Mark,
Re your comments:
> I thought that was Maxwell Smart's line. Speaking of
which, I saw
in
> the latest Premiere magazine that Steve Carrelll has
siged to play
Agent
> 86.
With a name like that, he ought to be in an adaptation of the
87th Precinct.
> Of course, this goes back to Jim's assertion that
"more faithful =
> better movie." That's just crap. Payback was far
more faithful to
the
> plot of Stark's novel than Point Bank, but the
latter is a far
better
> movie. I recently read PD James's Children of Men
after being very
> impressed with the movie (got robbed in not being
nominated for best
> picture). I was surprised how little of the book was
in the movie.
In
> fact, given how much of the book was interior to a
character's
mind, I
> doubt a faithful rendition would have worked nearly
as well as a
movie.
> This is not a criticism of the book, which was quite
good, but an
> admission that the two media are best at different
things (and that
the
> book and movie were created on different sides of
9/11 and the
impact it
> has had on our view of the future world). And each
of these took
> advantage of its medium's strengths.
You're deliberately misreading my assertion. I never said,
"More faithful equals better." In fact, in that very message
I gave an example of a Chandler-adapted movie, the Mitchum
BIG SLEEP, that was, in many ways, more faithful to the book
than the Bogart version, but wasn't as good a film.
But "not as faithful" isn't the same as "unfaithful." POINT
BLANK may not have followed the letter of the Stark novel as
closely as PAYBACK, but it didn't trash the original. It
wasn't made to show what a pointless piece of drivel the
novel was. Boorman didn't have contempt for Westlake's
work.
I haven't seen CHILDREN OF MEN, but I'd bet it's at least
faithful to the spirit of James's novel. At least I haven't
heard anything about James fans getting up in arms the way
Chandler fans do about THE LONG GOODBYE. From this, I infer
that, at the very least, the filmmakers didn't have withering
contempt for either the novel or Ms. James's work in general,
that came through in the film
Altman did. At least the things he said sure indicate that he
did, and I'm willing to take him at his word.
I never said, "more faithful = better movie," although I
suspect that's true more often than not. There are exceptions
(BULLITT, for examples, has little relationship to Robert L.
Fish's MUTE WITNESS aside from the bare bones of the plot,
but it's a better movie than MUTE WITNESS is a novel). But by
and large, it's probably true.
What I did say is that a filmmaker making a movie based on
source material from another medium owes some fidelity to
that source material. If he has contempt for the material,
why make the movie? Why not make a movie from an original
screenplay that he believes in? Or make a movie from a
novel/play/whatever that he believes in? Why make a movie
based on a novel he has contempt for, by a novelist he has
contempt for, featuring a character he has contempt
for?
The film may be good or bad depending on the skill of the
director, cast, and crew, but that's not the point.
The point is what the filmmaker owes to the originator of the
material, and for members of a list devoted to the work of
people like Chandler to defend as meretricious a piece of
crap as Altman's film on the basis that "It's good in its own
right, and, anyway we can't really expect a director like
Altman to do a faithful version of Chandler and have to judge
it on its own merits," quite frankly mystifies me.
> As for Jim's claim that Sidney Greenstreet's
nomination was a
reward for
> Huston's faithful adaptation, no, it's a reward for
Greenstreet's
> acting, which may or may not have been as good if
the movie had
followed
> the book less closely.
I never said that, either. I said that part of what made the
Huston version great was its fidelity to the novel.
Greenstreet's masterly performance, taking to the part as
though it had been written specifically for him, was part of
what made it so faithful.
I never said that he got his nomination because the film was
faithful to the book, per se, I said he got his nomination
because his great performance was able to shine, and get
noticed, in what was a fine movie, and that the movie was
fine, particularly compared to SATAN MET A LADY, at least
partly because it was faithful to its source material.
JIM DOHERTY
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