Yesterday it was announced that the production team behind this summer’s The Fault in Our Stars is teaming up once more to adapt yet another John Green novel, Paper Towns. Which is great news, because Paper Towns is an excellent read and should make a nice film. 
This news was covered in Vanity Fair, which noted that Green’s immense popularity “helps explain why Hollywood turned to him first to kick-start the real-kids-on-screen revolution.”
That John Green is massively popular is true, and that his books-as-films are likely to be popular as well seems a safe bet. But the notion that his work will kick-start a revolution of real kids on screen shows a blinding ignorance about recent cinema from Vanity Fair.
Because we are currently in an excellent decade for young-adult dramatic cinema. Thoughtful movies that take teenage life seriously have always been a regular feature of independent cinema, but even Hollywood has seen how valuable these stories are. The list of films that look sincerely-without condescension, mewling irony, or bathos-at life as a teenager in America is long, and many of those films are quite excellent.
At the top-end of that list in recent years is Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower. That film has a rare cinematic quality regarding the inner struggles and mental health challenges that can accompany our high-school years. It’s a really moving film. Hopeful TFIOS can achieve such effect.
Last year’s Spectacular Now might be just as accompslished.
The pangs of being a teenage girl has seen serious treatment-with comedy in Tina Fey and Mark Water’s Mean Girls, with an unblinking look at a hard life in Lee Daniels’ Precious, and meeting a perfect tone of humor and melancholy in Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman’s Juno.
The list goes on. Because the “real-kids-on-screen revolution” has long been producing high-quality cinema. From The Way Way Back and Ghost World to Bling Ring and Spring Breakers, the past 10 years or so has seen a diversity of stories interested in the real-life issues that confront teens.
We all love John Green. I know I do. He’s an engaging writer, capable of writing with almost unparalleled empathy and compassion for his characters. There’s a reason he’s seen the success he has: he’s earned it. But let’s not let the love of Green cloud the fact that there a lot of accomplished artists telling a lot of moving stories that deserve our attention too.
