Can a book ever successfully be turned into a film

A. It's probably fair to say that more people will see a film adaptation of a book than read the original. This is certainly true of big films taken from literary novels such as The English Patient and Captain Corelli's Mandolin and may even be so of mainstream bestsellers such as Bridget Jones's Diary.

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Q. Will authors ever be happy about the adaptations
A. It would be impossible to quantify the number of films that are adapted from books, particularly novels, but it is fair to say that it is a very high proportion of the total output. It would be even harder to find out how many authors were happy with how their story had been treated by the film industry. For a living author or a dead author's estate, a successful film - at whatever compromise to the original - means a second, often tastier bite at the cherry, and it is doubtful if even aggrieved authors would turn down the royalties on the basis of artistic differences. Sometimes disaffection comes down to casting rather than the actual changes to the story.�Helen Fielding, the author of Bridget Jones, was unhappy about the casting of an American, Renee Zellweger, in the title role, but was mollified when she saw the performance.

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Q. Don't authors ever write the screen adaptation of their book
A. Frequently, and thus they must take some of the blame if it doesn't work. This is not to say that they will have absolute control, even if they are involved, as the commercial requirements of a film are somewhat different from those of a novel. Huge amounts of money is involved in putting a film together, compared with the production cost of a book. In some cases the film actually proceeds the book or story. Graham Greene's screenplay for The Third Man became a novella after the film, and the book 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, who co-scripted the film based on his short story The Sentinel, was published as a novel only after the film had been released.

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Q. Can a mainstream film ever be better than the book from which it is adapted
A. It is hard to jam several hundred pages into 100 or so minutes of film, and the levels of character insight that are possible on the page can be hard to translate on to the screen. It can also ruin one's own visualisation of a book, as a director's interpretation is rarely the same as one's own. But an obscure or trashy book can be transformed into a bigger event on film. One example is Angle Heart, taken from the novel Fallen Angel by William Hjortsberg, a major film based on a novel hardly anyone has read. And who now reads Gone With the Wind The film will be what everyone remembers. Then there is 'versioning' of classics, such as Scrooged (A Christmas Carol) and The Claim (The Mayor of Casterbridge). What - usually - long-dead authors may have to say about such things we can only speculate at, but it may introduce people to the originals.

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Q. What else can go wrong
A. In the last couple of weeks the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien and the publishers of The Lord of the Rings have fallen out with the makers of the current film version of the fantasy classic, not over liberties being taken with the plot, but over merchandising. What would Sauron, the Dark Lord, make of that

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By Simon Smith

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