The story told in Hidden Figures was adapted into an Academy Award–nominated movie, which focuses on Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) through their time at the NACA/NASA, particularly Johnson double-checking the IBM computer for John Glenn’s orbital flight trajectory. The movie deal was signed before Hidden Figures was published, and in interviews, Shetterly is quite open about the difference between the novel and the film. She told Script Magazine:
“There obviously were some changes. First of all, they made the decision to focus on one part of the story which is the moment where Katherine Johnson calculates the trajectory of John Glenn. Obviously, it’s a very cinematic impactful moment. And because of that, they had to collapse some of the timelines and deflate some of the characters to make the narrative work. It’s true that there are some things that are different, but I think the spirit of the women and the portrayal of them as very strong, very smart protagonists are very accurate. I’m very happy with it.”
The differences Shetterly points out make sense for a two-hour-long movie, as do other decisions by director Theodore Melfi and his co-screenwriter Allison Schroeder. Johnson, Jackson, and Vaughan are more obviously characters, imagined with cinematic qualities and given dialogue (which Shetterly herself usually avoids—but a film would be awkward without it). The friendship between the movie’s protagonists is expanded. While they certainly knew one another in real life, they didn’t drive to work together every day. The climax is intensified, and some facts seem to be fudged for drama. For example, Katherine Johnson runs (through rain, crowds, etc) to another building to use a colored bathroom in the movie, which reflects strangely on her work ethic until her white boss understands. In Shetterly’s Hidden Figures, Johnson uses the women’s bathroom by the Flight Division, since its white/colored status is unlabeled.
These choices add drama, but they also try to indicate the racial and political tension of the time, which film as a form struggles to document the way Shetterly’s Hidden Figures can. Shetterly emphasizes the interconnectivity of sweeping social/political/economic movements, in America and globally, describing them in detail. If Melfi’s Hidden Figures tried to do the same thing, the movie would be less movie, more documentary. Streamlining the narrative means that the viewer’s understanding of those large-scale movements has to be developed in a different way—for example, by making it really difficult for Johnson to find a bathroom, so segregation's deep influence is communicated.
For better or worse, the movie is just different from the book; it provides an interesting lens through which form’s relation to content can be discussed. Shetterly says it best: “the spirit of the women” is the same, but the content of the stories themselves are quite different.
