Ah, but the movie does have Richard Dawson playing a mean perverted verion of his game show persona. Dawson manages to achieve a certain sick brilliance in “Running Man,” despite having to work with such crappy script.
Amen to that! My favorite book. The movie… shudder The only thing I’m grateful for is that they didn’t call it Owen Meany. It would have been even more a travesty.
My biggest “missed the point by a mile” though is Starship Troopers. The movie should have been called Bug Mutants from Outer Space. It did not have the underlying political message that the book did, it changed barely mentioned characters into main characters, reduced the impact that other characters had to the overall story, made it more about blood, gore and yuch (along with the gratuitous sex) than about the actual. I was appalled by it. I understand that you can’t put every aspect of a story into a movie, unless you want an epic, but to totally bastardize a movie as badly as this one was…
Needless to say, I feel a little strongly about this one.
The great thriller Red Dragon, was turned into the mediocre Manhunter. The book showed us someone so twisted that it was like looking down into hell. The movie just gave us a homicidal nut. This was largely due to the fact that a novel can go into length explaining things that you can’t get across in a movie.
THE POSTMAN. If you ever watch that flick (God’s pity on you) watch for the part where Costner slides down a hill and
discovers a postal truck. From that point on their is a period of about fifteen minutes when (drumroll please) the movie ACTUALLY HAS A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP TO THE BOOK. It ends when the army arrives in the town. The rest of the movie takes a novel about how, as someone said, heroes are made by popular demand, from the most unlikely material, and turned it into a flick about how cool Kevin Costner is.
Ah well.
EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE. One of the best private eye novels ever written. Look what they done to it. There is a wonderful scene where the hero confronts the bad guy (a character who DOESN"T EXIST IN THE BOOK) in a parking lot.
They make vague threats to each other for what seems like hours while ominous music plays. Finally the music stops but the scene just goes on. It is as if the composer said “oh, the hell with it.” Good for him. I heard a rumor that the actors improvised that scene. It looks it.
FLETCH. Their are two separate crime plots in the novel. The ONLY thing linking them is that reporter Fletch is involved. The movie producers, presumably thinking audiences are too dumb to understand this, made the bad guy of one plot turn out to be BY SHEER COINCIDENCE the bad guy in the other plot as well. Lord love a duck.
BURGLAR. Based on books by Larry Block, who also wrote EIGHT MILLION WAYS… Bernie Rhodenbarr, a white male burglar, is played by Whoopie Goldberg. His lesbian sidekick is played by Bobcat Goldthwait (sp?). All of which would be fine if the movie didn’t stink. It did.
THE HOT ROCK. Not a terrible movie but the most cinematic part of Donald Westlake’s masterpiece is the scene in which the crooks break into a high-security insane asylum by driving an amusement park toy train through an electric fence, all of them wearing wet suits to avoid sparks. The movie left this out in favor of a stupid scene in a warehouse. Budget problems?
</rant>
The worst translation of all: Catch-22
A truly great book, a marvelous piece of satire and black humor, translated into a muddy, impossible to understand film.
Runners up, in no particular order:
2001
From Russia With Love, The Spy Who Loved Me, Casino Royale
Anything by Tolkien (so far, I’m cautiously hoping for good things in the new film
[slight hijack]
A well-written book is wonderful. You need to form all of the images in your own mind, you can go forward and back at your own pace and desire, and the author can convey all kinds of subleties that can never be done on the screen. It forces you to think, to participate. It’s horrible what Hollywood has done to some of the best books written.
[end hijack]
Thank you. I was preparing to step in to defend Dawson when I read your post. As long as I keep the movie separated from the book in my head (no great task, as I’m sure everyone here realizes), I can enjoy it for Dawson’s performance. I think of it as Dawson finally getting to do and say what he wanted to throughout all those long years of phony smiles and gingerly hugs. C’mon, don’t tell me you thought he was acting.
I always did kind of wonder how one played “The Running Man: Home Version” game, though. 
Bonfire of the Vanities epitomizes a bad translation from print to screen, and yet it’s been barely mentioned here. It was a great novel, with an interesting premise, and complex characters. I managed 10 minutes of the movie before ripping the tape out of my VCR. I seriously considered eating my deposit just for the satisfaction of casting it into the fire.
A lot of the titles that came to mind when I saw the OP have already been mentioned here, so I’ll just jump in with one that hasn’t. But before I continue, I want to thank all those who named Simon Birch in response to the OP. The book is a brilliant masterpiece; it is what I would choose without hesitation if I were stranded on a desert island and was permitted to have with me only one book for reading. The movie is a crime against Irving’s creativity.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man by H.F. Saint was a truly cool book when it came out. Years later, they adapted it to the big screen, starring Chevy Chase and {gag} Daryl Hannah.
Problems I had with the movie:
(1) They changed the antagonist almost beyond recognition. The movie version of Jenkins was nothing like the book version. Idiotic.
(2) They ripped out the characterizations of damn near every major character. Everyone was transformed into the palest shadow of the book versions.
(3) Hi Opal!
(4) They utterly and completely changed the ending. It does not end that way! The screenwriters responsible for this were thundering morons! Hannibal Lecter should pop open their skulls, remove the parts of the brain responsible for writing, marinate amd stir fry the pieces, and force-feed it down their gullets.
OK. I got that off my chest. I’m calm now. 
I don’t know about the others but I read “Diamonds Are Forever” then watched the movie. IIRC, there was no “diamond satellite” in the book. Bond was just trying to put the smuggling ring out of business with the usual Bond shanigans(sp?). I read that book long ago though, so if I’m wrong feel free to correct me.
You’re right that DAF has almost nothing to do with the book, but I think we have different definitions of “early”. Except for Dr. No the movies made during Ian Fleming’s lifetime are relatively faithful. From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball are pretty close, with the change of villain from Russian agents to Spectre or Goldfinger. You Only Live Twice was the first film after Fleming’s death, and it had nothing to do with the book (the screenplay was written by Fleming’s friend Roald Dahl, and not by Richard Maibaum, who did most of the Bond screenplays). On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was a return to a faithfual adaptation, but then ** Diamonds are Forever**, as you correctly observe, went off the deep end. It was also the last movie for which the Ian Fleming novel was released as a movie tie-in. After that they didn’t release any more novel tie-ins until Christopher Wood wrote novelizations for **The Spy who Loved Me[/b} and Moonraker that matched his abysmal scripts. The last movie to be really faithful to a Fleming novel was For Your Eyes Only in 1981. Octopussy had glimmers of the novel, but went for alternately good originality (God, the plot’s basically the same as Frederick Forsyth’s “The Fourth Protocol” that came out at the same time) and over-the-top bad.
Personally, I think all movies based on books are abominations. Every one ever made should be condemned for eternity. There has never been and never will be a decent book to movie translation, especially of literary books. Some modern books, like bestsellers, fare better because the author has in essence written a pre-screenplay adaptation, which goes a long way to explain the glut of awful books. When I read a great book the farthest idea from my mind would be “Hey, this would make a great movie.” I simply fail to understand why people (other than illiterates) would want to see great writing turned into a movies. Nowadays I refuse to watch any movie adaptations.
As to the original question, one of the worst adaptations was “A Clockwork Orange.” The movie’s theme was, in essence, a complete opposite from the book. Part of this stems from the fact the book was British but the movie was American and made from an American edition of the book that dropped the entire last chapter. I also can’t stand Shakespeare on the screen.
Sometime this year, I think, there will be two of the worst adaptations of time. Some grand idiot of idiots have decided that “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham and “Corelli’s Mandolin” Louis de Bernieres would be good movies. My guess is the decision was made by people who hadn’t read the books and learned that the content wasn’t at all cinematic.
I’d nominate The Naked Lunch for “the movie missed the point of the book altogether” but that’s making an assumption that the book has a point.
Do you REALLY think that “Of Mice and Men” (either version…the original, or the remake with Gary Sinese and John Malkovich) was an abomination? They were both pretty close to the book.
Do you REALLY think that “Of Mice and Men” (either version…the original, or the remake with Gary Sinese and John Malkovich) was an abomination? They were both pretty close to the book. **
[/QUOTE]
Never having seen either film version of “Of Mice and Men” I can’t say anything with first hand knowledge, but since every other film adaptation from other books has been a botched job, I have little reason to believe that these two movies are any different. It is like reading a book by an author you don’t like, then reading second book by the same author and not liking it, and going on to a third book by that author and not liking it and so on; sooner or later, if you have half a mind, you’ll learn that you just don’t like that author’s books so why keep reading on the off chance that there will someday be a book by the author that you do like? Time is too short, move on to good authors and leave the bad ones be.
Besides, the book “Of Mice and Men” is quite short and could be read in just about as much time as it takes to watch it. So why not read it?
The original film Of Mice and Men with Henry Fonda was quite disappointing for the singular absence of the critical closing scene. This closing scene is really a summation of the entire story and to omit it is a failure to convey the clearest moral of the story. In the book, Rose-O-Sharon (sp?) nurses a starving black man after the death of her infant child. This image was far too controversial (a black man suckling at a white woman’s breast) when the movie was originally released (early 1950’s I think). However, PBS recently produced a stage production of Of Mice and Men which I saw on television. I would describe the PBS version as poignant, powerful and very moving. In this respect the movie adaptation of the book was excellent, in my ever so humble opinion.
Jharding - you’re thinking of “The Grapes of Wrath.” “Of Mice and Men” is Lenny, George, and “Tell me about the rabbits.”
Dare I mention the humorless, meandering, poorly planned, cast, written, photographed, and directed attempt at Angela’s Ashes? Awful movie. I gave up partway through wondering if anyone involved had ever seen the book, let alone read it.
Any Disney adaptation. Of anything.
But don’t get me started.
Anyway, a thought on Hollywood executives who require that books be dumbed down when turned into scripts: who the hell do they think is buying the books in the first place? Especially wildly popular best-sellers with millions of copies sold? I mean, sure, the average print run for a book is barely four or five digits, compared to the usual audience of a film, but still… I mean, does someone honestly say, “We’ve bought the rights to this book, which has sold ten million copies in the last six months. But the plot’s too sophisticated for the mass audience…”
What drives me particularly nuts is seeing a book that was already dumbed to begin with getting further dumbed down in the leap to film… Excuse me?
– Bob
“bbbbbpppppptttttttt!!!”
That’s the sound of my brain fart concerning the mixup between “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men”
Thanks don Jaime for pointing out that gaff.
Have to comment on the John Irving adaptions. I wasn’t a big fan of Simon Birch, but I hadn’t read the book yet so it didn’t bother me. I then read Garp and Cider House Rules. Oddly enough, I have the exact opposite opinion of these movies than Irving himself. I hated Cider House Rules the Movie. It was a glossy, sugar-coated piece of shit IMO. The World According to Garp was a pretty good adaption, I thought.
However, I think that his books, while absolutely incredible stories, just don’t translate well due to the heavy emphasis on the internal struggles the characters have, which are so hard to communicate. jarbabyj said it all when she said that Owen’s (Prayer for Owen Meany) voice is different for everyone. Locking Irving into a box for everyone to see the same thing just destroys his work. Actually, it destroys everyone’s work, but you know what I’m saying.
Actually I didn’t think Hannibal was so bad…
I just reread the book over spring break. (My spring break was wild…No, I didn’t go to New Orleans…but I did travel to the world of canniblaism…:p)
If you compare the book to the movie, then the movie comes off looking kind of weak. With everything they leave out. But if you look at it by itself, then its good. The reason why I loved it is probably because I had completely forgotten the plot to the novel when I saw it. It’s more like a movie that has the potential to be really really good but limits itself a bit by not following the book. Still, I did enjoy it and it’s definitley not a movie I personally would consider worst book to movie.
But then, if all movies followed books faithfully, it might get boring. What’s the point of going to see a movie if its exactly the same? It’s a little more fun if you put a spin on it, take a slightly different point of view. Plus the time factor…you can’t keep everything. Unless you’re making a miniseries or something…
My own vote for worst movie to book? Probably Christine or The Running Man. Maybe Cujo. I’ve only seen a few, but these movies basically take away the entire feeling of the book. The Shining, I know, is in plot very different from the book, but still comes out all right. The first three don’t even touch the book at all.