In the book Red Dragon Hannibal Lecter is given use of a phone to call his lawyer, and he instead dials another number. In the movie, he is given a hotline phone which automatically connects to his lawyer. He taps the hook to dial the number, which is possible on the old-style pulse system.
Please don’t mention ‘Red Dragon’ when ‘Manhunter’ had a similar idea first.
I susspect a lot of films where the book was written after the film will fall into this category
, ‘Star Wars’ comes to mind. Can’t think of anything like this where the book came first.
Jaws. The book was wretched and laughable, particularly the “affair” between Hooper and Mrs. Brody.
Tried and failed several tiems to post this… strange.
I feel the *Lord of the Rings * movies improved on the books in many ways, most importantly by clarifying the narrative. The books sort of meander.
Lord of the Rings cut out all the fluff and told the story in spectacular fashion. I just sold my LOTR box set because I can’t imagine trying to read all that again. Especially when the movie’s on DVD.
Fight Club was a shitty book.
The Last Detail considerably improves on its source novel.
Forrest Gump. After seeing the movie, I found the book on which it was based. Terrible. The author had be quoted as bemoaning the fact that before the movie no one was buying his book. For good reason IMHO.
Can’t say it improved on the book, but The Shawshank Redemption movie came pretty damn close, considering that the book was pretty good as well. Although maybe I’m just partial to Morgan Freeman…
I don’t know if Adaptation greatly improved on the book so much as provides a deeply interesting companion piece to it. The book, The Orchid Thief, is pretty much straight-up nonfiction and quirky journalism, but the film turns that foundational material into something emotionally powerful and philosophically relevant.
The Godfather.
Harrison Bergeron (sp?) the short story was painfully dull and dumb and it was turned into a fairly interesting movie.
Lawmower man, Frankly how did they get that movie from the story? It’s about a fat guy that eats grass his mower cuts.
The Commitments
Roddy Doyle is good author, and very funny, but his combination use of dialect and instance on telling the story through lyrics makes it a difficult book for someone not Irish or familiar with the lyrics to get through.
(His other Barrytown trilogy books are far more readable).
I’ll second Jaws and Forrest Gump, and throw Get Shorty in the mix. The movie was terrific, but the book? Meh…
Como agua para chocolate / Like Water for Chocolate. Incidentally, I believe it was the writer’s husband who made the film.
About a Boy. THe boook was also good but I think the movie excelled. Also, The Princess Bride. The movie is a classic, the book is merely a good read.
The Professionals improves on the book (A Mule for the Marquesa by Frank O’Rourke) by merging the six bland members of the rescue team into four distinct individuals with depth and flaws. It also take a pretty by the numbers adventure story (the “cavalry” even rides to the rescue) and turns it on its head by asking “Who’s really the kidnapper?”
The Americanization of Emily adds a satiric anti-war tone missing from the book; it also makes the main character more likable. He’s still a smug opportunist, but in the book I found myself rooting for bad stuff to happen to him. The romance is also handled better in the movie, in the book it’s just a foregone conclusion that he will get the girl.
Being There. The book reads like a rough draft needing to be fleshed out, a fable rather than a whole story. The movie has more structure, and is less repetative than the book.
Point Blank The book, The Hunter by Richard Stark/Donald Westlake,
is a starightforward genre pulp crime drama, the movie is an odd ghost story with film noir touches. You remember the movie afterward, not the book.
Valdez Is Coming. The movie handles the racism in the Old West theme in a more meaningful way than the book, mostly by fleshing out all the characters more convincingly. The characters are mean or even evil just out of macho ornriness in the book, they’d act that way no matter the race of the other person.
I don’t remember the moving staircases being in the Harry Potter books, but they were certainly a great touch.
I second About a Boy- the ending of the book, while good, permanently anchored it into the early 1990s
[spoiler]it takes place on the weekend after Kurt Cobain’s death*
but the movie ending made it more temporally universal.
Cold Mountain lost many sideplots in the move from book to movie, but also made it more coherent and made Ruby’s relationship with her father more believable.
Simon Birch, imo, was an improvement on A Prayer for Owen Meany by clipping off so much of the book that tended to drag and meander and making it a shorter but more fluid narrative. (OTOH, the great shortening of Cider House Rules for the movie detracted.)
Almost forgot a couple of biggies:
Changing the setting of Chocolat to the 1950s imo made it far more believable.
And the film of GWTW was in many ways more enjoyable than the book (gone being the 16 inch waistlines and other unbelievable elements), though I missed many of the supporting characters who were cut. With the exception of Ashley (no teenager would swoon for Leslie Howard) I thought the characterizations were better in the movie than in the book as well. The movie is of course far more mythological than historical, but then the book wasn’t that historically grounded either.
Well, actually, they didn’t. King sued and succeeded in getting his name removed from the film; it simply bears no relation to his story other than the title. No idea why.
On topic, I liked Field of Dreams much more than Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, but that may be due to the fact I saw the film first and had its specific storyline firmly entrenched in my mind when I read the book. Changing the author to the fictional character portrayed by James Earl Jones in the film from J. D. Salinger seemed to work well (although I believe this was done for legal reasons as well as story).