He says he mainly summarizes plot and that the qualities of the writing are not important. It seems like that would miss opportunities - for instance he didn’t think Vineland was adaptable and didn’t even recognize One Battle After Another as the adaptation when he saw it until the credits rolled. Another example, IMHO Arrival is a beautiful adaptation that improves upon the original short story mostly by addition, or maybe it’s cause Amy Adams is more charismatic than the character in my imagination.
I think "Arrival" as a story is better than the movie. I think the movie misses on the part on how hard communication can be, and how different is the way aliens grok the reality as a whole. Also did you watch the movie first and read the story or the other way. I read the story first and then watched the movie with lot of anticipations, and was tad disappointed.
> I think "Arrival" as a story is better than the movie. I think the movie misses on the part on how hard communication can be, and how different is the way aliens grok the reality as a whole.
The movie does not miss anything about the difficulties of communication because that is not what the movie is about: it is about motherhood/parenthood, love, grief.
'Children of Men' is probably the best contemporary example of this - appalling book that informed a piece of cinema that's basically beyond reproach.
The archetype in blockbuster cinema has to be Spielberg's 'Jaws'. I'd also give 'Barry Lyndon' a huge commendation.
Those who contend that 'Starship Troopers' is a better adaptation than the book simply don't understand Heinlein or his aims. A fantastic movie and a darkly cynical piece of social commentary on jingoistic nationalism and 'bootcamp' movies as seen through the lense of a highschool ensemble. The book, however, represents a weightier piece of analysis in its own right and provides some fascinating insights into fascism, civil and civic duty, and the role of the individual in the machine.
I could also go into a long and varied debate about Michael Crichton and Stephen King properties which span both sides of this fence, but that's for another post I feel!
Nerdsniped by Starship Troopers, I think it's important to make the distinction there between a direct book adaptation versus "a movie inspired by".
Standalone (and keeping the "this whole thing is a propaganda movie" thing in the back of your head), Starship Troopers is a great film. But it's not a good book adaptation.
> [Re: Starship Troopers] The book, however, represents a weightier piece of analysis in its own right and provides some fascinating insights into fascism, civil and civic duty, and the role of the individual in the machine.
One of my favorites as a teen, and it holds up reasonably well for me decades later. I didn't see it as insights into fascism so much as a meditation into what it would take to keep a global, and later interstellar, society functioning. Yes, there was emphasis on duty, but not to an excess (ISTM), and not a surprise considering Heinlein's U.S. Naval Academy background and subsequent service.
Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption are good examples of the adaptation being an improvement. Then again, adaptations are usually a novel being adapted for a shorter telling rather than a short story being elaborated.
Those are great, but The Godfather is my favorite example. The book is, honestly, terrible. The prose is bad. It focuses almost exclusively on the salacious - does it need to tell us that many times about the size of Sonny's cock? - and enjoys the violence a bit too much. None of the minor characters leave any impression at all. The movie, though, is... The Godfather. It transcends it's source, without transposing or changing anything - in fact, I suspect it's far more faithful to its historical setting than the novel - more fully than any adaptation I'm aware of.
That’s true, your comment reminded me of The Electric State which maybe 50 pages of drawings with descriptions and the trailer for the movie was unintentionally funny to me like it was a parody and World War Z where I loved the short action packed book which seemed like an easy translation but I was so wrong.
This is very weird to me. Is it that hard to find good fiction that hasn't already been made into a movie, that they need to hire someone else to do it? Is the difference between a good movie and a bad movie the quality of the source material it was based on? Maybe I'm reading this wrong.
The number of bad book adaptations makes me believe this is harder than you'd think. It's really an act of translation; you have to figure out if a book "works" without being able to just say what a character is thinking, without using descriptive lanfuage to imply something, etc.
Plenty of great books would make terrible movies for this reason, and plenty of pretty terrible books can actually make good movies.
I'd imagine you have to read for a particular framework to assess viability. Translating from a literary medium to a visual one is very challenging. Much of the detail in the former will be lost in the latter, like inner monologue, narrative time compression, etc.
There is a reason most underlying film stories are so short, or feel tenuously connected from major scene to scene. There just isn't room to express much complexity through imagery and dialogue in 120ish minutes, unless you are also overtly narrating or exposition dumping. And a core rule of modern fiction is "show, don't tell" no matter the medium.
Two days per book full time means one every 16 hours. Enough to read the full Foundation Trilogy with one hour to rest between books.
On a side note, I'm ashamed to share that I tested my reading speed, and while it was 264 WPM, my reading comprehension was 50%. That's why I read slower, and frequently re-read.
Out of spite I tried to measure my Spanish reading, 520 WPM and 100% comprehension. Very unfair since it's my native language and I can glance and skip instead of reading every word.
I think reading for fun and reading for a job are difficult to compare; I'm sure this fellow has a very high reading speed and / or can skim across parts that aren't important for the task at hand. But that's making assumptions.
I'm curious what these tests are measuring if you say your reading comprehension is only 50%. Your comment here is completely articulate and sensible so you are obviously fluent in English.
Edited to add: hm. I just got 67%. I guess my college degree is a waste. Should have gone the humanities route instead.
In high school, there was an academic event for reading comprehension. I tried it one time and was humiliated. They read aloud to you a story, and then they ask you questions about it after. I have no idea where my head was, as I didn't do well at all. I never tried the event again. It wasn't until that experience before I realized that I'm the type that needs to read things multiple times for it to stick.
He says he mainly summarizes plot and that the qualities of the writing are not important. It seems like that would miss opportunities - for instance he didn’t think Vineland was adaptable and didn’t even recognize One Battle After Another as the adaptation when he saw it until the credits rolled. Another example, IMHO Arrival is a beautiful adaptation that improves upon the original short story mostly by addition, or maybe it’s cause Amy Adams is more charismatic than the character in my imagination.
I think "Arrival" as a story is better than the movie. I think the movie misses on the part on how hard communication can be, and how different is the way aliens grok the reality as a whole. Also did you watch the movie first and read the story or the other way. I read the story first and then watched the movie with lot of anticipations, and was tad disappointed.
> I think "Arrival" as a story is better than the movie. I think the movie misses on the part on how hard communication can be, and how different is the way aliens grok the reality as a whole.
The movie does not miss anything about the difficulties of communication because that is not what the movie is about: it is about motherhood/parenthood, love, grief.
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'Children of Men' is probably the best contemporary example of this - appalling book that informed a piece of cinema that's basically beyond reproach.
The archetype in blockbuster cinema has to be Spielberg's 'Jaws'. I'd also give 'Barry Lyndon' a huge commendation.
Those who contend that 'Starship Troopers' is a better adaptation than the book simply don't understand Heinlein or his aims. A fantastic movie and a darkly cynical piece of social commentary on jingoistic nationalism and 'bootcamp' movies as seen through the lense of a highschool ensemble. The book, however, represents a weightier piece of analysis in its own right and provides some fascinating insights into fascism, civil and civic duty, and the role of the individual in the machine.
I could also go into a long and varied debate about Michael Crichton and Stephen King properties which span both sides of this fence, but that's for another post I feel!
Nerdsniped by Starship Troopers, I think it's important to make the distinction there between a direct book adaptation versus "a movie inspired by".
Standalone (and keeping the "this whole thing is a propaganda movie" thing in the back of your head), Starship Troopers is a great film. But it's not a good book adaptation.
> [Re: Starship Troopers] The book, however, represents a weightier piece of analysis in its own right and provides some fascinating insights into fascism, civil and civic duty, and the role of the individual in the machine.
One of my favorites as a teen, and it holds up reasonably well for me decades later. I didn't see it as insights into fascism so much as a meditation into what it would take to keep a global, and later interstellar, society functioning. Yes, there was emphasis on duty, but not to an excess (ISTM), and not a surprise considering Heinlein's U.S. Naval Academy background and subsequent service.
Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption are good examples of the adaptation being an improvement. Then again, adaptations are usually a novel being adapted for a shorter telling rather than a short story being elaborated.
Those are great, but The Godfather is my favorite example. The book is, honestly, terrible. The prose is bad. It focuses almost exclusively on the salacious - does it need to tell us that many times about the size of Sonny's cock? - and enjoys the violence a bit too much. None of the minor characters leave any impression at all. The movie, though, is... The Godfather. It transcends it's source, without transposing or changing anything - in fact, I suspect it's far more faithful to its historical setting than the novel - more fully than any adaptation I'm aware of.
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That’s true, your comment reminded me of The Electric State which maybe 50 pages of drawings with descriptions and the trailer for the movie was unintentionally funny to me like it was a parody and World War Z where I loved the short action packed book which seemed like an easy translation but I was so wrong.
This is very weird to me. Is it that hard to find good fiction that hasn't already been made into a movie, that they need to hire someone else to do it? Is the difference between a good movie and a bad movie the quality of the source material it was based on? Maybe I'm reading this wrong.
The number of bad book adaptations makes me believe this is harder than you'd think. It's really an act of translation; you have to figure out if a book "works" without being able to just say what a character is thinking, without using descriptive lanfuage to imply something, etc.
Plenty of great books would make terrible movies for this reason, and plenty of pretty terrible books can actually make good movies.
1 reply →
I'd imagine you have to read for a particular framework to assess viability. Translating from a literary medium to a visual one is very challenging. Much of the detail in the former will be lost in the latter, like inner monologue, narrative time compression, etc.
There is a reason most underlying film stories are so short, or feel tenuously connected from major scene to scene. There just isn't room to express much complexity through imagery and dialogue in 120ish minutes, unless you are also overtly narrating or exposition dumping. And a core rule of modern fiction is "show, don't tell" no matter the medium.
One Battle After Another is a fairly loose adaptation, no?
I was skeptical, but the article starts with Train Dreams, which according to HowLongToRead, would take 2 hours at 300 WPM.
https://howlongtoread.com/books/323872/Train-Dreams
Two days per book full time means one every 16 hours. Enough to read the full Foundation Trilogy with one hour to rest between books.
On a side note, I'm ashamed to share that I tested my reading speed, and while it was 264 WPM, my reading comprehension was 50%. That's why I read slower, and frequently re-read.
https://swiftread.com/reading-speed-test
Out of spite I tried to measure my Spanish reading, 520 WPM and 100% comprehension. Very unfair since it's my native language and I can glance and skip instead of reading every word.
https://speedreadr.com/es/
Can't say I ever took a test like that. 644wpm and 100% in English (native language).
Hard to judge that based on just five questions though.
You will feel more judged when you score 67% like me.
Edited to add: we must have followed different links though, mine only had three questions obviously.
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I think reading for fun and reading for a job are difficult to compare; I'm sure this fellow has a very high reading speed and / or can skim across parts that aren't important for the task at hand. But that's making assumptions.
ESL and I got 512 WPM and 75%. I don't agree with the 1 wrong answer but I digress.
Reading fast means you can take in more info per unit of time. It can be a useful ability, if tedious at times.
I'm curious what these tests are measuring if you say your reading comprehension is only 50%. Your comment here is completely articulate and sensible so you are obviously fluent in English.
Edited to add: hm. I just got 67%. I guess my college degree is a waste. Should have gone the humanities route instead.
It hurts, doesn't it? I also thought a few measly questions would be a piece of cake, and mainly focused on speed.
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In high school, there was an academic event for reading comprehension. I tried it one time and was humiliated. They read aloud to you a story, and then they ask you questions about it after. I have no idea where my head was, as I didn't do well at all. I never tried the event again. It wasn't until that experience before I realized that I'm the type that needs to read things multiple times for it to stick.
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2000 WPM @ 75%