Conference bookie::movies

    Yes, each work should be judged on its own - and yes, movies which
    substantially alter the works they're based on may justifiably
    criticized for it. (Note that these are not necessarily incompatible
    items; I'm quite capable of finding movie X to be an excellent
    production, and also of being miffed that it departed radically from
    the book it was derived from.)
    
    Some of this is simple expectation-setting. If I see a film titled "The
    Hunchback of Notre Dame," and if it's advertised as "Now! On film!
    Victor Hugo's monumental work!", am I out of line to think/suspect/
    hope that the movie does in fact preserve the main elements of the
    book? [FWIW, I think that _all_ of the film versions of "Hunchback"
    mucked with the ending; this annoys me, but I still find some of the
    films to be very good ones.]
    
    I'd agree that a constant refrain of "but it isn't like the book" can
    get dreary, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's an invalid comment.
    My preference would be for movie ads to be a little more specific as to
    _how_ closely based the film is; "loosely based," "inspired by," etc.
    give one a strong hint that complete accuracy is not to be expected,
    whereas "faithful adaptation" leads one to believe that key characters,
    plot points, and (dare I say it?) endings will be preserved. 
    
    But, of course, the viewer should beware; there's many a slip twixt the
    book, the screenplay, and the final print. ["Bram Stoker's Dracula" is
    a recent example of a movie that was hyped as being a _very_ faithful
    adaptation, leading to considerable annoyance (though not, knowing
    Hollywood as we do, surprise) among many Stoker fans when we discovered
    that this was not the case.]
    
    -b

    Movies and books are different.  For example, it's tougher to spill
    coffee on a movie, whereas a book can be enjoyed when riding a bus.
    
    I think the only times I've complained about a movie not matching its
    source material are when the movie is clearly flawed and the source
    material seems to have offered a solution to the flaw, only to be
    rudely scorned.
    
    Books are made of many things other than plot summary.  It makes sense
    that if you're throwing away all the other parts of the reading
    experience, you have to rethink the plot summary as well. 
    
    By the way, "Little Shop of Horrors" was criticized for not following
    the storylines of the original movie and the stage musical.  I can't
    imagine a book...
    
    Ray

    I found the movie "Gone with the Wind" to be incredibly faithful to the
    book, other than the fact that TWO of Scarlett's children never
    appeared on screen!  But amazingly, this didn't detract at all from the
    movie, which is my all time favorite.
    
    But "Presumed Innocent", although somewhat faithful to the book, was
    very lax in providing a background to Harrison Ford's intense
    relationship with his wife, which just spoiled the movie for me.  There
    seemed to be no substance to them as a couple, but the book was
    riveting in its intensity.
    
    I also find Steven King books to be incredibly maligned when turned
    into movies.
    
    Leslie

    >I also find Steven King books to be incredibly maligned when turned
    >into movies.
    
    This is true but I've found ir movies are made from noveletts
    like The Body by Steven King or Alien (the first one) which was
    very short reading, the movie can and often is faithful to the
    book. 
    
    What was the name of the movie made from The Body? Stand by Me
    or something? 
    
    But generally King novels are very detailed and long. It 
    just seems impossible to convey the feelings and situations
    King creates, in a two hour movie.
    
    Jodi-

    How about Jaws.  The ending of the book is diffirent from the movie. 
    I'm sure that there are many others

    Yes, there are plenty of examples. Please don't try to list them all. ;-) 
    
    The question wasn't whether movies take liberties with their sources,
    but whether it's a valid criticism to say so. Does it make sense to say
    "It's a poor film because it wasn't faithful to the source," or is a
    more likely comment "I was disappointed with the film because I'd
    thought/hoped it would be faithful to the source"? Since the strongest
    complaints I've heard (and made!) re films that change key elements of
    plot or character have nearly all involved films based on well-loved
    books, it seems it's mostly the disappointment factor; movies based on
    obscure or not-very-good books don't seem to get panned as much for
    fiddling with the sources.
    
    -b

    
    I don't require screenplays to follow a book I liked.  I can think of
    examples where not following the book was very good for the film. 
    Steven Spielberg was very wise to avoid that whole unfaithfulness
    subplot in Benchley's novel.  Die Hard was based on a book, but the
    movie was better for all the changes it made.
    
    What galls me is when screenplays follow a novel slavishly up to a
    point and then change the ending to suit someone's notion of marketing
    rather than having an ending that follows from the rest of the story.
    
    DFW

re .4

> What was the name of the movie made from The Body? Stand by Me
> or something? 

Yes, _Stand by Me_, I agree that it's the best of the Stephen King based
films.


I think the source of most of the "it didn't follow/wasn't like the book"
complaints arise from a misunderstanding of how films differ from the
printed word and what's involved in filming from novels. Many people seem
to think that a film should just use the novel as a script, that's obviously
not possible without 15-30 hour films. A screenplay has to excise a major
portion of a novel for reasons of length alone. When you do that you have
to by necessity make some changes in order to retain a coherent story. Also
what works well in a novel doesn't always work well on screen and vice versa.
Look at successful films in which the author of the novel also wrote the
screenplay to see that a "faithfull adaptation" is anything but straight
forward.

Yes, sometimes a novel is used cynically to boost sales of tickets, in
these cases little more than the title is retained in the screenplay. But
in most cases I feel that the novel and film are completely separate entities
and should be viewed as such. When I see a film based on a novel I consider
the novel to be a jumping off point and judge the film on it's own merits.
There are many cases where the film is superior to the novel. But a film can
almost never be as rich in detail and characterization as a well written
novel, it simply doesn't have the time.


Randy

The one that irritated me most in recent times was "Empire of the Sun."  I
thought the novel was very powerful.  The movie seemed to be about something
completely different; the character and relationships were askew.  I didn't get
the movie at all, maybe because of the preconceptions I brought to it.  I left
the theatre quite angry.

I guess the point is that movies based on books really do have to be judged on
their own terms.  Film-makers may be interested in some aspect of a novel --
characters, setting, story -- as the basis for a movie, without much caring
about the rest of it.  Frequently, people who enjoy the book will be 
disappointed by the movie. 

-Stephen 

    The Steven King book-to-movie that galled me the most was "The
    Shining."  Although the plot seemed faithful MOST of the time, the one
    MAJOR flaw was casting Shelley Duval as Wendy.  In the book, Wendy was
    described as sort of a Farrah-Fawcett-without-all-the-teeth-and-hair
    type.  Blonde, pony-tail, pretty.  Shelley Duval is Olive Oyl for
    goodness sake!  How Jack Nicholson would pair up with her in this movie
    seemed like some kind of joke!  Also, the ending was AWFUL.  In the
    book, as the Nicholson character is dying, he whispers how sorry he is
    to his son once he's out of the "spell" and tells him to run.  In the
    movie, he merely freezes in a horrible grimace, having given up trying
    to kill that son!  And Duval looked as though part of her contract
    required that she never wash her hair or put on a shred of makeup for
    the entire production.  I just couldn't get the original book character
    out of my mind when I had to look at Duval.
    
    Leslie

    Given that Nicholson played an unpleasant geeky loser with a shaky ego,
    I can't imagine anyone _but_ Duvall pairing up with him.
    
    Ray

    My overall view of this, is that if we read the book first, then we 
    expect certain things from the movie - if we see the movie first, then
    we have a conception of what the book is about.
    
    I think that there will always be some dislocation between a book and
    movie, because, quite simply, they are different media, each with their
    own flaws, virtues and techniques.  I like books written in the first
    person, where you get involved with the characters thoughts and
    emotions, but this would be difficult to portray on the screen. 
    Conversely, visually impactive scenery or action is hard to describe in
    words.
    
    A movie won't replace a book, and a book won't replace a movie - they
    can only compliment each other.
    
    All the above only covers those movies/books that follow closely the
    book/movie.  Others that have only a title, or a single plot element in
    common (and they are too numerous to mention) should only be judged
    individually.
    
    Naturally, this is all IMHO.  We now return you to your regularly
    scheduled program........
    
    cheers
    
    ..klaas..

    One example of a movie that completely blew away the book from which it
    was written was Dances with Wolves, the book was a standard western
    novel, the movie was incredible.
    
    Dune was a decent movie if you forgot that a book was written on the
    subject.  unfortunately many people did read the book.
    
    Andrew
    

    
>    Dune was a decent movie if you forgot that a book was written on the
>    subject.  unfortunately many people did read the book.
    
Without the book the movie was incomprehensible - with the book and prior 
knowledge of the story behind the scenes, the movie was OK.

    RE: .13 by 3131::PRIESTLEY 
    
    >One example of a movie that completely blew away the book from which it
    >was written was Dances with Wolves, the book was a standard western
    >novel, the movie was incredible.
    
    It may have been a "standard western novel", but there were scenes in
    the book, dropped from the movie, which would have made some things a
    lot clearer. 
    

An interesting case where the film seems to change the book substantially but
still (in my view) does a good job of adapting the book is The Name of the Rose.

The film calls itself a palimpsest of the novel. This is a bit posy, but it's a
posy book. It gets the idea (which is also a theme in the book) that you can get
meaning from a text by looking for something which has been deliberately erased
underneath it, or else which is simply obscured by random events. 

This occurs in the film at many levels:

	The lost text of Aristotle is a palimpsest. Actually, I can't remember 	
	whether it is in the film or not, but there really is one, and it is a 	
	palimpsest, and it doesn't have anything in it that Brother William 	
	didn't guess.
	
	The real plot (the reason for the murders) is obscured by a mixture of 	
	deliberate actions (poisoning, but also Brother William's apocalyptic 	
	interpretation of events) and also by co-incidence.


The film, similarly, pulls out some implicit meanings in the book:

	Brother William is not Sherlock Holmes but James Bond, cinema's heroic 	
	Englishman.

	The mediaeval colour is interpreted in Hollywood terms. Eco plagiarised	
		his own historical works; Annaud, the director, plagiarises the
1980s 			version of mediaeval Europe. He ditches a lot of the
exposition and plot 		details for Breughellian visuals,

	Annaud also adds in national stereotypes which are not obvious from the 
	book. The added joke is that none of the actors are the nationality they
		play. (Brother William is Scottish, Jorge of Burgos (originally
there as 		an anagram of Borges) is Russian.) These reflect ideas
that Eco explores 		in some of his other writings, for example his
study of James Bond.
.
In all, I think The Name of the Rose is a pretty good film of an unfilmable
book. The one change that I can only explain as a commercial decision is the
end. But Adso is never going to see the girl again, so it really doesn't make
that much differnce.....

Helen 

    
    re:.16
    
    i couldn't agree with you more. 'the name of the rose' is the
    quintessential example of, as you say, filming an un-filmable
    book.  i think 'the age of innocence' is another good example,
    though not quite as convincingly done.
    

    Name of the ROse was an engrossing book, and a heartbreaking one, with
    a single fatal flaw. So many books ...
    
    spoiler
    
    
    ... and then they all go down in flames when the library burns down!
    This, back in the days when you didn't have the printing press, and
    many of those books were undoubtedly the only existing copy! I almost
    wept, as did the main character.
    
    The fatal flaw, to me, was when the investigating priest confronted the
    elderly priest who had committed the murders. *HE HAD THE TEXT BY
    ARISTOTLE IN HIS HANDS!!!* What did he do? He put it back down, in
    reach of the elderly priest, in a dimly lit library. If that text was
    so terribly important, I would have popped it in my briefcase and
    *then* turned the old man in. Stupid, plot-advancing trick. In an
    otherwise wonderful book.
    
    The movie was quite true to the book, except for certain things near
    the end. Hollywood definitely showed its heavy hand in the little
    joy-ride that the chief INquisitor took to his death (was almost like a
    scene from a Mel Brooks movie), as well as the
    happy ending that the girl was not executed.
    
    Great book, very good movie, but very emotional to a lover of books.
    			Jim

Re: -1

Hey, Jim -- it's fiction, you know -- it never happened....though the miserable
old priest, Brother Jorge, does embody the spirit of people who want to burn
books.

As for the fire, one of the jokes in the book is that most of the Greek texts in
the library were not available in Europe at the date the story is set. And these
are the ones that would have been unique at the time. All the Greek works that
we have were preserved in the Greek east and came to western Europe later. Latin
works were preserved in the west, but usually existed in more than one copy in
more than one place.

Personally, I think that the Hollywood touches are part of the texture of the
film. The director knows that he's making a movie for an audience that expects
Hollywood cliches (just as Eco knows that he's writing a novel for readers who
expect a Sherlock Holmes style solution). He chooses to exaggerate them so that
we can all share his awareness of the constraints under which he works. I think
it comes off in The Name of the Rose in the same sort of way as it does in Derek
Jarman's Sebastiane, for example.

Helen

It's always been quite common for studios to buy the "film rights" to a
best-selling or popular novel and make a film of the same name that has almost
nothing in common. In fact, if they film the book, they quite likely change the
name.

An interesting case in point is Powell and Pressburger's first film, The Spy in
Black. The novel was about a Calvinist minister on Orkney (?) who was really a
German spy during World War I. Korda bought the rights and announced the film
with Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson. 

Michael Powell relates in his autobiography that the scenario and script were
getting nowhere with the original writer, so Korda brough Powell and Pressburger
in over the writer's head, and he left them to it in a huff. That was how P&P
met....

P&P kept the German spy in Orkney premise, and left Conrad Veidt as the spy. But
they made him a German naval officer under cover, with Valerie Hobson as his
English control. This was a much better part for Veidt, who could never have
been a Calvinist, and allowed a romance with a twist or two. It also allowed a
fair bit of sympathy for the German, who was an officer and a gentleman etc.

The film came out a few days before Britain declared war on German in September
1939, but was still a great success. The honorable German was completely unlike
the Nazis, and a British audience could feel generous in acknowledging the
point. Whereas the cardboard cutout villain in the original novel would have
struck a false note when the German government was really and aggressively evil.

Helen