[HPFGU-OTChatter] "But the book was better!"

[Marilyn Porter]

First things first: I'm new here.  Harry Potter fan since the first book (read it to my son before he was born and haven't been able to stop).  Also, our son is named Harry too.  Cept his full name is Harrison.  But his name; Harry Porter, is awful close, don't you think? ;)
This is an issue I have always been interested in.  When I was much younger, I would read a book and then  watch the movie, or, if I saw a movie and loved it, I would read the book in order to get a deeper understanding.  But sadly, most of the movies are VERY lacking.  I have to agree that Winona Ryder's Little Women was great.  I haven't read A Prayer for Owen Meany but since I enjoyed Simon Birch (flame me now!) I bet I would love the book so I'll have to look it up.  Stephen King's The Stand was a great movie and the made-for-tv version was as good as it could have been (King doesn't translate to screen very well).  
Very often the movie is disappointing.  If i haven't read the novel first, I don't tend to notice as much, but if I have, I'm always upset by what is left out of the story and how the characters are portrayed.  My greatest dream is to have Cameron Crowe's job.  To be a writer and director would be heaven.  
Great discussion!

Marilyn Porter
wife to Kile (8/8/98), mom to Harry (11/10/99)
"Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." - Elizabeth Stone
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: heidit at netbox.com 
  To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 7:33 AM
  Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] "But the book was better!"


  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?



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