"...only ragged odds and ends of my script had been used..."
June 20, 2014 1:44 PM Subscribe
The film is not the novel but it is a fun film anyway because the story is good. Same goes for Moby Dick. Great writing style does not work in film but a good story sometimes can stand on its own.
posted by Postroad at 3:55 PM on June 20, 2014
posted by Postroad at 3:55 PM on June 20, 2014
I will never understand why Hollywood tries so hard to adapt extremely internal and cerebral novels into films.
Great novels are about things that are happening inside someone's head.
Great films are about actions that people take.
You can adapt the former so that it becomes the latter, but the idea that this makes the two works of art congruent is laughable.
I really feel for great novelists hired by Hollywood to turn their quiet, cerebral character studies into profitable films.
I mean, at least have the grace to hand the adaptation off to someone who can see the material through fresh eyes, as a garment to be cut down. "Kill your darlings" is a saying, but I don't think they mean it that literally.
posted by Sara C. at 4:51 PM on June 20, 2014
Great novels are about things that are happening inside someone's head.
Great films are about actions that people take.
You can adapt the former so that it becomes the latter, but the idea that this makes the two works of art congruent is laughable.
I really feel for great novelists hired by Hollywood to turn their quiet, cerebral character studies into profitable films.
I mean, at least have the grace to hand the adaptation off to someone who can see the material through fresh eyes, as a garment to be cut down. "Kill your darlings" is a saying, but I don't think they mean it that literally.
posted by Sara C. at 4:51 PM on June 20, 2014
There is no way that (picnic,lightning) can be well adapted, or, I think, usefully expanded upon. That's basically a perfect little bit of evocative and compact writing.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:13 PM on June 21, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:13 PM on June 21, 2014 [3 favorites]
Doktor Zed: Unfortunately, his experience of watching the movie turned out to be closer to the latter prediction.
Actually, the article makes it quite clear he considered the movie to be the former.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:39 PM on June 21, 2014
Actually, the article makes it quite clear he considered the movie to be the former.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:39 PM on June 21, 2014
Actually, the article makes it quite clear he considered the movie to be the former.
Nabokov was indeed publicly supportive of Kubrick's finished film, calling it "a first-rate film", and quite grateful to Kubrick for the income that the film provided. In private, he was more disappointed. He later revealed in the foreword to his published screenplay of it that his ambivalent first reaction was "a mixture of aggravation, regret, and reluctant pleasure". Some parts of it he found "painful […] such as the collapsing cot or the frills of Miss Lyon's elaborate nightgown". More obliquely but, for the scholarly Volodya, truly harshly, he compared the film version of the story to "an American poet's translation from Rimbaud or Pasternak" (the latter whose work he detested in the original and in English).
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:35 PM on June 22, 2014
Nabokov was indeed publicly supportive of Kubrick's finished film, calling it "a first-rate film", and quite grateful to Kubrick for the income that the film provided. In private, he was more disappointed. He later revealed in the foreword to his published screenplay of it that his ambivalent first reaction was "a mixture of aggravation, regret, and reluctant pleasure". Some parts of it he found "painful […] such as the collapsing cot or the frills of Miss Lyon's elaborate nightgown". More obliquely but, for the scholarly Volodya, truly harshly, he compared the film version of the story to "an American poet's translation from Rimbaud or Pasternak" (the latter whose work he detested in the original and in English).
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:35 PM on June 22, 2014
« Older Airports from above | Last year's filibuster was just the beginning... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:55 PM on June 20, 2014 [1 favorite]