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Film adaptations of books that worked surprisingly well

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    Film adaptations of books that worked surprisingly well

    David Cronenberg's adaptation of Naked Lunch? For a book that was the epitome of un-flimable it was a major achievement to make such a coherent film all things considering. My concentrating on the filmable imagery of the book as opposed to the (ahem) narrative he created a visual masterpiece.

    Prior to this Burroughs wrote s screenplay for a gay porn version of Wild Boys which never came to fruition but did inspire the Duran Duran song of the same name.

    #2
    The Godfather I and II. I never read the books, but they worked out very well regardless.

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      #3
      Well somebody's got to say it.

      The Princess Bride

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        #4
        As bad Stephen King adaptions tend to determine the overall concensus it worth pointing out there have been a number of very good ones-Carrie Misery Dead Zone Shawshank Green Mile The Body It and of course Shining however much the author tries to disown it.

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          #5
          I haven't read the books, so I can't be sure, but 2001 and 2010 are great films.

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            #6
            Originally posted by ale View Post
            As bad Stephen King adaptions tend to determine the overall concensus it worth pointing out there have been a number of very good ones-Carrie Misery Dead Zone Shawshank Green Mile The Body It and of course Shining however much the author tries to disown it.
            My understanding is that Stephen King agrees with that. He doesn't like most or all of the horror adaptions. I read that somewhere.

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              #7
              Originally posted by ale View Post
              As bad Stephen King adaptions tend to determine the overall concensus it worth pointing out there have been a number of very good ones-Carrie Misery Dead Zone Shawshank Green Mile The Body It and of course Shining however much the author tries to disown it.
              The romance bits in The Dead Zone were terrible though. I agree with you on the rest of the movie.

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                #8
                I usually like Cronenberg but I found The Dead Zone pretty underwhelming. The pacing is all off, you get bits where something horrible and obviously supernatural happens, followed by some boring bits where everything just goes back to normal like nothing actually happened. It just feels like a bunch of random spectacular set pieces with no structure, basically. Also visually it has aged horribly.

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                  #9
                  I have a feeling that in many instances the "haven't read it" will be applied.

                  The adaptation and radical re-working of Apocalypse Now from Heart of Darkness (had read that one a long, long time ago) worked well.

                  Never read the Dick short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but Blade Runner is Top 3 for me.

                  Finally, I haven't read the Motorcycle Diaries but I really enjoyed that film.

                  I'm sure another thread will start that is the opposite, but I will say that Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing was a great book and a crap film. And since On the Road was discussed a bit in the books thread, and related to my note above about Motorcycle Diaries, the film (based on the scroll) wasn't so hot. Not as bad as I expected but not great.

                  EDIT: Should have read further down. Oh well, leaving these here.

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                    #10
                    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is so different from Blade Runner that I don’t know why they even bothered to keep any of the characters’ names the same. Both are excellent in their own way.


                    Up In The Air is like that too. The film is great and so is the book, but they only have a superficial resemblance.

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                      #11
                      The Harry Potter movies tend to tidy up the books quite well, especially the latter ones where Rowling was obviously allowed to write pretty much anything without any editing being applied.

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                        #12
                        MASH would be a candidate.

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                          #13
                          I struggled with the book of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, perhaps because of its age v. mine, but the movie is one of my absolute favourites.

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                            #14
                            The Coen Brothers completely nailed Cormac McCarthys No Country For Old Men. They could have made the characters so much more larger than life, especially Anton Chigurh, but stayed pretty faithful to the novel instead of creating unbelievable persona.

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                              #15
                              Heart of Darkness was rubbish. Doesn't even have surfboards in it, let alone helicopters.

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                                #16
                                The tv adaptation of Good Omens was exceptionally good. The casting of Sheen and Tennant didn't hurt, of course, but it was pleasing that they kept in most of Pratchett's wry and Gaiman's warped senses of humour.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                                  Heart of Darkness was rubbish. Doesn't even have surfboards in it, let alone helicopters.
                                  Hold on you mean Conrad didnt coin the literary gem 'Charlie Dont Surf'. It was Joe Strummer after all.

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                                    #18
                                    Sideways was a great film based on what I believe was a much less interesting book. At least the director had no interest in doing another film with the same characters from another book by the same author.

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                                      #19
                                      I also thought The Postman Always Rings Twice worked much better as a film than as a book.

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                                        #20
                                        I read Sideways. I love the film and have seen it a number of times, so thought I should give it a go. The book is utter dogshit. Alexander Payne took the bare bones of the plot and made a great film out of it.

                                        Like an idiot, I'd already bought the second book. I managed to fight myself through about 30 pages of it. It is not only terribly written, and monstrously self-indulgent, but it's also actively unpleasant. I'd fully recommend steering clear.

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                                          #21
                                          I'm a big fan of A River Runs Though It. The book by Norman McLean actually has another unrelated story in it - which is also good - so the story the film is based on isn't very long.

                                          It's autobiographical, but the film shifted the timing of the story to earlier in McLean's life and added a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the book but was based on his real life. He contributed to the film. In the book, Norman is already married and in his late 20s and has already started his teaching career. In the movie, he's just home from college and meets and courts the woman who will be his wife.I can't recall how the book portrays the [spoiler] death of his brother Paul (Brad Pitt). In real life, he moved to Chicago to be near his brother and work for a newspaper. He was murdered there. In film, Norman tries to get him to come with him to Chicago but he says "Oh, I'll never leave Montana." And he's murdered, apparently by loan sharks/gamblers he owed money to, in Montana.

                                          Norman McLean was friends with Dr. Seuss at Dartmouth. Fact.

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                                            #22
                                            Shifting to TV, I think the TV version of The Expanse is excellent. The book is slightly more realistic as scifi, but they're both excellent.

                                            Related to that, I thought the TV series of The Magicians, which deviates from the books a lot, was actually better than the books. The author contributed to the show, so maybe he thought so too.

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by Belhaven View Post
                                              I also thought The Postman Always Rings Twice worked much better as a film than as a book.
                                              Which one? The Lana Turner/John Garfield (1946) version, or the Jessica Lange/Jack Nicholson (1981.) I might agree with former but not the latter, in spite of the big names attached to the production.

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                                The Godfather I and II. I never read the books, but they worked out very well regardless.
                                                Remember those cheesy lurid novels in the supermarket checkout aisle back in the 70s and 80s like VC Andrews and the Executioner? That was where Mario Puzo's The Godfather was born. It was recently named the single Greatest Film in History in the last Sight & Sound poll, beating Citizen Kane.

                                                Jim Thompson's pop.1280 as "Coup de Torchon" and moving the setting from the American South to Africa enabled it to being the greatest Jim Thompson movie just pipping The Grifters.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                                  I struggled with the book of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, perhaps because of its age v. mine, but the movie is one of my absolute favourites.
                                                  Yer reading my mind. Saw the movie first, loved it. Read the book, got through it, but the movie stuck more w/ me.

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