Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour Best Book to Movie Adaptations About this episode What’s your favorite movie that started life as a book? And what makes for a great book to film adaptation, anyway? We’ve got some examples of beloved books that made the transition to the big screen, and we’re prepared to discuss and debate why each of them works – and why we believe they’re the best of all time. We talk about: Blade Runner, Little Women, Nickel Boys, and Starship Troopers.
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0:21 Speaker 01 What's your favorite movie that started life as a book? And what makes for a great book to film adaptation anyway? Do you want filmmakers to stay as rigorously true to the book as possible? Or are you OK with bold departures, big swings, out-of-left-field choices that maybe evoke the essence of the book, if not every last detail? We've got four examples of beloved books that made the transition to the big screen, and we're prepared to discuss and debate why each of them works and why we believe they're the best of all time. So gird your loins. Wuthering Heights is about to hit theaters, so we thought it would be the perfect time to discuss and debate the best book-to-film adaptations of all time. I'm Glen Weldon, and you're listening to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.
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2:38 Speaker 01 Joining me today is Barry Hardiman. She's a senior editor for NPR's Investigations Team. Welcome back, Barry.
2:44 Speaker 03 Hiya.
2:44 Speaker 01 Also with us is BA Parker. She's one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast. Hey, Parker.
2:49 Speaker 03 Hello.
2:50 Speaker 01 Welcome in. And rounding out the panel is Andrew Limbong. He's the host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast and a reporter for the Culture Desk. Hey, Andrew. Yo, what's up? My loins are girded. I am girding these loins. I was telling producers, this is the dream team. This is a bunch of folks who, as Homer Simpson would say, these are eggheads who love their booky wooks. And I'm excited about this particular thing. So let's get to it. Parker?
3:15 Speaker 03 Yes, sir.
3:15 Speaker 01 Tell me your favorite book to film adaptation of all time and why it works.
3:19 Speaker 03 OK, so any other day when we did Books We've Loved, Andrew would have already heard me talk about The Brilliance of Gone Girls. We're just going to skip that and talk about something that really, really speaks to me. And it is the 2019 adaptation of Little Women.
3:33 Speaker 01 Ah, OK, great pick.
3:35 Speaker 03 All right, which is a famed book by Louise May Alcott from 1868 about the Four March Sisters in Massachusetts during the Civil War, this coming of age story. And this one is adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig. And she does this really impossible thing of like contemporizing the story and being so faithful to the book, but for modern times. And it does like two like fairly impossible things that has never worked in any Little Women adaptation. She makes me tolerate the love story between Laurie and Amy. I get PTSD from a child from the 1994 version of like-
4:15 Speaker 01 I hear you.
4:16 Speaker 03 The fact that Greta Gerwig made me root for Amy and Laurie. Skills. And with the character of Jo March, our protagonist, who's like this liberated author, who was like writing the story along the way. She allows for Jo and the audience to have their cake and eat it too, which, I mean, this is gonna, 150 year spoilers. There is this man named Bear, who was like a scholar. And in like the 19th century approach, which is like, you know, the woman has to have a man at the end. Like, that's just like a given for these kind of books and for these kind of adaptations. And Greta Gerwig makes this decision that the writing of the book is essential to the plotline and that is within the book. Jo's character ends up with Bear. But in the reality, the book is the man.
5:01 Speaker 03 Getting her first book published is like the win and that is like her love. And the fact that she is able to like have her cake and eat it too, it's like, it's so rich and smart and I just, I love it. And I say this fully, okay, like this is how good of an adaptation it is. Like my head knows that this is a perfect adaptation and yet my heart still belongs to the 1994 version. The fact that I know that the 2019 version is a perfect adaptation and I'm still fighting for it. Like, this is how good of an adaptation it is.
5:32 Speaker 04 In the actual book, I've never read it, sorry. Is like her writing the book not that big of a deal? Because I remember that being an integral part of the movie. Does it sort of just get tossed aside?
5:41 Speaker 03 It is not the motif. Yeah, it's not like the motif of it, but it is like, it's.
5:44 Speaker 04 Oh, interesting.
5:45 Speaker 03 It's there.
5:46 Speaker 01 Okay. Now, Parker, in this adaptation, in this film.
5:50 Speaker 03 Yes.
5:50 Speaker 01 Bob Odenkirk plays the dad. You know what I'm gonna say. You know what I'm gonna say. At one point, Mr. March comes home. He walks in the door and he says, "My little women."
6:01 Speaker 03 You know what? Calm down.
6:03 Speaker 01 Okay. But here's the thing about adaptations, right? Odenkirk is Odenkirk. He's a great actor, but we have all seen Mr. Show sketches. That's kind of set in this time page.
6:13 Speaker 03 My family has it. No, this is the thing. My mom and my aunts, I, we went to see Little Women and everyone was like, "Oh, Bob Odenkirk." And my family's like, "Who the heck is that?" So there wasn't like, "Oh, Bob Odenkirk." They're like, "Who's this white man?" Like, why is this such like a big moment? Like, well, the dad's here, that's great, but like for nerds like yourself that know who Bob Odenkirk is, it's like, it's great. Civil War hat. Okay, this is a personal quibble just with all of the Little Women adaptations in general. There's the mom in the book and in the movies is, it's called Marmee, which is M-A-R-M-E-E. But Louisa May Alcott is just clearly a woman who grew up in Boston and was writing out mommy.
6:56 Speaker 04 Mom.
6:57 Speaker 03 It's a very Pachacar in the Harvard Yard situation. But in all of the adaptations, everyone's saying Marmee. Like, no, it's just mommy. So that's my one quibble. I'm like, just say mommy. It's okay. All right.
7:08 Speaker 05 Wow, Parker. I never have thought, I've like, grew up on this book. I'm from Boston.
7:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:14 Speaker 05 Never occurred to me.
7:16 Speaker 03 It's just like girls in Massachusetts.
7:18 Speaker 05 Oh, my god.
7:19 Speaker 03 My god.
7:19 Speaker 01 Parker, you've unlocked this book for Barry. You've unlocked it. That's awesome. That's awesome.
7:23 Speaker 05 My heart is beating so hard. My heart is beating so hard. Wow.
7:28 Speaker 04 How we feeling about Greta doing, uh, C.S. Lewis going over to Narnia? What's our temperature read on that?
7:33 Speaker 03 Let her do what she wants with that white witch. She can do whatever she wants.
7:37 Speaker 01 Yep, let her cook.
7:37 Speaker 03 Aslan.
7:38 Speaker 05 What she did with Barbie, I mean, she can do it, absolutely. I mean.
7:42 Speaker 03 Do we want it?
7:43 Speaker 04 Do we want it?
7:44 Speaker 05 Another one from her? I didn't think I wanted another Little Women.
7:47 Speaker 03 I feel like she's a good adapter, like, even with like Barbie, which is like IP or whatever. She is able to create something unique. There's like a feminist slant.
7:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
7:58 Speaker 03 Like, she's able to make it her own.
7:59 Speaker 05 A meta-narrative, usually.
8:01 Speaker 03 A meta-narrative.
8:02 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:02 Speaker 03 And like, contemporize it for these times.
8:04 Speaker 01 There will be takes.
8:05 Speaker 05 And Narnia. Narnia. Oh, god, you really got the accent stuck in my tongue. Narnia. All right.
8:11 Speaker 03 It's Narnia.
8:12 Speaker 05 Sorry.
8:13 Speaker 01 All right, Parker, that's a great pick. That's Little Women. Barry Hardeman, what's your pick?
8:17 Speaker 05 This is so difficult for me because my entire life, I would have said The Age of Innocence, the Martin Scorsese adaptation. And then I saw the adaptation of, um, The Nickel Boys, which is Colson Whitehead's book, which is about this boy who was wrongly sent to this abusive boy's school in Florida during the Jim Crow era, and really about this friendship between these two boys. And it is exactly the kind of book where the IP would get taken and put on the big screen. But I'm telling you, I sat down in my seat and within five minutes, I was so hooked. And I thought, oh, my God, I'm seeing something really new. And not just new, different from the book, which I really respect. I like a cover band, you know, like the Harry Potter movies are fine, like that.
9:04 Speaker 05 I like a cover band.
9:05 Speaker 01 Sure.
9:05 Speaker 05 But I do prefer somebody to have their own idea about it. And because the whole thing is told from this immersive POV camera point of view, which is the real thing here, it's a hard story to watch, right? It's a hard story to read. But because you are in the head, like really in the head of the person experiencing it, it is somehow more immersive even than the book, which is usually the problem for me. Right? You know, like I'm always out of it. I'm thinking like, well, that's where my book did. I never thought about it in this. I felt that because you were inside of it, sometimes I have a tendency with books that are,
9:48 Speaker 05 you know, I'm thinking about like Boys Don't Cry and 12 Years a Slave. And, you know, these narratives that have just these broke descriptions of truly awful things.
9:59 Speaker 01 Right.
9:59 Speaker 05 I find myself covering my eyes, right? I felt because of the point of view with this, I feel that I couldn't. It not only showed me what it was, it showed me what it felt. And what Ramel Ross, the director, has done with this is just so stunning. And again, this is one of the few times where I thought, oh, he's saying something about the experience of reading about these two boys being so badly abused in Jim Crow, Florida. He's saying something about that. He's also saying something about the way that we view it. He is saying something about the way that anyone who wants to see these things on screen should really, really think about how we have them in our heads, how they are portrayed
10:44 Speaker 05 to us and how we react to that portrayal. I can't say enough about this film. I really was absolutely just jaw dropped about it.
10:51 Speaker 04 I was shocked that this movie didn't seem to have like a bigger. Sort of like cultural impact when it came out. Like, I would have put money on this being like the talk of the town for like a year and a half.
11:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:01 Speaker 04 And it sort of disappeared, right?
11:04 Speaker 03 It's on MGM Plus.
11:06 Speaker 04 It's on MGM Plus.
11:07 Speaker 03 Oh, my God, fucker, I love you. That's amazing. But it's like encouraging empathy.
11:12 Speaker 05 Yes.
11:12 Speaker 03 In a way that I know when I saw it in theaters, made some people uncomfortable.
11:17 Speaker 05 Yes.
11:18 Speaker 03 Also, some people got motion sick.
11:20 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
11:22 Speaker 03 Because of some of the movements.
11:24 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:24 Speaker 03 But it's such a beautiful film. There's like a moment where like ingenue Ellis Taylor hugs the camera.
11:31 Speaker 05 Oh, my God.
11:32 Speaker 03 And it's like envelops you, like it really, it's a movie that envelops you.
11:35 Speaker 05 It's like a ride, almost.
11:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, you clarified something for me just now. I mean, like, I was wondering why this approach works because the POV perspective, using the camera as the eyes of your character. I mean, it's so unusual, it calls so much attention to itself, it can feel show off you. People can dismiss it as a gimmick. And
11:54 Speaker 03 And they should do it, try to do it.
11:56 Speaker 01 But the weight of this story, and this is the other thing you add when you add an adaptation, when the performances of these actors, you're staring into their faces. That carries it. And, you know, so much of contemporary fiction is written in first person perspective.
12:10 Speaker 05 That's right.
12:11 Speaker 01 And over the years, you know, filmmakers have cheated that with voiceover and diary entries, or they create characters at a whole cloth just for the main character to confide in. But it is a cheat. And it's been done before. There's a 1947 film called The Lady in the Lake. There was an episode of Mesh. I remember looking a lot that does it. But it is a risk and it doesn't feel like a risk here. It feels like the only way to do it, which I guess is the trick.
12:31 Speaker 05 Yeah. Actually, like, it feels so much more subjective and the audience is on, not on edge, but well, yeah, the audience is so
12:39 Speaker 01 No, you're in danger. Yeah.
12:40 Speaker 05 Yes, right. It's so connected to it that it's like, I saw myself seeing more while seeing less, if that makes sense, you know? I think it's just an astounding film. Although I will say this, I have noticed, you know, Nickel Boys is taught in my kid's school now. And I, I think partly it's because, oh, there are these two ways of looking at the book. And, you know, you don't have to read the book to enjoy the movie and vice versa. But the two together. Give you a full experience that is itself the class. And so, you know, they'll watch it in class, too. And I just wonder if maybe through those kind of, because it's also for film geeks, right? Like, it's so gorgeous. And just these moments where you're staring at the stump of a tree or the little things like
13:25 Speaker 05 that really sort of emphasize, you know, what it is to be a human taking in images. I think it's probably also happening at the college level, too. Like, I have to imagine that this is getting a lot of mileage from, you know, eggheads who like their bookie wookies.
13:41 Speaker 01 Okay, that's Nickel Boys, another great pick. We should note that Nickel Boys is distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Okay, here's my pick. It's Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Which became the 1982 film Blade Runner. Both the movie and the book are about a future where androids are used as slave labor. Six androids of a new model that is hard to tell from humans rebel, they kill their masters and a cop named Rick Deckard, which is just such a great noir name.
14:17 Speaker 05 Yeah.
14:18 Speaker 01 A hilariously noir name has to hunt them down. Now, look, there are book people and there are movie people and there are Philip K. Dick people. And I've visited the Reddit threads. I know that there's a lot of book people who hate this movie. And some of them for those reasons that you can understand. Like, my copy of this book is called Blade Runner. Originally published, as do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And it's got art from the movie.
14:42 Speaker 05 What a copy.
14:43 Speaker 01 They hate that. Of course, they would hate that. Nobody likes to feel like a newbie, right? Nobody likes it when the movie art becomes the book art. Everybody hates that. But, and also, there's been so many versions.
14:52 Speaker 05 Asking for well, actually.
14:53 Speaker 01 You are asking for that.
14:55 Speaker 03 Wait, this is my well, actually. Is this the director's cut or is it the original version?
15:00 Speaker 01 See, this is the my other point. Thank you, Parker. I mean, when you say they hate the movie, which, do you hate the theater cut? The director's cut? The final cut? The international cut? The work print? So, leaving all that aside, I would argue, and this is what we're talking about here today, the book does what books do well. The film does what films do well, right? Because when you are reading a book, you enter the world and you're intellectually and you're emotionally invested, you're pot committed because you helped build that world. Like, the version of Little Women, the version of Nickel Boys, the version of Blade Runner. The version of two hundred stream of electric sheep inside your head is different from the one in mine because you helped build it and you stay inside it for hours. Or if you're like me and you read slowly, hours and hours and hours and hours. So you kind of live there.
15:43 Speaker 01 And in this book, the author kind of outfits you with absolutely everything you need to know about this world. There is also a tremendous lot about a religion called mercerism, which is founded on the notion of empathy as like the most human, the highest human attribute. You learn a tremendous lot about how status works in this world. Like there's a, many animals have gone extinct, so owning a mechanical sheep, as the main character does say, is a sign of wealth and status. Everyone carries around this catalog of mechanical animals that are available. It's this cultural obsession and certainly the main character, Rick Deckard, never shuts up about his sheep and wanting to get an ostrich and like, it's a huge thing. I would say though, that the world building itself, like how it's executed in the book
16:28 Speaker 01 is, you know, it's not deft, right? It's a lot of characters telling other characters facts that they should already really know if they, if they live in this world.
16:37 Speaker 05 Exposition, exposition, exposition.
16:39 Speaker 01 Lot of stuff pushed into dialogue, a lot of Deckard pausing to remember that Lord Up, right? You're saying it's a science fiction book. I'm saying, thank you. But the prose is so like classic, you know, hard nose pulp. Now, the movie takes the thinnest possible slice of the book, the action, the hunting androids part, but I would disagree with some of the folks who hate this on Reddit. There is deference paid to the book. The whole notion of empathy, it's in the movie. It's not a major theme, but it's like in there. The fake animal stuff gets maybe two or three mentions. It's not this obsession like it is in the book, but you don't need it to be like, it's just there to undergird the world because movies, they're not, you know, exhaustive, comprehensive, deep dives. Their language is visual.
17:23 Speaker 01 They deal in impressions and imagery and, and you get the meaning of them through lighting and camera movement and camera placement. So the books lived in, like it's a lived in experience. Movies are like you're visiting that world for a couple hours. And so you get in the movie, what movies do. You get tone, mood, atmosphere, spectacle. Books do the same thing, but it takes a while, right? Cause like you can get in a couple pages, what the mood's gonna be by like how long the sentences are and that kind of thing, but it builds. With a movie, boom, establishing shot. You get it. You feel the world underneath it, but there's no need to dig into it because I would say the book shapes the world and the movie just walks you through it. And also, the other thing you get that you don't get in books is performances.
18:04 Speaker 01 So you get this big swing, bat poop, performance of Rutger Hauer as Roy, who is one of the androids, and he is off, he's charismatic, but he's sinister. And then when he meets his maker and finds them disappointing, he goes all the way off the rails and it's great to see. They made little changes, tweaks to the book, cosmetic changes that at first you think, that doesn't add anything. Why'd they do that? Then you realize, oh, okay, maybe, like, the book's set in San Francisco largely. The movie is set in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is about what's real, you know, what's not. It's like, that's kind of like the whole economy, that city. The name of the company that makes the androids in the book is Rosen.
18:47 Speaker 01 In the movie, it's Tyrell, as if somebody sat down at a story meeting early on and said, guys, do we need to make the greedy corporate corporation making these killing machines Jewish? Or could we maybe not? Maybe we don't. How about that?
19:00 Speaker 03 Good note, good note.
19:02 Speaker 01 Good note, good note. The smartest tweak they make was in the slang for these replicants, for these androids in the book. They're called Andys, which I'm sorry, is just adorable. That, I'm sorry.
19:14 Speaker 05 It's too cute.
19:15 Speaker 01 There's an Andi behind you. In the movie, they're called Skin Jobs, which sounds racist, which sounds hateful, which speaks volume to...
19:26 Speaker 05 Sounds a little porny.
19:27 Speaker 01 A little bit. Sounds sexy, yeah. There's also that.
19:30 Speaker 05 Just a little.
19:30 Speaker 01 So have you seen this film? What do you guys think? Have you read the book?
19:32 Speaker 03 I mean, I've seen the movie. I will say, I do have a Do Androids Sleep Like a T-shirt.
19:41 Speaker 05 I do too, from out of print. Yes! Yes! I have this thing one, because it's such a great old cover.
19:47 Speaker 03 So I know what you speak, but have I read the book? No.
19:50 Speaker 01 Okay.
19:51 Speaker 03 So sorry, Glenn.
19:52 Speaker 01 No.
19:53 Speaker 03 But the movie, I mean, it still resonates and is, like, it's brutal. And it's, like, it's memorable, just such a compelling viewing. To be fair, I've only seen the director's cut. I have never seen the controversial original release.
20:13 Speaker 01 Which has narration, which again, is what we're talking about, the cheat of narration. That's what makes it bad, because it's really cheesy narration.
20:19 Speaker 03 That's why I was confused, because I don't remember.
20:24 Speaker 03 Andrew, have you seen Blade Runner?
20:25 Speaker 04 So, no, I've read the book. I was a big sci-fi kid growing up, so I read the novel. And I actually, I've never seen the movie because I've always been privy to the arguments over the versions, which has caused a sort of a choice paralysis. So then I just end up watching like Frasier or something, you know, like I have no...
20:42 Speaker 03 That's painful.
20:43 Speaker 04 Is there a good version, Glenn, to watch? Is there?
20:45 Speaker 03 Director's cut, Andrew.
20:47 Speaker 05 What is the best one to watch?
20:48 Speaker 01 I would go director's cut or final cut, which is also the director saying, no, but seriously, no, but for real this time, this is the final.
20:55 Speaker 04 It's like when I'm mixing my projects, I'm like, use this project.
20:58 Speaker 01 Yep. Final, final, final.
21:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:01 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, that's the one I'd go with. That's the one I'd go with for a variety of reasons.
21:04 Speaker 04 The director's cut, okay.
21:05 Speaker 05 In a weird way, this is sometimes the problem with sci-fi adaptations that are really good and, you know, I've really have been so seduced by it that I'm like, eh, I'm good. I have actually done the thing that I am always terrified my children will do, which is not read the book.
21:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:21 Speaker 05 You know, that's the danger. But between me and Andrew, you know.
21:25 Speaker 04 Yeah, we're messing up, like Voltron.
21:27 Speaker 05 We did it.
21:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:29 Speaker 05 And Parker too, sorry. But it's like, no, the three of us are, we have all the knowledge, so.
21:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's great. All right, that's my pick. Do androids dream of electric sheep to Blade Runner? All right, Andrew, bring us home. Spoiler alert, this was my second pick.
21:44 Speaker 04 Okay, all right. So I think a lot of us have been leaning towards movie adaptations that have a theorial voice behind them. They're true adaptations and, as Barry said, just covers. My pick is one in which the director straight up hates the source material, straight up detests and makes fun of the source material entirely.
22:04 Speaker 03 Delicious.
22:04 Speaker 04 And that is the movie Starship Troopers.
22:07 Speaker 05 Oh.
22:08 Speaker 04 Yeah. So now, Starship Troopers, the book by Robert Heinlein, which I'm almost done rereading, is about space cadets and a guy, Rico, Johnny Rico, going through space cadet school and learning like the philosophies of being in the military and why it's cool to live in a society in which only people who fight in the military can vote. And like, that's the whole argument. The movie is making fun of that idea, is taking that idea and says, this idea, kind of fascist, right, guys? And it is a Guys, guys. Yeah, anybody see what's going on here? It's kind of a hilarious parody of Heinlein's book.
22:48 Speaker 04 And yet, if you are like a mouth breather, not fully understanding how it's working on a meta textual level, the movie itself kind of rocks as propaganda, as a piece of action filmmaking. It feels like I'm watching Top Gun. It feels so cool and all the
23:06 Speaker 03 Does it?
23:07 Speaker 04 I rewatched it yesterday, two days ago. The like, all of the bugs being shot looks so sick. And then all of the people are so beautiful. Everybody's extraordinarily good looking.
23:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:19 Speaker 04 And I think the movie, I think it came out in the late 90s, but I first watched it on like TNT or whatever. And so I kind of think of it as a sort of post nine 11 movie, even though obviously it came out before nine 11. But I always thought of it in the context of being in school where, you know, people were trying to recruit us to join the military.
23:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:38 Speaker 04 And I was like, oh, this is an interesting sort of a comment on what's going on now. Even though I think as a kid, I didn't realize it was a parody of the book. I just thought it was like a cool action movie. And then I remember reading the book, finding it kind of boring and kind of like, wow, there's a lot of, a lot of just yapping going on. Philosophizing. Yeah. And so, I don't know, the movie I think is one of the brilliant cases in a movie that can have its cake and eat it too. And sort of like making the comments while doing a cool thing that it's commenting on.
24:06 Speaker 03 Who directed it? Was it Joe Esther?
24:08 Speaker 04 Paul Verhoeven. Paul Verhoeven.
24:10 Speaker 03 Paul Verhoeven, okay.
24:12 Speaker 04 Yeah. So, and it feels like an extension of Robocop in a lot of ways and how everybody's acting kind of like, Yeah. Not stiff, but like extra, everybody's got a little like asterix on all of their lines. All right, Parker, I'm picking up on some ambivalence on your part. Say more.
24:26 Speaker 03 Look, it's of its time. I Respect the craft. It's not for me.
24:39 Speaker 03 Starship Troopers? I don't know, man.
24:42 Speaker 01 The great Roger Ebert, who loved this book as a kid. In his review, he dismissed it as science fiction for kids. And then he says this, he says, "The one redeeming merit for Paul Verhoeven's film is that by remaining faithful to Heinlein's material and period, it adds an element of sly satire." To which I say, sly. We have very different definitions of the word sly, my man.
25:06 Speaker 05 It's doing a lot.
25:07 Speaker 04 It's so obvious. I don't know.
25:08 Speaker 01 As if you stumbled into it, right?
25:10 Speaker 04 That Ebert reviews, Two Stars, by the way, which is insanely love.
25:12 Speaker 01 Crazy, crazy.
25:13 Speaker 04 He like gets it, kind of.
25:15 Speaker 01 Kind of.
25:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
25:16 Speaker 03 Well, I also think this is between, he had just done Showgirls, and this was before he does Hollow Man. And it's just like, it's just not his time at that point. And that's okay.
25:29 Speaker 05 I have to say, I feel for Ebert. I had to grow into this movie. Partly because I'm not familiar with the source material. And I'm also like, kind of, I was like, very like, serious about my science fiction. And, you know, I was like, why can't they make a Left End of Darkness? And, you know, I remember going with a group of people and just being like, I kind of don't get it. Like, this is dumb. Like, this is stupid. And, and none of these people are like, I don't like Denise, like, what? I just really didn't get it.
25:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:57 Speaker 05 And in some ways, I will say, like, it wasn't until, you know, my husband kept being like, we gotta watch this movie with the kids. And I was like, oh.
26:03 Speaker 04 With the kids?
26:06 Speaker 05 I mean, they're, my kids are close to teenagers now. I know.
26:09 Speaker 04 I've not watched that shower scene with my parents now.
26:11 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:15 Speaker 05 Maybe I should go back and think about that. But in any case, I will say, once I understood the source material and what it was, and was able to sort of get more context around it, I think it's terrific. But at the time, I just, it didn't land for me.
26:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I get that.
26:30 Speaker 05 Which may just be because, you know, I was a snooty or, you know, empty-headed person. I don't know. But I just, I didn't get.
26:38 Speaker 03 Don't you dare, baby. Don't you dare.
26:40 Speaker 01 Don't you dare.
26:41 Speaker 05 My head was full of stuff, just not that stuff.
26:43 Speaker 01 Yeah. There is a very, I would say, popular notion at the time that if this is a satire, it's not intended as one. He kind of stumbled into it because he doubled down on the original period.
26:54 Speaker 03 Like an accidental B movie.
26:55 Speaker 01 Ebert called the characters interchangeable, which is the point.
26:58 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, these actors are bad.
27:01 Speaker 01 The whole point is that the cast looked like they stepped out of a Lenny Ripken stall film, right? And Casper Van Dean, who is Johnny Rico in this film, is all just clean, sharp lines. Like, he looks like a fascist illustration. He looks like a-
27:13 Speaker 05 Bunch of rectarian youth poster.
27:14 Speaker 01 Exactly. There is a scene where he gets flogged shirtless in front of these, you know, regiments of troops. That is there for a reason. That is there for many reasons, and none of them are sly. They're all right there on the surface. So the reason that one works for me is because of this change in tone, because taking the source material and interpreting it, right, which is what we're talking about here. Yeah.
27:35 Speaker 03 A good adaptation is a separate animal from the book. I feel like if you want to be a loyalist to the book, just read the book.
27:44 Speaker 01 Exactly.
27:45 Speaker 03 Like, there's a movie I love called Little Children.
27:47 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
27:48 Speaker 03 By Tom Peralta.
27:49 Speaker 05 Yep, Peralta.
27:50 Speaker 03 And like, the movie is within the tone of the book. But like, the ending and other things are different, and it still reaches me.
28:01 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:01 Speaker 03 Like, I'm not gonna be like, well, actually, this is what happened in the end. Like, I don't care about that. I go into the movie not wanting to, like, play the greatest hits. I want a new idea, a new thought.
28:15 Speaker 05 I think this is why, in some ways, I really love when people adapt Shakespeare to the screen. I'm a little bit done with seeing A Million Twelfth Nights onstage, actually.
28:25 Speaker 03 Listen.
28:25 Speaker 05 But when I see, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio and Clara Danes, you know, making a mess of the language, which I used to be annoyed by, and now I'm like, good for them, you know, and changing the ending, you know, like, literally, like, they see each other, like, that's amazing, like-
28:42 Speaker 03 It's even more tragic.
28:43 Speaker 05 Exactly. It's also just like, what balls you have to have to be like, you know what, well, I have an idea. Like, I got a note, you know?
28:51 Speaker 01 Exactly.
28:52 Speaker 05 I love it.
28:52 Speaker 01 I've got some notes.
28:54 Speaker 05 If you can tell me something new, then like, that's culture. That's culture. Tell me something new.
29:02 Speaker 01 That's culture. Tell me something new. That's great. We want to know what your favorite book to film adaptation is. Tell us what it is and also tell us why. Because my favorite thing about this conversation, we had a lot of different whys. So I want to know about yours. You can find us on Facebook. And we had a lot of book to film adaptations we wanted to talk about, but that we couldn't get to today. So we made a list of more of our favorites at Letterboxd. You can find a link to that in our episode description. And that brings us to the end of our show. Barry Hardeman, BA Parker, Andrew Limbong, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you.
29:33 Speaker 05 Thanks.
29:34 Speaker 01 And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katso, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Riedy. Audio engineering was performed by Travis Hagan, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.
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