'Duff' was originally written by a 17 yr old kid and now a movie
The 'Duff' is one of the most popular teen high school rom-coms that has released in the recent pass. The film garnered grave reviews in US from both audience and critics alike and is all set to release in theatres across India on 12th June, 2015. The 'Duff' marks the feature film directorial debut of Acadamy award winning director Ari Devon Sandel. The story of The 'Duff' revolves around a High School girl Bianaca who was made aware that she was her group’s 'Duff' i.e. Designated Ugly Fat Friend and the struggle of self discovery that follows.
Well like many of the successful teen franchises such as Twilight Saga and Harry Potter series, this high school drama was also originally penned down as a novel. The 'Duff' is written by Kody Keplinger. Kody is an established author today but The 'Duff' is a novel that came from her adolescent years when she was still on the path of self discovery. Kody wrote the novel when she was in high school herself and thus the novel had a very honest and heartfelt narrative. The fate of the novel turning into a movie was sealed even before the book was complete.
Executive Producer Lane Shefter Bishop first learned of the novel The DUFF when she saw the partially written book in the office of Joanna Stampfel-Volpe who is a book agent in New York. She read the book in one night and was convinced that she will make a movie out of the book. Speaking about the novel and its Author Kiplinger, Lane Shefter Bishop says, “I thought, ‘This cannot be a 17-year-old. She has the high school voices down, but this is someone who knows how to write because the emotion woven throughout is dead on.’ There’s a lot going on in the book and a lot of complexity underneath it all.”
As much as the producers loved the book and the characters at the heart of the story, they needed to put it in a film structure and adjust certain aspects to make it work visually for an audience. Kody was a constant part of this transformation from book to script through. The producers were absolutely sure that the only way to safe guard the soul of movie was to ensure that Kody was there to give her inputs. “Sometimes while condensing a book, you have to lose certain things and change others but we stuck with the elements that were the most important and integral to telling the story,” says the producer Mary Viola.
Lead cast Robbie Amell said, ‘And it's really, it says something really amazing about you know Kody Keplinger the author of the book to having written it at 17, that her book is so well received and so well liked. And then the movie version takes the same themes and the same idea. And kind of flips it on a tad a little bit and just makes it for the screening. It can still hold up and people really love it. So, good on her”.
Robbie added, “I've had a few people come up and I have been lucky enough to host a couple of like fan screenings out in L.A. and one in New York, and some fans have come up with the book which is very cool. One of the interesting things I found you know from people Tweeting and talking about it, that have read the book, there is a fairly significant difference between the movie and the book. The book is a little you know edgier and racier, and a little darker, but they both have the same message and tell it in a fun, cool way. And I just feel like most people who have come up and said, "It's very different than the book but I loved it you know I liked it, or I liked it just as much if not more."
The film has been very well received by the audience in US and in the absence of the teen genre for so long from Indian theaters; The DUFF is destined to leave a mark on the box office.
