Works where you liked both the book and the movie, but for different reasons

[joebuck20]

For me, "The Running Man" by Stephen King would fit into this. I love the book for the dark, dystopian vision it presents, and its prescient portrait of reality television run amuck. I would love to one day see a serious movie made from it.

But I also love the Schwarzenegger flick, which has almost nothing to do with the book, other than the protagonist having the same name and him competing on a murderous game show in the future. In my mind I see it pretty much as its own thing, which is a goofy, over-the-top, Reagan-era action flick. Not great cinema by any means, but a good "turn-your-brain-off-for-90-minutes, blow-shit-up-real-good" romp, complete with professional wrestler-style villains.

So, what are your instances of liking both the book and the movie, but for different reasons?

[Infovore]

Fight Club. I loved the book for Palahniuk's writing style. The movie was...different, but very good.

[Rubixcube]

I'm not sure if it counts as they were produced parallel rather than one being based on the other but I like both versions of 2001:A Space Odyssey. The novel is an extremely well executed sci-fi novel, the film is a visually stunning experience.

The Shining, the novel actually focuses on Jack Torrance and seeing the character repenting his former actions and rebuilding himself only to slowly descend into madness is quite powerful. The film on the other hand focuses on Danny, and is significantly scarier IMHO. In fact it's one of the very few horror movies I find truly terrifying.

[astorian]

There wasn't much resemblance between Philip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, but I loved them both.

[well he's back]

LOTR - books I love cause, well, they're Lord of the Rings. Movies I love for the visualization of middle earth, the music, the actors, the cinematography.

To kill a Mockingbird - books for the beauty of the writing; movie for the beauty of the acting

[hogarth]

"Congo" the book and "Congo" the movie were quite different, but I thought they were both fairly entertaining. The book was kind of a techno-thriller and the movie was kind of a pulp adventure.

[Freudian Slit]

Originally Posted by Rubixcube

The Shining, the novel actually focuses on Jack Torrance and seeing the character repenting his former actions and rebuilding himself only to slowly descend into madness is quite powerful. The film on the other hand focuses on Danny, and is significantly scarier IMHO. In fact it's one of the very few horror movies I find truly terrifying.

I was thinking the Shining, too. The movie comes off as very surreal, very off, whereas the Jack of the book is very fleshed out and sympathetic. I agree that I like both (prefer the book personally, though) but for very different reasons as you say.

[Robot Arm]

The Princess Bride (the movie) is very faithful to the book, but I've always thought the tone was just slightly different. The book is a satire of fairy tales, the movie is a parody; but both are done with great affection for what they're poking fun at.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; the book, for being brilliant and excellent in every way, and the movie for giving me a mad crush on Zooey Deschanel.

[flodnak]

I'll second The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have never, alas, heard the radio plays that started the whole thing off, but I love the books for being funny and smart and funny and charming and funny. The movie is also a very good story - a very different story that happens to share most of the same characters and a few of the same events, and got criticized for not being a film of the books, but to heck with that. I liked it, and it introduced my kids to the Hitchhiker's universe.

[Rubixcube]

A few more.

I like all three version of Dune. The novel for the world building, the movie for the gorgeous scenery, and the miniseries for the characters which I thought shined a bit more than in the novel.

I like Jurassic Park the novel as a relatively intelligent science fiction story of man pushing nature too far. I like the movie for the dinosaur action which has yet to be topped on screen.

[Eonwe]

Ditto on The Princess Bride (screenplay written by the author of the book, by the way).

As Robot Arm says, the movie is a light parody, with a happy ending; I might even say that the parody elements are pretty minimal, and most of the film is just a straight-up fairy tale, with an occasional left-handed jab at a trope or two.

The book, however, is a biting satire about adulthood, growing up, and the pursuit of happiness.

Both are excellent, but are really opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak.

[Infovore]

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the first one) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the book) are different in many ways. The movie is one of my all-time favorites, and I also love the book (I like the movie better--apparently Roald Dahl hated it).

[mbh]

Logan's Run. The book and the movie are drastically different, but I like both. Neither is an Immortal Classic, but both are entertaining yarns.

The book I read was a mass-market paperback, with several pages of photos from the movie. So I knew from the beginning that the book and movie had little in common. So when I finally saw the movie, years later, the changes didn't infuriate me.

[bobot]

I liked both the film and print versions of:
The Shining
The Shawshank Redemption
Misery
One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest
Although ALL of the books were better.

[Rhythmdvl]

Kubrick rules this thread.

2001: A Space Odyssey
The Shining
One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest
Lolita
A Clockwork Orange


I haven't read the sources for his other films, but these alone dominate the topic.

[Krokodil]

The Pope of Greenwich Village
True Confesssions
Rebecca (Hitchcock/DuMaurier)
Frankenstein
Thank You for Smoking (The adaptation dropped the ball in a few places, but made some very good decisions in others, like giving the kid a bigger part)

[Raguleader]

Starship Troopers. Love the book for it's discussion of warfare, politics, and the character's dry wit. And of course, for the powered armor. Love the movie for the music, scenery, and beer-and-popcorn fun of it all.

Flight of the Intruder. The movie was actually a pretty danged effective adaptation of the book. Minor characters that revolved around the plot (but had no direct part in it) got merged together, many of the day-to-day hijinks got trimmed out, but the story was effectively the same. Big change was that the protagonists in the movie came off as a bit more idealistic than the jaded guys in the book due to one big difference:

SPOILER:

In the movie, Cool Hand and Tiger decide to go on an unauthorized raid on a stockpile of North Vietnamese anti-aircraft missiles in Hanoi. In the book, they decided to bomb the Communist Party Headquarters instead, and they missed their target to boot.

[Miss Woodhouse]

Ditto on The Princess Bride.

Also (and probably a bit obviously) I love most Jane Austen movies. Most of them center on the love story and miss quite a bit of the biting humor, but are still quite fun pieces in their own right. The books are masterpieces, of course.

[N9IWP]

Originally Posted by flodnak

I'll second The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have never, alas, heard the radio plays that started the whole thing off, but I love the books for being funny and smart and funny and charming and funny. The movie is also a very good story - a very different story that happens to share most of the same characters and a few of the same events, and got criticized for not being a film of the books, but to heck with that. I liked it, and it introduced my kids to the Hitchhiker's universe.

http://www.zbs.org/catalog/product_i...roducts_id=102

I really like the radio series, I like the later series better than the books.
There is also the TV series (and some record albums also, not to mention the Infocom game)

Brian

[Thudlow Boink]

I would second some of the ones other people have mentioned, and add:

I liked (though didn't love) Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter the movie as a cheesy, over-the-top action flick, and the book as an interesting alternative take on history and Lincolniana.

If this counts, I love both the books and the BBC adaptations of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster. Some of the reasons why apply to both versions; but I love Bertie's jaunty first-person narration in the books, and Fry and Laurie's performances in the show.

Originally Posted by N9IWP

http://www.zbs.org/catalog/product_i...roducts_id=102

I really like the radio series, I like the later series better than the books.

That link is kind of expensive; I've found the BBC series for less on Amazon and at Audible.com.

[oreally]

2001 and Jurassic Park. Tempted to say Da Vinci Code but I found the movie just passable and "liked" a bit too strong.

[TreacherousCretin]

Originally Posted by bobot

One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest

Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink

...both the books and the BBC adaptations of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster.

Me too.

My entry in the sweepstakes: Deliverance.

[Maserschmidt]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

Kubrick rules this thread.
A Clockwork Orange

I came to post this one. The book is a clever political fable; the movie is...well, you know what the movie is.

[detop]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

Kubrick rules this thread.

<snip>
One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest
</snip>

It is not a Kubrick movie. It was directed by Milos Forman.

[Rollo Tomasi]

Hello, SDMB! First post!

My vote is for The Exorcist. The book is very much about Father Karras and his demons, and I love the psychological complexity of it. The movie has some of that, but it's more of a scarefest. It lacks the depth of the book, but it's grade-A entertainment.

I also have to admit to fondness for dual versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the novel and the Disney version. I absolutely love the book, and while the movie bears very little resemblance to it (especially with the stupid wisecracking gargoyles), I think it has one of the best scores and set of songs ever for a Disney movie. "Hellfire" is sheer brilliance.

[phxjcc]

The Right Stuff

Book for the depth of detail.

Movie for the perfect casting, just dead solid perfect cast choices.

[CalMeacham]

Who Framed Roger Rabbit -- The movie is amazingly good, and not just because of Jessica Rabbit's excessive voluptuous body. It really did set out to show the place of animated cartoons in American culture, to send up and prauise film noir, and to be a consistent mystery film on its own. The animation by Richard Williams is superb. The gathering of major animation characters in a single film was a coup for someone (it's worth seeing Donald Duck and a pre-Chuck Jones Daffy Duck sharing screen time and jabs, and to see Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse on screen simultaneously). The film is surprisingly sexy and sex-positive and gets away with stuff I'm surprised they did in a Disney film. And it gives a film noir a happy ending (and marital fidelity!) without feeling like a total sellout. Plus it's filled with tons of little throwaway bits that you don't catch untril repeated viewings.

Gary Wolfe's novel was an off-the-wall blend of noir novels and comic (not cartoon) characters, with all the dark stuff still in there that the film excised. An interesting piece of oddball speculation.



Pudd'n'head Wilson was done as part of Nebraska Public Television's 5-film Mark Twain series. The entire series was pretty awesome, bringing to the screen seldom or never-before-dramatized Twain pieces. This one featured Ken Howard in the title role as an eccentric freethinking Southern attorney. It's an interesting mix of humorous character and a biting story on race relations that Twain wrote in his later years. They changed Twain's orioginal story for the film, but the result is so good that I can't complain.

[Annie-Xmas]

The World According to Garp--The book for Irving's fantastic writing and his tale of 1960's sexual mores; the film for the great acting of Robin Williams, Glenn Close, and John Lithgow.

[salinqmind]

LotR, of course. I re-read the trilogy every couple of years, but I just adore the movies. I never get bored with either.

Harry Potter - I've only read some of HP, but again, I adore the movies. As I have not read every page of every book, I'm not perturbed by any changes or compressions that cause such an outcry among fans.

Gone With The Wind - I like the movie, I apologize, I think it's all that an older epic movie should be, andl I think it's perfectly cast. (though Paulette Goddard would have been just as good as Vivian Leigh, IMO). The book is awesome. Much more detailed in every way. More history, more psychological stuff between Rhett, Scarlett, and Ashley, more descriptive of life after the war ended and how very difficult llife was. Plus the book has a character or three that were left out of the movie altogether - I'm thinking of Will, and Scarlett's other children, and I'm sure I'm leaving someone out...

[Annie-Xmas]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--The book for kowing from the get-go that the story is being told by a crazy Indian who pretends to be deaf and mute, and how McMurphy recognizes him as a fellower pretender practically from the first time they meet.

The movie for that moment when Chief says "Thank You" and McMurphy's reaction.

[GargoyleWB]

The Circus of Dr Lao, and the 7 Faces of Dr Lao.

The book is a gem of brilliant wit, writing, and wordplay. The movie (if you can get over the antiquated racism) is wonderfully wacky-60's-ensemble-cast fun.

[magnusblitz]

Originally Posted by Raguleader

Starship Troopers. Love the book for it's discussion of warfare, politics, and the character's dry wit. And of course, for the powered armor. Love the movie for the music, scenery, and beer-and-popcorn fun of it all.

This is what I came into the thread to post. I also love the "and that's how we became space Nazis" undertone of the movie. I think the book has some interesting ideas, but the movie makes a decent deconstruction/satire of it.

[salinqmind]

Originally Posted by GargoyleWB

The Circus of Dr Lao, and the 7 Faces of Dr Lao.

The book is a gem of brilliant wit, writing, and wordplay. The movie (if you can get over the antiquated racism) is wonderfully wacky-60's-ensemble-cast fun.

Ensemble? Tony Randall IS the ensemble! I love this movie, always forgetting how good it is until it actually shows up on TCM once in a blue moon. And I have the book somewhere, too.

[Raguleader]

Originally Posted by magnusblitz

This is what I came into the thread to post. I also love the "and that's how we became space Nazis" undertone of the movie. I think the book has some interesting ideas, but the movie makes a decent deconstruction/satire of it.

The whole trilogy of movies make for some fun over-thinking fodder, actually. They present just enough extra info to let you totally reevaluate what they just presented you and what "actually" is going on (each movie, in context, is a movie-within-a-movie, complete with commercial breaks, you never see the "real" world of the SST movie universe.)

[slm2955]

harry potter series

[oreally]

Originally Posted by salinqmind

Ensemble? Tony Randall IS the ensemble! I love this movie, always forgetting how good it is until it actually shows up on TCM once in a blue moon. And I have the book somewhere, too.

Exactly - wow what a blast from the past, forgot about this, great little movie and showcased Randall's surprising versatility. Underrated actor.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by salinqmind

Ensemble? Tony Randall IS the ensemble! I love this movie, always forgetting how good it is until it actually shows up on TCM once in a blue moon. And I have the book somewhere, too.

Well, not entirely. There's Barbara Eden and Arthur O'Connell and a host of other actors who mever became famous, but contribute wonderfully. And there's Ji Danforth's animation, whivch is sub-Harryhausen in execution, but still cute.


Randall didn't play ALL the faces. He reportedly refused to get into the Yeti suit in that desert heat. Although, to make up for it, he also plays a nondescript customer sitting on the benches.

I like the movie, but I don't love it. It seems to be missing sometrhing. When I found Finney's book it was a revelation -- great bizarre writing. I sto;le two epigraphs from it for my own book.

[salinqmind]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Well, not entirely. There's Barbara Eden and Arthur O'Connell and a host of other actors who mever became famous, but contribute wonderfully. And there's Ji Danforth's animation, whivch is sub-Harryhausen in execution, but still cute.


Randall didn't play ALL the faces. He reportedly refused to get into the Yeti suit in that desert heat. Although, to make up for it, he also plays a nondescript customer sitting on the benches.

I like the movie, but I don't love it. It seems to be missing sometrhing. When I found Finney's book it was a revelation -- great bizarre writing. I sto;le two epigraphs from it for my own book.

I spotted him as the customer on the benches!

Not meaning to ignore the other actors (and somehow this movie reminds me of "The Music Man"). I've always wondered if Tony Randall did play all the faces. Did he play The Medusa, anyone know? If so, he makes a very comely woman! My favorite part he played was the blind seer, that was rather chillingly depressing and kinda stopped the show for me, for a moment. Though Barbara Eden getting all hot and bothered by Pan was rather hot and bothering, lol.

[wedgehed]

Originally Posted by phxjcc

The Right Stuff

Book for the depth of detail.

Movie for the perfect casting, just dead solid perfect cast choices.

You beat me to my first choice, so I'll go with my #2 for much the same reasons.

L.A. Confidential. I'm amazed that anyone had the balls to attempt to make a movie out of this. The movie is simply pared down perfection. The book is so sprawling that the movie seems like a suppository pulled from its ass.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by salinqmind

I spotted him as the customer on the benches!

Not meaning to ignore the other actors (and somehow this movie reminds me of "The Music Man"). I've always wondered if Tony Randall did play all the faces. Did he play The Medusa, anyone know? If so, he makes a very comely woman! My favorite part he played was the blind seer, that was rather chillingly depressing and kinda stopped the show for me, for a moment. Though Barbara Eden getting all hot and bothered by Pan was rather hot and bothering, lol.

I'm pretty sure he played Medusa, as well as Pan, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana (although in the book Apollonius had the Merlin role), and, of course, Dr. Lao. He didn't play the Abominable Snowman (which is never called that in the book -- it's a Charles Beaumont imposition. The book calls it a Russian ot a Bear or something) or the Giant Serpent (although the internet Movie Database credits him with both) -- the serpent was played by a hand puppet and a Jim Danforth animation, and resembled O'Connell, not Randall. And he doesn't play the Loch Ness Monster (just a Sea Serpent in the book) So he doesn't actually play seven faces, but the symbolism is all that's important. The DVD box the imdb shows gets seven faces by using the unadulterated Randall (the customer, I guess) along with the yeti.

[oreally]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

He didn't play the Abominable Snowman (which is never called that in the book -- it's a Charles Beaumont imposition. The book calls it a Russian ot a Bear or something) or the Giant Serpent

Well the serpant was an "animation" and I think he did the voice, so yeah he was that character.

eh on the others. You could have inserted any of a zillion other actors in there and not lost a thing (assuming the Eden character was hot ). Randall was the movie.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by oreally

Well the serpant was an "animation" and I think he did the voice, so yeah he was that character.

eh on the others. You could have inserted any of a zillion other actors in there and not lost a thing (assuming the Eden character was hot ). Randall was the movie.

I'm not sure he did the serpent voice -- it sounds like O'Connell (who it resembles in some scenes), so I've always suspected he did the voice. But I admit I dpon't know for sure. (By the way -- the scene between a businessman and the serpent is in the book, so at that point the movie's being fairly faithful. It goes on much longer in the book.)

[Wheelz]

Moneyball.
A fascinating book for baseball fans, but probably nobody else.

The movie somehow turned a book that was primarily about how to best interpret baseball statistics into an engrossing dramatic narrative about how people relate to and value one another. A different kind of fascinating.