BOOKS MADE INTO MOVIES SEPT 2023

Books as a source material for movies, successful or not (the movies, that is). In fact, nominations for movies or TV/streaming series that did not fulfill the promise of the books they were based on could find a place here as well. Or vice versa, of course: movies or TV that for one reason or another were better than the book. Also, this might be the place to consider filmed versions of plays & musicals or even operas (?). Last month was rather slow; maybe move to quarterly updates, e.g. Oct-Dec 2023?

(Confession: I read a number of candidates but didn't get around to submitting thoughts or comments; apologies)

The William Cook series of lectures on The World's Greatest Churches got me into browsing 2 reference books in my collection, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art & Architecture by Peter & Linda Murray & The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, by Jacob de Voragine; translated by William Granger Ryan (currently in volume 1 but will take a look at volume 2 as well). Being reference books, I don't expect to read them through; bedtime insomnia cures, I suppose. Unintentionally read about St Nicholas in The Golden Legend before Cook got to him while explicating one of the ecclesiastical images; seems baby Nicholas was so pious he refused his mother's breast on fast days (one of them being Wednesday -- hump day? -- as I recall). When Nicholas became wealthy, he left gold anonymously with a neighbor who was contemplating selling his daughters to a brothel due to poverty; hence Christmas presents.

Having exhausted the (Inspector) Lewis series on Britbox, I started to re-watch Midsomer Murders on freevee w/(natch) catfood commercials, & I get to S1 E3, “Death of a Hollow Man.” The series was (is?) based on the novels of Caroline Graham, and the early ones were actually based on the novels (according to IMDB, Graham wrote this episode), & it happened I had the novel loaded on my Kindle reader, paused at around page 50, & I resumed reading after watching the episode (for some reason knowing the spoiler results in advance is if anything a soothing experience for me & anyway the screenwriter doesn’t quite spoil the book’s coup de theatre). The book takes a bit of time to get going (saw some grumbles in the LT reviews) but fortified by the viewing experience & with a compare & contrast mindset I found it absorbing, at times exhilarating, and unfortunately kept me up late, though the conclusions were somewhat disappointing.

The original TV family of John Nettles (Tom Barnaby), wife Joyce (Jane Wymark), & daughter Cully (Laura Howard) is there, of course. Joyce has a part in an amateur production of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus where she sings in the chorus, & there is a detour in Tom’s thoughts where he regrets how his absorption in his detecting career has gotten Joyce’s vocal career off the tracks. In the novel she reassures him that she has no regret, but one can’t help wondering if her dreadful culinary creations that are a running joke in both book & TV series are a kind of unconscious revenge, even though it does keep Tom at fighting weight despite his plebian full English palate.

In contrast, one of the pleasures of the book is a lengthy description of a celebratory meal cooked by Avery for his companion Jim & their live-in friend, aspiring actor Nicholas (the characters are carried over fairly intact into the episode, though the TV version can only briefly allude to the thoughtful reconciliation of Avery with Jim for a brief philandering linked to some violent stage business & a murder).

The book is divided into 3 parts, as I read it, with the long set up introducing the large cast of (theatrical) characters rehearsing Amadeus, then the murder at the center on opening night, with the last third working through the suspects with Barnaby providing the solution at the end. I’m somewhere in the middle of a long literary history by Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, and the key theme is a contrast between classical & Judeo-Christian characterization in literature, with classical characters being largely foregrounded, with Judeo-Christian characters with unspoken background depth. One term that struck me was what the translator Trask gives as “creaturely,” from German kreaturlich, referring to the realistic representation of the miseries of human existence that originates (following Auerbach) with the Gospels & is a theme that frequently appears in the Medieval texts Auerbach considers up to where I’ve read.

So I was seeing two main storyline arcs in the novel, one classical, featuring rational Barnaby crime solving with foregrounded clues, as well as the Shaffer play itself & characters Esslyn Carmichael (the aging lead actor playing Salieri in the play) & the director Harold Winstanley. Here what you get from the book is Graham’s familiarity with theater production & the play itself – the “classical” foreground stuff, technical details like stage lighting, props, memorizing lines, marking actor placement, scene painting & costumes – with lead actor (as well as his wife & ex-wife) & producer/director as somewhat caricatured “flat” character types one might find in Aristophanes or Moliere, where you determine point of view often from social class markers & speech clues/cues. Graham leaves out of the TV version Esslyn’s allies, twin brothers who function as his sycophants, & whose malicious gossip tends to pollute the whole production, like classical Furies.

The second storyline shows us the deeper, creaturely aspect of the cast & crew. I’ve mentioned the relationship of Avery & Jim, & the book opens with an excellent set piece about how Nicholas was seduced by a Royal Shakespeare production of Midsummer Night’s Dream – emotional & subjective rather than foregrounded -- but the most touching thread is with the stage manager Deidre, the dogsbody constantly being abused verbally by Harold or Esslyn, but immersed deeper than either in the depths of the plays she serves, while at the same time constantly distracted by her Cordelia-like devotion to her father, losing his mind to dementia as the novel progresses. The madness of or emanating from the theater (in the novel more than the TV production) climaxes as dementia takes over Deidre’s father’s mind, where in a Lear-like scene she trails her father through a storm where he is ranting on a boat (the whole thread is messed up in the TV version, where the father jumps from the top of a building), to be echoed in the madness of the director, whom Barnaby convinces him that the national press is waiting to meet him outside the theater – Winstanley’s Gloria Swanson moment from Sunset Boulevard.

The conclusion of both novel & TV production seemed flawed to me. In the novel, Barnaby’s working out of the killer’s identify & the technicalities of the murder are done on stage before the assembled cast & crew; cleverly theatrical but disappointingly conventional (think of the ritualized solutions at the conclusions of the TV series Death in Paradise) after the depths of creaturely emotion just before (Deidre’s transformation is beautifully symbolized by the dog who follows her home from the scene of her father’s madness, as her dogsbody persona is transferred to an objective correlative). The (worse) TV version climaxes with a slasher scene when the second razor is found by Winstanley’s wife, and misses the "win" scene where the wife, who’s starved herself to support her husband’s theatrical extravaganzas, bites into an éclair after she takes over his property. Genre novels with happy (uncreaturely) endings! That’s why we read them!

I was handicapped both reading & watching by not having seen the play or movie Amadeus; I’ve started watching on Amazon Prime hoping to finish before it leaves at the end of September. Can’t help but see F. Murray Abraham as Esslyn Carmichael, though! Another minor compare & contrast note is that the TV version of Barnaby’s daughter Cully, Laura Howard, seems to me a girl next door type, while Graham’s novel has her as rather vampy & “malicious” though not in any evil way (she was glamorized somewhat in the next season).

I would like to add a couple minor peeves regarding the freevee closed captioning: Salieri is captioned as Sally Yeri, and the Barnaby daughter's name, Cully is captioned as Kelly, even into season 2.

This might be of interest. From the fivebooks.com site, here are "a list of books that have been recommended on Five Books that have appeared on the screen this year or are currently in production."

>4 featherbear: I've read three of the books on the list. Killers of the Flower Moon, The Color Purple, and Red, White and Royal Blue. I can't say that the first two will go on my reread list...but I have read the third one twice.

Killers of The Flower Moon on film was 3 hours long and I read that it cost Apple 200 million dollars to make the film. It was another "not so proud moments" in U.S History and all for money and oil rights. It did show how inhuman humans can be, but the Native Americans were used to that...they just weren't expecting it in so much to still be happening in the 1920's. The author did a great job of putting this event on paper.

The Color Purple - My mother read this book, so I read it after I saw the movie with her. She liked the book more...I wasn't crazy about either one. A movie critic hit the nail on the head with this part of his review. " The ads describe the movie like this: "It's about life. It's about love. It's about us... Share the joy." What director Steven Spielberg apparently didn't want us to "share" was the pain, the bitterness, and the anger that gave Alice Walker's book its power.". It was easier, if that is even the way to describe it, to read about the rape of Celie, an African American teenager raised in rural Georgia, than it was to watch it a life of reality. The saving grave of the book, and the movie, was Celies courage and how she didn't let her childhood destroy her adulthood.

Red, White & Royal Blue - I really liked the book...but didn't see the movie. I can imagine with the right casting that it could have been better than the book. The story centered around a theme that is not as farfetched as some thought. What happens when America's "First Son" falls in love with the Prince of Wales? What sold the book to some people was the fact that "America's First Son's MOTHER...not his father, was the serving President of the United States. While the book and the movie were raking in the dollars. The plot was that Alex Claremont-Diaz, the President's son, had a disagreement with Prince Henry, across the pond. When the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S.& British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and others devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, interrogatable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy, really likeable Henry that could derail the campaign and upend the two nations. It also begs the question: Can love actually save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be ... how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? The story proves that true love isn't always expected or diplomatic. People were going to the movie theaters and reading the book...but believe it or not they weren't paying much attention to the genera of the movie or the book. Some people became enraged when they suddenly opened their eyes and realized that what they had been enjoying the life out of was what some of them had gone to violence to protest. This best seller book and movie dared to be about two, young gay boys that dared to fall in love. Which part of the description of the movie and book didn't they understand?

>5 Carol420: I think Red, White, & Royal Blue was recently added as a TV streaming series on Amazon Prime Video.

It's on Amazon, yes, but it's a movie, not a series. Straight to streaming with no theatrical release, at least in the US.

>7 KeithChaffee: My bad, movie it is

Is y’all still active

Yes. Let's see if we can jumpstart this topic with a list of the major book-to-movie adaptations coming later this year. All release dates subject to change, and may vary from city to city. What's everyone looking forward to?

The Caine Mutiny Court Martial -- The fourth film version of Herman Wouk's novel, following the classic 1952 film, a 1955 live TV production, and a 1988 TV movie. This version is William Friedkin's final film, and stars Kiefer Sutherland as Capt. Queeg. Streaming at Paramount+ w/Showtime on October 6.

Killers of the Flower Moon -- Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the David Grann book about a series of murders in 1920s Oklahoma after the discovery of oil on the Osage Nation. Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro star. In theaters on October 20.

Pain Hustlers -- Chris Evans and Emily Blunt in a true story about a criminal conspiracy at a pharmaceutical company; based on the book by Evan Hughes. In theaters on October 20; streaming at Netflix on October 27.

The Pigeon Tunnel -- Not an adaptation, but certainly book-related. The new Errol Morris documentary about the life and career of John Le Carre. In theaters on October 20.

Priscilla -- The Priscilla Presley story, based on her memoir Elvis and Me; directed by Sofia Coppola. In theaters on November 3.

Eileen - Based on the novel by Otessa Moshfegh; Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie play two women working at a correctional facility. In theaters on December 1.

Poor Things -- Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos; based on the novel by Alasdair Gray. Dark-comic riff on the Frankenstein story, starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Mark Ruffalo. In theaters on December 8.

American Fiction -- Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett; cast includes Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae, and Keith Dave. People's Choice Award winner at the Toronto Film Festival. In theaters on December 15.

All of Us Strangers -- Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, and Claire Foy in a gay romantic ghost story from director Andrew Haigh; based loosely on the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada. In theaters on December 22.

Ferrari -- Michael Mann directs; Adam Driver stars. Based on the biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates. In theaters on December 25.

The Color Purple -- based on the Broadway musical adaptation of the Alice Walker novel. Starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo, Danielle Brooks, H.E.R., and Ciara. In theaters on December 25.

I just saw this on the internet yesterday and thought it sounded interesting, even though I am the only person on the face of the Earth that doesn't like Agatha Christie.

A Haunting in Venice - based on the same book by Agatha Christie. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Kyle Allen, and Camille Cottin. It was supposed to have been released on September 15.

Yes, it's been getting mostly good reviews. It's loosely based on Christie's Halloween Party. "Loosely" as in Halloween Party isn't about a haunting and doesn't take place in Venice, which I imagine will confuse the people who buy the new movie tie-in paperback edition of the novel.

Reminder. From Oct, postings on books made into movies will be found HERE.