Better than the Book: Re-Animator

I'm a relative newcomer to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I read At the Mountains of Madness long ago, but then kind of forgot about it. With all the attention Alan Moore has given to Lovecraft lately, I decided it was time to dig into it. I started with "The Dunwich Horror" and moved through his best, "The Shadow over Innsmouth," to some others. The worst of what he's written is, I think, "Herbert West, Reanimator." It's just not a very good story.

As a developmental editor, I spend a lot of time suggesting ways for writers to improve their stories. One suggestion I often make is for writers to show instead of tell. Yeah, it's the basic thing you learn in high school, that dramatizing the interactions of human beings is probably going to be more interesting than a summary of that interaction. Usually, it means going into detail: giving us the dialogue, being descriptive when chronicling action, stuff like that. Showing through words.

Lovecraft's story is virtually all telling. It covers years and years of West's activities through, through the filter of his friend/roommate/collaborator. And it's got a bit more of a mythology of the reanimation, for lack of a better word, that ties together the separate sections, and gives more personality to most of the reanimated corpses. But it doesn't really work. As I read, I felt like I was looking through a fogged up window at the events going on. I never got a good sense of any of it.

The movie version is, however, rather intense. Of course, as film, it becomes much easier to show events. But Stuart Gordon's film, though it does have a lot of dialogue, almost doesn't need it. The visuals alone would be all you'd need for the most part, and even the scenes in which there's a lot of talking (I'm thinking of our introduction to West as he criticizes the doctors at the university), could be glossed over with a title card or two. It could be a silent movie.

The movie is tense where the prose is lethargic.  This is one example of the filmmakers seeing something worthwhile in the source and jettisoning everything else. It works.

Better than the Book: How to Train your Dragon

You guys read this book? It's by Cressida Cowell, and it's not bad. It's just not all that great, either. I never connected emotionally with Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. I never really felt like anything of vital import was going to happen in the novel. Maybe that's because I read it when I was already about 35 years old. My son read it, and he liked it okay, but hasn't felt the need to read the rest of the series.

But the movie...the movie has music. Of course I have to bring that up, because the score is triumphant and inspiring. The whole score is worthwhile, but check out this part:

John Powell.

For whatever reason, after Hiccup's dragon Toothless has been revealed and Stoic has sailed off with it on his foolish errand, and Hiccup and Astrid are standing on the cliff and Astrid asks him what he's going to do, and he tries to dodge the question because he doesn't know, and Astrid won't let him because she wants to hear what he has to say, I get a little choked up. It's  because she trusts him, even more than he trusts himself.

Hiccup's a different sort of hero, and I appreciate that. Cerebral rather than physical, which is kind of the whole point of the movie. My kids love it because of the dragons--I don't think I've ever heard them talk about Hiccup at all, but they really get into the different types of dragons in the movies and shows. But I love it because there's something worthwhile in the human relationships. I would never have cared about that level of trust when I was a kid, but as an adult, as someone who feels like he's in that kind of relationship, I see it as laying the groundwork for understanding each other in my own children. Sometimes we need someone else to say that what we're doing is important, and that it can change the world, even just for a small group of people.

That said, I do think they missed an opportunity in the second movie when they didn't make Astrid the new chief.

Better than the Book: Jaws

I'm not sure why, but I was under the impression that Peter Benchley's novel Jaws was really bad. It appears to have been a best seller when it debuted in 1973, but it has been swallowed up by the movie. Nobody talks about it much, but it's number 11 on Amazon's Kindle bestseller list for sea adventure books. Take from that statistic what you will. I checked out the top twenty of that list and was disappointed to find The Odyssey nowhere on it. It is dominated by someone named Clive Cussler.

Anyway...Benchley's book was pretty good. There's a whole lot about life in Amity, how the town is in trouble because of the lack of tourism, which leads everybody wanting the beaches open despite the shark. There's stuff about the mob, and Brody's tension with his wife. In short, the bulk of the book is about the effect of the shark on the town, not about the shark. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not as good as the movie.

Also not as good as the movie: that part where Brody is dumping chum into the water and the shark comes right up to surprise him. It's precisely the same event in both mediums, but it's a whole lot more effective on film. Here it is in the book:

Brody's butt was sore from sitting on the hard transom, and his arm was growing weary from the dipping and emptying of the ladle. So he stood up, stretched, and facing off the stern, tried a new scooping motion with the ladle.

Suddenly he saw the monstrous head of the fish--not five feet away, so close he could reach over and touch it with the ladle--black eyes staring at him, silver-gray snout pointing at him, gaping jaw grinning at him. "Oh, God!" Brody said, wondering in his shock how long the fish had been there before he had stood up and turned around. "There he is!"

Compare that to this:

There really is no comparison. Everything in that scene adds to the tension, from the camera angles to the acting to the music. In the book, it's all very calm and matter-of-fact, exclamation points notwithstanding. And it's not very compelling. We don't need to read Brody's worry that the shark had been there for a while, but we do need to see his face after he notices the shark. And then there's the line. Not in the book. Is there a way to invoke that sense of shock using only words? It doesn't seem like it. There's no means of doing that, making people jump.

We can say that about every shark scene, I think. I've been a big fan of horror fiction since I was a teenager, but I am rarely scared or startled by what I read. The only book that ever really creeped me out was Salem's Lot, and staying up until the middle of the night to read it had a lot to do with it.

I seem to be digressing a lot here.

As with "You're gonna need a bigger boat," nearly everything great about the movie is original to it. The script puts that chum ladeling scene at the beginning of the trip out to the water to get the shark. Benchley puts it just a few pages from the end. The result is that we get our first good look at the shark with Brody, and feel his fear of it. It's a great move on the screenwriter's part (either Benchley or Carl Gottlieb).

If the book is better than I expected, the movie isn't as good as I remembered. There's an awkwardness to a lot of it, especially the sound editing. Some of it feels forced. The story has gotten some complaints about how unlikely it is that the town would still go to the beach with the threat, and I will say that the novel spends a lot of time making this plausible, giving the mayor motivation.

Still, everything having to do with tension, with the shark, works better on film. I think that's because of the documentary quality of the camera's presence. When writing,  the limited nature of prose--describing one thing at a time as opposed to the encompassing nature of the visual image--really allows tension in certain ways. The camera can imbue any object with menace, find tension in the simplest things. Every time anyone's in the water we can feel the tension. David Lynch is a master of this technique.

But once the trio is on the water, the movie just works. That's all there is to it. Even the end, with Brody killing the shark, works despite the fact that it's not realistic. The novel just sort of fizzles out.

Better than the Book: No Country for Old Men

I'm no fan of Cormac MacArthy. He gets a lot of accolades from literary types, but I just don't like his prose style. That being said, his book No Country for Old Men has a paragraph so absolutely right it may as well have been written by Hemingway:

He ate in a restaurant with the white tablecloths and waiters in white jackets. He ordered a glass of red wine and a porterhouse steak. It was early and the restaurant was empty save for him. He sipped the wine and when the steak came he cut into it and chewed slowly and thought about his life.

It works better if you've read the eighty-five pages that lead up to it. At that point, Llewelyn has made some pretty bad choices. And as far as I can tell, there's just no way to adapt that sentence to film. It doesn't work, cinematically speaking. Yeah, you can show us a guy sitting in that restaurant, but the details will be lost. There's no way to call attention to the white jackets or table cloths without forcing it. The visuals wouldn't be right. But in prose, it's perfect.

With that out of the way: I love the Coen Brothers film. Well-shot, well-edited, great performances, and all that. McCarthy's prose style didn't bug me the way it did in some of his other work (a prose style that so very many praise), but it just can't compete with Roger Deakins' cinematography.

It's not that I dislike the book. It's an interesting meditation on the philosophy of men in a certain position, of a certain disposition. One complaint I had is that it's a little bit too long. There's a lengthy passage during which Llewelyn picks up a young girl and they drive together to the motel where the climax takes place (off-screen in both the book and in the film). The Coens cut the entire character, the residue of which shows up in the woman who talks to Llewelyn at the motel pool. They even streamline some of the scenes toward the end. After Chigur goes to confront Llewelyn's wife Carla Jean, McCarthy flat-out tells us that she was murdered. The Coens know this isn't necessary. The way Chigur looks at the bottom of his shoe when he leaves the house tells us all we need to know.

My friend Matt Guschwan likened this to a horror movie, and I think the comparison works. Take that scene when Llewelyn is in the hotel the first time Chigur finds him. Chigur is walking down the hall, following the signal from the transponder, and all we hear are the footsteps, then the turning of a lightbulb, then the door lock flying out of the door. It's horror, in a way that the book doesn't aspire to be, and it works.

No Country for Old Men showed me that MacArthy could be a very good writer. The Coen brothers took that and made the best possible movie from it.

Better than the Book--Close but No Cigar Edition: High Fidelity

I think John Cusack and Stephen Frears made as good a movie as one can possibly make when adapting Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. I like the movie quite a bit.  Once, when I was watching it with some friends who hadn’t seen it before, one of them asked why the movie wasn’t over when Laura moved back in with Rob. It’s a valid point.  Most romantic comedies would have ended with that. The only problem was that Rob really hadn’t changed yet. He’d made some realizations, and he’d promised to do better, but we haven’t seen him capable of it. This is one element that elevates this film:  It doesn’t let Rob off easy. It’s not too hard on him, in the end, but he has to put forth a lot more effort than most leading men.  

 Another friend who read the book said it was just exactly like the movie, only with more Top 5 lists.  This is mostly true. There’s more to the book, of course.  There’s a lot more to Rob’s relationship with Marie LaSalle in the book. She pops up again and again, though her role isn’t substantially different. One of those times is Rob’s birthday, when he organizes an ad hoc gathering of his “friends.” It isn’t successful—nobody involved seems to have any fun, and all we really learn is that Rob doesn’t really have friends. There’s nothing there that would make for a good movie scene, and it was rightfully dropped.  As were scenes where Rob goes to visit his parents and all the stuff about the fourth breakup on his top 5 list. 

There are some things the movie does better than the book, such as the one-night stand with Marie. In the movie, Rob says he’s not going into details—“who did what to whom”—and he doesn’t.  In the book he says this, then proceeds to describe their awkward foreplay, a strange trip to the bathroom, and he sexual neuroses. It’s actually kind of annoying to read that part, simply because the movie handled it so nicely. But the book needs this sort of glimpse into Rob. We know the Rob in the book much much better than the Rob of the movie. And he’s more of an a-hole than the movie version at that. They’re mostly the same character, though the movie version is softened a bit for our benefit.  There’s one big difference in them: Rob in the book doesn’t commit because he’s afraid of death.

His low point in the story is when he leaves Laura’s dad’s funeral. He sits on a bench in the rain and realizes his big problem. Both movie and book have this tied overall to the fantasy presented by women he doesn’t really know. He can imagine these women so reality never ruins anything. But with Laura he has the reality, and it can’t match up.  In the book, Hornby's Rob has a strange realization that he’s always been afraid that Laura would die and he’d be alone, though he’d never realized it until then.  It’s strange and out of place and there’s absolutely no build-up to it at all. Even Hornby acknowledges this in a way with the interjection “oh, right! He sleeps with other women because he has a fear of death!—well, I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are.”

I wonder…If I’d read the book before I saw the film, which omits it completely, would I still think it’s strange?

Anyway, all the best stuff between the characters is there in the book, and there’s more of it.  Even things like gestures and body language are there in the prose, which was a bit surprising.  The actors nail their characters. The script gets all the right parts in there.  There’s just more to the book, and that is a good thing. Hornby is able to give a bit more of the everyman philosophy and the feeling of grown up. The change of setting isn’t a big deal (London of the book is Chicago in the movie). The only argument that the film is superior could come from the delivery, from the actors, and direction.  There’s not much of the cinematography to speak of, which is appropriate. This is one of those cases where the adaptation got everything right, and the novel is just going to be superior.

Better than the Book: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

This movie is one of the two or three musicals that I have watched many times. It’s just a brilliant movie in so many places, Gene Wilder makes it so. That's not a knock on director Mel Stuart or Dahl and David Seltzer's screenplay. I love the way Wonka's dialogue is peppered with so many quotations from songs and plays and whatnot. So shines a good deed in a weary world.

There's a certain comedy that I like to the whole film, from treating a chocolate sweepstakes as the most important thing in the world to the half-office Wonka works in at the end.

I'm just going to be upfront and say that I haven't seen the version with Johnny Depp. Tim Burton is a really good visual stylist, but for me there was no need to see that movie.

No thanks.

The book, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is not bad. It’s just not as good as the movie. For me, it all comes down to the end, where Charlie outlasts the other kids and wins the favor of Wonka. In Dahl’s book, Wonka turns around soon after Mike TV takes his leave and sees that Charlie is the only one left. He gets excited and declares Charlie the winner.

In the film, Wonka feigns indifference, even scorn because Charlie and Grandpa Joe drank some fizzy lifting drink against Wonka’s interdiction. He gives Charlie every reason to betray him to his enemy, Slugworth, but Charlie keeps true to his promise, thus proving himself worthy of inheriting the chocolate factory. Both book and movie keep Charlie’s character central to his victory, but the movie dramatizes it better. We might say that the book makes Charlie’s lack of action key to his triumph--he doesn’t do anything wrong or exhibit any real defect in his character--but the movie makes his action at the end count. That’s just better storytelling, if you ask me.

Then there are the songs. “There is just no way of knowing, where exactly we are going.” Insane. And "Pure Imagination" is simply perfect. And even in that song, Wonka's oddity shines forth. That part where he plucks a hair from Mike TV's head for no reason at all? It's wonderful. Throughout these "Better than the Book" posts, I've been stressing the effect music can have in making a movie superior to a book. This movie is the exemplary case.  Should Willy Wonka have been on that list of perfect movies a few days ago? Probably.

Willy Wonka is one of my favorite movies, and I enjoy watching it again and again. I can’t say the same for the book. I’ve read it once, and flipped through it again for this post. Maybe I'd be more attached if I'd read it as a kid, which is when I first saw the movie. Nostalgia can do that, make something feel important, seem better than it is. But even if I had read the book first, I would no doubt still think the movie is better.

Doom-pa-di-do

Better than the Book--Too Close to Call Edition: The Princess Bride

I love this movie. It’s just about perfect. Everything, from the framing story about the sick kid and his grandpa to Peter Cook’s lisp, just works. So many memorable lines. So many great shot compositions (seriously, look at the end of the boat chase and see how deep Rob Reiner makes the field of focus to get Buttercup, Vizzini, Fezzik, and Inigo crystal clear, even though they’re all different distances from the camera).

Then there’s the book. When I started reading it, having already seen the movie, I wondered why the narrator intrudes so much. There's a lot of the narrator's life and how he's handling his son, who has some issues. Where the movie had a few short scenes with the boy and grandpa, the story of the father and his son takes up a lot of the novel. A lot. And there’s the indication that much of S. Morgenstern’s Princess Bride book has been glossed over, so that all we get are the good parts. All this sounds bad, but we’re safe in William Goldman’s hands. And it all pays off. When we get to the climax of the father-son plot, it’s hard not to get choked up. 

Some things are very different in the movie version. Take Inigo’s use of his father’s sword to call upon his father’s spirit to help him find the pit of despair. Not in the book. But the book includes a lengthy road of trials that Inigo and Fezzik must get through—traps and poison spiders, etc.—to get to Westley at the bottom of the pit. In the movie, they just walk down a few stairs and there’s the guy they’re looking for. So, which is more satisfying as a story?

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

I dunno.

If prose style really is analogous to cinematography, this is a tough call. Goldman’s writing is excellent throughout. If the movie edges out the book, I think it's only because the line delivery is so much more memorable when uttered by real people instead of read on the page. This is one case in which I don't think my imagination could have come up with a better version than the film in terms of characters, setting, and raw beauty.

Good night, Westley. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

And how are we to compare the Impressive Clergyman? In the book, it’s written really, really effectively. I don’t even have to imagine Peter Cook’s accent. It’s well-realized in the film, but does that make it better?

There’s a lot to be said for the way actors deliver lines as making a story more enjoyable, for the interpretation offered by a film being superior to the reading experience. For me, it’s hard to say which was better in this case. They’re too close to call.

Yeah, that's a lego r.o.u.s. by Leda Kat.

Better than the Book: The Black Stallion

I've put a few of these posts up before, in which I extoll the virtues of cinema by pointing out that books aren't always better than the movies based on them. Let's see, there was Wonder Boys, Psycho, The Wizard of Oz, Fight Club, Get Shorty, Lord of the Rings, and History of Violence. I've got a good sized list of these for future posts, but today's story came up recently.

I read this book to my son not too long ago. It's a good book, well worth reading. I'm such a fan of the movie that I couldn't believe I'd never read it before.

This was Walter Farley's first novel, and it shows. The prose isn't all that smooth--but to be fair I should note that I haven't read the subsequent volumes, and maybe he improves with experience. After all, he started writing it when he was in high school. The prose really isn't an issue, though. It's a kids' book, and the prose does its job. Regardless, the story's great.

This is a pretty great book.

So what makes the movie better? Showing us the horse. It's as simple as that. One thing implicit in all of these "Better than the Book" entries is that prose style is the equivalent of cinematography. We get to see lots of shots of the horse running and jumping and just being a horse on a beach. It's great, especially if you're a kid who already loves horses. It would take a tremendous talent to capture in prose what the camera can capture in images. Here, the medium makes the film better.

The movie has a couple of other things going for it. One is Hoyt Axton, who plays the father. He does a great job with the small amount of material he has. In the movie he tells a version of the story of Alexander the Great's horse, Bucephalus. He wins a tiny bronze figurine of Bucephalus in a card game, gives it to Alec, his son. Alec keeps it with him while stranded on the island after the boat sinks. I guess I could get into variations of the Bucephalus story (the version I know has the horse being afraid of its shadow, so the young Alexander merely turns the horse so it's facing away from the shadow, and it calms down enough so he can ride--that's not mentioned in the movie), but it's not entirely relevant.

I think what the movie does, and the book doesn't, is equate riding a horse with flying. Riding can give you that feeling. It's a feeling of endless possibility. Of strength and freedom. The book didn't really attempt to do this at all. It was purely a product of cinematography--of director Carroll Ballard and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.

I want a bronze statue like that sooo very much.

Farley had a huge impact on my childhood. My grandfather was a horse trader, and lived just a mile from my parents' house. So I got to ride horses pretty much whenever I wanted. I named my horse Little Black, after Farley's picture book of the same name.

The Mystery Horse

So, the long and the short of it is that the film made me love this story, and the book is great, too. As I kid, I wanted to be Alec Ramsey. Reading it as an adult, I kinda still do. So maybe the movie's only better because I didn't read the book until I was an adult.