The Sisters Brothers: what happens when your favourite book becomes a film?

When Patrick deWitt released his second novel The Sisters Brothers in 2011, it was instantly showered with acclaim and awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize and the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Now it's getting a different kind of acclaim by way of a film treatment, which screened at the Toronto and Venice film festivals, and will hit theatres in October. For deWitt, who was born in B.C. but now lives in Portland, it was the first time his work had been adapted so it was difficult to let the story go.

"It's not an easy thing to do, it's true. But I always took solace in the thought that it was in the hands of people who were respectful of the source material and really wanted to bring that all to life," he said during a sit down interview while at TIFF.

The Sisters Brothers is a comedic Western, and tells the story of two hitmen brothers assigned to kill a chemist with a strange formula that can make finding gold remarkably easy. Played by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix in the film, the story follows the brothers as they travel through Oregon and California, engage in witty banter and find themselves in various situations.

DeWitt never wrote the book with a film in mind, even though its rapid style almost seems to evoke a screenplay, but it was influenced by films.

"I was considering all the visual information that I have amassed over the years in watching Western films and films in general," he says. "My reference points in terms of the Western are much more cinematic than literary. I haven't read very many Western novels in my life."

He mentions the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns specifically, films that are largely plot-driven with little in the way of dialogue, unlike deWitt's Sisters Brothers, whose characters come off as verbose, highly educated and complicated. If anything, it's as if the characters from a Coen Brothers film such as Oh Brother Where Art Thou? found themselves in the world of A Fistful of Dollars. 

The journey from book to film began when deWitt worked on the screenplay for the 2011 film Terri starring John C Reilly, who produced The Sisters Brothers in addition to starring in it. Terri director Azazel Jacobs had read a manuscript of The Sisters Brothers, passed it on to Reilly's wife and production partner Alison Dickey, who then passed it to Reilly. When asked about deWitt at a press conference during the Toronto International Film Festival, Really described him in very affectionate terms.

He's a very sensitive and intellectually curious guy.- John C. Reilly on Canadian author Patrick deWitt

"I got to know him pretty well through the course of making [Terri]," Reilly said. "He's a very sensitive and intellectually curious guy. He chooses his words very carefully, and in some ways the way the dialogue in the book is similar to the way Pat speaks. … I just feel an enormous debt of gratitude to him."

It was the beginning of what has become a close personal relationship.

"Over the years I've come to feel such an admiration and love for them both," says deWitt, referring to Dickey and Reilly. "Of all the people for the book to have landed with, it was just such such a bit of good luck that it should land with them because they've got such integrity and artistic intelligence and fairness and generosity. And I have nothing bad to say about them. I really adore them."

DeWitt says he was involved in the entire process of turning his story into a film, even receiving drafts of the script and providing detailed notes. That said, in the end, the film and the book offer very different versions of it. The film, which was directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) and written by Thomas Bidegain, takes a more visceral and violent approach, minimizing the humour in order to emphasize the darker undertones in deWitt's novel.  

DeWitt says there was a "process of acceptance" needed to separate the two, and one that took more than one screening for him to do.

"I think when you're an author whose book is adapted into film you have to realize that they are different things," he says. "They didn't want to recreate the book faithfully, and that was never their aim. ... So it does take a moment to understand that, and to really accept one is separate from the other. But now that that's happened, I can watch the movie and just sort of enjoy it on the level of the fan."

In the end, deWitt says he enjoys the process of seeing his work portrayed on the big screen, but he has no ambitions of moving to L.A. and pursuing a career in film.

"I'm a fiction writer and I think the novel will always be where my primary interest is," he says. "I would never want to be, for example, a director or necessarily working full-time in the film industry, just because it's so complicated and difficult and there's so much heavy lifting and so much communication and socializing. I prefer the quiet of my office."

In fact, his latest novel, French Exit, was released in August and has already been longlisted for the 2018 Giller Prize. The novel tells the story of a well-to-do family who, after a gruesome death, escape to Paris and go down a path of self-destruction. The publishing notes describe it as a "tragedy of manners and a riotous send-up of high society."

Surely there's a part for John C. Reilly in there somewhere.