Why Hollywood Turns Good Books into Bad Movies

"No one sets out to make a bad movie." - one of my film school producing professors.

With all due respect to my aforementioned professor, I'm not so sure. There must be some explanation for all the absolutely abysmal movies made every year. It's like some conspiracy theory of crappiness. And nowhere is it worse than in the numerous adaptations Hollywood churns out year after year. Think about it. When's the last time you liked the movie better than the book? Sure, you can find a few exceptions, but most people I know always say something like, "I don't know why I'm going to go see it. It won't be as good as the book."

It wasn't always this way. Go way on back to 1939. That year two books were turned into all-time classic films: The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. To be sure there are others. Jaws the movie was better than Jaws the book. The same holds true of The Godfather. I liked the ending of the filmed version of The Firm better than Grisham's original ending. Silence of the Lambs comes to mind. But why are these movies the exceptions and not the rule.

Novels and Films are Different
Now there's a profound thought, but it needs to be stated. To understand why most adaptations fail, we need to take a look at how novels and movies work in different ways. Just remember the fundamental difference between novel and film is that the novel uses words to tell a story, and a film uses images.

The Play's the Thing
In the early days of cinema, plays were the art form most closely associated with film. On the surface this makes sense. And back then, with a stationary camera cranking away, it made sense too. But along came Griffith writing history with lightning, and telling stories with close ups and reverse angle shots, tracking shots and inserts. Suddenly the language of film changed, and in that change came a fundamental shift in where films would get their material.

With the single camera set up like a member of an audience looking on a stage, earlier filmmakers recaptured the theater experience. It was like watching a play, only you were colorblind and deaf. But once the camera penetrated scenes, moving in and out and shifting point-of-view - movies became inherently more novelic. Novels can go anywhere they want in a scene: inside a character's head, on a spider crawling up someone's pants, anywhere. Stage plays try, but cannot force your perspective. This subtle distinction may seem trivial, but it marked the shift from Hollywood stealing plays to Hollywood adapting books. The problem with doing that is that's where the similarities hit the brakes.

Most great novels feature internal struggles. They revel in penetrating the minds of the characters. A novelist can do this at will. A novelist should do this at will. Film cannot, well, at least not without resorting to artificial devices like voiceovers, flashbacks and dream sequences.

Separate Strengths
The strengths of novels are their abilities to go within characters' minds, to shift time frames from past to present and to reveal deep complex characters through detailed description. A novelist can spend four pages describing the china at a place setting, tracing its origins back to dear old Grandma Smith, the matriarch of the family who years ago packed each piece with loving care as the family emigrated from the old country to the new world leaving behind the old prejudices of .... You get the picture. In a film, you simply can't show this. If you spent four minutes of screen time looking at plates, the audience would think they stepped into a Warhol film. The basic strengths of the novel form are not the strengths of cinema.

Movies on the other hand excel at visual action. Films are all about movement, and suggesting character rather than revealing it. Where the novelist can fill in pictures, the filmmaker can only partially complete the picture, relying on the audience to do the rest. Movies also engage more senses, the visual and auditory senses are melded into an immersive experience. Also, films must, by their very nature, simplify the storytelling. In novels, you can always go back and reread a passage. In a movie theater, you cannot rewind the film and re-watch a segment that you missed. This means that films must be simpler. Another critical difference deals with the rate of information. In a novel the reader controls the flow of information. You can skip a paragraph here and there, you can real slowly, skim a lengthy description. You set the pace of the story. In a movie, it comes at you at 24 frames per second. The filmmaker can slow it down (think bullet time for all you Matrix fans) or speed things up, but the filmmaker controls the rate of information. This management of story speed becomes a critical factor in understanding why so many movie adaptations go awry.

When Good Books Go Bad

With the cost of movies skyrocketing, filmmakers must appeal to the widest possible audience. This means, simply put, that films must not be too complicated for the average person with an 8^th grade education. After all, their dollars are just as green as yours. In order to make complicated novelic plots understandable for the greatest amount of people, the flow of information must slow down. This is a double whammy for readers of the book, who already know much of the story, as many films bog down to reveal information that readers and more advanced moviegoers get much more quickly that Joe Sixpack.

But That's Not Right
How often have you read a book, and then went to see the movie version and thought that the film just didn't get it right. They tinkered with the plot, the casting was all wrong; they completely cut out that part you loved in the novel. Why would they do this?

The quick answer is that many writers and filmmakers don't understand the adaptation process or the novel they are adapting. I think Kubrick summed it up best - in an adaptation he seeks to recreate the feeling he got when reading the source material. Trying to stick to the novel's plot is troublesome. The art of it is to capture the essence of the book.

Why Hollywood Loves Books
That's simple: they offer a built-in audience. With such a huge emphasis on opening weekend box office, it's little wonder that studios try to hedge their bets with the built-in name recognition a novel has to offer. Can you say Harry Potter?

In addition, much of the work is done. The basic story is there. The characters have been drawn. The plot is a proven commodity. All filmmakers have to do now is focus on creating images, rather than generating an original story as well. The novel is like a super-huge treatment. In terms of sheer numbers, 85% of movies made are adaptations.

Not Fair to Compare
That's my Johnny Cochran argument. It's not really fair to compare movies to novels. Each has very different strengths. Each uses different means to entertain, so it's really not right to measure one against the other. Each is a different interpretation of a story. While we're at it, it's virtually impossible for a filmmaker to capture what you, a single individual, pictured in the novel.

While Hollywood doesn't want to make bad movies, it's difficult not to when it comes to adaptations. Just remember that most novels make bad movies simply because the strength of the novel is the weakness of a film.

A Few Movies That You May Not Have Known Were Adaptations

I Know What You Did Last Summer
Harriet the Spy
The Incredible Journey
Full Metal Jacket
Planet of the Apes
Enemy Mine
Death Race 2000 (Yes, even Roger Corman reads books. Although in all fairness to Mr. Coreman, it is only a novella.)