Well, there's three examples that come to mind for me, each one based on one of my favourite books.
1) The Killer Inside Me.
I read the book a couple years ago, and I loved it. To me, there's nothing so interesting as looking through the eyes of a man with no morals. So, you can imagine that when Michael Winterbottom was going to direct the movie based on this film, I was psyched. Alas, Winterbottom committed the one unforgivable artistic sin: this film is fucking boring. The sad thing is that a few years back, there was a report of a screenplay by the director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford starring Leonardo diCaprio and Drew Barrymore, and I can't see how that would have been anything but awesome.
2) Lonelyhearts
This is a film based on one of my favourite books (Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts"), starring one of my favourite actors of the 1950s (Montgomery Clift.) How do you screw that up? Easy. By completely removing anything that made Nathanael West's novel feel like Nathanael West. I'm not sure whether or not Hollywood would dare to film an actually faithful adaptation of the story, especially in 1958, but I do know one thing: The man who produced the anti-racist classic Bad Day at Black Rock was probably not the right guy to bring a novel about the basic moral bankruptcy of 20th Century America to the screen. This film is not available on DVD, even in an archive collection.
3) The Brothers Karamazov
How did they make a movie based on The Brothers Karamazov? Easy: by stripping away everything that didn't have to do with the story of Dmitri Karamazov. The fact that the movie seems to have clearly been filmed in a set for an old western village really makes it seem like the filmmakers don't care. Especially when contrasted with the 1956 adaptation of War and Peace and the adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that the film's director helmed in the same year.
1) The Killer Inside Me.
I read the book a couple years ago, and I loved it. To me, there's nothing so interesting as looking through the eyes of a man with no morals. So, you can imagine that when Michael Winterbottom was going to direct the movie based on this film, I was psyched. Alas, Winterbottom committed the one unforgivable artistic sin: this film is fucking boring. The sad thing is that a few years back, there was a report of a screenplay by the director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford starring Leonardo diCaprio and Drew Barrymore, and I can't see how that would have been anything but awesome.
2) Lonelyhearts
This is a film based on one of my favourite books (Nathanael West's "Miss Lonelyhearts"), starring one of my favourite actors of the 1950s (Montgomery Clift.) How do you screw that up? Easy. By completely removing anything that made Nathanael West's novel feel like Nathanael West. I'm not sure whether or not Hollywood would dare to film an actually faithful adaptation of the story, especially in 1958, but I do know one thing: The man who produced the anti-racist classic Bad Day at Black Rock was probably not the right guy to bring a novel about the basic moral bankruptcy of 20th Century America to the screen. This film is not available on DVD, even in an archive collection.
3) The Brothers Karamazov
How did they make a movie based on The Brothers Karamazov? Easy: by stripping away everything that didn't have to do with the story of Dmitri Karamazov. The fact that the movie seems to have clearly been filmed in a set for an old western village really makes it seem like the filmmakers don't care. Especially when contrasted with the 1956 adaptation of War and Peace and the adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that the film's director helmed in the same year.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
![[Image: harmlesskitchen.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/yxR97P23/harmlesskitchen.png)
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
