>On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Frank Denton wrote:
>
>: I just recently watched The Maltese Falcon and when
I started to
>: read the novel, I was struck by how close the movie
dialogue
>: followed the dialogue in the novel. Am I correct or
under a
>: misconception?
>
>You are correct, sir. The story I've seen is that
Huston wanted to
>make a movie of the book, and gave a copy to his
secretary to type up
>in screenplay form so that they could use it as a
first draft.
>However, when he saw it, he decided it would do fine
pretty much as it
>was.
Yeah this is pretty much what I'd call the standard 'creation
myth'
about the 1941 film. *Everyone* reproduces it. The earliest
mention I
can find of it though is in a 1963-ish book by Allen Rivkin
(and
somebody Kerr) called _Hello Hollywood!_
What I find interesting about this is that the secretary is
always
nameless.
If someone wanted to concoct a post-facto story to promote
the idea of
fidelty in adaptaion, they couldn't've come up with a much
better story
than this one.
>I have an essay I did for a third-year film studies
course somewhere
>about here, about differences between the book and the
movie. I
>thought it was a masterpiece, but the prof only gave
it a C.
Well, if you have thirty essays to mark and no time to read
'em all
thoroughly, it's usually safer to give 'em a 'C'. If you can
find it,
why not bung it on the web site? Maybe we could read it and
re-mark it?
We could even email our comments and grades to the guy that
originally
marked it ;->
ED
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