Today’s Book Club post is a mashup with Joe’s Movie Club and looks at the differences between how a book and film handle a story differently. You can see some of the Movie Club videos on my YouTube channel, including my review of the new 4K video of Godzilla (1954) from the Criterion Collection.
Today’s post by Joe Farace
“Reviews are not feedback forms. Reviews are for readers, not for authors (or manufacturers) as taste is entirely subjective.”—Cinzia DuBois, Lady of the Library
“The secret of life is to waste your time in ways that you like.”—Jerry Seinfeld
One of the first pieces of advice new authors get is “never read the reviews.” If the reviews are great, you’ll get a swelled head; if they’re bad, you’ll be depressed. Much like driving past an accident on the highway, you sometimes can’t avert your eyes, you just gotta look (and cause miles long backups.) For some new writers, bad reviews can cause writers block, although my late friend Ernie Mau believed “there’s no such thing as writer’s block; writers write.” But I still looked…
One Amazon reviewer said this about one of my books: “I read one of this guy’s magazine articles and hated it, so this book can’t be any good.” Since his comments were not a review of my book, I tried getting Amazon to delete this comment but they never did. I once had an actual reviewer write this about one of my books—I think it was my infrared book—saying that he liked it but thought the tone of my writing was “overly familiar” and that I wrote it like “I was talking to a friend.” That was in 2006, and it was the last time I read a review. Nowadays when I grab a link from Amazon for one of my books to include in these posts, I ignore any of the reviews attached to it. It’s hard to avoid but I do it to maintain (what’s left of) my sanity.
The Movie vs. The Book
It seems its a given that a movie is never as good as the book it’s based on. I’m sure there are more than a few movies that are as good as their source material but I’d like to talk about one—Lost Horizon—that I think is much better than the novel it’s based on. Lost Horizon was a 1933 novel by the English writer James Hilton. The book didn’t make much of an impact upon its initial publication but after Hilton’s 1934 novel, Goodbye Mr Chips became a best seller, people rediscovered Lost Horizon. Then in 1939 it became the first book that was published as a paperback, which was then an innovation in the publishing world. As a Pocket Book it went through 40 printings, selling several million copies, helping to make Lost Horizon one of the most popular novels of the 20th Century. And yet…
After watching Frank Capra’s 1937 film of Lost Horizon for the umpteenth time. —it’s one of my favorite films—I decided to purchase a paperback copy of the book and while reading it was surprised at the similarities and the differences. Let me say this first, all of the changes to the novel make it much better than the book. The screenplay was by and Robert Riskin, Capra’s longtime collaborator but Sidney Buchman, a blacklisted writer, is an uncredited contributor.
The screenplay for Lost Horizon embraces the external structure of the book but the entire internal aspect of it is different, more coherent, logical and more impactful, The opening of the movie and the book, which features an aircraft rescuing four people from riots at an airport in Baskul, a fictional Chinese city, are almost identical, with the film being somewhat more dramatic. Steven Spielberg liked the opening of the film of Lost Horizon so much he did a take-by-take remake of it for the scene that follows the “Anything Goes” musical number that kicks off Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, much as Tarantino stole the opening scene of The Graduate for the opening credits of his wonderful film Jackie Brown.
Once the passengers get on the plane to escape China, the book and movie diverge, To start with Riskin and Buchman add a new passenger—Lovett a paleontologist. The female missionary of the novel becomes, Gloria a woman with a questionable past who is terminally ill. Hugh Conway, the protagonist of the novel, becomes Robert Conway in the film. Conway’s diplomatic colleague becomes his brother George and then it all proceeds as per the book until they reach Shangri-La.
By the way, the book was the first time the words “Shangri-La” entered our lexicon. Trivia: FDR’s presidential retreat in Maryland was originally name Shangri-La. Later President Eisenhower changed its name to Camp David, after his son, and it so remains to this day,
A young Chinese woman in the book becomes two people in the film: Jane Wyatt’s Sondra and Margo who portrays Maria. a Russian refugee. It’s the love story between Conway and Sondra that forms most of the second, magical act of the movie but this is nowhere to be found in the book. In the film the encounters Conway has with the High Lama, gently portrayed by San Jaffe, are briefer and more interesting, than what happens in the novel, while making more sense within the concept of the novel. The third act plays out almost identically to the book, with the film being more believable while giving something approaching a happy ending while the book leaves you hoping for a happy ending. See the movie for yourself and maybe read the book afterwards for the total Lost Horizon experience.
Upcoming Reviews
(All subject to my whims…) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, A Lethal Walk in Lakeland, a cozy mystery by Nicholas George and John Banville’s The Drowned. In the automotive space there’s The Million Dollar Car Detective by Stayton Bonner and one I’m anxiously looking forward to reading. because I’m hoping to acquire a 1995 Corvette by the end of the year, The Complete Book of Corvette.