I wonder if [Alan] Moore is "big" enough that someone will come along and do Moore "right" without actually, specifically adapting one his works. I'm thinking of the way Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind captured the low-rent sci-fi feel of Philip K. Dick's stories better than any of the official Dick adaptations.
So, we're talking about movies that aren't actual adaptations that "get" something about a writer better than any other movie, especially movies that are adapted directly from the writer's work.
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind is my go-to example: it nails the next-week-in-Hoboken feel of Philip K. Dick's stories better than the big-budget, effects-packed movies that are actually adapted from them.
Another example: The Third Man, where Graham Greene and Carol Reed do a better job of bringing the sensibility of Eric Ambler's spy novels to the screen than the movies taken directly from Ambler's novels (even the ones where Ambler worked on the screenplays).
Do any other movies fit?
If I recall correctly, Pauline Kael made this kind of point about Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us and William Faulkner.
Some more of my own suggestions: 28 Days Later - J.G. Ballard's sci-fi novels, Fingers and Black & White - various pieces (essays, novels, etc.) by Norman Mailer.
Anyone else have any?
(As a starting place, here are a couple of authors who, I feel, haven't been done justice by the movies based on their work: Joseph Conrad, Jack Kirby, Donald E. Westlake. Elmore Leonard would have made this list if it weren't for Out of Sight.)
3 comments:
Ah, yes - Peckinpah/Melville. It's too bad Major Dundee was such a cock-up (just imagine Robert Ryan in the title role: it definitely would have been Moby Dick-worthy).
Kagemusha - Borges is a good call and with Kurosawa, who's maybe the most literate of the great directors, it probably wasn't an accident.
But you're right, Borges is like Kafka in that his influece is all over all sorts of modern cultural stuff.
And thinking of Kafka: has anyone really managed to "get" him on film? I really don't think so, although Polanski's short films come close. Most cinematic attempts at "Kafkaesque" seem pretty superficial to me.
"Chinatown" and Raymond Chandler. The black and white versions of Chandler's novels couldn't do justice to the gorgeous visual descriptions in Chandler, but Chinatown's glorious cinematography of what LA looked like before smog nails Chandler's books like "Farewell My Lovely."
Mark,
I buy the Day of the Locusts, but not so much the Eraserhead as Kafka. Eraserhead is just too thoroughly weird. It lacks the central sanity that is under attack in Kafka's stories.
Steve,
Interesting call on Chinatown. I love Howard Hawks's version of The Big Sleep, but it certainly isn't as visually evocative as Chinatown.
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