The Papercut discussion

Why is the book almost always better than its movie?
Budget is one thing when they have to cut allot of the novel details in order to fit in the budget.
second is they have to that our imagination is usually allot richer than effects created by film makers
third is that they sometimes "dumb down" film to appeal to a wider audience..
what you guys think?

Time has to to be the biggest factor in that.

Not that I fully agree with that statement. There are plenty of movies which are better than the book.

Such as ?

Definitely the Godfather would be a prime example. The book was poorly written and heavily mysoginistic. But the movies are a work of art.

There are rare exceptions where the book is not as good as the movies, but I agree with Mohammed, timing would be the major factor.

I didn't know the Godfather was originally a book.

but usually the book is admired by a film maker to turn it into a movie.
so why did Francis Ford Coppola make a film out of a bad book!?

and ok i take back my original statement, "most films are usually worse off than the book".

Lol I'm not sure why FFC wanted to make a movie out of such a poorly written book, it probably had something to do with the hype that surrounded the book when it first came out and the fact that Mario Puzo (the author) received death threats from the Sicilian mafia in real life when they got wind of his book. Perhaps FFC thought that he should capitalize on this frenzy and that maybe Puzo was onto something.

I'm also going to post a link when I find it. It's a BookRiot post where the author lists movies which she feels are actually better than their books!! I was shocked to read some of them - let's see what you guys all think!

This is not an easy question. Still thinking about it.

But Fight Club.

Mohammed that was one of the books on that BookRiot list! I wish I could find it :(

Chuck Palahniuk can be hard to stomach at times so I can see why people would think that his book wasn't as good.

I was trying to think of it in very general non-author specific terms. Still don't have an answer, but I'm trying to comparatively think about the ingredients for books/movies. Particularly in terms of premise, detail, language, character development, and the 'pixiedustmagicness' element.

But I agree with you on Palahniuk. Not quite the posterboy for accessibility. I'm a bit surprised that not more of his books have been movified.

OK Guys, you proved it, I know nothing about Cinematography.
I seriously didn't know all these films were books!

and Fatma where is that link?

I watched On The Road tonight, based on Jack Kerouac's highly-esteemed work of the same title, and I'm compelled to put it in that better than the book category.

First, I'm not a huge fan of either the book or the movie, because it felt a bit premature watching/reading about young decadence, love, debauchery and ambition while still being in the same age (and mindset) of the characters.

Unlike most of the beat generation drivel (I'm a bit bitter at what could have been, I suppose), On The Road was a good book, and was stylistically wonderful, and the movie correctly makes no effort to re-explore (read: falsify) any metaphors of its own. The movie looks, sounds and touches like the book, and so I'll happily recommend it to anyone who's mildly interested. Bewarned, however, of the NC/PG nature of the movie, but I suspect anyone who's survived the first half of the book (impressive gag reflex, btw) will already know what the book contains.

Breaking down the book-movie paradigm to a science is still in the pipes. I haven't convinced myself fully of it yet.

So which one do think was better? Or at least which one was less bad?
And why do you think that?
Ps. Life of pi , the film is far better than the novel i will explain in details why later.
Good night good people.

I want to say the movie, but I think maybe going back to read the book sometime in the future and make sure. I wouldn't say any of them are bad. They are both quite good (bordering on excellent), but simply unappealing to me (for now).

[POSSIBLE SPOILER]

The problem with the book was that I think lingered too long in the bits between the cities, the actual road trip itself, where compared to what went on in the cities/places that they stopped in, ended up being less than important, entertaining or interesting. He might have taken a deliberate creative decision to do that that I can't understand, but Im leaning towards thinking that he simply didn't have any good ideas for what occurs on the road that would serve the plot well. I say this because he kept going back to this theme of Dean's crazy driving every time they were on the road again in super great detail. By the end of the book it felt like repetition/filler that we've all heard before.

If I were to guess as to why insisted on doing that, I'd say the reasons were philosophical/fanciful (depending on your philosophical bend). He possibly wanted to discount the idea of the road itself having any value, and all event, emotion, and intellect that's worth discussing comes from your ultimate destination, and the stops you make along the way.

The movie didn't do this. The bits on the road were all less than one minute cut scenes, and despite the scenery being the same (a car driving through the staple American midwest), the benefit of visuals is that even a camera angle change worked. The book would have had to imagine things up in the scenery to make it interesting which wouldn't have been true or faithful to setting. I think this may be one of the reasons why he kept going on and on about Dean's driving.

[END OF POSSIBLE SPOILER]

I think everybody should try to watch this. It's so well made and very well cast. The fashion/decor actually reminded me a bit of a movie James Franco did about Allen Ginsberg a few years back called Howl. Now if they do a Naked Lunch movie, they would have the Beat Generation Ginsberg-Burroughs-Kerouac trifecta sorted for movies.

Later beatniks !

Oh. I just checked. They actually did do a Naked Lunch movie back in 1991. Found something to watch for tonight :)