"But the book was better!"

[heidit at netbox.com]

An article today at Salon Magazine, at 
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/04/24/movies_books/index.
html was food for thought over breakfast.

My husband & I were talking about this last week, because of a blurb 
in Entertainment Weekly about a TCM airing of To Kill A Mockingbird - 
his favorite book ever (yes, if Harry had been a girl, we would've 
named the baby Harper!) and one of his favorite movies as well - the 
blurb said, to paraphrase, "The movie that makes it impossible to 
say, The book was better!"

Obviously, some books are better than the movies that were made based 
on them. The ones that come to mind from recent years are The Prince 
of Tides, which defiled an amazing novel, and Simon Birch, which 
annihalated all the wonder of A Prayer for Owen Meaney.
But Cider House Rules was wonderful, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet was 
amazing (but to show that it's not consistant, his Frankenstein was a 
confusing mess) and I loved Little Women (the Wynona Ryder version) 
but I know others who loved the book as much as I do, and hated her 
adaptation, which was truly a labor of love for her.

The article talks about how to *read* movies, and wonders whether 
literary-obsessed people can *read* a movie with a look below the 
surface, to see the organization and control that goes into adapting 
and staging a scene.

It's an interesting read - and I'd love it if some of those who read 
it bring a discussion of the writer's concepts over here.

Any takers?