{"id":843,"date":"2016-11-18T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/undergrad-students-publishing\/?p=843"},"modified":"2016-11-18T08:00:31","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T13:00:31","slug":"why-cant-all-books-be-good-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/2016\/11\/18\/why-cant-all-books-be-good-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Can&#8217;t All Books be Good Movies?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victoria Kiarsis \/\/ Blog Writer<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-846\" src=\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster-300x228.jpg\" alt=\"High Fidelity\" width=\"300\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster-300x228.jpg 300w, https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster-768x584.jpg 768w, https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster-560x426.jpg 560w, https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster-260x198.jpg 260w, https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster-160x122.jpg 160w, https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/11\/High-Fidelity-versus-poster.jpg 992w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I have seen numerous films that have been adapted from novels, and I\u2019m also currently taking a class called Novel into Film. What I\u2019ve learned through my experience inside and outside of this class is that films cannot be made from novels that have a large amount of internal dialogue or narration. Films cannot uphold the same themes as complex novels can. If you\u2019ve ever seen <em>One Day<\/em> with Anne Hathaway, <em>The Time Traveler\u2019s Wife<\/em> with Rachel McAdams, <em>The Help<\/em> with Emma Stone, or <em>Room<\/em> with Brie Larson, and have read the novels, you\u2019d know that it is possible to have pretty exact copies.<\/p>\n<p>But when we look inside of the words in these books, there is action and dialogue. Nothing too internal nor any nuances that can only be understood when inside the mind of a character,which is impossible in a film unless a director\/writer decides that the character will talk to the audience. This practice, in my mind, is immature and inauthentic. I saw it in <em>High Fidelity<\/em> with John Cusack. The actor was obnoxious every time he turned to the camera, and the ideas of pop culture influencing one\u2019s thoughts and actions that I enjoyed in the novel were translated into this Hollywood picture of a story with a bad beginning and a happy ending without any sort of take away.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the only way that a film can get these internal thoughts through is in the form a letter the character is writing\u2014yet reading out loud\u2014or through talking to the camera. I have yet to come across an internally developed character in a film without the aid of a diary or some awkward dialogue where his or her guts are spilled. If anyone has any recommendations, I\u2019m open! I have not had the chance to read all of the novels that have been made into films, nor have I probably read all of the popular ones. I found in reading <em>One Day,<\/em> <em>The Time Traveler\u2019s Wife<\/em>, and <em>The Help<\/em> that sometimes reading the book if I\u2019ve already seen the movie is not worth it.<\/p>\n<p>That is unfair though because who knows? I have read <em>Slaughterhouse-Five<\/em>, where incredible meditations on death and time were thrown away for a classic anti-war sentiment in the 1972 film; I have read <em>The Revenant<\/em>, where a child was added into the film because an audience would not have been able to conceive of such a story based half on the thievery of the man\u2019s rifle\u2014and I would not have known these things if not for reading and watching. What I\u2019m trying to say is that in my opinion there is no novel with complex internal ideations that can be translated intact into a film. Does anyone agree? I do encourage reading and watching\u2014the conversation of which is better to do first is beyond me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victoria Kiarsis \/\/ Blog Writer I have seen numerous films that have been adapted from novels, and I\u2019m also currently taking a class called Novel into Film. What I\u2019ve learned&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-vs-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}