According to Ian Fleming’s description, James Bond looks like this.
In Carl Sagan’s Contact the character of Palmer Joss is a 50-ish world weary autodidact whose resume includes everything from being a tattooed man in a carnival to revivalist minister who enjoys an increasingly close platonic friendship with Ellie Arroway.
In the movie he’s played by a (then) 20 something Matthew McConaughey as an idealistic and horny theology doctoral student who has a one night stand with Ellie followed by her never calling him back, then comes into contact with her again years later.
In the movie version of LA Confidential, the 3 main detectives are basically seeking redemption in one way or another. In James Elroy’s book, they and every other cop are corrupt and evil, and never seek redemption let alone find it. I’ve read most of his books, and I don’t think there is a single character in any of them who could be called heroic or even “good”. The closest he comes are with his victims, who are basically helpless sheep for slaughter.
The book isn’t even the same story. It’s just that the characters happen to have the same name.
Heck, they even changed the title, since the original is Who Censored Roger Rabbit? and Roger is the not the suspect, but the victim.
Yeah, I think this is more the sort of image he had in mind.
Dutch Schultz. I suppose I could see Sizemore. Though now days he’d be getting a little long in the tooth ( as is Hoffman ). The Dutchman was apparently only 33 when he was gunned down. He rose fast and died relatively young.
Actually IMO Otto ‘Abbadabba’ Berman looked even less like his actor counterpart. Steven Hill was 69 when he made that film and Abbadabba died around age 43-55 ( his birth date seems uncertain ).
Yeah, but she’s Emily Deschanel. Your argument is invalid.
True, he mentions Hoagy Carmichael, but maybe not that particular photograph. For the films I believe he preferred David Niven, who is actually mentioned by name in You Only Live Twice.
Yes! That’s what I meant.Should have read through the thread first.
Dreyfuss’ Hooper is also unmistakeably an urban Jew. In the book, Hooper was supposed to be a preppy WASP. That’s one reason he appealed to Ellen Brody- he was of her socio-economic class, and her cop husband wasn’t.
Am I the only person to have noticed that while the name “Ellie Arroway” might look good in print, it’s difficult to say? Unless it’s carefully enunciated, it sounds like a stomach noise.
(pause)
As much as I adore Jodie Foster, and her performance in Contact, the book was far superior to the movie.
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In the original book “Mute Witness”, Frank Bullitt is a middle-age Boston cop who likes ice cream. They sexed him up a little for the movie “Bullitt.”
That’s what I read somewhere- haven’t actually read the book.
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practically all the 9 walkers in the lord of the rings trilogy were incorrectly portrayed in the movie, except maybe for the two hobbits merry and pippin.
In the books, Tarzan could fly airplanes and drove fast cars. At one point he’s kicking back in his mansion in England smoking a pipe before he returns to the jungle.
Frankenstein’s monster of the book was fast, agile, and well spoken, unlike the lumbering idiot of the films. IIRC, Shelley said he was 8 feet tall and carried firearms.
at least in one movie version, i remember the monster attempt to speak french and play the fiddle.
Oh, yeah, I remember that great line in the original novel:
It’s a Hollywood six shooter.
Peter Fallow in Bonfire of the Vanities. Wolfe wrote this character as a pretentious British journalist hell-bent on slandering Sherman McCoy and American society in general. In the movie, he’s played by Bruce Willis as a wisecracking, friendly New York reporter who winds up extending a hand of sympathy to McCoy (who was, himself, played all too sympathetically by Tom Hanks.) In all fairness, it’s damn hard to adapt a Tom Wolfe novel into a movie; his characters are far too unlikable to ever carry a mainstream film.
Um… This novel mainly took place in Geneva and Ingoldstadt. There were other locales, none of them in Transylvania. Also, you forgot the part where he took his revolver up to his lips and coolly blew the smoke out of the end of the barrel.
IIRC, they basically switched the boy and girl characters in bringing “Jurassic Park” to the screen - something about wanting the girl to be the computer whiz, contrary to early '90s stereotypes about boy computer geeks.
BTW, I’m amazed to learn that “Mr. Belvedere” was inspired by a book!
In one of the books the real Tarzan is considered for the role of Tarzan in a movie and is rejected.
And let’s not forget Susan Calvin - a repressed robopsychologist in the stories, a beautiful pistol-packing momma in that travesty of a movie.