How Hollywood Ruins Novels
Some of my fellow Lit-Nutters may remember the name Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) and his signature work Understanding Media (1964.) Considering media as “extensions of man,” the Canadian scholar examined the effects of various types of media in terms of their technological and social impact rather than the specific content, hence his most quoted line, “The medium is the message.”
In the decades since McLuhan first made a splash on the cultural scene, a small canon of mythology has evolved over his theories – that 30 years ago before its inception, McLuhan “predicted” the World Wide Web (similar to the folklore that Al Gore “invented” the Internet) and that he declared the book as obsolete. Both of those notions about McLuhan are at least partially true, but what we probably should remember is that far from being a cheerleader about the future technological advances, McLuhan sounded early alarm bells about the approaching media revolution and its possibly adverse effects upon the nervous system of the individual as well as that of the collective society, including changes within the overall culture.
I mention McLuhan because he broached the idea that a film is “the extension of the book.” He was speaking only about the evolution of one medium into another, and not about the content -- nor certainly not the quality– -of the respective book and movie. All of this is a roundabout way of introducing the premise of this thread: that no matter how good the original novel is, the movie version almost always ruins it.
Hollywood producers, leery of venturing into new territory by taking a chance on unproven original screenplays, seldom hesitate when green-lighting a “remake” of a successful movie of the past. Similarly, today’s blockbusters are likely to be one of a string of sequels in a “super-hero franchise,” the original super-successful film having first appeared as a comic book. A few hit movies have been based on original television series, (which takes McLuhan’s linear progression -- movies extending into television –- a step backwards.)
Yet the plots, settings, and characters of many movies first appeared within the pages of novels. From the very birth of American cinema, from silent movies through talkies, film-makers have tapped pre-existing novels for their content, and to a certain degree, the “novel-into-movie” format still holds true today, though the number of this type of films has decreased in recent years.
Hollywood has had few qualms about mining the great books for subject matter. It can do– and has done – whatever it wants to with the gold mine of works in the public domain, since Dickens, Austen, and the pantheon of their illustrious counterparts are no longer around to say a word about it.
Problems come with the “adaptation,” attached with wishy-washy disclaimers as “loosely adapted from the novel . . .”or “based upon characters created by. . .” Sometimes the source material is too short, as in J.D. Salinger’s short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” which added extraneous material for the movie, My Foolish Heart (1949.) Although the original work had been adapted by the accomplished Epstein brothers, Salinger detested the unrecognizable finished product so much that he vowed never again to let anyone film any of his material.
It’s a challenge to fit the format of a 700+ page novel into a shooting script for a movie with a desirable running time between the 90 minute to two- hourframe. Some books are much too long for movie adaptations. I haven’t heard anything yet about Mark Helprin’s reaction to the movie version of his glorious novel, Winter’s Tale, but I have read that the story has been condensed so much so that pivotal characters, and extremely significant plot developments are conspicuously missing. Reportedly the magic realism at the heart and soul of the book– the dream landscape of an imagined New York City-- that is the heart and soul -has been sacrificed for the commercial appeal of a romantic love story.
Additionally, movies can’t effectively elicit the collaborative experience between author and reader. The picture in the reader’s imagination may not be the same as the visual depiction on the screen. Another thing movies can’t do is capture original author’s unique voice: his style, elegant prose, and evocative imagery (despite the fact that film is a “visual” medium.)
The long list of novelists disenchanted by Hollywood --among them, Fitzgerald and Hemingway- -has a recent addition with Scott Spencer, whose work, Endless Love is a emotionally-charged and brilliantly-written novel about obsession, has been burned not once, but twice.
It’s a good bet that authors will be completely dissatisfied with – if not totally devastated by-- the film version of their original creations. That is true for novels; I’m not sure it’s true about non-fiction: film depictions of actual events. Recent acclaimed movies such as Argo, Captain Phillips, and other “docu-dramas” reportedly retain at least a nodding acquaintance with the facts. This year’s leading contender for the Best Picture Academy Award is Twelve Years a Slave, the painful saga of a victim of America’s original sin, from Solomon Northrup’s historic memoir.
Baseball-themed movies are said to be “box office poison” but two recent ones about the grand old game were for the most part critically and commercially successful. Moneyball (2011) recaps the story of Oakland general manager Billy Beane who hit upon a method of building a successful team through the cost-effective use of sabermetrics, presented in a dramatic way that intrigues even viewers who aren’t necessarily fans of the sport. And last year’s 42 told an inspiring story in a resonant way, despite several – though ultimately trivial – historical errors. A film-maker would deliberately have to go out of his way -- really have to work at it – to ruin this uplifting subject which is, after all, Jackie Robinson.
Finally, to any of the younger Lit-Nutters out there are still in school, please accept a little bit of advice: If you are assigned a book report and are considering skipping the novel and watching the movie version as a short-cut, think twice about it, okay?
Winter’s Tale:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/02/wha...ers-tale-movie
Endless Love:
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...spoiler-alert/
The movie, “42"
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/20...YeJ/story.html
