The Book or The Movie

Do movie adaptations help or harm a book's interpretation? Does making movies out of books deter people from reading books in the first place?

Everyone has an opinion on books vs the movie versions of books. Over the years I have come to know quite a few people who would rather see a movie and thus never pick up a book on the off chance it might be made into a movie. I am of the opinion that in most cases the movie does not live up to the book - the book to me is often more vivid, more developed, and more interesting than the chopped down movie version.

One of the few exceptions to my rule would be Peter Benchley's "JAWS", made into a blockbuster movie by magical director Steven Spielberg in 1974. In this case, because the author and the director worked together on the screenplay the movie became as exciting as the book itself.

Author Annie Proulx has had a double home run with movies made from her books "The Shipping News" and, most recently, "Brokeback Mountain" (aka "Close Range"). Personally, I enjoyed watching "The Shipping News", but thought it lacked the depth and beauty of the book. As for "Brokeback Mountain" I thought a challenging and interesting novel, which you could put down and soak up along the way, got forced into a vehicle for two up and coming young actors to "do something 'outrageous' with their careers". It's too bad, really - Proulx writes prose at times beautiful, at times stark. You can't capture the beauty of that writing in film.

Of course, most people are familiar with the movie version of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". This movie was an excellent adaptation, but it stands to prove my point that movies can take away from books. I have met quite a number of people who were assigned this book in school, only to check out the movie because they opined that "reading is a waste of time" and the movie was "faster, because you can fast forward through the boring stuff". I think that is sad. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is one of my favorite novels of all time. Even enjoying the movie, I would never stop re-reading the book. Its prose holds a resonance for me that the film can never have.

Truman Capote provides another example of a book and a movie being vastly different. The character Holly Golightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's", played by Audry Hepburn, was nothing like the character envisioned by the author (he wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part). Ken Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", made famous by Jack Nicholson, didn't want the movie released.

The final verdict on the true impact movies made from books has on those books is still out. In my opinion there are few occasions where the help, and many more where they hurt the potential reader base for the novel. (The only exception I can think of is in fact, British Fiction , not American Fiction like the examples used here, and starts with an H... *wink*)

(Many thanks to this site, Wikipedia, Amazon and many other fine web sites for their help in gathering information for this blog.)

Technorati Tag: American Fiction