oh no, not again

[calimac]

Mark Evanier trots out the tired and fallacious old defense of bad movie adaptations, "the book is still on the shelf."

Here's the letter I sent in reply. I got no answer, either by e-mail or in a blog post, but then I never do from him.

Dear Mark,

I have to raise objection to your anecdote about the author (I hear the story often, and usually it's said to be James M. Cain) who said, "My book isn't ruined, it's still right there on the shelf."

That may be true when the book, like Three Stooges movies, has no dignity. But when it does, no matter how beloved and oft-read the book is, that dignity can have its hair pulled or a tire iron smashed over its head, and, unlike when Moe does it to Larry, it hurts.

A book sitting on the shelf isn't alive, it's dead. It doesn't live unless somebody takes it down from the shelf and reads it. When they do, it comes alive in their imagination. That's the thing about books: unlike movies which tell you exactly what everything looks and sounds like, books leave a lot to your imagination. And if your imagination has been hijacked by a movie of that book, your individual creative imaginative experience has been ruined.

It will happen. Movies are powerful experiences, and while they may sometimes be forgotten, they can also make a permanent impression. You can see this in little things. Fan drawings, in science fiction convention art shows, of characters from The Lord of the Rings used to show a variety of imaginative interpretations. Now they all look like the actors from the Peter Jackson movies.

Second thing: A movie can take over the conversation about the book, even when the conversation is specifically supposed to be about the book. I've seen scholarly articles about Tolkien which say things that are true of the movies, but not of the books the article is supposed to be about. And the general run of readers today know nothing about Frankenstein or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, even though they're still much-read books. People are always completely surprised when they pick up the books and find out how unlike the famous movies they are. The movies have drowned the books out.

Lastly, sometimes it's not even true that the book is still on the shelf, if that shelf is a bookstore shelf. Sometimes it's been replaced by a novelization of the movie.

Yours,

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I agree with all your points, but they don't apply only to bad movie adaptations: they also apply to good ones, and arguably more so, since good movies are more likely than poor ones to leave a powerful and long-lasting impression, and to have staying power in their own right.

It's not just a question of fidelity, either. A very unfaithful adaptation (such as The Seeker vis-a-vis The Dark is Rising) may actually make less impression on one's perception of the book, because they're so dissimilar as to be easily distinguished, whereas an adaptation that's faithful in almost all respects is going to be harder to guard against, just as a skilful forgery is more likely to go undetected than a clumsy one.

Let's imagine what you might take to be the Platonic ideal of an adaptation (of LOTR or anything else): one that respects the spirit and letter of the book as well as the particular demands of its own medium, and that's skilfully and sensitively made. Such a film is still going to affect people's future readings of the book: they are still going to picture the actors and sets, and maybe have the music running in their head, when they read. That's in the nature of people's imaginations, I think: we always bring our experiences to a reading. Given that, I suppose what I'd like to know is - would you find that a good (or acceptable) state of affairs, if only the adaptation were good enough? Or would you prefer on principle that no adaptation be made, so that the reading experience remain as purely literary as possible?

[supergee.livejournal.com]

"The damage done by my wretched film is limited."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

For the sake of brevity I omitted the consideration of whether one minds having one's brain hijacked this way. Some people even seem to like it: I find many whose reaction on reading a good new novel is, "I can't wait for the movie," a response I find unfathomable.

It does, however, depend on the work, which is why I brought in Evanier's concept of "dignity". This, I think, is the determining factor. He's probably right that the Three Stooges are immune to any sort of damage from adaptation, though the fact that they're on film to begin with may have something to do with this. Since I've never been fond of the Stooges in the first place, I wouldn't be the one to tell. The greater the work is, the more fragile it is in this way, unless there are many adaptations, in which case they form a kind of background noise that drown each other out.

The books I find most amenable to adaptation are mid-range novels which are perhaps a little stiff and need an additional jolt of imagination to bring fully to life. Then, if the adaptation is both faithful to the spirit of the book, and alters the story in a way that's actually appropriate for the medium (instead of just using "movies are different from books" as a cover for "I wanted to do it this way"), we have a winner. I can cite two: Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride, especially the frame story which is brilliant and actually improves on the book; and John Schlesinger's Cold Comfort Farm, which smartly condenses and simplifies the story while retaining the same amount of wit, thus increasing the concentration.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The books I find most amenable to adaptation are mid-range novels which are perhaps a little stiff and need an additional jolt of imagination to bring fully to life.

I have heard that Hitchcock deliberately avoided adapting acknowledged masterpieces, confining himself to works that he presumably felt he could improve, on very much these grounds. (I hope no one told Daphne du Maurier.)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Hitchcock also wisely avoided adapting full length novels -- Du Maurier's "The Birds" is a short story and Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train" is -- well, it's a very short novel. Later directors should have learned from this.