I’m reading The Passage, by Justin Cronin, right now. It’s not terrible, but it’s really not my kind of thing, and I’m mostly just slogging through to the end. But there was one scene I just got through that made me roll my eyes hard. It was an action sequence that was so clearly written to sell the movie version of the book that it completely took me out of the story. Our band of heroes is divided between a train and a Humvee. They’re being chased by a giant pack of “virals”, which are basically just very fast, scary vampires. There’s lots of climbing onto the top of the train, and jumping back and forth between the two vehicles, and just lots and lots of moments that would look totally badass on the big screen. I think at one point, the text actually reads, “For one breathtaking moment, the Humvee teetered on two wheels…”
I don’t really know why this irritated me so much, but it did. I read a book to read a book, not to have someone describe a movie to me. I guess it’s inevitable and understandable that writers have an eye looking forward to the possibility of further commercialization, but still. I don’t know. It just bugs me.
Apparently some of the later Wizard of Oz books are like this. I read the first four (I think)and I haven’t noticed it, but from what I understand, after the first one was adapted into a musical, Baum tried to make it a little easier to adapt others. I guess one of them even included a dancing chorus line. I could see how that might take you out of the story.
I didn’t read the Twilight or Harry Potter books, but were those written to make movies? What about the Hunger Games books? I read the HG books, I assume the Twilight and Harry Potter books are similar in that even if the author wrote them to make a movie it wasn’t done in such poor way as to take you out of the book. That is, it didn’t quite feel like you were reading a screenplay with notes in the margin.
I don’t think Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books specifically to make movies. It is true that by the time she was writing the later novels, it was obvious that all of them would be adapted for the big screen, but her original intent was a series of seven novels.
But the IMDB trivia for The Pelican Brief says that John Grisham had Julia Roberts in mind for the lead role in the film version when he was writing the novel.
A lot of Michael Crichton’s later books read that way; the terrible time-travel one in particular stands out to me, but you could even see it on Jurassic Park, which was a great thriller as a book.
I seem to recall that there were some early interviews where she stated quite firmly that she would NEVER agree to sell the movie rights because she wanted to retain full control of her franchise. That must have been before they backed up sixteen dozen dump trucks full of cash to her front door.
Ben Mezrich is the guy who wrote the book The Accidental Billionaires, which is what the movie The Social Network is based on. He’s a hack of a writer but has gotten identified as the guy who finds real-life stories about young up-and-comers who stumble into something huge. His books are poorly-written movie proposals at this point…
For one thing, I believe that she insisted that the cast be British. I think at one point they thought of casting an American actor in the lead role but she vetoed that.
I actually really enjoyed reading his book “Bringing Down the House” about the MIT blackjack card-counting ring. Didn’t see the movie though.
Would 2001: A Space Odyssey count? Didn’t the book get written at the same time the movie was being made?
But the movie idea, in the form of Kubrick asking Clarke to work on it, came first. The book is more of the best novelization ever. It was done well before the movie was finished, but was not published until the movie opened, much to Clarke’s frustration. He needed the money at the time. Not afterwards.
I read The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks when it was a big to-do. It read very much like a screenplay to me. So much so, I thought they could just add the characters name and a colon before each paragraph and it pretty much would be it.
Dan Brown also does this. The Da Vinci Code is a prime example.
Sphere broke into movie-script format for several pages.
I have a theory about writers whose works devolve into movie treatments. Robert Crais is my poster boy for the notion. About five or six books ago, his style changed completely and the books became (for me) tedious and unreadable.
I think it’s when the author makes the shift from** describing a story s/he sees unfolding around them** to transcribing a movie they see up on a screen in their mind. It usually happens on the second novel after their first big Hollywood sale, and thereafter.
You are right and she always insisted that she would not think of the movies she wrote. I think book 7 illustrates that it was a book series to her first. It has a lot of “woods” scenes and ends with a conversation instead of a fight.
I don’t think she said this, though I’d love to read a citation where she did.
Well, she approved quite a bit of stuff and she guided them away from certain decisions, but I don’t know how much control she had.
Yeah, the whole “We thought Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) was dead but turns out, ahhhhh, he’s not!” was a modern day deus ex machina at its worst!
The original Jurassic Park was not only gonna be a film before the book came out, but before it was even written! Crichton was talking with Spielberg about just the idea for his next book and all he said to him was, “Dinosaurs & genetics” and Spielberg instantly got it. He replied, “Oh my god, you mean they’re coming back?!” Crichton wouldn’t confirm or deny anymore but Spielberg then & there asked, “You’ve got to let me make the movie!”