From Page to Screen

By Dean Poling

VDT View — One of the biggest questions in modern culture has been, Which is better? The book or the movie?

Most readers will say the answer is the book. Still, when a book is adapted into a film, movie producers hope the book’s fans are an immediate built-in audience for the movie. Usually, they are. Though regular readers may say again and again that the book is better than the movie adaptation, these same readers will often, again and again, line up at the cinema to see the movie based on the book.

Hollywood finding big-screen inspiration from the pages of a book is nearly as old as movies themselves. While movies such as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” have supplied the cultural touchstones of how those characters look and act for generations, neither was a movie creation. Both were adapted from books. Hollywood may have created the stereotypes of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein monster and the Bela Lugosi Dracula, but it was the authors Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker who created the characters in their respective books.

Books have long provided the inspiration for movies. Some movie adaptations overshadow and overwhelm the original book. Most folks are familiar with Tom Hanks’ “Forrest Gump,” but few may know author Winston Groom’s very different book of the same name that inspired the movie.

James Bond, for example, seems to have been a perfect movie creation, but the super-spy is really a perfect movie adaptation. James Bond was the main character of a series of novels by Ian Fleming before Sean Connery and several other actors took to quipping, “Bond. James Bond.”

On other occasions, the book and the movie are different, but each stands on its own merits: Ken Kesey’s book “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” and the movie adaptation of the same name starring Jack Nicholson are both classics in their own right.

Then, there are books that stand above any movie adaptations. Several films have adapted “Huckleberry Finn,” but none have replaced the book and its author Mark Twain in the popular imagination.

In some cases, authors work with movie makers by adapting their books into screenplays for movies. In other cases, movies are adapted and the author hates the resulting film. Many moviegoers love film genius Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shining.” The movie stars Jack Nicholson in one of his most well-remembered roles. Yet, despite Kubrick’s genius and Nicholson’s legendary star turn, King has said in interviews that he hated what the movie did to his book.

Often, it is readers who express that they hate what a move adaptation has done to a beloved book. Whether it is deleted scenes, missing characters, dropped sub plots, or completely rewired plot points and endings, readers-turned-viewers can’t help but notice the differences between a book and the movie.

In the latest “Harry Potter” movie, some J.K. Rowling fans have noted the omission of a funeral scene from the movie that seemed a key part of the original book.

“Harry Potter” is an on-going series of books being adapted into movies. Several more adaptations are making their way from print to film.

Alice Sebold’s novel, “The Lovely Bones,” is being adapted into a movie directed by Peter Jackson. Jackson knows his way around adapting books into film. He directed the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy from J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic books.

Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” is being adapted into a film. How this picture book of a misbehaving boy who imagines his room as a dominion of monsters he rules long enough for his mother to forgive him with a hot meal will translate into a movie remains to be seen. But the advance peeks at the special effects and cinematography appear well done.

The 3-D “Coraline” released this week on DVD is based on the children’s book by Neil Gaiman. Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett’s children’s book, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” is being adapted into an animated film. The first book in Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series is being adapted into a movie.

The adaptation of author Jodi Picoult’s “My Sister’s Keeper” has been released as a movie starring Cameron Diaz. As with many movies based on books, the book itself has been re-released with a movie tie-in cover.

So, if you’re curious what movies may be coming to a theatre near you in the future, you can watch the previews or you can scan the bestseller lists at your favorite bookstore.

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