No long setup here, folks.
Tell us about a book or short story you love and are certain would be ruined by being made into a movie.
I’ll start with a tale by Andre Dubus: “Dancing After Hours.” It was the title story of one of his last short story collections, and it’s about a waitress in a restaurant trying not to be emotionally closed off. What action there is is mostly internal, and I would have no desire ever to see it done as a movie.
Next?
Dune
I, Robot
Starship Troopers
Ha,ha.
I’m not really interested in slamming movies that have already been made.
The first thing that came to mind: I am happy with all of Salinger’s oeuvre never being filmed. Some characters should just remain within musty old pages, waiting to be discovered as they were, away from the prying eyes of the illiterate. I think the whole Glass family would just be too precious and quirky on film anyway.
Since you’ve disqualified all of runner pat’s answers, which were the first one’s that came to my mind as well…
Good Omens
Everything else Pterry and/or Neil have ever written.
For me it wouldn’t be a story “I love too much” to be made into a movie. I wouldn’t want to see a story not suited for cinematic treatment made into a movie. I’ve seen plenty of stories I love made into movies that I love. And far more made into movies that I hate. There’s not much correlation between how i feel about the story and what kind of movie it makes. And i can’t think of any that I’d rather not be made into movies simply because i love them. The ones I wouldn’t want to see filmed are those that would not make good movies, whether because i thought they’d do a bad job, or because they’re not filmable.
Lots of H.P. Lovecraft falls into this regime – he was all about creating a mood, and a lot of the story is description. Not much dramatic actually happens in the story. I just finished reading works by Catherine L. Moore – same comment.
I saw the thread title and immediately thought of Andre Dubus, though I would probably go with “A Father’s Story.”
[del]The Quiet Man[/del]
This is hard. Sometimes I think about trying to adapt something to film as an exercise.
But yeah, there are any number of stories that are too internal for film. One reason the romance genre is still tied to text-only.
I’m afraid someone is going to try and turn Stephen King’s Dark Tower series in a movie or miniseries. While it would be awesome to see the story done right on the big or small screen, it’s just far too epic to do it properly.
I really wanted to like The Stand miniseries, but c’mon, it had Molly Ringwald and Parker Lewis(Yes, it turns out he CAN lose). And it’s just much too much info to pack into a movie.
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
A REAL love story…and YES i am a bit sappy at times.
tsfr
And whatever happened to “The Talisman” movie? (maybe they did do something with it, haven’t looked it up).
“Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell” by Susannah Clarke has been rumoured for a while but…I can’t see it. And besides, David Bowie is way too old to be The Thistle Haired Man by now. Too long and esoteric.
“The Crimson Petal and the White” - sunk without a trace. Costume pictures?? Set in the past?? How passe!
Well, easier and more profitable to make 3-D movies about toys, and rom-coms (though not 3-D, I would hope).
Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life’ is one of my favourite stories ever, and it just wouldn’t work as anything but written text; the precise language used is so important to the story (it’s about linguistics) that you’d have to have it as narration over the entire film.
I know they made part of the Neverending Story, but it really was only the first 75 pages.
I like the rest of the book so much, I hope they never film it. It’s not something that needs to be filmed.
Yes, I’ve seen the Canadian TV show, too. It was…not great.
Oh, and:
Snow Crash. Technically, it could be done. I suspect it could have been done pretty well when it was first published. But I don’t think anyone in Hollywood then or now simply WOULD do it justice. I think it would end up looking way too serious.
I read it again last weekend (on my Kindle, no less), and it occurred to me that any attempt to visualize its content would flat-out REQUIRE the fashion of the late 80’s/early 90’s that seems so corny now. I believe that would be a big part of staying true to the flavor of the story.
It’s being made into a mini-series. While I love Romola Garai, she is the polar opposite of what I imagined Sugar to be and the more I think about this and look at the other cast choices, the less hope I have that I will enjoy this. The book is actually not something I would include in this thread – while I love it to excess, I think it’s very well-suited to mini-series treatment – but none of those actors are anything remotely like the characters as I imagined them and that pisses me off.
My favorite book from childhood, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, is one I’d never want to see made into a movie. Mostly because I feel very possessive of it and don’t want it made accessible to a wide audience, who of course could never love it as much as I do. 
Ha, this was right above the Ray Bradbury thread, and mine is one of his books:
Dandelion Wine.
Not because of any “unfilmableness”. Just don’t think watching it would have the impact of making the images in my head.
Though I would’ve said the same about Something Wicked This Way Comes, and they did do a good job on the film. Though how can celluloid capture the feeling of lying awake in the middle of the night in your boring, midwest town, when you’re certain something’s about to happen…
Same applies to Ender’s Game, but I’m scared that it’s only a matter of time until Orson Scott Card (or his heirs) need some cash, and they start looking for the latest Jake Lloyd ::shudder::
I spoke to soon! AGGGHHH!!
Time to start another thread - who should they cast?!
Avoiding those which have already been sullied:
Rendezvous with Rama
Childhood’s End
another vote for Good Omens
When I read the thread title, I immediately thought about Crowley’s “Little, Big” but on further thought I realized that, in the right hands, its whimsical and intricate nature would translate well to the screen. It’s the sort of story of Hollywood writers can grasp more easily than other fantasy fiction that breaks the bounds of the genre, strangely enough. So … I got nothing!
The Lord of the Rings.
snerk
Ok, uh … Winesburg, Ohio.