And there was I thinking that he writes them thinking how they’ll turn out as movies. Oh the cynicism!
People 
read the Godfather because it had lots of sex in it.
I’m not sure that this technically qualifies, but I thought the movie for Jurassic Park: The Lost World was waaaay better than the book. Of course, the descriptor of “decent” for the movie is itself questionable…
Okay, can I tweak the original question a bit? There seems to be a consensus that the likes of Clancy, Crichton and whoever wrote The Horse Whisperer (and possibly Stephen King) benefit from adaptation on the big screen, especially if they get a decent director.
But what about classic books (however you define that)? Any examples of films that are better than the book? I’d suggest one to get the ball rolling, but can’t think of any.
Actually, even some of the more faithful adaptations of his books somehow end up missing something. Pet Sematary comes to mind. The movie was extremely faithful to the book, but not nearly as good, I thought. Of course, then you’ve got great adaptations like The Shawshank Redemption and Misery.
Oh, I don’t know, I really liked the book.
The film version of Psycho was considerably better than the book.
I’ve mentioned this one before: The Hunger.
Not by any means a great movie, I wouldn’t even call it a good movie, but it’s solid two-star vampire fare. For a long time I was puzzled as to why the movie wasn’t better, since so much talent went into it. There was a good cast, a good director, a good score. So where did they go wrong?
With the source material! I read Whitley Streiber’s original novel because I foolishly hoped that the book would be better than the movie and provide me with the “good version” of an enjoyable but mediocre story. Turned out to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I was determined to complete it though, so I sat down and plowed through the whole thing in about two hours.
Turns out the screenplay was amazingly faithful to the novel (the casting choices were excellent, and even minor details like the names of secondary characters were left unchanged), while at the same time making numerous improvements. Basically, the screenwriters cut most of the unappealing or just plain stupid parts and managed to get the characters through the same basic plot without requiring them to act like idiots. In the book Streiber tells us repeatedly that the vampire Miriam is smarter than a human, but we never see any sign of this in her behavior.
As her husband John deteriorates both physically and mentally, he also becomes violent and makes mutiple attempts to kill her. Miriam inexplicably puts off dealing with him for most of the book. “Oh dear, he’s tried to kill me again…guess I’ll have to do something about that one of these days.” The only reason offered is that she’s waiting for him to become weak enough to handle easily, but he’s already so weak that he can’t even bring down a full-strength mortal for feeding anymore. I was hoping that when he destroyed her precious rose garden out of spite she’d finally get mad enough to act, but the book drags on for some time longer before she makes any real response to the threat. In the movie she sticks him in a box in the attic before he gives her any grief. He eventually manages to break out and come after her, but at least she tried.
The only change that wasn’t a real improvement was the ending. Not that the book’s ending was all that great, but the movie added two “twists” and the last one seemed tacked-on and didn’t really make sense. If they’d ended the movie with the detective looking at the photo of Miriam, just before the final twist, I’d have considerd it an improvement over the book too. Almost every other flaw in the movie comes directly from the book, including the pointless lab-monkey subplot that’s suddenly abandoned partway through. Even the slow pacing and excessive “artiness” (oh, those endless shots of billowing curtains!) is true to the book.
You can’t really say Blade Runner’s an improvement over Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? since it has scarcely anything in common with the book beyond Deckard’s name and the existence of rogue replicants. Arguably Blade Runner is a better piece of art than Dyck’s book (though I don’t think I agree), but it’s no more an improvement on it than Babe is an improvement on Animal Farm. (They both have talking pigs, after all.)
MAS*H.
Not out and out crap as a book, but not much there to enjoy beyond the bare plot. And the movie was very very good.
Midnight Cowboy. The book by James Leo Herlihy was good, so I can’t really say it was a “crap book,” and the movie was way more than “decent.”
Dr. Zhivago. I kind of liked the movie, but could not make it through the book.
Fight Club*
Although to be fair, I guess the Fight Club book wasn’t crap, it just was no where near as good as the movie.
While neither was a masterpiece, I thought the film version of Bridget Jones’ Diary was superior to the book, which was sort of annoying and dumb.
About a Boy was a good book, but I think the movie was better. The climactic school talent show scene in the movie wouldn’t have worked nearly as well on the page, but the roughly equivelant scene in the book (which involves Marcus and his semi-girlfriend getting into trouble) didn’t really do it for me.
I also felt the character of Fiona was both more “real” and more sympathetic in the movie than in the novel. Much of the credit for this must go to Toni Collette for her excellent performance, but it also helped that the movie has Will talk her into seeing a psychiatrist and trying antidepressants. At the end of both the movie and the book she says she’s been feeling better recently and thinks she’s going to be okay, but in the book there’s no indication that she’s sought out any kind of treatment for her mental health problems. I couldn’t help but come away thinking that she was kidding herself and would soon cycle into another period of depression.
It was one of the first mass-market novels to eschew euphemisms and include graphic descriptions of sexual acts. I was in eighth grade, and I remember kids passing it around, saying “Check out page 26!”
girl…interrupted
Misery That’s the only SK book I can think of that was not as its movie.
All of John Grisham’s books are inferior to their movies.
The Joy Luck Club was a difficult book to read because the characters were hard to distinguish by name (Chinese names all look the same!) But the movie is one of my favorites.
The Color Purple was a good book, but if you’re looking to be as moved reading it as you were watching the movie, you will be disappointed. Women of Brewster’s Place is the same way.
The Posseiden Adventure
Has anyone actually read Sol Yurick’s novel, “The Warriors”? I’ve been looking for a copy for years - saw one in a second-hand shop once, but I had no cash and I couldn’t find it again when I got back.
I’m just curious. Could you give some examples of SOAF being racist and facist?