Epilog: I read the book version of Red White and Royal Blue

Heartbreaking

 

Most fan boys read a book and then criticize the film almost universally for deleted scenes and other compactions along with other alterations for things in the book that don't translate well to the screen. I on the other hand saw the film first and have now read the book too. I stand by what I wrote in my review of the film because that's what I saw but I can see how people who read the book first might not agree with some of it. My main takeaway is that they are both really good and different. There is really no point to complain because they are just not the same. Most of the film is pretty faithful to the book but frankly I think the film did some things a lot better than the book. The book and the film largely were the same at least until around the New Year's Eve kiss so I won't dwell on that.

For starters I don't think anything could surpass the scene of Alex talking to Henry on the phone after they had been cut off while in crisis. There is a raw emotion about it that was just heartbreaking with the minimal amount of words said. Alex's "baby" and Henry's "Hurry. Please" captures everything about what they are going through. The scene on the stairs when Alex gets to Kensington and the tenderness of comforting his lover who is in utter despair is just beautiful. I suspect that this is because Matthew Lopez understands the pain of the closet at a visceral level. In general I think that the film captures the agony of Henry's closet better which is what most of the film is about. In the film, you can see that Henry is crying often with his puffy eyes. That's hard to get across in a book.

The other scene that I think the film did much better is the platform on the lake scene. The "drowning" scene is really not possible in a book but it perfectly captures Henry's despair of not being able to have the one thing he wants above all others: Alex. He can have anything in the world materially but he can't have happiness. His closet is suffocating him. Drowning him. Alex's clueless about his situation was a dagger into his heart. Alex falling for Henry while the one thing Henry wanted most, was the one thing he could not have. In the book there was much, much more dialog in that scene while the film was about symbolism. The symbolism wins hands down in my opinion.

The making love scene in the film was better too, in my opinion. In the book, they are pretty torqued having been out drinking all night. That's usually not the best time to try to fuck and even if it's successful it's not going to have the tenderness that the film showed. As the book explains later, Henry has been in love with Alex since the very first time they met. It was bearable because he never thought that Alex would love him back. In the film, it's very clear that Alex is falling hard for Henry even if that surprises him both with him being a guy and Henry of all people. But in the book, it makes it clear that Alex was absolutely obsessed with Henry from way before they ever met. The scene in the film is sort of emblematic of Alex figuring out what that obsession was about. And for Henry it is possessing for the most fleeting amount of time the only thing that he really wants and you can see it in his eyes looking at Alex. That sort of scene and introspection is just not going to happen after a night out drinking in LA. And Paris, of course. Who the fuck doesn't fall in love in Paris?

I agree with the film that compressing June and Nora into Nora is fine. June doesn't really do much if anything that drives the plot. Getting rid of Wimbledon was fine too. It was basically a repeat of the polo match so didn't really bring much to the table other than giving Alex and Henry more together time. The karaoke being in LA was a little more believable than some bar in bumfuck Texas. It's debatable that the Texas venue would be more anonymous because most Americans know who the front line royals are and they'd certainly know who Alex was. But in Hollywood it would have raised a lot of eyebrows and iPhones though.

I think that the meeting with the queen (vs king in the film) made more sense. If they married off the stair scene with it it would make more sense. I don't like throwing in Henry's mother -- who we've never met before -- to stand up to the queen. The film has it right that that was Henry's fight. That's mainly because it finally allows him to become his own man and own his own destiny. A destiny he didn't think was possible. Henry grew leaps and bounds in that scene. He finally allows himself happiness. "I certainly hope not". Perfect.

One major difference between the book and the film was how Alex and Henry were outed. In the film it was a one-off fling reporter of Alex's who did it. That really didn't make a whole lot of sense. And that is certainly not a good way to make friends and lovers in gay land. In the book, there is an entire subplot of Alex's mentor becoming a mole in the republican candidate's campaign. In today's hyper polarized climate that's a hard ask. But what doesn't make sense is that they don't seem to do anything once they find out with the book version. There are vague allusions to it after being in the press, but they don't really resolve whether it was even damaging.

In the book it makes much more sense for Alex to give his coming out speech after having resolved it with Henry in London. In the film, he's basically giving Henry no agency in his outing which puts Henry in another bind. How can you deny anything when the other half has already come clean? So the book makes much more sense. If I recall correctly, the outing speech had a much more personal aspect that wasn't in the book. As in why am I here? I'm fucking in love with him. 

I liked the small subplot of Alex's high school fling Liam having a part in the book. It doesn't push the plot forward at all so I understand why it was cut, but it's probably nice for Liam to finally have closure as a gay man that Alex wasn't just an experimenting straight guy. Small, but nice. I do really wish that Alex had grabbed Henry to introduce him to Liam and his boyfriend on election night. It would be best if he just introduced Henry as his boyfriend and maybe Henry being curious to speak to Liam later since he knew Alex back in the day. Basically Henry disarming the elephant in the room that Alex is dating a prince.

Alex pulling Henry up to them by the arm: "Hey Liam and Spencer, this is my boyfriend Henry"

Liam, nervously: "Nice to meet you, uh...", not knowing how to address him

Henry, breaking in: "Nice to meet you Liam, we really must get together and talk young Alex. And just Henry...", with a mischievous smile 

Liam, laughs and says: "I don't want to scare you away from him", with a broad smile

Alex: "God knows, I've been trying to scare His Royal Highness off for years and can't shake him" and Liam understands their relationship dynamic while starstruck Spencer giggles

Henry, rolling his eyes: "I keep threatening him with dungeons and locked towers for his impertinence and still nothing works. It is my lot in life" and they all burst into laughter

The other thing I want is when Alex butters up the audience at the convention and finds Henry after he gets off stage is to drag Henry back onto stage and say:

"Hey! Have I introduced you to my boyfriend? Meet Henry!"
 

On a personal level... The Emails. I am one of the people who invented an email authentication protocol called DKIM. It wasn't our intent at the time, but as it turns out DKIM makes for pretty air-tight non-repudiation. That is, if you wrote something you can't deny you wrote it and say that it was hacked. It's not quite that simple but suffice it to say it would be very, very difficult to deny it. Imagine my surprise years later after Her Emails (ie, Hillary Clinton's) was a brouhaha that I found out that DKIM was being used to prove that they were real. In the book which has their actual email correspondence (in the film it was really confusing because all they did was text each other) and more importantly the email correspondence of the republican campaign's plot to out Alex and Henry would not be able to be denied. In the book, they needed to get the mole senator to come clean because they didn't have time. In reality running the raw email through one of the many available DKIM verifiers online would have taken only a few minutes. It doesn't really make any difference, but it's just an unintended quirk that any time I hear of a controversy involving email... there I am.

Just to be perfectly clear I am not bagging on the book in any way. Or the film for that matter. They were bound to be different. That's just the way it is. It's just that the film took advantage of the visual media in ways that would be almost impossible in the book. Henry's intense stare as Alex is fucking him for the first time. How can you represent that in a book? The image is raw and visceral. Same with the stair scene. Lopez really took good advantage of his medium without really altering the overall arc of the book. 

So in conclusion I am glad I saw the film first and then read the book. I'd probably be much more critical of the film if I had read the book first, and my takes in my first post about the film would have probably been different because I'd already know the back stories which I didn't have, not having read the book. I don't think that my takes were wrong, per se, it's just that the film doesn't give as much context so you have to infer more. But the long and short of it is that I'm still sort of amazed at how much this has transfixed me in a way that although I loved Heartstopper, it did not. I guess it's the corrosive effect of Henry's forced closet that is just too real. The closet is something pretty unique to the gay experience and you don't see it in gay media very much. Or at least where it's the driving force of the plot. It deserves more attention because our project is far from done. We gay people who are out and happy need to be reminded that our experience is far from the norm. Oh, and last but not least from the book: Henry has a big dick. Big dick bottoms are my fave.

Epilogue

So they've been dropping a few cut scenes and of course there is an uproar about not including them. The problem is that Matthew Lopez was given a two hour time budget so if you're going include them, what are you going to cut or compress? I've scanned through the movie looking for what could be done and I frankly don't see it. The movie is already rushed especially at the end. The one that is causing the most controversy is the fireside chat scene where Henry tells the tale of the prince born with his heart outside his body. In the book this was one of their email exchanges and Alex is trying to understand what makes Henry tick. In the cut scene, it is the night before the lake scene and Alex is basically asking Henry if he has permission to love him. Although it's somewhat ambiguous Alex doesn't think so and thinks that Henry's answer is "yes". What doesn't make sense is why he would have waited? He would have told Henry then and there and it would have been a very different movie. So while the scene is absolutely beautiful and Nick nails it, I understand why it got cut. We should just be happy we got to see it (and hopefully more) instead of complaining it wasn't in the final cut.