Kloves comments on the PS/SS screenplay

[GulPlum]

(Before I start; I'm not a Mod here, and these comments may well 
incur their wrath, but could I ask people to put proper subject 
titles on posts, and to quote from posts to which they're responding, 
but not excessively? Thank you. I do note that Penny posted an ADMIN 
message to this effect only yesterday and it's annoying the hell out 
of me that people are already ignoring some of the rules.)

jazmyn wrote:

<HUGE SNIP http://www.wga.org/WrittenBy/1101/Kloves/Kloves.html>

> Thank you for posting this. Its close to the article I was trying to
> find again to show people on the 'literary' list just how much input
> Rowlings had in the script, thus proving that yes, the movie can be
> considered 'canon' as the books, due to the author's input and how 
> much she has had to have told them for the actors to understand the
> characters so well as to portray them so beautifully. 

Actually, I read that interview to mean quite the opposite (My thanks 
as well for the link, Oradork - it's the first time I've seen Kloves 
rather than Columbus expound on the script development, other than 
his short comments included on the DVD). Please note that he was 
talking exclusively about the *FIRST* movie's script. At the time of 
the interview, it seems that the second movie wasn't even in 
production - note the sentence "The script for number two, he says, 
is in pretty good shape").

One of the things Kloves's statements make clear to me is that JKR's 
input into the script was limited to telling him when he was going 
*wrong* (e.g. the Sirius reference, more on which in a moment), and 
in answering questions about what props or sets should look like. Yet 
fans have been going on about how much she directed him. This appears 
to be completely unfounded. 

What surprised me most about what he says (if he's telling the truth, 
which I admit isn't necessarily the case) is that he hasn't been told 
ANYTHING about the future storyline: "No matter how hard he tried, no 
matter how many angles he approached it from, Kloves could not pry 
one hint, one breath of a hint about what's in store for the 
characters he has come to love so much."

Along with probably most of HP fandom, I've always assumed that 
Kloves was given some kind of window into future developments, but it 
now appears that this is not the case. He's only got the same 
material to go on that we have. (From past comments, therefore, it 
seems that only Rickman, Coltrane and Harris were ever given any 
insights, and we should perhaps bear this in mind.)

As a result, I'm not sure that the movies are allowed to enter the 
canon, except for those specific instances where we know that JKR 
herself has added something (Namely the flachback sequence in the 
first movie). That Coltrane plays the Knockturn Alley scene in CoS 
slightly differently than the book would indicate is a borderline 
case, though. 

Based on this interview, all we can say about the canonicity of the 
movies is that those instances where the movies depart from book 
canon are unlikely to be important to the plot (e.g. James's 
Quidditch position), as JKR did not bother to *correct* them - this, 
after all, appears to have been her role in the script development.

To continue with a thought I started above: one correction Kloves 
specifically mentions (but not in detail) is: "I had added one 
reference about the character Sirius Black; Jo said 'No, you can't do 
that because something's going to happen that will show that's not 
possible'."

I've heard before that JKR nixed a Sirius-related comment in the 
first movie, so now that I've seen a specific quote, I'm wondering 
even more what that might have been.  My gut feeling at this moment 
is that as Kloves had the same information we currently have, did he 
include a reaction to Hagrid's mention of Sirius's ownership of the 
bike?