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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The un-filmable novel or help! my bookshelf is full of films

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Spatula Clarke

18:43 / 03.12.02

The UBIK game, iirc, is based on the book in only the very loosest sense - it's a strategy deal where you pit one company of psychics against another. Bleh. Even Blade Runner managed to stick more closely to its source material than that...

Off topic, have you read the Jon Courtenay Grimwood Arabesk novels, Lada? They 've got a distinct MMS vibe to them.

On a recent SF tip, I'd quite like to see Alastair Reynolds' stuff get the film treatment, although - as with MMS's work - I'm not certain that Hollywood would be too keen on the morally ambiguous characters.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:18 / 04.12.02

No I haven't, though people keep mentioning JCG in relation to MMS, so one of these days...

Kit-Cat Club

18:28 / 04.12.02

I'd like to see a successful adaptation of Tristram Shandy - the comic one works quite well, but a film? Can't see it...

The Photographer in Blowup

17:08 / 12.12.02

Books that couldn't become movies?

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (too boring, even for a biography)

Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost

Any of the greek tragedies?

Wait, i know: Morrison's The Filth. case closed. Next.

Goodness Gracious Meme

17:31 / 12.12.02

Think Kubrick's attempt at Barry Lyndon is a brave failure, would love to see someone do any better, but it doesn't work, ultimately... and he had to take it apart to make any kind of film out of it.

Midnight's Children? (just for length, and interminable detail? )

I think stuff like Ben Jonson and Chaucer would be pretty hard to do *well*...

Actually, been talking with people about how most classic genre adaptations are rubbish, and furthermore tend to *miss the point* , a major exception being LOTR... eg Bram Stoker's Dracula (which I wish had been done by David Lynch), all the versions of Frankenstein *ever*, etc....

The Photographer in Blowup

15:57 / 13.12.02

Orlando Furioso is just impossible to adapt

And The Lusiads, a medieval piece of work (It's portuguese so i understand if no one knows it, i do and hate it - but it was translated by Sir Richard Burton, the same who translated Arabian Nights - original title is One Thousand nights and a Night)

Most Stephen King books end up adapted, but how many are worth one's time (Green Mile; Shining; Shawshank Redemption and nothing else)

adamswish

16:06 / 14.12.02

Most Stephen King books end up adapted

Am I right in saying those you've mentioned are short stories of Mr King. Always thought that it's his short stories that made the better films than his "Novels". And yes I am including "The Running Man" in that.

The Photographer in Blowup

17:43 / 14.12.02

Well, Shining is a full-lenght novel, but you're actually right: Shawshank Redemption was a short story, Green Mile was a serial, and the only other movie of Stephen King that's actually memorabel is one based on a story called 'The Body' (can't remember the title of the movie, but it's about kids going after the body of a guy who was run over by a train)

Still, i guess the reason all his adaptations end up as crap is because the screenwriter doesn't have good material to work with - all King's novels are crap, and it's time everyone realises that.

I'm ready to be crucified now.

The Timaximus, The!

19:47 / 16.12.02

I agree that Gravity's Rainbow is pretty unfilmable, but I think Darren Aronofsky's "Pi" captured the feel of it pretty well.

Twig the Wonder Kid

15:40 / 21.01.03

I'm sure as CGI seems to be taking over cinema it's only a matter of time before some of the cyberpunk classics are given a good stab. I dread it.

Will Self's My Idea of Fun is probably the most unfilmable book I can think of, although I'd love someone to have a go at Great Apes. And the Harry Hill book I'm reading at the moment would also pose some quite serious challenges to anyone stupid enough to try and bring it to the screen.

grant

19:18 / 21.01.03

Orlando Furioso was made into a movie.

I think it had Olivia D'Abo in it - it was fairly cheesy. Italian production, maybe... came out the same time as Beastmaster, roughly.

It's not the same as this one.

Oh, it's this one. Hearts and Armour. Tanya Roberts, not Olivia D'Abo.

Aged cheese.

HCE

21:04 / 21.01.03

When I think of unfilmable books, it's less too do with some goriness or discontinuity than with the action being largely interior, as in the novels of Thomas Bernhard -- they might be filmed, but not well I don't think.

The Photographer in Blowup

21:06 / 21.01.03

My God! Another good book caught in the web of adaptations - Orlando Furioso, who would say? It sure got adapted, but it seems to be a mediocre adaptation, so i reckon it's 'un-filmable' anyway - not like L.A. Confidential, a movie that could have really screwed up had it not been for the skillfullness of the screenwriters adapting such a complex novel.

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