NOVEL ATTEMPTS YOU CAN'T JUDGE A MOVIE BY ITS BOOK... OR A BOOK BY ITS MOVIE.Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer `It's a book so bad, it makes bad books look good.'' So says Salman Rushdie about ``The Da Vinci Code.'' And given Hollywood's history with books both good and bad, Dan Brown's bogus best seller should have made a ripping good movie. As filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan (``The Big Chill'') once put it: ``High art often starts in low places.'' Hindsight tells us that it didn't work out that way for Ron Howard's plodding adaptation of ``The Da Vinci Code,'' which took a bad book and made it worse. Say what you will about Brown's clanking clank n. A metallic sound, sharp and hard but not resonant: the clank of chains. intr.v. clanked, clank·ing, clanks To make a sharp, hard, metallic sound. prose, but his quick-hit chapters did keep the action moving and readers guessing. By contrast, the movie is flat and ridiculous and somehow managed to make a self-flagellating, homicidal hom·i·cid·al adj. 1. Of or relating to homicide. 2. Capable of or conducive to homicide: a homicidal rage. albino albino (ălbī`nō) [Port.,=white], animal or plant lacking normal pigmentation. The absence of pigment is observed in the body covering (skin, hair, and feathers) and in the iris of the eye. monk boring. No small trick that. The ``Da Vinci'' filmmakers seem to have been bedeviled by the same problem that sent Chris Columbus' two ``Harry Potter'' movies into the dumpster. ``When the book has been read by tens of millions of people, it casts a big shadow,'' says Stephanie Harrison, editor of the nice compendium ``Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen.'' ``And in the case of something like `The Da Vinci Code,' it's hard not to play it safe and try to be too faithful,'' Harrison continues. ``The thought process is: `I'd better not screw this up' as opposed to `Let's do something cinematically interesting with this.''' Of course, Hollywood screws up books -- good and bad -- all the time. But there are almost as many cases where a talented filmmaker has used a crummy crum·my also crumb·y adj. crum·mi·er also crumb·i·er, crum·mi·est also crumb·i·est Slang 1. Miserable or wretched: a crummy situation in the family. 2. book as a starting point for something special. Our favorites in both categories: BAD BOOKS ... GOOD MOVIES ``The Bridges of Madison County'' (1995): Director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Richard LaGravenese excised all of Robert James Waller's purple prose and big speeches and turned an object of ridicule into a deeply felt love story for adults. It did fine critically and commercially, yet the stigma surrounding the book is so great that its audience wasn't nearly as big as it should have been. ``The Godfather'' (1972): Author Mario Puzo's first two books aimed for literary merit. He wrote ``The Godfather'' because literary merit didn't put pasta on the table. ``I wished like hell I had written it better,'' Puzo said after Francis Ford Coppola's movie became a sensation. ``I wrote below my gifts on that book.'' That didn't stop him from churning out the same garish excesses in his four post-``Godfather'' books. But by that time, Puzo had become a compulsive gambler and needed the money more than ever. ``Jaws'' (1975): In Peter Benchley's clunky best seller, there's no U.S.S. Indianapolis speech. No ``we're gonna need a bigger boat.'' No Quint and Hooper swapping scar stories. Instead, Brody's wife gets it on with Hooper and feels bad about it the morning after, and the mayor doesn't want to close the beaches because he has ties to Mafia-owned real estate. What? Was he afraid he was going to wake up with a shark's head in his bed? ``Le Morte D'Arthur'' (basis for ``Monty Python and the Holy Grail,'' 1975): Yes, it's the root of an enduring legend. But where are the coconuts? ``M*A*S*H'' (1970): Robert Altman performs open-heart surgery on Richard Hooker's (aka H. Richard Hornberger H. Richard Hornberger (February 1, 1924 – November 4, 1997) was an American writer and surgeon, born in Trenton, New Jersey, who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. ) dime-store novel and brings the patient to life. Hooker, a surgeon who served in an Army M*A*S*H unit during the Korean War, went on to write two little-read sequels. In one, Hawkeye admits a favorite pastime is going over to the State University to ``kick the (wind) out of a few liberals.'' Alan Alda: Watch your back. ``Rosemary's Baby'' (1968): Roman Polanksi took Ira Levin's seed-of-Satan premise and turned it into a disturbing horror classic that richly incorporated the freaky freak·y adj. freak·i·er, freak·i·est 1. Strange or unusual; freakish. 2. Slang Frightening. freak fears surrounding pregnancy and motherhood. ``Sideways'' (2004): Rex Pickett's Nick Hornby-lite first novel wasn't bad, but it's strictly Thunderbird when compared to Alexander Payne's brilliant character study. ``To Have and Have Not'' (1944): Director Howard Hawks wanted Ernest Hemingway to come to Hollywood and write a screenplay. Hemingway balked balk v. balked, balk·ing, balks v.intr. 1. To stop short and refuse to go on: The horse balked at the jump. 2. . Hawks told the writer he could make a great movie out of Hemingway's worst book. And, with the help of William Faulkner, who co-wrote the screenplay, he did. The heat between Bogie bo·gie 1 also bo·gy n. pl. bo·gies 1. One of several wheels or supporting and aligning rollers inside the tread of a tractor or tank. 2. and Bacall might have had something to do with it, too. GOOD BOOKS ... BAD MOVIES ``The Bonfire of the Vanities'' (1990): Think Tom Hanks is miscast mis·cast tr.v. mis·cast, mis·cast·ing, mis·casts 1. To cast in an unsuitable role. 2. To cast (a role, play, or film) inappropriately. in ``The Da Vinci Code''? Go back and watch him try to play an odious Wall Street trader in this epic miscalculation mis·cal·cu·late tr. & intr.v. mis·cal·cu·lat·ed, mis·cal·cu·lat·ing, mis·cal·cu·lates To count or estimate incorrectly. mis·cal . The silver lining: We got another great book, Julie Salamon's ``The Devil's Candy'' (the subtitle, ``The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco,'' says it all), out of this disaster. ``Breakfast of Champions'' (1999): Some books -- ``The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,'' ``Fear and Loathing fear and loathing - (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000). in Las Vegas'' and just about anything by Kurt Vonnegut, including this mess -- should not be made into movies, no matter how reverent the intent. Just leave them alone, OK? ``Captain Corelli's Mandolin'' (2001): The book was a high-spirited historical romance. The movie was a leaden travelogue, remembered mostly for Nicolas Cage's phoney-baloney paisano pai·sa·no also pai·san n. pl. pai·sa·nos also pai·sans 1. A countryman; a compatriot. 2. Slang A friend; a pal. and the way it turned the sound of a mandolin mandolin (măn'dəlĭn`, măn`dəlĭn'), musical instrument of the lute family, with a half-pear-shaped body, a fretted neck, and a variable number of strings, plucked with the fingers or with a plectrum. into the cry of the damned. ``Catch-22'' (1970): See ``Breakfast of Champions.'' Hollywood Meaning should never be grafted onto an absurdist classic. ``Moby Dick'' (1956): John Huston's movie isn't horrible per se, but if Melville's book was just about a loon loon, common name for migratory aquatic birds found in fresh- and saltwater in the colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Its strange, laughing call carries for great distances. Like the grebes, loons float low in the water and their legs are placed far back. going after a whale, high-school students wouldn't still be complaining about having to read it more than 150 years after it was published. ``Myra Breckinridge'' (1970): The cartoonish movie version of Gore Vidal's acidic sex-and-the-city satire arrived with the tag: ``From the book that couldn't be written comes the motion picture that couldn't be made!'' If only. Vidal immediately disowned dis·own tr.v. dis·owned, dis·own·ing, dis·owns To refuse to acknowledge or accept as one's own; repudiate. it, calling it ``the second-worst movie'' he had ever seen. The mind reels at the thought of the No. 1 film on the list. ``The Natural'' (1984): Bernard Malamud's book was a satire of a fallen baseball hero. The movie was a dewy dew·y adj. dew·i·er, dew·i·est 1. Moist with or as if with dew: dewy grass in early morning. 2. Accompanied by dew: a dewy morning. 3. , soft focus celebration of Robert Redford as Jesus incarnate. We hear Barry Bonds will be starring in the remake. ``The Scarlet Letter'' (1995): Plays like the first -- and last -- entry in the ``Classic Literature as Imagined by Hugh Hefner'' film series. Sadly, the abject failure of this movie meant we never got to see Demi Moore take off her clothes in ``Wuthering Heights,'' ``Madame Bovary'' or ``Jane Eyre.'' ``The Ten Commandments'' (1956): Moses forgot one: Thou shalt not Thou Shalt Not is the initial phrase of most of the Ten Commandments brought forth by Moshe the prophet. It can also mean:
Glenn Whipp, (818) 713-3672 glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): 6 photos Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) WHY DO TRASHY NOVEL MAKE GREAT MOVIES? And why do the classics bomb? (2 -- 4) Book-to-movie adaptations include, clockwise from far left, ``The Da Vinci Code,'' ``The Natural'' and ``Jaws.'' (5 -- 6) Demi Moore, above, was pilloried for her role in Nathaniel Hawthorne's ``The Scarlet Letter,'' but Marlon Brando, below, created an iconic character in Mario Puzo's ``The Godfather.'' |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion