Adapting to all the Adaptation

Official Post Number Two
-Sam Leishman

I absolutely loathe the idea of seeing a movie before I read the book. When I get up to leave a movie theater, and out of the corner of my eye I see "based on the novel by..." the movie just seems to lose a little bit of its impact.
My dad asked me the other day if I wanted to watch "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with him (a movie I no doubt have to see, eventually, I know) and scoffed at me when I told him that I wanted to read the book first.

The idea I've had most of my life: Books are better than movies. They do more for society and they don't cost $100 million to make, and just because you like watching movies more than you like reading books (most of the time) doesn't mean you should get away with it.

This is part of the reason I've never seen The Godfather, though I'll probably get around to seeing that before I get around to reading Puzo's novel.

And it doesn't even matter if it's "loosely based" on a novel. If this same idea has been written in a book, it's going to be better there, because the book is always better than the movie.

I heard about this movie, "Little Children" over the summer and immediately wanted to see it. And I was aware that it was being adapted from a novel written by Tom Perrota, so as soon as I could, I went out and bought it, and then tried to finish it before the movie came out. I even got the version of the book with the promotional poster for the movie right there on the cover. (About four dollars cheaper.) And I did finish it as planned, but I still haven't seen the movie. Why? Well, because any movie that's in less than 2000 theaters refuses to come to Alabama, but that's beside the point.

It was a very good book, a piece of suburbia darker even than American Beauty, and when all was said and done, I was glad I'd decided to read the book. Because if I'd seen the movie first, I don't know if I would have gone back and done it. Most of the time, if I see the little sidenote at the end of the movie, forfeiting a fraction of its genius over to the author of the book, I'll tell myself that I need to go read the book, but I can't remember the last time I actually read the book after the movie. It's just not the same experience. Whereas I think seeing the movie after reading the book makes it an even better experience. It gives me a more critical eye, and I like that.

Books I need to read:
The Godfather
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Schindler's List
The Silence of the Lambs
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
A Clockwork Orange
The Shining (Well, I've read about half of it.)
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Scanner Darkly
The Green Mile
The Graduate
Gone With the Wind
The Grapes of Wrath (Shouldn't be a problem, as I'm required to read it in a few months)
Mystic River
many, many more...

I know I'll never read all these books before I see their film counterparts. The temptation will just be too much. But I'd like to think I have the time to do it all, even if I might just be doomed to never be as well-read as I am another well-watched film buff.