OK, a possibility that I’m sure someone here can confirm or deny:
I sometimes think I’m the only adult in the USA who has not seen Forrest Gump. I had read the book and really did not like it.
I’ve been told by more than one person that the movie is not like the book.
I agree 100%.
Exactly. The dedication to the book is “To `Sarge’ Arthur George Smith - Soldier, Citizen, Scientist - and to all sergeants anywhen who have labored to make men out of boys. R.A.H.”
Can the source be “real life”? Because I’d nominate Bonnie and Clyde (1967). No - they weren’t two 1970’s young rebels. They weren’t Robin Hood types. The reality was much more sordid.
Now I’m curious what film that was claimed to be “Based on a True Story” was the furthest from the truth (excluding propaganda or supernatural pieces)
Fargo? 
The Atlantic seems to think it’s satire.
I liked most of his Dutch films. Soldier of Orange, The Fourth Man, Spetters, Keetje Tippel.
I’d say that Lawnmower Man is the winner, as suggested above. The only thing the short story and the movie had in common was that both contained a lawnmower- and that was shoehorned in to justify the title.
As for the Heinlein sidetrack, I believe he was completely serious and in favor of the society depicted in “Starship Troopers”. You have to remember that he served in the military during peacetime, loved it, and was deeply wounded when he re-enlisted and wound up riding a desk. Issac Asimov told a story about being chewed out by him when he complained about the mess hall food during the war, that’s how pro-military he was. He was apparently one of the few who actually believed L Ron Hubbard’s lies about his service, and loaned him money on that basis, despite hating him personally. Heinlein was a true believer.
I can’t help but think that his attitude might have been different if he had gotten his wish and seen combat. Wonder what alternate Heinlein’s “Forever War” would have been like.
Between 1933 and 1934, Heinlein served on the USS Roper and earned the rank of lieutenant. After surviving tuberculosis and chronic sea sickness, he was given early retirement in 1934.
Just to clear up that you meant “emotionally wounded” as opposed to the other kind.
The oldest sources upthread are from the 19th century. What about Greek classics and Shakespeare? I’ve heard there have been many modern retellings of The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, etc.
Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet is a work of art, but I was surprised that he tweaked the ending slightly. I seem to remember the play’s big climax taking longer than was shown in the film.
Where The Odyssey is concerned, Kirk Douglas will always be Ulysses in my mind.
Forrest Gump is a great nomination to this thread. You can safely give the movie a try.
Salome (1953) - Along with casting 35 year old Rita Hayworth as the teenage princess of the Bible - and that she only removes 6 of her 7 veils during her climactic dance - this version makes other major changes, at once making her character more sympathetic and the story much sillier.
Vice and Virtue (1963) - Roger Vadim’s version of de Sade’s novel Justine updates the action to the Nazi occupation of France, while adding a moralistic ending that is the antithesis of the novel’s intent.
No. The happy ending was from the 1938 movie with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Until then the play had always been done as originally written. The fact that My Fair Lady pretty much copied it verbatim is said to be the reason that the movie was embargoed from the mid-50s to sometime in the 70s. The screenplay is even credited to Shaw because the new final scene doesn’t include a single line of dialog that Shaw hadn’t already written in the original script.
It appears there were multiple “happy endings.” The first was added during the play’s first run in 1914. It was actually the work of Sir Herbert Tree, the first actor to portray Henry Higgins.
From Wikipedia:
Pygmalion was the most broadly appealing of all Shaw’s plays. But popular audiences, looking for pleasant entertainment with big stars in a West End venue, wanted a “happy ending” for the characters they liked so well, as did some critics.[13] During the 1914 run, to Shaw’s exasperation but not to his surprise, Tree sought to sweeten Shaw’s ending to please himself and his record houses.[14] Shaw returned for the 100th performance and watched Higgins, standing at the window, toss a bouquet down to Eliza. “My ending makes money; you ought to be grateful,” protested Tree, to which Shaw replied, “Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot.”[15][16] Shaw remained sufficiently irritated to add a postscript essay, “'What Happened Afterwards”,[17] to the 1916 print edition for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.
He continued to protect what he saw as the play’s, and Eliza’s, integrity by protecting the last scene. For at least some performances during the 1920 revival, Shaw adjusted the ending in a way that underscored the Shavian message. In an undated note to Mrs. Campbell he wrote,
> When Eliza emancipates herself – when Galatea comes to life – she must not relapse. She must retain her pride and triumph to the end. When Higgins takes your arm on ‘consort battleship’ you must instantly throw him off with implacable pride; and this is the note until the final ‘Buy them yourself.’ He will go out on the balcony to watch your departure; come back triumphantly into the room; exclaim ‘Galatea!’ (meaning that the statue has come to life at last); and – curtain. Thus he gets the last word; and you get it too.[18]
(This ending, however, is not included in any print version of the play.)
Shaw fought against a Higgins-Eliza happy-end pairing as late as 1938. He sent the 1938 film version’s producer, Gabriel Pascal, a concluding sequence which he felt offered a fair compromise: a tender farewell scene between Higgins and Eliza, followed by one showing Freddy and Eliza happy in their greengrocery-flower shop. Only at the sneak preview did he learn that Pascal had finessed the question of Eliza’s future with a slightly ambiguous final scene in which Eliza returns to the house of a sadly musing Higgins and self-mockingly quotes her previous self announcing, “I washed my face and hands before I come, I did”.
A friend of mine is a stuntwoman and stage combat trainer; one of her first roles was as an extra and stuntwoman on the first Starship Troopers film. She recounted spending two full days of shooting hanging from a rope, halfway up a cliff face, firing blanks from a rifle at a spot in the air where the aliens would be added in CGI. Verhoven’s direction to the actors in those scenes was, “Shoot da bugs! Shoot da bugs!”
The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy should have been about six, she, Uncle Henry, and Aunt Em should have been the only Kansas characters, the Good Witch of the North should appear only at the beginning, the Wicked Witch of the West should not appear until Dorothy and her friends travel westward, Glinda, the Sorceress of the South, should appear only at the very end (thus fixing the movie’s biggest plot hole), and lots more. In particular, it should be clear to the audience that the Scarecrow is the smartest one of the party (and its chief tactician), that the Tin Woodman is tender to a fault, and that the Lion, no matter how much he complains about being afraid, never once backs down from a threat; all three already have exactly the thing they think they want. And Oz, of course, is real.
Of course, it’s nowhere near as bad as the earlier drafts would have been.
William Goldman wrote both, and I think he knew what he was doing: the framing story in the book is a bitter, sarcastic post-modern deconstruction of, well, post-modernism and is just deeply literary/meta. It wouldn’t have worked in a movie. If anything, it’s a book written by a screenwriter about why everyone likes movies more than books, and then the movie is just illustrating his point.
The Greatest Story Ever Told adapting the bible? 
mmmmm Renee Soutendijk 
- maybe my alltime favourite screen hottie.