In the novel, Rob describes that “Marie is pretty, in the that nearly cross-eyed American way – she looks like a slightly plumper, post Partridge Family, pre-L.A. law Susan Dey – and if you were going to develop a spontaneous and pointless crush on somebody, you could do a lot worse” (77). Describing Marie as being similar to an actress from the American television show the Partridge Family gives the impression that she is an all-American woman, given that the audience has an already perceived knowledge for American television shows. Rob is interested in Marie not only for the fact that she is a musician, but also that she is an exotic figure in the eyes of a British man. American women in Europe are just as exotic and mysterious as a non-American woman coming to the United States; men are infatuated with the unfamiliar, thus drawing Rob to Marie. The novel intertextualizes Marie to have looks similar to Susan Dey, who is a white female with a sort of free-spirited style closely related to that of a hippie, leading the audience to believe that Marie LaSalle was an average American, white woman with an Indie style. In the film, however, Lisa Bonet is cast to play Marie LaSalle; she has mixed skin and the style that is closely relatable to Alanis …show more content…
Being that a film is not able to have a continual background of narration, it used music to help portray Rob’s ideas. Using background music as a character in the film helped to better translate the ideas and inner dialogue of Rob that cannot fully be portrayed in the film. In both the novel and the film, he was such a big believer as music being an essential part to a person’s life so this also bettered the adaption of Rob’s character from the printed version to the film. The intertextuality in the novel that was not easily noticeable in the cinematic version was Hornby’s instances of relating Rob’s life to major films easily identifiable to the audience, for instance, when Rob relates his life to the movie When Harry Met Sally. At one point in the novel, Rob is questioning happiness and says that: “surely people who are happy should look happy, at all times, no matter how much money they have or how uncomfortable their shoes are or how little their child is sleeping; and people who are doing OK but have still not found their soul mate should look, I don’t know, well but anxious, like Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally” (257). In the film, music becomes an aid to better understand the tone and storyline of the scene. “I Want Candy” is playing in the background when the