Comments on: Books into films—getting it right!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:48:31 +0000

The John Carter (of Mars) movie. I’ve waited fifty years to see the Edgar Rice Burroughs series (he also wrote the Tarzan books, among others) brought to the screen. Until now the technology couldn’t do it justice. We should be there now. It doesn’t debut until March next year. Also, an obvious additional choice: The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings films, in my opinion, were near perfect examples of how to bring those books to life on screen.

By: Ciara

Ciara — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:33:43 +0000

I was pretty disapointed with the harry potter movies. I know that they can’t live up to the books but i was always irritated when they changed things for no apparent reason, like why did the weasleys house burn down, what was the point?
Though Dave up there reminded me that i thought the cider house rules adaptation was really good. it’s the only irving book i’ve really liked and i thought the movie was pretty good at staying true to the feel of the book.

By: Barb Riley

Barb Riley — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:15:22 +0000

A prime example of my disappointment in screen adaption is True Blood. I’m a big fan of the Sookie Stackhouse series, and was tickled to meet Charlaine Harris at RT 2010 Columbus when she surprised us with a visit to the aspiring writer’s class. I totally understand that when a book/series is written in first person, there’s a lot of work required to build the secondary characters for screen. However, I think the producers should do their best to keep the characters in character. Characters are written with certain values, goals and motivations, and that should transpose to the screen. Change all the external situations you’d like, but please keep the characters in character. Yeaaaah, not happening so much on TB. It’s discouraging!

On the flip side, Game of Thrones was so by-the-book that at times, I fast forwarded ahead. Blah blah blah. Do we really need to dredge through characters talking back and forth for 15+ minutes? Couldn’t they have found a more entertaining way to SHOW us what was happening with the politics?

So, what’s a producer to do? I don’t like it by-the-book, but I don’t like to see the books murdered on screen either. Keep the characters true, and give me a happy medium!

By: Dave Sosnowski

Dave Sosnowski — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:05:14 +0000

Not necessarily recent, but three faithful (and brilliant) book-to-screen adaptations: “Fight Club,” “Get Shorty,” and “Out of Sight.” Not surprisingly, all three are strong on voice and dialog and relatively short, making them good candidates for adaptation. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have John Irving, not exactly a minimalist, whose had two reasonable adaptations made out of his doorstops. The first is “Simon Birch,” which takes “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and basically cuts it in half (the first half). I believe Irving has gone on record as not being crazy about that one. The next is “The Cider House Rules,” adapted by the author. Read “My Movie Business” by John Irving about the process of adapting that book, and you’ll get a pretty good picture of the challenges involved.

By: Yat-Yee Chong

Yat-Yee Chong — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:37:09 +0000

I am looking forward to Hunger Games as well. I hope the powers to be follow in the footsteps of HP in terms of trying to be faithful to the books and not go down the path of Percy Jackson. That could have been a series of wonderful movies.

By: Josin

Josin — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:23:57 +0000

It’s the constraints of the medium. With a novel, you get at least 50K words and a few hundred pages to tell your story; with film, you get around 110 pages and 15-20K, most of which is dialogue.

While on the written page, you can tell the audience that Mike is walking through the rain, contemplating the recent suicide of his pet turtle, there’s no way to do that in a film, unless Mike talks to himself. The beautiful language gets stripped down to basic action.

“Mike, pensive, shuffles through rain puddles.” <– That's it.

The descriptions go from something potentially memorable and poetic to:

"MIKE, 30-ish, awkward basement-dweller." <— That's it.

It's a bare-bones approach to the material that's filled in by the actor / director, and they don't always want to be "directed on the page". So much more depends on the interpretation and presentation of the actor with a screenplay; there are fewer blanks to be filled in with a novel.

By: Melissa Alexander

Melissa Alexander — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:47:08 +0000

I think changes are inevitable for three primary reasons:

1. Length. Take One Day. Say this is a 2-hr movie — 120 min. If you set aside just 20 minutes for the setup AND the resolution, that leaves just 4 minutes per year if you show all 25 years. It just wouldn’t work. On the other hand, HP and the Order of the Phoenix was, in my opinion, better than the book, because the movie was forced to streamline and focus the plot.

2. The challenge of presenting visually what are often internal stories. Plot-heavy stories adapt more easily than character- or theme-heavy ones. The movie adaptation of Jurassic Park is a fun dinosaur movie; the book is also a dino adventure, but it is also a much more serious examination of some pretty heavy themes.

3. Structure challenges. Books that follow screenplay structure adapt more cleanly to screen adaptation. The more a novel varies in structure, in pace, or even in length of its “acts” (as compared to the requirements of traditional screenplay structure), the more it will have to be adapted to meet the expectations of a movie audience.