(no subject)

[jfb]

Montmartre as post-Amélie tourist destination.

Griping about the Angelika Film Center in Manhattan. The seats are too small! The lines are too long! I can hear the subway when it goes by! New Yorkers are spoiled rotten.

A.O. Scott reveals that movies are different from books. Why are we still having this conversation?

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Oh sure it's reasonable to want your art house to be comfortable. I think my point was that New Yorkers are spoiled rotten. Maybe I wasn't clear.

And it's reasonable to want an adaptation to "stay true to the virtues of its source," but I'm not sure I agree that it's reasonable to complain if it doesn't. If The Truth About Charlie, adapted from Charade is a bad movie, it's not because Mark Wahlberg is a different actor from Cary Grant--it's because he's a worse actor. Or whatever. I guess I'm not really interested in what a work says it's based on, as long as it works on its own.

But regarding books to movies specifically, everybody knows the translation is not direct. A movie can show things a book can only tell, and can't show things a book can easily tell. A movie can cover maybe two hours of plot, a book can take weeks. Everybody knows this, right? But people keep writing articles about it.

I'm with you on the cake thing, though.

[(Anonymous)]

I definitely agree that a movie ought to stand on its own as a good movie regardless of its source material. But, I still think that a movie based on a book, especially a well-regarded book, ought to in addition be faithful to the intentions of the book's author (note that this can be different from preserving plot elements or characters-- I don't mind, for instance, the way they enlarged Arwen's character in the LOTR movies, or the fact that the movies aren't 9 hours long each). I realize this is debatable, just like it's debatable whether a director ought to stick verbatim to a screenplay, but I think there should be a really good reason to stray in either case.

And, for what it's worth, remaking a movie is a pretty different subject than making a book (or a TV show, or a...theme park ride) into a movie, since there's no cross-media translation. Unless you want to say modern film is a different medium than 1950s film, which I'm willing to consider...

--Doug

[jfb.livejournal.com]

I was going to say we'll have to agree to disagree, but I think both of us admit enough gray area that I'm not sure we're disagreeing.

Remaking within a medium is different, mostly in that cross-media translations require change in obvious ways that intra-medium adaptations don't. But for me, I think the same principles apply. I just chose the Charade example because it's been on my mind lately.

Cover songs are another related topic. I adore M. Ward's cover of "Let's Dance" in large part because he invests it with a yearning sincerity that I don't think Bowie ever meant. (I love the original, too.) That sort of thing is why I'm suspicious of the idea that the adapter is obligated to follow the intent of the original author.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, thinking of cover songs was what made me point out that remaking a movie was different. If you're doing the same thing in the same medium, there does need to be something different about the new version or else there's not much point. Ride's cover of Kraftwerk's "The Model" struck me as rather pointless, since it sounds almost identical to the original (although the fact that Ride usually sounds nothing like Kraftwerk makes it somewhat impressive). I didn't see Gus Van Sant's Psycho but I'm guessing that's either an example or a counterexample...

Anyway, you're right, there are plenty of gray areas. I enjoyed Clueless more than Emma, for instance, and it's hard to even compare the two versions of The Shining. I guess it's just that when I read a book and enjoy it, I really want to see it the way the author would want it to be seen, just once. I'm happy to see other interpretations after that.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Psycho is a great example of why you should never go to horror movies on opening night, even if they're really art-house experiments marketed as horror movies.

But seriously: It's exactly an example of a cover version so like the original that there's no point to it--except for the sort of meta point that no one had ever made a remake that uninteresting before. You'll recognize the Martin Gardner reference (http://www.wordsmith.demon.co.uk/paradoxes/#interesting).

[bnewmark.livejournal.com]

just because it seems sort of on topic, i watched "adaptation" the other night, which is based on _the orchid thief_, which i read, and i have to say, i thought it was very creative and unique, given that adapting that book would be... incredibly difficult, to say the least.