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Questions that are rarely asked
Richard Green writes to me:
If the likes of Hitchcock and others could turn works that were mediocre in literature into great films, I wonder what mediocre films could have been great literature.
The point is not to come up with a list (though some of you will) but rather to ponder what we can learn about literature as a medium. He continues:
...literature adapted from films is almost (and this is a hedge because my experience says invariably) hack work, rushed and held in the lowest regard...Is it because literature is the elder medium, and has a higher status which would prevent condescension to recognising a prior from another medium? Is it because creation is more personal to a individual writer than the inevitable collaboration of film, and so they are loath to allow others' work in?
Movies need (at least) a plot and a script and that can be taken from a book, with results of varying quality of course. But I do not have an equal understanding of which factor of production is scarce to writing a good novel. Do professional writers benefit more from showing originality in creating a world and also creating a language? There is plenty of fan fiction based on Star Trek and the like but few professional writers take this same tack.
A simple default hypothesis is that movies are more powerful and more real than books. So a movie based on a book won't necessarily be overwhelmed by its source but a book based on a movie will be. Of course there are many books adapted from oral tales so maybe it is the addition of the pictures that is so overwhelming. I know only a few books adapted from paintings, most notably Gert Hofmann's excellent Der Blindensturz.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 28, 2008 at 03:13 PM in Books, Film | Permalink
Comments
Novels (can) have an internal voice of the characters, but using voiceovers in movies for the same effect is normally considered hackish. You should show instead of tell. So there's an extra dimension that the movie-adapter might add to the work that weakens it. Removing the internal voice of novel characters might actually strengthen the work.
Posted by: Alex J. at Nov 28, 2008 3:38:55 PM
I think the dominant factor is that a book contains vastly more narrative content than a movie, because a movie must be consumed in a few hours at most. Therefore a book-to-movie adaptation represents a distillation process. You only film the best of a book.
On the other hand, a movie-to-book involves much more original content on the part of the author, since the contents of a movie can only be the kernel for what must be at least a few hundred pages of content. I think this leads to instinctive concerns about the fidelity of the project, since by necessity a large percentage of the book contents will have to exogenous.
I know only a few books adapted from paintings
For those wondering, Girl with a Pearl Earring was overrated.
Posted by: sidereal at Nov 28, 2008 4:09:32 PM
Although I can't think of any off the top of my head, there are many great movies, which are really just great stories. It is the story that sticks with me and I forgive some of the actual moving making (such as sets, direction, acting, etc.). A lot of cult movies probably fall into the category. There is something "good" buried in them to be enjoyed by many, but too many flaws to become universally accepted as great movies.
It is easy to imagine these becoming good books. Books are a lot more forgiving to the surreal and fantastic elements of a story. Such things can look cheesy in a movie, but be quite amazing in ones head. But, since movie images tend to trump the imagination when reading books for movies you've already seen, these would probably only be great books to people who never saw the mediocre movie that inspired it.
I think the hardest part is finding someone who could get inspired enough by a bad movie to turn it in to a good book. The most likely candidates would be movies with great stories that were failed by their visuals. The most likely candidates would probably be stories that include quite a bit of the surreal, the supernatural, fantasy, the future (and/or science fiction) and other elements that don't exist in the real world (and translate poorly to the physical realm of film visuals). The big flying dog in the Neverending Story is pretty silly, but its not hard to see why children love the story being told in the film.
Another aspect is narration. Voice overs are often bad in film, but internal monologues are quite accepted in literature.
Although not quite appropriate because the movie version is actually pretty good, I think movies like Brazil and Eternal Sunshine could become great novels.
Posted by: Nylund at Nov 28, 2008 4:11:15 PM
Dostoyevsky's The Idiot bears a great debt to Hans Holbein painting "Christ in the Tomb."
Posted by: Thorfinn at Nov 28, 2008 4:14:20 PM
The novel "The Third Man" was published after the release of the eponymous film, but this doesn't really count since both the screenplay and the novel were written by Graham Greene.
The odds for seeing great literature of the caliber of, say, Borges and Nabokov derived from the kinematograph are worse than those for a macaque with wordprocessor to type Hamlet to the last comma.
Proof: denote by I the function "intelligence".
Then
I(smartest director)/I(generic macaque)= o(1)
q.e.d.
Posted by: Blogging Ape at Nov 28, 2008 4:25:11 PM
If a writer took a mediocre movie and turned it into a great book, it would be remade into another movie.
Posted by: 8 at Nov 28, 2008 5:08:59 PM
I can think of a movie (while not great, it was jolly good) that was made into a great book: the princess bride. Very swiftian adaptation.
Posted by: Katie at Nov 28, 2008 5:38:52 PM
Rather than anything inherent in the power of either medium, it seems to me that the difference in quality of film and literature has principally to do with how each are developed. A novel is typically the effort of a single person--with nominal, though critical support from editors or early readers--while even the most minimal film will require several people, and big budget films probably having the participation of upwards of a hundred individuals.
Given that the cost of making a film is so much higher, the use of proven source material makes a lot of sense. Despite accusations of hackery, I suspect that returns are, on average, higher for movies based on popular books.
On the other hand, the incentives for a writer or a publisher to use material from a film run the other way. Could one sell the movie rights from a book based on a movie? Are publishers looking for derivative, rather than original, novels? Is there any evidence that the book-buying public will buy books that tell a story they already know?
I don't think that it's the case that great books couldn't be the adaptations of films, but it just doesn't really make sense for authors to do so.
Posted by: TW Andrews at Nov 28, 2008 5:48:30 PM
"A simple default hypothesis is that movies are more powerful and more real than books."
My experience is exactly the opposite, and I am a child of TV and movies who has not finished 15% of the novels I've started over the last several years and still consumes a movie (minimum) a week.
Cinema does seem more real and provides much greater visceral thrills.
But I have always connected more strongly with novels. I spent my early 20's foisting Catch-22 on people and rambling about it when I was drunk. I connected with (and was probably shaped by) it's world view. Similarly, though I might've wanted to look like Mel Gibson back in the 80's, I wanted to be Gus McRae or one of James Ellroy's doomed badasses. And I still vibe out with Thomas Berger's narrative voice (may The Houseguest live forever).
The only movies that had as strong an effect on me were Star Wars and Raiders, and that was when I was prepubescent.
Movies at their best are great entertainment. I personally think the best filmmaker going is Mamet: Spanish Prisoner, Glengarry (yeah, I know he didn't direct it), State and Main--- watchmaker's should eat their hearts out. But flicks cannot give you the depth that a novel can.
(And it's worth mentioning that Mamet's attempt at a novel was not well received. I didn't try it. Might some day.)
Posted by: burger flipper at Nov 28, 2008 5:52:49 PM
Nylund, I think your response is on the right track. When we read a great, or even a good, novel, no matter how descriptive the narrative, we are still required to use our imaginations to create the experience. We contribute, in a sense, with the the author, in creating the setting and the look of the story. When the author describes a negative scene, we likely add elements to it in our own minds that would make it even more unpleasant, if that gets us into the story more, or less so, if that adds to our enjoyment. In short, a good author paints enough of the picture to get the job done but leaves just enough for us to play a contributing role. This is not the same with a movie. In a movie, we are fed every aspect of the experience. I agree that the only chance that a movie would have of becoming a great novel would be if it was a movie that nobody had seen.
Posted by: Rational at Nov 28, 2008 5:59:38 PM
All the published adaptions of films I can think of have been *plays* rather than novels - except where the screenplay & novel writer are the same person (as with blogging ape's example of Greene). Maybe the leap to a novel is too great a liberty to take with another's work OR perhaps anyone diligent & talented enough to make a good novel out of another person's work would be more inclined to change the names, setting etc. & claim it as an original work (perhaps siting the film as an 'influence'), rather than pay to licence it? I've heard of several novel writers earning more for the film rights to their book (even if no film gets made) than they made from royalties - so to licence a film into a novel would likely be prohibitively expensive.
Posted by: nick at Nov 28, 2008 6:38:14 PM
Novels based on movies suck because they are generally written by hacks as glorified merchandise for the movie, not as great literature. The movies that become books are often the ones that are targeted at a teen audience (most likely to pick up a trashy, hastily written book version of a movie they loved). Serious authors do not adapt movies because it is too constraining - the audience already has a clear idea of what the world and characters look and act like.
Posted by: Ned at Nov 28, 2008 8:04:43 PM
Isn't mediocre source material a blessing for filmmakers? There are no legions of devotees waiting to pounce on every license taken. Great literature often perfectly renders a world in our heads, while mediocre literature would leave it open to interpretation. Finally, mediocre books give filmmakers the opportunity to add and improve, while great literature can be defined as not needing addition or improvement.
It's highly possible that a mediocre film could inspire great literature. I think many novelists today write while picturing the film. They can picture the film of their novel because they've frequently grown up on many more movies than books.
Posted by: Ray at Nov 28, 2008 8:19:07 PM
Katie, The Princess Bride was a book fourteen years before it was a movie, though I seem to recall that William Goldman wrote the first version of the screenplay shortly after he finished the novel. (Ditto The Neverending Story, the movie of which is a pale and incomplete imitation of the book.)
As for the original question, I think it's mostly a matter of rights. Most of these books are work-for-hire -- if the author does add anything to the story of the movie, it still doesn't belong to the author. It practically demands hack-work.
Posted by: Sol at Nov 28, 2008 10:37:46 PM
After you see a music video, any time you hear the song after that you can't help but have the music video replay in your head. The video taints the song. (At least, that's the case with me.)
And this is music videos we're talking about, 99% of which are abysmally stupid and add nothing to the song, yet you STILL can't get the stupid images outside of your head the next time you hear the song. Images are powerful.
Like a couple others said, the only way a book could be successfully based off a movie is if no one had seen the movie.
Posted by: WillJ at Nov 29, 2008 12:06:45 AM
The premise is false. No film is even remotely comparable to great literature, and the people who pretend that Hitchcock films (for example) are great art are pretentious prigs indulging in mutually reinforced fantasies of self-importance. We might as well post a blog about how "maverick" dadaist urinals were -- the incestuous critics seem to never feel shame or regret. The fact that we can even seriously entertain the comparison of films to literature only shows how degraded our culture has become, and how incapable of truly appreciating literature most people are.
Posted by: Joshua Allen at Nov 29, 2008 2:02:28 AM
Posted by: fds at Nov 29, 2008 2:24:14 AM
Posted by: dsd at Nov 29, 2008 2:26:13 AM
Posted by: ds at Nov 29, 2008 2:28:20 AM
I'll cite Timothy Zahn as having written better books than the movies upon which they were based (Star Wars), but that is all original work rather than an adaptation.
I am trying to think of examples of re-adaptations of this type, something like what "8 at Nov 28, 2008 5:08:59 PM" said. I can think of movies made into Broadway musicals made into movies (Hairspray, The Producers), but I am struggling with movie-book-movie. Book-movie-book is trivial, since there are occasional novelizations of movies based on books. For some reason.
Posted by: Zubon at Nov 29, 2008 10:09:27 AM
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was originally a radio series adapted to a book then a TV series, then a film. The book was good enough to come fourth in the BBC Big Read poll in 2003 giving it a pretty strong claim to be the best novelization ever. There wer no other novelizations in the top 100
A notable example of Book-film-book is the novel Red Alert became the film Dr Strangelove which became the novel Dr Strangelove, the first book was a straight thriller the film and subsequent novelization were satire. Both novels were by Peter George, who therefore novelised Kubrick's film based on his own novel.
There is a novelization of the Bond film the Spy Who Loved Me (James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me by Christopher Wood), but as the film took only the title from Ian Fleming's novel it isn't an example of book-film-book.
Posted by: Brett Dunbar at Nov 29, 2008 11:21:32 AM
As for the original question, I think it's mostly a matter of rights.
I think that's right -- there's a lot more money in film, so purchasing the film rights to a book is a relatively small fraction of the cost of the movie. The reverse would not be true, so books from films are just additional elements in the merchandising of the film, and the owners of the film franchise want control over that merchandising.
There's also the question of age. Many great works of literature are in the public domain and can be filmed at will -- not so with great films. With the copyright extension, virtually nothing from the mainstream era of movie-making will be going into the public domain for some time yet.
Posted by: Slocum at Nov 29, 2008 11:23:43 AM
Good question and good answers
Rational writes about novels: "When we read ... we are ... required to use our imaginations."
WillJ adds about the picture in music videos: "The video taints the song." Our imaginations are actually not invited to attend.
Thirdly, Slocum finishes off almost any hope that book-from-film will be financially viable: "books from films are just additional elements in the merchandising of the film"
I'll add that the only music video I have ever enjoyed was the steam train plowing through deep snow in Pat Metheny's "Last Train Home". Perhaps the music without lyrics still allows the imagination to work. The drum brushes creating the rhythm of the steam pistons is fantastic.
Posted by: Bill Lever at Nov 29, 2008 1:39:33 PM
An interesting use of the reader's imagination is Patrick Susskind's novel "Perfume", which engages the sense of smell in many of its passages. I cannot remember another novel that used my nose quite that much. Any other suggestions in that regard?
Posted by: Bill Lever at Nov 29, 2008 1:46:21 PM
An interesting use of the reader's imagination is Patrick Susskind's novel "Perfume", which engages the sense of smell in many of its passages. I cannot remember another novel that used my nose quite that much. Any other suggestions in that regard?
Posted by: Bill Lever at Nov 29, 2008 1:48:34 PM
