I have to agree here. When Carrie eschews her mothers dirty pillows and sees herself as a young woman I think she carries herself as headstrong and sure. As much as she can with a witch of a mother like she had. And then all hell breaks loose an I am just glad Betty Buckley got out of there.
I have to agree here. When Carrie eschews her mothers dirty pillows and sees herself as a young woman I think she carries herself as headstrong and sure. As much as she can with a witch of a mother like she had. And then all hell breaks loose an I am just glad Betty Buckley got out of there.
I’ll nominate Mr. Roberts. The book was okay - but the movie is just plain excellent. Some of it because of things that had to get cut, IMNSHO. But a large part is just the cast was so… wow.
I like the movie much better than I like the book. But that’s not so much because the book is flawed, or of lower quality - it’s more a matter of taste. The tone between the two works is very, very different. Basically, the book is a more ‘adult’ work - happy endings aren’t, there are no guarantees in life, etc. The movie is far more optimistic. I think a lot of it is going to depend on whether you prefer upbeat, but probably improbable, endings versus the more ambiguous but more realistic endings.
I have to admit that despite the theme some of you have given me books to think about. I have never read “Jaws”, “Psycho” or “Princess Bride” although I have seen them all in film version. I don’t know what I can say about Princess Bride, if I read the novel will I feel like I have spent my time toward something? Because the movie did not do anything for me. Sorry.
For me, it’s the movie Carlito’s Way based on Torres’ novel After Hours. DePalma took a hood in a rambling, confusing book and turned him into someone genuinely trying to go straight. You could sympathize with Carlito, and you could believe his conflicts even if you couldn’t identify with them.
In the novel, Carlito was an unrepentant thug. He sort of makes an effort to go straight, but not out of any genuine desire to make a new life as much as he’s afraid to go back to jail. He ran a violent dive to make ends meet. In the movie, it was a classy place. Also during the climax of the story where
Kleinfeld kills the lawyer, in the movie this is the turning point where Carlito realizes that his loyalty to his friends really will get him killed. In the book, it’s just a blip on the screen, and Carlito doesn’t give a fuck one way or the other.
Oh, and speaking of loyalty, the book Carlito doesn’t have any. He shivs his friend in prison just to get in good with the Italians so that he can keep his hand in the drug game after release. Also, he doesn’t like Kleinfeld or care about him at all, even though Kleinfeld helped him out. DePalma did a better job on that work than the novel deserved.
Yeah, not ugly is the impression I got too.
I got the book out to check. King says Carrie was a " . . . frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her back and neck and back and buttocks . . . " Other words King uses (or has other characters use) are bovine, sweaty, fat, whiny, bag of lard, ape, and at one point he puts a “bubble of green mucous on her nostril”. God, he really hates her, doesn’t he?
Pimples on the neck and back and uhh buttocks? is something I daresay alll of us girls have had. As for the ohter words, it’s been a long while since I’ve read Carrie, but can you justify these perjoratives? Were they said by other students? Were these these students jealous? Were they perhaps envious of this girl because she was so innocent? Look , I don’;t know how i would reaact to an of this shit. I;m a lot older now and I don’t need shit. Jesus just let it go now.
I like the book of the princess bride a lot, so to me it doesn’t qualify for this thread. But I prefer the movie, not because of the Morgenstern thing in the book (though that does get a bit tiresome,) or because of the ‘tone’ thing you mentioned, which is definitely a good distinction between the two.
To me, the pacing and plot structure just works better in the movie. My stock example of this is Inigo and the ManInBlack on top of the cliffs of insanity. In the book, Inigo has a HUGE flashback about his father, the six-fingered man, and his training as a swordsman while waiting for the man in black to finish climbing up the last of the rocks. Ho-hum.
In the movie, Inigo asks him about having six fingers once he’s up, and ends up telling him the main details of the story much more briefly. It works well, and it has the positive side effect of setting up a bonding moment between these two warriors that really pays off in the climax.
Hm. I’ve read Carrie twice, and I never got that she was anything but butt-ass ugly.
When I first saw the movie, my first reaction was that Cissy Spacek wasn’t ugly enough.
Another difference is that Carrie’s Mom, in the book, is not only fat and ugly, but much, much scarier, and much more fully developed as a character. I think Kubrick missed the bus on that one.
Pimples, yes. Pimples on the face and back, yes. Pimples on the neck and butt? Thank goodness I was spared that!
You know, that’s something I’ve often noticed in film adaptations: The protagonist is made notably more sympathetic than in the book. Compare Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon’s character in the film, or Barry Lydon in Thackeray’s novel vs. Kubrick’s movie. In the books they are total, unredeemed, nearly heartless bastards – but we the readers sympathize with them, to some extent, because we invest a lot of time in getting to know them and have a window on their inner lives. I guess no director is up to the challenge of putting that across in a two-hour movie.
For me, it’s Forrest Gump. I don’t even know how they pulled that movie out of that arrangement of pages and letters.
Oh, definitely. Cissy Spacek’s Carrie might have been lightly mocked for her naivete, and maybe for the way she dressed. In real life, somebody like Susan would have taken her shopping and showed her how to use makeup, and the gym teacher would have given her a copy of Our Bodies, ourselves.
The Cissy Carrie wouldn’t have inspired the hatred that the girls had for the Carrie from the book.
Like Monstro said, De Palma was smart in casting her, because it made Carrie a really sympathetic character.
Yeah, Monstro, I do thank Gods that you were spared that.
fuck it, im too drunk
I’m unfamiliar with both this book and movie.
What’s it about? 
Seconded. I came in specifically to post this.
Originally Posted by Sunshine and Smiles
For me, it’s Forrest Gump. I don’t even know how they pulled that movie out of that arrangement of pages and letters.
I liked the book…but it’s scope was small. When the movie came out, I never expected it to be this sweeping saga of the 1960’s.
Preach it, sister! I came in specifically to point this one out as well. The movie was entertaining and fun. The book (which I read on the principle that The Book Is Always Better) made my head hurt. Yuck.