Adaptations : From Short Story to Big Screen: 35 Great Stories That Have Inspired Great Films
If, like me, you’re interested in the creative process that goes into writing stories, making movies and penning songs, then Adaptations : From Short Story to Big Screen
Adaptations
While I am neither a film or a communications major, I am a fan of a well told story regardless of the medium. While going through the list of stories included in the anthology, I was surprised to find some popular movies which found their origins on the printed page. Kurosawa’s Rashomon for example was based on “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa or that Hitchcock’s Rear Window came from “It Had to be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich.
Reading these stories made me think about the movie version in a different light. Drawing the curtains as it were, doesn’t take away from the appreciation of the movie or the short story. My theory though that to make a good movie-version of a novel or a short story, the director needs to stay close to the material yet imbue it with enough of his vision to make it stand on its own. It’s a tricky proposition to negotiate (as we’ve seen in the recent past), but it can be done. Kurosawa and Hitchcock’s versions of the stories are a testament to a good story told well. They have timeless quality which you can find in any good book or movie.
While some movies may have become bigger than their original source, some stories are just too powerful in themselves. Like what Harrison explains, some filmmakers have a hard time translating a writer’s work to film. She gives an example of screenwriter Ben Hecht complaining about adapting Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms: “The son-of-a-bitch writes on water.”
Harrison divides the anthology by genre, prefacing each chapter with a short history of how the stories included were turned into movies. Maybe as a sign of things to come (the book was published April 2005) there’s a whole chapter on movie adaptations of graphic novels albeit it “only” includes Harvey Pekar and Daniel Clowes’ work. Speaking of comics, interesting too that Christopher Nolan’s brother Jonathan wrote Memento Mori which is also included in the anthology. Totally different animal than the movie (duh!) and you’d appreciate Chris Nolan’s movie even more because of the decisions he made as a director.
I’d recommend Adaptations
List of stories included in Adaptations
“Spurs” by Tod Robbins
Freaks, directed by Tod Browning, 1932
“Bringing Up Baby” by Hagar Wilde
Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, 1938
“Stage to Lordsburg” by Ernest Haycox
Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, 1939
“A Reputation” by Richard Edward Connell
Meet John Doe, directed by Frank Capra, 1941
“My Friend Flicka” by Mary O’ Hara
My Friend Flicka, directed by Harold D. Schuster, 1943
“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway
The Killers, directed by Robert Siodmok, 1946
“Mr. Blandings Builds His Castle” by Eric Hodgins
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, directed by H.C. Potter, 1948
“The Basement Room” by Graham Greene
The Fallen Idol, directed by Carol Reed, 1948
“The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr
All About Eve, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950
“In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1951
“Tomorrow” by William Faulkner
Tomorrow, directed by Josephn Anthony, 1953
“Rear Window” (Originally titled “It Had to be Murder”) by Cornell Woolrich
Rear Window, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1954
“Cyclist’ Raid” by Frank Rooeny
The Wild One, directed by Laslo Benedek, 1954
“Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Time I Saw Paris, directed by Richard Brooks, 1954
“Your Arkansas Traveler” by Budd Schulberg
A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan, 1957
“Blow-Up” by Julio Cortazar
Blow-Up, directed by Michelangelo Antoniani, 1966
“The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1968
“The Swimmer” by John Cheever
The Swimmer, directed by Frank Perry, 1968
“A Man Called Horse” by Dorothy M. Johnson
A Man Called Horse, directed by Elliot Silverstein, 1970
“Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid” by Jean Shepherd
A Christmas Story, direct by Bob Clark, 1983
“Herbert West - Reanimator: Six Shots by Moonlight” by H.P. Lovecraft
Re-Animator, directed by Stuart Gordon, 1985
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
Smooth Talk, directed by Joyce Chopra, 1985
“The Lady with the Pet Dog” by Anton Chekov
Soviet Union: The Lady with the Dog, directed by Josef Heifitz, 1959
Russia/Italy: Dark Eyes, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, 1987
“The Fly” by George Langelaan
The Fly, directed by Kurt Neumann, 1958 and David Cronenberg, 1986
“Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa” by W. P. Kinsella
Field of Dreams, directed by Phil Alden Robinson, 1989
“Jerry and Molly and Sam” by Raymond Carver
Short Cuts, directed by Robert Altman, 1993
“Auggies Wren’s Christmas Story” by Paul Auster
Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang, 1995
“This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie
Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Eyre, 1998
“Emergency” by Denis Johnson
Jesus’ Son, directed by Alison Maclean, 1999
“Memento Mori” by Jonathan Nolan
Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, 2000
“Killings” by Andre Dubus
In the Bedroom, directed by Todd Field, 2001
“Supertoys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss
A.I. Artificial Intelligence, directed by Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, 2001
Ghost World - Chapter 5: “Hubba Hubba” by Daniel Clowes
Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff, 2001
“The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick
Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg, 2002
“The Harvey Pekar Name Story” by Harvey Pekar
American Splendor, directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, 2003
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
xkg
Skimming the upper half of the list really seems like the AFI list of 100 films. Although if you do a close count of the 35 stories included, half and half naman pala ang classic hollywood vs the 90s. At notable din yung sci-fi selections ha.
Personally, I really liked yung kay Raymond Chandler. Saka yung original story na The Fly, it scared the bejeezus out of me when I was a kid. Surprised din ako na galing pala sa short story yung “In the Bedroom.”
Anyhoo, looks like a very interesting book all in all. :)
Jul 27th, 2005
Jio
Good find on this Mark. I usually like reading short stories more than novels. Hope this one is available here in local bookstores.
Jul 27th, 2005
eula
Oh this looks like a wonderful book. I’ve read or am reading a few of the listed stories (“Supertoys Last All Summer Long” was slightly more chilling than the film A.I.); lot of them I haven’t even heard of. I hope I can find this locally.
Jul 28th, 2005
markmomukhamo
Xkg yeah I like the sci-fi collection. Reading Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report and I can’t help but admire Spielberg’s vision. He really took it to a different direction. Although the story was really compact and way more thrilling than the movie. And I was surprised about the inclusion of ‘Freaks’. I saw that movie in the old channel 2 station in the 80s when I was 12. Late at night. I was so scared I didn’t see most of it but could hear what was happening. I waited for it for weeks but they never played it again. “One of us! One of us!” :)
Jio, Eula some of the bookstores there like Powerbooks and Fully Book can order it for you. You can just take the title and the name of the author (or even the ISBN) and give it them, if they don’t have it in stock yet. Usually takes 3-4 weeks. Good book to have though. Nice stories.
Jul 30th, 2005
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