Monday, January 24, 2011

Books into Movies

How do authors feel about having their books made into movies? Do they lose independence? Larry McMurtry's third volume of his memoirs called, Hollywood, delves into the world of screenplays and movie making. You may recall McMurtry has authored many books that you find on Hollywood landscape - Brokeback Mountain, an original screenplay he helped adapt to the silver screen, Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, where Jeff " The Dude Lebowski" Bridges and Cybill " MoonLighting" Shepard made early cinematic debuts, directed by Peter Bogdonovich, who fell in love with Shepard, and eventually divorcing his wife. McMurtry opens your eyes to the wheeling and dealing of hollywood and the risks and sometimes no rewards authors reap when books are made into movies.  Did you know that the movie Brokeback Mountain originated from a mere 11 page screen play?  There's hope for me yet!!

Here's a question for you, if a book has been made into a movie, do you watch it? Or if a movie was based on a book that you haven't read, will you read it? 

I find that once a book has been made into a movie, the image of those characters then become the image of those in the book.  Confused?  Example, in reading Alex Cross series by James Patterson, Alex is played by Morgan Freemen in a few films based on Patterson's books.  Each time I read a new Cross novel, I picture the character as Morgan Freeman.  Seems that it takes away from the readers own imagination of how characters should look.  Tick Tock...Tick Tock...well look at the time..it's getting late but Tick Tock is also my latest read by James Patterson.  Interesting tidbit about James Patterson.  Its my understanding that he insists that his new releases are put on display on Monday, the day before most new releases are sold.

No comments:

Post a Comment