be perfect to adapt. ... but also, like, not at all, because HOW HEAVY AND SMART IS THIS MATERIAL?!! I swear, someone could take ANY chapter from this and turn it into an awesome monologue. One of my favourite aesthetic things about the book is how it utilizes all the random technological quirks of the era-- uses of bizarre wingdings, emoticons, and random symbols (I know I was SO trigger-happy with those as a kid) and there's even full on Kid Pix illustrations separating the little vignettes. And you better believe I love me some Kid Pix. While I'm unsure WHO did the Kid Pix illustrations (it's never mentioned), the other book I read of Janet Tashjian is actually illustrated by her son, Jake (SPEAKING OF WHICH-- I am 99% sure they named Jake in the movie after her son Jake!!), who seems to have inspired Eddie's character! They made this brilliant video to advertise for it.
Also, as someone who's been an Internet content creator for a vast majority of my life (been posting animations online since I was 8 years old!), a lot of Tru's struggles throughout the books to connect with people was seriously resonant for me. People in high school knew me as the "Asian kid with the glasses who was always carrying a camera", and it never felt like anyone honestly gave a hoot about me besides this very general surface-reading. Thankfully, much like Tru, the Internet has been an amazing place to reach out to people! I mean, gosh, what other place would I be able to talk about SO WEIRD or... well, Tru Confessions, for that matter? I'm a lucky ducky.
Some last delicious book-y tidbits-- there's so many nice details and side-stories that help you get into both Tru & Eddie's headspace. There's a really powerful description of Eddie's cry in the book:
"I hear something that sounds like a wounded buffalo in that Kevin Costner movie." And, although it's not story-critical, there's this absolutely brilliant subplot about summoning spirits back from the dead that just ROCKS. Actually, the pacing of that part felt like it'd belong right in a Studio Ghibli film-- charming, quirky slice-of-life, and somehow fitting into the whole of the theme without seeming to try at all to. And, while I feel like a lot of the visual language of the movie is A+ (and... well, besides a
couple insipid pop songs, most of the score is excellent), there's a LOT to love about the actual ending of the book. It actually is a LOT of fun to read the ending of the book after having watched the movie-- since it goes a little farther beyond the ending of the movie-- which is exciting for someone who's thought about the Walkers a lot since watching the film. : ) From what I gather, Tru will probably grow up to be a lot like Janet Tashjian. *cracks up* So there's a happy ending for ya'.
And now I'm gonna go back to listening to Secret World. *headbang*