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The Devil Wears Prada (film)

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The Devil Wears Prada
File:Devil wears prada styleA.jpg
Promotional poster for The Devil Wears Prada
Directed byDavid Frankel
Written byLauren Weisberger (novel)
Aline Brosh McKenna
(screenplay)
Produced byWendy Finerman
StarringMeryl Streep
Anne Hathaway
Emily Blunt
Stanley Tucci
Adrian Grenier
Tracie Thoms
CinematographyFlorian Ballhaus
Edited byMark Livolsi
Music byTheodore Shapiro
Release dates
June 30 2006
(North America)
October 5 2006 (UK)
Running time
106 minutes
LanguageEnglish

The Devil Wears Prada is a comedy-drama film, the screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. It stars Anne Hathaway as Andrea Sachs, a recent university graduate who gets a job as a co-assistant to powerful fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep. The film co-stars Emily Blunt as Priestly's first-assistant, Adrian Grenier as Sachs' boyfriend, and Stanley Tucci as a male co-worker of Priestly's. Tracie Thoms plays a close friend of Sachs' and Simon Baker has the role of a writer who assists her with some difficult tasks assigned by Priestly.

The film premiered in New York City on June 19 2006 and was released to North American theatres on June 30 2006. It became the top-grossing film of both Hathaway and Streep's careers. The DVD will be released December 12 2006.

Plot

Template:Spoiler Hoping to work her way to the The New Yorker or Vanity Fair, Andrea "Andy" Sachs, fresh out of college, lands a plum magazine job: personal assistant to Miranda, who dominates the fashion world from her perch atop Runway magazine. She puts up with the eccentric and humiliating requests of her boss because, she is told, if she lasts a year in the position she will get her pick of other jobs, perhaps even the journalistic position she truly craves.

Gradually, though, Andrea adjusts to the position and its many perks, including free designer clothing and other choice accessories. She also comes to prize chance encounters with hot young writer Christian (Baker), who earns her eternal gratitude when he helps her with one of her more impossible assignments. However, her family and, especially, friends are feeling neglected. Ultimately Andrea realizes she must make a choice between them and her job lest she become more like the woman she despises working for.

Differences between film and novel

File:Anhathaway.jpg
Hathaway as Sachs on the streets of New York City.
  • Lily's role is the most significant change between the novel and the film. In the former, she is a graduate student in Russian literature at Columbia rather than working at an art gallery as she does in the film. Her role in the novel is much larger, and the narrative goes into lengthy detail about her past with Andrea, depicting her as more free-spirited in contrast to her. In both the film and the novel she comes to enjoy the free designer gifts Andrea's job provides. Lily encourages Andrea to pursue Christian in the novel, while in the film she is angry when she sees the two close together. She's also Andrea's roommate instead of Nate and, over the course of the novel, starts to pick up men in bars and develops a drinking problem as a result of stress from her studies. A car accident she suffers while Andrea is in Paris triggers the climax of the novel.
  • Nate is named Alex in the novel and is teaching fourth graders in the South Bronx through Teach for America rather than being a chef as in the movie. He and Andrea do not live together as they do in the film, and have broken up at the end, although they remain friends.
  • Emily is seen much more often in the novel, and is more cynical in her attitude toward Miranda, sometimes not doing things she has told Miranda she has done. Overall, she is a more sympathetic character in the novel. In the film, it is Emily, not Lily, who is injured in a traffic accident.
  • In both the novel and the film, Andrea is required to deliver the Book and Miranda's dry cleaning to her home. In the novel, Andrea walks in while Miranda, "B-DAD", Cassidy and Caroline are having dinner and starts to talk without cue, obviously humiliating herself. In the film, this scene is simplified by having her listen to the daughters tricking her into heading upstairs where she walks in on Miranda and her husband arguing.
  • Generally, Miranda is extensively much more cold, abusive, and distant to Andy in the novel. The film offered the two a much more colorful connection and sense of understanding.
  • The Doug character does not exist in the novel.
  • Christian's last name is Collinsworth in the novel. He and Andrea do not sleep together as they do in the film. However, by the end of the book, he and Andrea still maintain their flirtatious friendship.
  • Miranda's explanation of how Andrea's cable knit sweater was ultimately influenced by the couture in the magazine's pages, and Nigel's lecture about how important Runway truly is and what it represents to so many people, are not in the novel and were written for the film.
  • Andrea's effort to get the new Harry Potter books (not copies of the unpublished manuscript) is less successful in the novel. While she is aware that the twins want separate copies, only one is actually delivered (to Paris, not the train) and Miranda again berates Andrea over it. Also, in the novel she is asked to get the fourth book in the series, not the seventh, as is shown in the film. (A closeup of the manuscript the twins read says "Harry Potter: Book Seven".)
  • In the novel, the twins attend the Horace Mann School in The Bronx, New York, while in the movie, they attend The Dalton School in New York, New York.
  • There is less confusion in the novel on Andrea's part over where to put the Book and the dry cleaning at Miranda's home (in the novel, a Fifth Avenue penthouse rather than a townhouse as it is in the film).
  • Irv Ravitz, played by Tibor Feldman and seen in several scenes throughout the movie, is only referred to in the novel.
  • In the novel Nigel is very tall, British, black and enough of a celebrity that even Andrea recognizes him; whereas the film's Nigel (Stanley Tucci) is white, of normal height and from Rhode Island. Also, he is not so nice in the book and in fact most of his niceness is arranged by Emily in the book.
  • He, and the other male Runway staffers in the novel, are also openly, even flamboyantly, gay. But while his character in the film could be gay, there are no references to it in the script, the other men were cut from the story and this aspect of the novel is largely absent from the film.
  • Nigel is never offered a new job in the novel, and Christian is never offered a job at Runway.
  • Both Andrea and Miranda are described in the book as coming from Jewish families (Miranda had even changed her name to something less Jewish). In the film, no reference is made to either character's religious or ethnic background.
  • Emily is English. The novel made no reference to her nationality.
  • Conversely, Miranda is English in the novel, but Streep plays her as an American.
  • In the novel, Emily cannot go to Paris due to a bout with mononucleosis. In the film, Miranda decides Andrea is more capable when Andrea remembers who an oncoming guest is at a museum benefit after the cold-stricken Emily fails. She puts Andrea up to telling Emily she's going with her instead, and the film implies Emily is also fired. However, before Andrea can tell Emily this, she gets hit by the car.
  • In the book Andy has been told by Miranda that she has to babysit her friend's son at this party. The son ends up being Christian. None of this happens in the film
  • Andy has a sister who gives birth to a baby boy which Andy is unable to meet for the first few monthes of his life because of Miranda's tight noose on Andy.
  • Miranda's husband does not leave her in the novel. The two have a stable and happy marriage.
  • Miranda's job is not in danger at the end of the novel, as it is in the film.
  • In the novel, Andrea ends her time with Miranda by telling her, very publicly, "Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you." instead of simply throwing her cell phone into a nearby fountain. This happened, in the novel, after Miranda blamed her for not realizing that her daughters' passports had expired a week earlier and that she needed to get them new passports and on a plane to Paris by that very night. She immediately returns to New York to attend to the comatose Lily. Miranda actually does not make much more of an appearance in the novel after that moment. She doesn't help with any connections. The major connection that Andrea was able to make was enhanced by a loathing for Miranda that she had in common with the woman at Seventeen.
  • The novel ends with Andrea, finally having launched a more serious writing career with a somewhat autobiographical short story in Seventeen, returning to Elias-Clark to discuss writing assignments with another of the company's magazines. In the film, she gets the reporting position she always wanted with the New York Mirror (a fictionalized Village Voice) instead.
  • The film gives the impression that Miranda has a very high regard for Andrea at the end, despite her cold, unfeeling exterior, and that even Andrea has come to like Miranda. In the novel, how Miranda truly feels about Andrea is not known, although she does offer to let Andrea write short pieces for the magazine and pull strings at The New Yorker. Andrea does show some appreciation for Miranda and what she does at some points in the novel, but not as much as she does in the movie.
  • At the end of the novel, it is implied that Emily is likely to pretend she does not know Andrea because of the controversy surrounding her confrontation with Miranda. It is made clear by Emily to the new assistant that she greatly respects and likes Andrea, and believes she did a honorable job as second assistant.
  • In the film, Andrea kindly offers Emily the clothing she received from Paris. In the book, Andrea sells the clothing to a second-hand shop for $38,000 and finances her writer's life for the next year.
  • In the Book we can read that Miranda and Andrea are both staying at the Hôtel Ritz Paris. In the movie it's the Plaza Athénée
  • In the novel version, the white Hermés scarves that Miranda likes to wear are discontinued, however in the movie, when Emily gets hit by a taxi, there is a shot of white scarves flying all over the street.

Template:Endspoiler

Production

File:The Devil Wears Prada preview onesheet.jpg
Teaser poster for the film.

Principal photography took place in New York and Paris between October and December of 2005.

Anna Wintour, the powerful Vogue editor on whom Streep's character was widely believed to be based in the original novel (Weisberger once worked as her assistant), reportedly warned major fashion designers who had been invited to make cameo appearances as themselves in the film that they would be banished from the magazine's pages if they did so.[1] Wintour's spokespeople deny this claim; however, it is notable that Vogue and other major women's and fashion magazines have avoided reviewing or even mentioning the book in their pages. Further, only Valentino, who had designed a black gown for Streep, chose to make an appearance.[1]

Off-screen, designers were very helpful in assisting film's costuming designer, Patricia Field (also known for her work on the series Sex and the City), by supplying clothing for the film's characters. Field's $100,000 budget for the film's costumes was supplemented by help from friends from throughout the fashion industry. Chanel asked to dress Hathaway for the film, and Dolce & Gabbana and Calvin Klein helped Field as well. Although Field avoids making Streep look like Wintour, she dresses her in generous helpings of Prada. (By Field's own estimate, 40% of the shoes on Streep's character's feet are Prada). Fields said she avoided prevailing fashion trends during production in favor of a more timeless look based on Donna Karan archives and pieces by Michael Vollbracht for Bill Blass.[2] Los Angeles Times fashion writer Booth Moore chided her, however, for creating a "fine fashion fantasy with little to do with reality", a world that reflects what outsiders think fashion is like rather than what the industry actually is.[3]

Director David Frankel and producer Wendy Finerman had originally read The Devil Wears Prada as a book proposal written by Weisberger.[4] It was sent out to an agent who sold it in under one minute. A hundred pages long, it dealt with what became the film's set-up, the story of young woman looking for a job on the streets of New York City and how she would wind up working for a fashion magazine editor.[4]

Composer Theodore Shapiro relied heavily on guitar and percussion, with the backing of a full orchestra, to capture a contemporary urban sound.[5] His work was balanced by songs by U2 ("City of Blinding Lights", Miranda and Andrea in Paris), Madonna ("Vogue", Andrea's fashion montage), KT Tunstall ("Suddenly I See", during opening credits), Alanis Morrisette ("Crazy", Central Park photo shoot), Jamiroquai ("Seven Days In Sunny June", Andrea and Christian meet at James Holt's party) among others.

Cast

Other actors / characters

Reception

File:MerylStreep DevilWearsPrada.jpg
Meryl Streep received much praise for her performance as Miranda.

Reviews unanimously raved about Streep's performance, praising her for making an extremely unsympathetic character far more complex than she had been in the novel. "With her silver hair and pale skin, her whispery diction as perfect as her posture, Ms. Streep's Miranda inspires both terror and a measure of awe," wrote A.O. Scott in The New York Times. "No longer simply the incarnation of evil, she is now a vision of aristocratic, purposeful and surprisingly human grace."[6]. Kyle Smith agreed at the New York Post: "The snaky Streep wisely chooses not to imitate Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, the inspiration for the book, but creates her own surprisingly believable character."[7] "Wintour should be flattered by Streep's portrayal," agreed Jack Mathews in the Daily News.[8]

David Edelstein, in New York magazine, considered the film thin but loved Streep as well for her "fabulous minimalist performance".[9] J. Hoberman, Edelstein's onetime colleague at The Village Voice, called the movie an improvement on the book and said Streep was "the scariest, most nuanced, funniest movie villainess since Tilda Swinton's nazified White Witch."[10]

Roger Ebert gave the movie "thumbs down," while Richard Roeper gave it a "thumbs up".[citation needed]

It had a very successful run in theaters, making nearly $125 million domestically,[11] career highs for both Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway.

References

  1. ^ a b "The Devil You Know, On Line One". Fresh Intelligence. 2005-11-09. Retrieved 2006-07-01.
  2. ^ French, Serena; June 21, 2006; "The $1 Million Wardrobe"; The New York Post, 41-43
  3. ^ Moore, Booth; June 30, 2006; This fashion world exists only in the movies; Los Angeles Times; retrieved June 30, 2006
  4. ^ a b Grove, Martin A. The Hollywood Reporter. "Oscar-Worthy 'Devil Wears Prada' Most Enjoyable Film in Long Time: 'The Hollywood Reporter'". June 28 2006; retrieved September 1 2006
  5. ^ Goldwasser, Dan; May 3, 2006; Theodore Shapiro scores The Devil Wears Prada; soundtrack.net; retrieved September 21, 2006.
  6. ^ Scott, A.O.; June 30, 2006; In 'The Devil Wears Prada,' Meryl Streep Plays the Terror of the Fashion World; The New York Times, retrieved June 30, 2006
  7. ^ Smith, Kyle; June 30, 2006; Wintour Wonderland, The New York Post; retrieved June 30, 2006
  8. ^ Mathews, Jack' June 30, 2006; She's devilicious: Streep a delight as infernal fashion diva in "Prada"; The New York Daily News; retrieved June 30, 2006
  9. ^ Edelstein, David; June 30, 2006; Review of The Devil Wears Prada; New York; retrieved June 30, 2006.
  10. ^ Hoberman, J.; June 27, 2006; Myths American; The Village Voice; retrieved June 30, 2006.
  11. ^ The Devil Wears Prada at boxofficemojo.com, retrieved September 15, 2006.
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