They even made their own film about it:
The “Coffee is for closers” scene in Glengarry Glen Ross, which was added in the film for Alec Baldwin and doesn’t exist in Death of a Salesman, the book it’s based on (in fact Alec Baldwin’s character doesn’t appear at all). But its the primary thing that is remembered about the whole thing.
When that guy refers to them as, “Murder-Happy Characters”, I cannot help but fall over laughing. 
Neither Daniel Boone nor Davy Crockett ever habitually wore coonskin caps. Crockett may have worn one a few times, when he was campaigning for Congress, and capitalizing on the popularity of a stage play called The Lion of the West. But even then, it was a staged joke.
And of course in the original Jurassic Park book Ian Malcolm dies at the end from his injuries sustained from fighting the T-Rex. Then he survived the movie, and so in The Lost World novel they retcon his death and make him the main character for some reason.
Weird. I’ve watched Glengarry Glen Ross a few times, and I’ve never once thought about Death of a Salesman, which I’ve also seen.
With something like the tenth movie in total and two reboots coming out, Planet of the Apes seems topical. Sure, the big twist ending of the original movie is reasonably close enough (and probably far more relatable during the Cold War) compared to the twist in the book, but it sure seems to come across differently to me.
I read the book more than once when I was young, and still remember a fair amount of it, but the movie pretty much drowns it out even in my mind.
I was today days old when I learned that there was a book in the first place.
So showing my ignorance of cultural matters. I actually thought the movie was based on death of a Salesman not the sequel which had the same name as the movie.
I don’t blame them for turning the slippers/shoes to ruby for a Technicolor movie but people leap on a plot hole in the movie – If Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, knew the footgear could get Dorothy back home, why did she send the kid off to see the Wizard who, in turn, sent her and her gang to off the Wicked Witch of the West?
ITB the Good Witch of the North was not Glinda but an unnamed good witch not as wise or powerful as Glinda, so she didn’t know. Named Locasta in the 1902 musical play by Baum, she sent Dorothy off to Oz after planting a protective kiss on her forehead and the story more of less happens as does the movie, the kiss convincing the Wizard to see her and does protect her from WWotW.
After the Wizard accidentally flies off without her in his balloon, the King of the Winged Monkeys suggests the Good Witch of the South – yes, Glinda – might be able to help, and after another set of adventures going south she does indeed, know the shoes can transport Dorothy back to Kansas. The movie-makers presumably felt they needed to get on with it.
The whole, “it was all a dream” thing is movie only.
If you asked most people how Neverending Story ended, they would mention the movie ending where he yells out “Moon Child!!!” and goes into Fantasia briefly, returning with Falkor to abuse his bullies.
In the book, that is purely the intro. Bastian spends 75% of the book in Fantasia, gradually forgetting the real world along the way.
I love the book.
They did the opposite with Forrest Gump’s mother. She didn’t die in the book but she did in the movie. When Winston Groom wrote a sequel to the book, Gump and Co., after the movie’s release, he opened with Forrest describing what had been happening to him since the previous book and one the things he says is “Mama died, an that’s all I got to say about that.”
French author name of Pierre Boulle. I read it when I was in like grade 4 because I was POTA freak. Rod Serling was the dude responsible for the screenplay, so it had that feel.
Boulle also wrote The Bridge over the River Kwai, which is the source of another great movie.
On a trivia note, Boulle received an Academy award for the the movie script, which was officially credited to him. But Boulle had nothing to do with writing the script; he didn’t even speak English. The script was actually written by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, but they were both blacklisted and couldn’t be credited.
Interesting the way thing turn out sometimes.
Glengarry Glen Ross isn’t really based on Death of a Salesman except in the loosest sense possible. Rather, it was adapted from Mamet’s play of the same name. The “coffee is for closers” scene and Blake character, though, was an original invention for the film.
Gary Wolf’s Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is a murder mystery detective novel set in '80s LA where “toons” are comic strip characters who talk by causing speech balloons to appear above their heads. The film, on the other hand, originated as a sequel to Chinatown that was heavily repurposed, and went on to eclipse the novel. Wolf would even write a subsequent Roger Rabbit novel set in the film continuity, with the first novel being retconned as a dream sequence.
The Godfather… the movie is only about 60 percent of the book …
The Oompa Loompas that most people know come from 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – green hair, orange skin, white eyebrows. They come from Loompaland (without clarifying where that is).
In Dahl’s original story, however, the Oompa Loompas are Black pygmies from “the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle.” They were shipped to the factory in crates and were paid in cocoa beans. Dahl himself would revise his depiction in later editions to remove some of the uncomfortably colonialist overtones.