Books better than films?

I've enjoyed Biblical epics masses more than the Bible.

ANY film adapted from a Stephen King novel is better than the book, and there are so many of them. 'The Shining','Carrie', 'Shawshank Redemption' etc.
I liked Forman's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' better than Kesey's, because it wasn't submerged in dated 60s anti-establishment counter-cultural 'philosophy'.
Cronenberg's 'Crash' was very different from Ballard's, yet both were good.

'Heart of Darkness' just isn't as good as 'Apocalypse Now' when you're on acid.

I feel just the opposite about Stephen King books. The Shining was so much scarier in print. I felt the movie didn't do it justice. Christine..The Stand...Misery, I enjoyed all those books much more than the films. I very rarely find a movie that is better than the book it came from. I think I just like imagining the movie in mind while I am reading, and then get disappointed when the actual film is nothing like I pictured it would be.

Genre novels (sci-fi, crime) seem to make for films better than the books - how many classic noirs are based on pulp thrillers that are now forgotten? Whenever there's an exception (Ellroy, Thompson), the authors have had experience writing for films themselves.
'The Godfather' - based on a pretty forgettable thriller.'Straw Dogs' - book forgotten, film no masterpiece but infinitely more interesting due to Peckinpah's somewhat belligerent outlook on life. (Strangely, when Peckinpah met Thompson ['The Getaway'], BOTH hated the result.)

I think the film version of American Psycho is infinitely superior to the book -- much more sly and mocking. I know Ellis intended AP to be a satire, but from the book you get a sense that Ellis is a little bit in love with his character, whereas the movie doesn't show him any sympathy.

Has your co-worker read "Dr. No" I wonder?

Generally speaking I enjoy the books better than the films. I usually dread a film based on one of my favourites. I wonder if anyone's seen alex cox' version of borges' "death and the compass" OH MY GOD IT SUX0RED!!!!

xoxo

Gone With The Wind the book: a few extra marrages, few extra dead kids. The movie has Vivien Leigh!

To Kill A Mockingbird: Movie is just as good as the book.

I generally dispise movie adaptations of books, though there have been some great ones already mentioned. But what my co-worker stupidly believes is that all books are better, including books of films. So the book version of Star Wars would be better, by this rationale (hey, maybe it is). That just doesn't make sense. It depends on the content every time, surely?

When you're talking about Stephen King or Tom Clancy, a radical refinition of 'content' is necessary, and in fact, disposal of the whole concept of 'content' is even better.

Ah novelisations. Seen the film, now read the book. Er - why? I know what is going to happen and I doubt that the book will contain anything the film doesn't except perhaps some internal narrative based on character notes for the film which were run roughshod over. Oddly the films most often novelised are summer blockbuster action movies - not super heavy of exposition or dialogue. I fear we are never going to see stuff like the following:

CHAPTER 5

Jar-Jar Binks hated Wednesdays. It all stemmed from his childhood when Wednesday was composition reading class and all the other kids would ridicule him for his odd accent. Why once he remembered the class laughing for the entire lesson when he read the role of Lenny in Of Mice And Men: 'Mesa scared George'.

It entirely depends on the book and film! That's asinine, that the book is always better. That's like saying that chocolate is always better than vanilla even though both have their uses and places. Some examples (two have already been said :( ):

American Psycho: The film is vastly superior to the book. In Mary Harron's hands, Ellis's extremely smug, look-at-me-I'm-writing extremely dated satire becomes a satire of something much bigger than the 80s, which is patriarchial culture in general. It's wicked funnier to boot, and not as grotesque. Granted, Ellis's style lends itself better to film than to writing (ironically): he's so hung up on descriptions that take up pages upon pages upon pages, which is dull and unbearable at points, but in a film you don't have to describe a character's fucking medicine cabinet down to the last screw - you just show it and get it over with.

Gone With The Wind: The book lacks the famous line. End of story. But not really, it's just a better piece of work. Though I do like the fact that in the book Margaret Mitchell makes a huge point of the idea that Scarlett O'Hara isn't spectacularly gorgeous in the opening chapter - personality and all that making a difference, etc. Then Hollywood went and cast arguably the most beautiful woman of all time, doesn't that figure.

Misery: I can't be the only person who (spoiler alert, for the two people unfamiliar with this, I'll put it in white so highlight it if you wanna read it) thinks it's way better that he gets his feet sledgehammered instead of CHOPPED THE FUCK OFF. I mean, honestly.

Silence of the Lambs: Chops out the unnecessary "character-building" scenes with the roommate, plays up the psychological attraction with Lecter - it's apparently even obvious to Harris that his (extremely good) book was inferior to the (much better) film: Hannibal was clearly a sequel to the film, and not necessarily the book.

And while I've never read the book Goodfellas was based on, I'm certain Goodfellas was better because it has Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta looks hot in it.

OH! And The Shining the Movie is SO not better than The Shining The Book. I've never seen a less frightening movie than The Shining, besides The Exorcist. 70s "scary classics": all duds.

I haven't read very many novelisations of films, to be fair, and those I did read were generally as a child. But only Alan Dean Foster's novelisations of Alien and Aliens ever stuck in my mind as offering more than the movies they were based on (and even then they weren't better than the films). This was because Foster wrote from the screenplays, and then film was changed upon release in both cases. I think my co-worker is on crack and is just trying to look cleverer than me by saying she reads more.

Good point on the content/Tom Clancy at al thing. Content in the loosest sense of the word. I mean, John Grisham adaptations make good thrillers and action films, but the books are generally weak unless you have a worrying legal profession fetish. Which I certainly don't!

Damn you Mr Strange. I was going to mention those Allen Dean Foster novelisations. They were good, particularly because I read them when I was ten and obviously not allowed to see the films for another eight years. (I take certification very seriously).

OH! And The Shining the Movie is SO not better than The Shining The Book. I've never seen a less frightening movie than The Shining, besides The Exorcist.

The Simpsons did a much better adaptation of the Shining than either the movie or the horrid tv-movie. Homer is scarier.

Yeah, The Shining was rubbish. Even worse, in true horror film stereotype fashion, the black guy gets killed stupidly, whereas in the book (if I remember correctly) he saves the day.

Yeah, those Alan Dean Foster books (I was too young to see the movies, too!!!) gave a lot more backstory and information on the characters than the movies did, which was really interesting. Then when I finally saw the films, they actually made them more scary. I'm still impressed by that. I recently saw directors cuts of both films, on DVD, and they included a lot of stuff that was in the books and missing from the films originally, which was incredible to see.

Did anyone watch/has anyone seen the "movie" Stephen King's The Shining (it was on TV abt a week ago)? I bet bet bet it was more rubbitch than Kubrix0r'z

It starred Steven Webber. It was going to be rubbish!

Shining, the TV Movie was on in the states a couple of years ago, a miniseries. From what I remember it was crappy. It was truer to the novel but come on, we're talking Kubrick.

It also starred some little kid whose face looked like it was permanently fixed in a frown.

Can't remember who wrote it but I do remember loving the Wargames novelization. We get the Matthew Broderick character sitting around the dinner table, silently imagining the computer program that runs his dad 10 COMPLAIN 20 FIX FRANKS AND BEANS 30 SLEEP 40 GOTO 10 or something like that. Classic. But of course the movie was better because it had Ally Sheedy in it did it not?

Kubrick is wicked overrated.

I'll slightly disagree with Tarden by suggesting that Hammett's THE THIN MAN is an even better book than film. But it is 13 years since I read it, or watched the picture come to that.

It's peculiar enough that half the board are possessed by the spirit of Molesworth. But am I the only one to be *flabbergasted* that Ally gets HER Brit public-school slang from Stalky and Co.?

That's British slang?

What are you talking about? 'wicked'? That's east-coast slang yo. Especially Mass. for some reason - friend of mine studied there for a year, came back, said 'wicked' nonstop.

What Josh and Ally said. Trust me, I live in Boston (a wicked small city that thinks it's HUGE).

Whoever this Stalky & Co group is, though, I'm wicked down with them.

The film is always better than the book.

My mistake (maybe): so far I've only found "horrid":

"I never got squiffy but once – that was in the holidays," sad Stalky reflectively; "an' it made me horrid sick."
"We won't tell about you. I swear we won't," M'Turk concluded. "Bad for the discipline of the school. Horrid bad."
(Both from Rudyard Kipling's 'In Ambush', first pub. McClure's Magazine, 1898...)

I'm not ruling out "wicked" from Kipling: just ruling wasting any more time looking. Stalky and M'Turk were young lads learning to be sly imperialists, Kipling's favourite kind.

Of course RK loved Uncle Remus and peppered at least one of his S&Co stories with stuff they'd picked from Brer Rabbit. Boston is an uppity far-western suburb of London, no: like Acton with beans?

Paul, are you misrepresenting your colleague's argument, by any chance? I mean, to claim that novelisations of books are implicitly superior to the film is (the pinefox's favourite) so insane as to be rather intriguing. Is she a really, um, stupid person?

The other day in a second hand bookshop I saw A NOVELISATION OF THE KENNETH BRANAGH FRANKENSTEIN MOVIE BASED ON MARY SHELLEY'S NOVEL. WHY? WHY?

Novelisations of films are bad bad bad. They add nothing.

Almost all of Paul's colleagues are 1) insane and 2) stupid, so you might not be far off the mark there, Nick.

Isn't that "Boston Manor", as mentioned in Saint Etienne's "Girl VII", Mark? Boston is in Lincolnshire, FWIW.

there is also a boston manor in the wilds of west london/thames valley. i work very near there. it is awful

Erm, Gareth, that *was* the Boston Manor I was referring to.

Interesting that you refer to it as "the wilds". It's far too close to London, surely? I'd never use that phrase myself at all, but I've never before heard it applied to anywhere in suburbia. Speaking for myself, I rather liked the Richmond Park area the one time I visited.

I was talking about the Boston where they had the tea party. Lincolnshire = dud since the last wolves were seen in Englande...