[HPFGU-OTChatter]Simon Birch (was: "But the book was better!")

Tue Apr 24 21:28:01 UTC 2001

The thing with Simon Birch/Owen Meany:
that book is just huge.  Irving wrote a dense book.  There's no way all that book could have been fit into a movie.  The movie itself is OK.  not the best i've ever seen, but it didn't suck.  
But if you've read the book, and you know just how much there is to that story (and how much they  mucked with the ending of the movie), you have to stick to the book.  

And why did they change the name?

Abbie, who read PFOM in high school and loved it so much she cried
starling823 at yahoo.com
69% obsessed with HP and loving it
"Ah, music," Dumbledore said, wiping his eyes.  "A magic beyond all we do here!"
          -HP and the Sorcerer's Stone

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Marilyn Porter 
  To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, 24 April, 2001 11:51 AM
  Subject: Re: [HPFGU-OTChatter] "But the book was better!"

  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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