The Book Versus The Movie

Salutations Space Travelers.  I just got done doing some midnight cleaning of my apartment while trying not to wake the roommates.  When they wake up and come out of their rooms, it will be like Christmas morning, if their letters to Santa requested that the damn kitchen be cleaned (They've been nice, I'm the naughty one).  As I was cleaning, and organizing, I looked at the bookshelves.  I realized that I have more movies than books.  There is a debate that rages on between the book and the movie.  Had movies won my brain's real estate?

I've never considered myself to be very literary.  I was not the child with my nose in a book.  I was too impatient.  I couldn't be bothered to devote multiple days to stories that took only 80 minutes to tell on TV or in a theater.  As my peers began to read more as an extra-curricular activity, I witnessed a trend.  The more films I watched with them, the more I'd start to hear "the book was better."  At first, I was arrested in a sort of disbelief.  I often had enjoyed the film, and I didn't see anything wrong with it.  Seeing my fellow audience seem so disappointed was mildly alarming.  As I heard this phrase more and more, I started to worry that there was a whole world out there I was missing out on; a book world, where the story was always better.  

In 1999, A very special film came out.  The movie was Fight Club, and it's dark visuals coupled with its gritty attitude was intoxicating.  I watched it over and over.  A few of my friends and I even got in fist fights in our garages.  We were punch drunk, literally (I told you it was intoxicating).  It was a lot of reality mimicking fiction.  But hey, the story is about exploring the male condition, so perhaps this was a form or exploring the ideas in it.  We didn't fight for too long, and never as fiercely as in the film.  We tempered our enthusiasm, and cooled our teenage jets pretty fast when we discovered something important:  We all fucking hated getting  punched in the face.  It was awful.

Fiction and storytelling can have a very powerful effect on those who digest it.  It can become as real as the person allows.  Since I was done getting decked in the jaw, I decided to read the book.  When I came across a copy, it was a soft back with the movie art on the front.  It was obviously a reprint made exactly for people like myself who had seen the movie, and now wanted to read the book.  A funny thing happened right before I began to read Fight Club.  I stumbled upon an interview with Chuck Palahniuk where he said that he like the movie better than his book.  I was puzzled.  This wasn't right.  The book was supposed to be better!  The author isn't supposed to say that kind of thing!  habpasadfiuonfcwdnwepowcna'xa!!!1one

Now, having read all but one of Palanuik's books, I look back and think that this isn't shocking at all.  Not for Palahniuk. He likes very much to play the devil's advocate and his humor is often quite contrarian.  Well played Chuck.

I read the book.  It was good, but it was good in many ways because in my mind this was the cast of Brat Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. Oh, and Meatloaf.  Him too.  To me, it felt less like a book, and more like a projection of the movie.  The same thing happened when I read the Harry Potter books.  I began after the first movie, and finished prior to the conclusion of the movies.  J.K. Rowling does such a wonderful job of describing Harry, but the truth is that no matter what she wrote, I will always think of Daniel Radcliffe.

Potter ala livre ou toile?

So how do I compare these works of literary art to their cinematic cousins?  In effect, I've really just compared two movies:  Their movie, and the one in my head; my movie.  I can't be considered objective on a matter where my imagination is on one side of the scale.

There are some books that I read prior to them becoming a movie.  What?  You didn't so?  I'm hurt (E tu Space Travelers).  Another Palahniuk book, and notably my favorite, Choke, was made into a film in 2008.  It stars the very very very (I just completed a "very" combo!) talented Sam Rockwell.  However...  I didn't really love the film.  It was okay.  The book was better...  There, I said it.  But was it?  Or was it simply that I was struggling with someone else's manifestation of the characters?  Was it just one mental director (me) being overly critical and envious of the actual director?  For instance, I thought that instead of Kelly MacDonald, the obvious choice was Monica Bellucci for the role of Paige.  Geeze.  Get a Clue, right?  Seemingly, the Director Clark Gregg never read the book, otherwise he would have come to this inevitable conclusion as easily as I did.

Maybe it's about the order of operations.

Right now I'm really into the Scott Pilgram comics by Brian Lee O'Malley.  Volume Six, the final volume, comes out today.  The film adaptation of the omnibus is due in Theaters in August starring mumble champ Michael Cera as  lead man loser-hero Scott Pilgram.  Get excited.  It looks visually exciting, and (the trailers at least 1 2 3) captures the video-game-rock-n-roll-mid-twenties feel of the graphic novels.  Last time I was at my local comic store, the store cleric explained, with the gusto and charisma of the basset hound, that he was holding off reading Scott Pilgram until after the movie.  Did my gregarious friend have a point?  What if I've poisoned the well!  What if I've ruined the cinematic experience!  How can I enter the theater at all?  I'll cross into that scared dark cave with the knowledge of the six volumes in my head, knowing that to fit the story into a two hour film, lots will have to be cut out.  Cut out with a chainsaw, not a scalpel, at that.


I know that a graphic novel is not the same as a book (It has pictures.  Weeeeee!).  However, I think the reasons that one might enjoy the film less than its original form is the same/similar for both.  Certainly the die hard Marvel and DC fans well tell you (No seriously, they don't shut up once you get them started) about how the recent comic book movies could have been better (Perhaps there is an exception for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.  They didn't try to be canon as much as feel correct, but hey, why so serious?).  We like books and graphic novels.  Opinion-fact!  They have lots of details to feed our imagination so our mind's Director can compose a masterpiece.

I don't believe I'll ever be able to compare the book and the movie.  I won't be able to assign a value to some of a film's elements so that it is readily comparable to the book.  Think of the many beautiful cinematic scores composed for films that became characters themselves.  I for one, cannot think about Jurassic Park without thinking of that beautiful symphony, or how could I ever relive the climatic ending of Last of the Mohicans without hearing the dramatic and emotional Irish song racing though my head (Wait?  Irish?  Daniel Day Lewis was in the film...).  There are some things that defy value and discourage cross evaluation.  

Maybe we should not seek to compare the book and the movie; the novel verse the film; the PDF against the MPEG.  Let them be their own experience each.  If they do cross paths, let it be a collaboration in our imaginations, not a competition for our favor.  Some stories may not be able to arouse us in both forms.  Some stories will remain on the bookshelf, and others will only light the silver screen.

Someday we could have a way to have project holographic images directly into our heads.  We'd literally be in the story.  If that day comes, I'll probably (like Palahniuk) declare that the virtual story is better than the movie, and perhaps even the book.