Hidden Gems

Author Delia Owens shares her excitement at Bentonville Film Festival

“Where the Crawdads Sing” is a film adaptation of the popular novel published in 2018 by Delia Owens. Owens (on left) visited Bentonville and spoke about the book and film with producer Elizabeth Gabler (center) and director Olivia Newman on Sunday, June 26 at Skylight Cinema.

(NWA Democrat-Gazette/April Wallace)
“Where the Crawdads Sing” is a film adaptation of the popular novel published in 2018 by Delia Owens. Owens (on left) visited Bentonville and spoke about the book and film with producer Elizabeth Gabler (center) and director Olivia Newman on Sunday, June 26 at Skylight Cinema. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/April Wallace)


If you haven't heard by now, "Where the Crawdads Sing," the hit debut novel by Delia Owens that sold 12 million copies in its first few years on the shelves, has been turned into a movie. It will be out in theaters July 15.

The story follows Kya at two times in her life -- as a young girl abandoned by her family who grows up in the marshlands of North Carolina and as a young woman, caught up in a murder case.

This is Delia Owens' first novel, but not her first book. Before writing about Kya's isolation in nature, she co-authored three internationally best-selling nonfiction books about life as a wildlife scientist in Africa: "Cry of the Kalahari," "The Eye of the Elephant" and "Secrets of the Savannah."

Owens came to the Bentonville Film Festival on June 26 for an extended preview screening of the movie based on her novel, along with the film's director, Olivia Newman, and its producer, Elizabeth Gabler.

After an introduction from Geena Davis and the 30-minute screening, which was a series of clips, the key moments and broad strokes of the story and the first time they've shown the footage to an audience, the all-female team discussed various aspects of writing the story and making the film.

Since the movie is highly anticipated and this one-time event at Skylight Cinema was sold out, we're sharing the comments made by author Delia Owens. She had tears in her eyes as she addressed the crowd.

"I'm sorry, I'm a little bit emotional right now," she said. "I mean, thank you for making this (she said as she turned to Newman and Gabler). I'm so thrilled with the film that these wonderful people, the group of women, the whole team -- there were men, too -- made. I'm so thrilled with the film."

The intertwining of Owens' deep connection to nature and the title of the book:

"I grew up in the woods of south Georgia," Owens said. "And my mother used to say to me: she would encourage me and my girlfriends to go as far into the oak forest as we could go. She wanted me to experience real nature. She wanted me to maybe see a fox or a deer with her fawn. She'd say to me, 'Go way out yonder where the crawdads sing.'

"I don't think she realized how seriously I'd take her advice until she saw me with a one-way ticket and a backpack going to Africa. I stayed for 23 years studying wildlife, and since then I have lived most of my life near the wilderness.

"What I learned is that how much we ... are part of nature. We're not separate from nature. We can learn a lot about ourselves and maybe also realize how it felt to be isolated from other people.

"(In Africa) I missed my girlfriends back home and realized how important it is to have a group. I became determined to write a novel about a young woman who is isolated and how that would change her behavior.

"The book is really about how we need other people, but I told it in reverse by showing a young woman and how loneliness, rejection, being isolated, how that affects your behavior. It does change you. I wanted to reach people with this story, because I think it's important. So I decided to add a love story and a mystery. My whole idea was to make it readable so I could connect with a lot of people."

The time commitment and trusting film production to do it justice:

"I wrote 'Crawdads,' it took 10 years," Owens said. "I spent a lot of time beyond that editing, and I wasn't even sure I wanted it to be made into a movie. I wasn't just going to give it to anybody, I really wasn't.

"So when my agent -- my agent is seasoned, he's been doing this for years, so he doesn't get excited about anything because he's been in the business so long. He called me one morning and he said, 'Well, something interesting has come through,' and that's as excited as he gets, so I thought 'Well, what?' He said, 'Well, Reese Witherspoon and Sony (Pictures) want to make Crawdads into a movie.' Well, that's beyond interesting!

"I knew (producer) Elizabeth Gabler from many years before. I knew the quality of her work. When you go into her office ... every poster you see on the wall, you think 'Oh my God! She made that movie?' One after another -- huge movies. I trusted Elizabeth.

"I also trusted Reese (Witherspoon) because she's done so many good films, and I knew that both of them cared about this. They flew me to LA, which was so fun, and we sat around this table, and the very first words out of their mouths were 'We want to stay with the story. We love the story. We're going to make a movie that's the same story as the book.' No author thinks their story can be improved upon, but seriously that is a big thing for an author to know that they're going to stay with the story. They told me that they would, and that meant a lot to me. I had so much confidence and from then on. Everybody ... from Olivia (Newman, director) to Daisy (Edgar-Jones, lead actress) -- and let's not forget the guys. Tate (Taylor John Smith, who plays one of the male leads) is pretty cute, he was perfect.

"Every step of the way I trusted them and believed in them."

Owens on seeing the book come to life on the movie set:

"They invited me to be on the set, and oh my gosh, that was so surreal, to sit there one night on the beach with Chase and Kya sitting next to the campfire," Owens said. "The real moon came up because they timed everything so it would, and then the fake moon comes up (audience laughs) because the real moon didn't give enough light for their faces, so they had to have a fake moon. Then the waves start coming in on the beach just to the right rhythm because they have a big wave machine out there (more audience laughter). There's all this movie magic going on, and then Chase and Kya start talking and my words come out -- you know, it's just surreal. You just can't believe it's happening."

What's the biggest difference between the book and the movie?

"I think visually," Owens said. "A movie is so visual, of course, that some scenes like, well, we're not worried about giving things away, we're not worried about spoilers." (Director Olivia Newman interjects to say "We are.") "We are? (audience laughs) OK, I'm not going to give any spoilers. Most scenes that include action come across more vividly in a movie than in a book.

"I wouldn't say that the words in Lucy (Alibar's) beautiful screenplay were that different than the book, but graphically on the screen, some scenes come across as 'Wow,' you know. You sit there like 'Oh my gosh, that was incredible.' That was the only thing that was different to me."

What were her goals for the book's impact and themes?

"The first answer is resilience," Owens said. "We can solve our problems on our own if we have to. Kya shows us over and over again that when you get knocked down, you just stand up, keep going again. That was one of the main points of the book.

"But then also, as I mentioned earlier, to emphasize the value of family and friends by showing what happens when they're not there.

"The other really important theme to me was the importance of nature in our lives and how much we can learn from nature ... and we can learn a lot about ourselves, learn a lot about human nature from nature itself. Kya learned how to feed herself, she learned how to protect herself -- she learned how to survive from nature. We talk about Mother Nature all the time, but we don't really treat Mother Nature like she's our mother. And Kya shows us that it's important to do that because nature is where we come from, and it's a big part of our lives. I didn't want to go too much into that with dialogue or anything like that, but the story itself shows the importance of our being in nature."

  photo  Author Delia Owens, film director Olivia Newman and film producer Elizabeth Gabler speak about the making of the film “Where the Crawdads Sing” after a 30-minute screening of key scenes. Newman said this was the first audience to see footage of the film adaptation of the popular novel. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/April Wallace)
 
 


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