It’s Kind of a Funny Story
It’s Kind of a Funny Story is a novel that was published in 2006 by Ned Vizzini, inspired by his own life experiences. The narrator of this novel, Craig Gilner, is 15 years old and enrolled in Executive Pre-Professional High School. He feels stressed due to the academic pressure and he turns to drugs and begins to have suicidal thoughts. He starts taking the antidepressant, Zoloft, and when he feels cured of his depression, he stops taking it. When his depression recurs, he calls a suicide hotline and admits himself to a local psychiatric hospital. The film adaptation of this novel, “…is a complete mess–which is all it should be, considering it tells the story of a heavily depressed, utterly confused and at times even suicidal teenager,” (Coconi) released in 2010 by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, …show more content…
The novel has a lot of character development with a serious undertone, which allows the story to grow and allows you to become attached to the characters and understand how they’re feeling and care for them. Whereas the film has little character development and focuses largely on humor. Boden and Fleck likely presented the film in a comedic matter to make it more appealing to the PG13 audience. Additionally, Vizzini had his own reasons for writing the novel. Ned Vizzini relates closely with Craig’s character considering he “...spent five days in adult psychiatric in Methodist Hospital, Park Slope, Brooklyn, 11/29/04—12/3/04. Ned wrote this 12/10/04—1/6/05” (445). Vizzini was 23 years old when he was institutionalized. Ned states in an interview with James Blasingame that “It’s Kind of a Funny Story was based on my real life and is 85% true. I didn’t actually attempt suicide—I just thought about it seriously and called the hotline” (Blasingame 607). Unfortunately enough, nine years later, Vizzini commits suicide at the age of 32 (Los Angeles