Even a great movie adaptation of a medium sized great book has to ditch so many sideplots and characters that I’d like to see some redone as an uncensored miniseries or multipart movie. My suggestions:
Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp- both just had too much material for even the greatest of screenwriters to capture in 2-3 hours. Both could be great if allowed the multigenerational scope to allow in some of the deleted moments and characters.
To Kill a Mockingbird- seeing the movie long after I read the book was actually a disappointment. It wasn’t bad, but some of my favorite moments and characters didn’t make the transition (Calpurnia taking Scout to her church, the “drunk” with a mixed-race family, Atticus’s sister, etc.).
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe- There was much to recommend the hit movie version, but I’d like to see Big George’s twins, the side characters (like Dot Weems and Young Ninny) and the modern plotline dealt with.
Confederacy of Dunces- the only way I think it would work would be as an HBO miniseries (perhaps with Philip Seymour Hoffmann or Oliver Platt in the lead).
The Straight Dope Code- a globespanning epic in which various Dopers, members all of the Priory of Cecil, left clues to the greatest mystery of history, but none of them can agree on what it is and the word CITE? is written everywhere.
Gone With the Wind- it’ll never happen, but I think it would be cool to see a remake featuring Scarlett’s older children, a more understandable Ashley Wilkes (Orlando Bloom, perhaps- there’s no way anybody would fall in love with Leslie Howard) and filmed on location with believable houses rather than the way too grand for the book Tara and the “Holy Mother of All Magnolias” overdone Twelve Oaks (if any Georgia planter had seen a house like that he’d have exploded). It’d be especially cool (speaking of will never happen) to simultaneously film The Wind Done Gone and air them back to back (with Dave Chappelle as Polk).
There’s no way to do it at the rate of one movie per book. I think it would make a great animated series if done in the right style. Each book could be a 13-week mini-series (with hour-long eps).
That’s odd- it gobbled my OP- well, I’ll take it the thread title is self explanatory enough. In the OP I mentioned:
To Kill a Mockingbird- include the deleted sections and characters (Calpurnia taking Scout to the black church, the “drunk” man with the biracial children, the inferences of incest in the Ewell family, Atticus’s sister, etc.).
Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp- again to restore the deleted portions of the novels that had to be changed or cut altogether to fit into a 2 hour movie.
Ragtime- the movie was not without its moments, but I would love to see either the full novel filmed as a miniseries or a movie version of the musical.
Almost anything by Dickens would be good - maybe having more than one novel overlap. Wouldn’t exactly be the cheeriest of mini-series, but Deadwood usually doesn’t have people rolling in the aisles with laughter either.
I have no idea what happened. I posted the OP, then hit “Reply to Thread” to add another movie, and somehow it posted another identically titled thread. IT’S A MADHOUSE!
To anybody coming in after this, please post only to the other “HBO” thread.
And thank you for pointing out my typo in that thead.
At any rate, here was my post in the soon-to-be-deleted duplicate thead/threat/thread:
"DUNE comes to mind.
Almost anything by Dickens would be good - maybe having more than one novel overlap. Wouldn’t exactly be the cheeriest of mini-series, but Deadwood usually doesn’t have people rolling in the aisles with laughter either."
