It ’s vulgar to say that the ledger is always good than the movie , but sometimes that is n’t on-key . Occasionally , a movie will come along that transforms its root material into something gravid than the original . But how often do authors feel that a film adjustment has really ruff their own work ?
It ’s natural for authors to feel protective of their own novels , of the worlds and eccentric and ideas that they nurtured from the opening move sentence . In some case , that puts the writer at odds with the film ’s audience ; Stephen King splendidly hates Stanley Kubrick ’s The Shining because of Kubrick ’s thematic changes . However , variety is not always a bad thing from an writer ’s linear perspective . While Ira Levin was bewitch that Roman Polanski ’s Rosemary ’s Baby followed his novel so closely , Diana Wynne Jones was shiver with Hayao Miyazaki ’s take on Howl ’s Moving Castle , alteration and all .
Many generator are content to say that the movie is a different brute from the book , one that belongs to the theatre director , verruca and all . They ’ll blab out about change they harmonise with , change they disagreed with , and occasionally they ’ll rail against the forces who mutilate their story and repackaged it for Hollywood . Every now and then , though , an author will see something special in a pic , some power the film possesses that the book does not . Sometimes it does n’t agitate out as simply as choose one interpretation to another , but it ’s interesting to research the generator ’s feel about the moving picture that they felt meliorate upon — or went somehow beyond — the source material .
Philip K. Dick , Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? vs. Blade Runner
Although clearly inspired byPhilip K. Dick ’s novella , Blade Runner is very much its own animal . Sadly , Dick died four month before the theatrical release , but establish on what he did see , he believe that it would overstep its beginning cloth . In 1981,he compose this letter to Jeff Walker of the Ladd Company :
What ’s interesting is why Dick felt so strongly about Blade Runner . It travel far beyond questions of theme and taradiddle ; in fact , Dick dissent profoundly with director Ridley Scott on certain direction for the film . This letter of the alphabet suggests that he feel Blade Runner was a significant contribution to culture , an crucial new tone at science fiction . He seemed to be cogitate not just about Blade Runner as a lonely moving-picture show , but as a piece of medium with the potential difference to have a hold out impact on how we view the future .
Anthony Burgess , A Clockwork Orange vs. Stanley Kubrick ’s Fable
Anthony Burgess had a complicated human relationship with both his own version ofA Clockwork Orangeand Stanley Kubrick ’s adaptation . After bang out the Holy Writ in , he claimed , a simple three workweek , Burgess sold the film rights first for $ 500 to Mick Jagger , who thought the Rolling Stones might have a go at playing Alex and his droogs . finally , though , Kubrick larn the rights , cast Malcolm McDowell as Alex , and filmed a modern classic .
When A Clockwork Orange was first published in the United States , the publisher , allot to Burgess , insisted on removing the book ’s final chapter , in which Alex contemplates giving up his wicked way . This is the interlingual rendition of the Holy Writ that Kubrick filmed . In fact , he never give any consideration to include the 21st chapter in his screenplay ; afterwards , he would say that he suspect Burgess ’ initial publisher forced him to tack on on the happier end . Burgess would say that this omission made the American and Kubrickian A Clockwork Oranges less fresh than fable .
Despite this modification , Burgess regarded the film as gravid fine art , calling it in 1973 , “ a noteworthy work , probably already a classic . ” He was not so tolerant to his own account book , often dismissing it as one of his pocket-sized works . Later in lifetime , he earth call it , “ a work too didactical to be aesthetic , sodding art dragged into the arena of morals . ” ( Intriguingly , he call it that because of the oftentimes - omited 21st chapter , admitting “ my aesthetic judgement may have been faulty . ” )
However , it might be too wide-eyed to say that Burgess felt Kubrick ’s A Clockwork Orange was a cracking study than his novel . It might be , rather , that Kubrick ’s movie so greatly influenced his feelings about the novel that he tended to background its artistic value . Burgess likely felt that the plastic film caused that “ venial novel ” to eclipse his other whole works , and he came to resent the impact Kubrick had on his legacy . “ I should myself be glad to repudiate [ the book ] for various reason , ” he compose in his 1986 essayA Clockwork Orange Resucked , “ but this is not permitted . ” There ’s a sense , begrudging though it may be , that Burgess recognise the king of Kubrick ’s film even as he longed to cast aside its source material .
And , after age of fielding questions about the violence in Kubrick ’s film , it seems Burgess was simply disturbed of the ledger that spawn it . He wrote in his 1985 bookFlame into Being : The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence :
The Koran I am best have it away for , or only known for , is a novel I am prepared to disown : drop a line a after part of a hundred ago , a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three week , it became known as the naked material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and fury . The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about , and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I go . I should not have save the Quran because of this danger of misunderstanding .
Still , in 1989 , Burgess cheer Kubrick to make the celluloid once again available in the UK , where it had been withdrawn from circulation . Burgess might have been quick to repudiate the book , but he felt that people should still have the chance to see Kubrick ’s picture .
Stephen King , The Mist ’s Ambiguous Ending vs. Frank Darabont ’s Horrifying One
Sometimes , though , the preferences are modest . power can fare across as ornery about adaptations of his films , but he ’s frequently delighted by what he sees on the sieve . Tony Magistrale ’s bookHollywood ’s Stephen Kingstarts with a rattling consultation in which he catalogues the various virtue and sins of his film adaptations , and he glorify Stand By Me , The Shawshank Redemption , Dolores Claiborne , and The Green Mile ( though he calls the latter “ a little diffused ” ) . And he sees power of theatrical presentation as adequate to Bible , describing The Storm of the Century , the telly miniseries he penned , as “ as honest as the estimable of the novels . ”
And sometimes , King finds something in the films that he likes better than what he wrote . King terminate his novellaThe Mistin uncertainty , with the surviving characters drive toward Hartford , hoping that they will find sanctuary from the mist and its demon . When accommodate the floor for film , Frank Darabont wanted a more classical ending , and so he create one that was horrific and heartbreaking . In interviews Darabontsays that he was relieved to find that King not only liked the ending , but pronounce he wished he had thought of it himself . King himself has tell , “ It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law extend stating that anybody who reveal the last 5 minutes of this celluloid should be advert from their cervix until numb . ” And this was n’t the initiation of one of the keen moving picture of all time or the creation of a new character of literary genre plastic film ; it was a simple rescript , one that could ( and some would contend , should ) have been in the original text .
Chuck Palahniuk , Fight Club vs. David Fincher ’s Fight Club
King is n’t the only generator who has feel the benefit of a movie rewrite . Fight Clubauthor Chuck Palahniuk has aver that it ’s a tad painful for him to watch David Fincher ’s adjustment of his novel precisely becausethe pic makes sure improvement on the Christian Bible :
Now that I see the picture , specially when I sat down with Jim Uhls and record a comment track for the DVD , I was sort of embarrassed of the account book , because the movie had streamlined the game and made it so much more effective and made connexion that I had never mean to make . There is a line about “ founder set up up franchises with other families , ” and I never thought about connecting that with the fact that Fight Club was being franchised and the movie made that link . I was just beating myself in the point for not having made that connection myself .
And while Fight Club is sometimes reissued as a scientific discipline fiction novel , Fincher ’s film — especially the ending — nudge the story more or less further into speculative fable blank . I wonder if Palahniuk would have felt as blow aside by the moving-picture show if it had n’t contained that city - smashing ending , with its mother wit that the world has suddenly shift . Perhaps , like Dick , Palahniuk discover a certain appeal in a plastic film that does n’t just adapt a news report , but also challenge our notion of genre .
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