The Book of the Movie of the Book...

Sergio Leone apparently said once that it was impossible to make a good film from a good book. “You can make a great film out of a bad book”, he added, or something to that effect*. So, according to Leone, the equation goes something as follows:

( a ) Good book = bad movie (every time)

( b ) Bad book = good movie (or, at least potential for a good one)

( c ) Bad book = bad movie (at least as much of a chance as b)

Was he right? There are many who would say – emphatically and repeatedly – YES. In the face of it, there is some compelling evidence of exceptionally good books forming the basis of exceedingly bad films (we all remember Less Than Zero - a film that used up two other movies quotas of bad as well as its own). But often one person's "bad" is someone else's "quite good" - off the top of my head To Kill a Mockingbird, A Room With a View, The Remains of the Day, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in America, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Voyager, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, The Shining, LA Confidential, Wonderboys, not to mention this blog's namesake. All of these movies were based on books that are considered exemplary, at least within their genre, and each one of them is a damn fine film (or at least, I think they're damn fine films).

I think I understand what Sergio was getting at. When a filmmaker decides to make a film based on a popular book, there is a lot of baggage that comes with the project. People have expectations. The reading experience has become to a degree "cinematic" for many people. Probably since the Second World War (I'm guessing about the time-frame here, but stay with me) Western culture reached a tipping point where the number of people that read and go to the movies began to out-number those who just read or just went to the movies. And people started seeing what they read in terms of a filmic experience, as if it's being projected on a screen in the mind. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but the result is that when we see someone else's visual interpretation of something we have already interpreted visually for ourselves, it seems at best jarring - at worst a travesty against the intentions of the author.

People get protective about the books they read because it's their experience. They complain that their favourite scene was dropped, or an ending changed, the leading lady miscast. The solution, apparently, is to read the book after you've seen the movie (tough with something like The Lord of the Rings or a Harry Potter story). Ironically, the biggest criticism levelled against Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was that is too closely followed the book. Just no pleasing some people, I guess.

So, the short answer is, if you're thinking about making a book into a movie, don't. But if you really want to, here's some survival tips:

1. Pick your material carefully. When I finally got around to reading Graham Greene's The Quiet American I got about half-way through and thought, This has to be made into a movie. It was cinematic in style and pace of narrative, and it was timely and topical. (Unfortunately for my film-career chances, Phillip Noyce thought so too.)

2. Stick to the story where you can. These days nobody is going to pay good money to see the plight of an outed adulteress in a Seventeenth-Century Puritan settlement, whether it has a happy ending or not. Keep it real.

3. Don't be afraid to leave stuff out. Tom Bombidil didn't make it into The Fellowship of the Ring. SFW. While his appearence in the book makes for an interesting interlude, Tom contributes nothing to the narrative thrust. The movie was already 178 minutes long. To add him would have jacked it up another seven or eight minutes and risked losing those members of the audience who hadn't read the books every year since they were ten like some holy pilgrimage.

4. Pick a screenwriter who can write adaptations. It takes a particular kind of talent and sensitivity to the material, as well as an understanding of film, to distill a two-hundred-and-forty page novel into a ninety-eight minute script. Lawrence Kasdan can do it. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala can do it too. Andrew Davies and Christopher Hampton can do it really well.

5. If possible, don't let the producers sell the novelization rights to the script, a la Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It's just embarassing.

* I think I remember reading this in Sight and Sound, around the time Leone died (1989).