I have been reading about Jim Thompson's collaboration with
Stanley Kubrick on the latter's 3rd film, _The Killing_.
Kubrick said he wanted Thompson's hard boiled dialogue, but
the film clearly shows the novelist's influence in other
ways. For example, the well thought out plan to steal
millions from the race track unravels due to common people's
uncommon obsessions and desires: a wife's disloyalty, her
husband's masochism, a hit man's bigotry. Bad luck, Fate, is
also an enemy. The last words in the film, the protagonist's
bitter resignation, are in fact a direct echo of one of
Thompson's father's pet phrases
("What's the use of kicking?"). And for all this, the
ambitious Kubrick slighted Thompson (although just how much
is debatable) by giving him credit only for "additional
dialogue."
My question is: are there other noir
novelists whose writing for the movies was recognized as very
close to that in their books? I understand that screenplays
are advertised as being valuable because of the contributions
by good novelists. Yet when one views films like Double
Indemnity, or Stranger on a Train (Chandler), Stranger on the
3rd Floor
(Nathaniel West), Shadow of a Doubt (Thornton Wilder) one
does not think primarily of the novelists' own work. Even The
Burglar, from a novel by Goodis and with a screenplay largely
(I understand) by him, does not seem to me very much like
Goodis' novel.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Nov 2004 EST