Brilliant Lies: Comparison Between Film and Playwright

David Williamson wrote the serious comedy, Brilliant Lies in 1993. Three years later the play was adapted into a film. The play was about how a young sexy party girl, Susy, was sexually harassed by her power-demeaning boss, Gary. Throughout the story we are kept in the dark about what the truth really is concerning the account in the office when both parties worked late alone. The film introduces changes to both enhance and develop the play’s main ideas and themes.


When plays are made into film, or film into plays improvement s are made. Scenes are taken out, added and changed.


The film of Brilliant Lies has significant improvements; a scene is added, some are deleted and overall the setting are far more exotic.


Overall the film improves on the ideas explored in the play.






Many changes are displayed in the film adapted from the playwright. One of these main changes would be the ending of the story.


The adapted film ending shapes our ideas of Gary and his wife, Stephanie. In the play we never meet Stephanie and only hear about her from what Gary says to Susy who explains it to Marion who is there to make sure the proceedings don’t get out of hand.   Susy say’s “He screamed that his wife treated him like shit”. Consequently in the play we think of Stephanie as a bitch. In the film Stephanie is at the court hearing and has to hear the horrible degrading things her husband has told Susy about her. Stephanie eventually breaks down from hearing these things in court and leaves. We feel sorry for her because of the horrible things she had to hear in court and also because she is married to such a hostile man. The audience in both film and play know that Gary treats Stephanie badly because of what he says to Susy, who repeats it in court in the film and in the conference room in the play “… he hated her so much that the only thing that made him feel god was that he’d cheated on her four times since”. Gary is presented in a...