Cat Person, the $12 million adaptation of the groundbreaking New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian, has been met with … crickets. Since its release on October 6, the film has grossed less than $35,000, and its score of 52/100 on Metacritic offers no further assurances.
Published in 2017, “Cat Person,” the story, charts an ill-fated and morally scrupulous relationship between the college-age Margot and an older, less discriminate “cat person” named Robert. Roupenian’s prose was lauded for its nuanced, profound investigation of topics such as gendered expectations, the power dynamics of dating, and the female perspective on consent.
During a recent interview with AIR MAIL, director Susanna Fogel (Booksmart, The Spy Who Dumped Me) spoke about the allure of the screenplay and the opportunity the film had to spur a two-way conversation by fleshing out the character of Robert (played by Nicholas Braun, the bumbling Cousin Greg on Succession). Fogel’s insights shed light on what is gained and lost in moving from short story to feature film, and, perhaps, why not every viral written work must find its way onto the silver screen.
“I wrote ‘Cat Person’ always imagining it as part of a … horror collection,” Roupenian told reporters following the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. “When they were thinking about optioning, they said horror … [so I knew] they got it.”
Fogel says she hadn’t considered adapting the story into a film until she was presented with the screenplay, written by Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex, The Pacific). “She had taken the exoskeleton of a horror movie and made it into an actual thriller,” Fogel says.
Ashford’s genre-bending and the ways she externalizes the excitement, fear, and qualms experienced by Margot (played by Emilia Jones, the breakout star from CODA) give Roupenian’s heavily internal story visual potential. At the same time, they detract from the written story’s greatest strength: the subtlety with which it engages complex and often intertwined feelings. The film leans into heavy set pieces, such as therapy sessions and imaginary conversations, which, at times, come across as inorganic and too on the nose.
Because Robert lacks a certain depth in the written piece—“It’s Margot’s story,” Fogel says, “and so [Robert] really only exists as a projection of her imagination, fantasies, and fears”—the director recognized an opportunity to broaden the conversations spurred by an already provocative story. Fogel was also aware that debates surrounding “Cat Person” had largely fallen along gender lines, citing common “He’s bad and that’s the end” narratives. To that effect, portraying the filmic Robert as more nuanced was an avenue toward bringing the character closer to “how people really are,” Fogel says.
It’s an approach that works to an extent. Moviegoers will have much less difficulty empathizing with Braun’s portrayal of Robert than they did with Roupenian’s characterization. Nevertheless, all that screen time mires some of the written story’s allure.
In Roupenian’s iteration, what the reader doesn’t see—from the job Robert works to the details of his home, to the company he keeps (feline or otherwise)—carries as much weight as the few details the author does include. Across the two-hour film, creative liberties fill in many of those gaps, leaving little to the imagination.
“That’s the peril in adapting anything,” Fogel says. “A movie puts things into a visual language, but it also robs you of the ability to [use] your personal visual language—the one you’ve invented from your life.”
Fogel has another crack at the adaptation barrel right around the corner. Winner, an upcoming comedy-drama feature, will again star Emilia Jones, this time as the whistleblower who leaked intelligence reports regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. And you thought cat people were polarizing!
Cat Person is in theaters now
Will Zimmerman is a New York–based writer