The Unfilmables: The Hardest Novels to Film: Now Disc. "Dr. Bloodmoney" (Philip K. Dick)

Very interesting list:

"The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film
January 11th, 2007 by eoin o'faolain in Directors, Movies


With the release and critical success of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, an adaptation of a novel once considered impossible to film, what better time to look into the process of adaptation. Most movies these days are based on literary sources. Which is ironic, considering the increasing lack of interest in books these days as opposed to the spoon-fed thoughts offered by Hollywood.

While many novels can be almost directly translated to screen, especially pre-20th century novels such as Jane Austen?s gossip columns, more recent novels can prove difficult. There have been bad novels turned into good films (pretty much everything Hitchcock Made, The Godfather), and plenty of dull adaptations of good books (Dune, The Unbearable Bore of Being in a Cinema to Watch This). There?s also a few oddities, such as Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman?s bizarre self-referential adaptation of ?The Orchid Thief?. But despite the film industry?s frenzy in snapping up adaptation rights, there remains a few novels many fear.

Below are what I consider to be the most difficult novels to adapt, and who, if any, is fit to do that job.


Ulysses

Considered to be the greatest novel ever written, Ulysses is ripe with obscure references, wit, and a style of lyrical writing that makes the book better said than read. There have been two Irish films, one in 1967 and other recent version in 2003, called Bloom. Both are utter failures, and the best they can do is have passages read over the basic action in a desperate attempt to maintain James Joyce?s stream-of-consciousness style of writing. It?s the cardinal sin of adaptation. A true adaptation of this novel would have to substitute the written associations and wordplay with a solely visual language, allowing the power of the image and editing to represent the novel?s essence. I should also give Joyce?s last novel ?Finnegans Wake? a nod for being the most unfilmable novel of all time, despite this.

If anyone can do it: Quentin Tarantino has displayed a habit of? just kidding. If the novel does truly require a focus on imagery as opposed to the word, then Wong Kar Wai has proven his ability for doing just so. In The Mood for Love was a simple story about forbidden love, explored in the most luscious of ways. It?s sort-of sequel 2046 was even more abstract, a rough circle around the idea of first love unregained filmed in the most mesmeric and sensual of ways. Unconvinced? Then check this out."




Haven't seen any of the attempts, but Joyce is better left alone, or given to someone with some insight to the Celtic imagination. Joyce is all ear, which means he is particularly unsuited to pictorial adaptation.

 

I would definitely say Finnegans Wake is the most unfilmable book of all time; they say it's a novel, but you couldn't tell it by me. And I actually read the whole thing; oy.

 

Ulysses is bad enough as a novel, I wouldn't even want to see someone make a movie of it.

 

I agree re: Finnegan's Wake...it must have taken you years, Rogue, to read all of it. I managed a page a day until I gave it up in the interests of my mental health, what there is of it.

You wonder why they would keep trying to film "Ulysses".

 

Next: "Cat?s Cradle"

"Although most of Kurt Vonnegut?s novels are unfilmable (That didn?t stop Alan Rudolph from making the horrendously bad Breakfast of Champions), Cat?s Cradle is one of his best, and most manic. The book?s narrator is researching the man who helped invent the atom bomb, and ends up discovering a substance that could spell the end of humanity. Richard Kelly, writer and director of Donnie Darko, adapted the book for Leonardo Di Caprio?s company Appian Way, but the project seems to have been dropped. Probably because it?s bloody UNFILMABLE.

If anyone can do it: Go on, give it to Kelly. Despite early reviews condemning Kelly?s new film Southland Tales, Donnie Darko was quite entertaining, and in some ways embodied the Vonnegut spirit."


I didn't know that they were actually *trying* to film this. I admire their optimism.

 

I disagree. It probably couldn't be a page per page translation to a screenplay but if you sift through the digressions and songs and jokes - there is enough of a plot to turn into an apocalyptic movie. It would need to be heavily adapted to the point of 'based upon' would only mean lifting the Ice-9 concept and a few of the main characters but I don't think it is unfilmable. Difficult. And perhaps impractical. But not unfilmable. If Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions could be done I don't see the problem with Cat's Cradle.

 

Maybe we should commission an 'unfilmable' screenplay.

My suggestion: "Ender's Game"

 

I wouldn't say unfilmable

In fact, it could be a pretty big success if they get P.J to direct.

 

My favorite Vonnegut novel is SIRENS OF TITAN. Like Cat's Cradle, I don't know how you could possibly film it. Getting the "tone" of it right on film would be challenging and I'm not sure how the literary humor would translate into moving images. It would be awful hard to do and get it right. Maybe some books are better left on the page.

 

Orson Scott Card has been working for years with producers and screenwriters to get a version of Ender's Game he's satisfied with (most likely also combining Ender's Shadow). The biggest problem is that, while it's incredibly visual and dramatic for the most part, it's just not really dramatically feasible. How do you make a very adult film starring all children who are good enough to play the parts... and wouldn't it be very R-rated? It just seems like a mess.

I haven't read Cat's Cradle so I can't comment on that.

In my Milton class, we were discussing the fact that Scott Derrickson who directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose has been trying to work on an adaptation of Paradise Lost (ok, so not technically a novel but still ). Some thought it was a cool idea.. arrrg... the only consolation I had was knowing form some people at my film program who know him pretty well that he was ditching the project. Apparently. One hopes. Seriously, how do you translate epic poetry into film? Especially when it's about some indescribable things?

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Agreed. I think it could be done. It has a solid enough plot. I do think the satire would be hard to translate though - I think that is a greater hurdle to put on screen.

I'd love to see it attempted. Cat's Cradle is my favorite of his books.

 

"The Wind Up Bird Chronicle"

"Hugely popular Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has penned nothing but odd novels, but his best is his most peculiar. It follows Toru Okadu in his attempt to find his missing cat, and then missing wife. Instead he finds psychics, oddballs, a well that transports him to a hotel room, shared dreams, and a damn spot he just can?t get rid of. Every time the novel appears to be gaining narrative momentum, it turns and twists surreal corners. I?ve only read the English translation, but this unsolvable mystery is utterly engaging, and possibly the best book of the last 50 years.

If anyone can do it: Initially I thought of David Lynch, but homeboy Beat Takeshi has proven his desire to take on all types of film, from comedy, violent cop drama, a mix of both, tap-dancing Samurai flick, and powerful parables. So why not have the country?s best film-maker make its best novel?"


Someone recommended this book to me in another thread, but I haven't been able to get a copy.

 

Yeah, but from what I hear, both of those films are pretty well train wrecks and not patches on the books; which is, I think, what they mean when they say 'unfilmable.' Sure you can put it on film, but by God, it will suck and it won't really be the book at all. At least that's what I think they mean.

 

Next: "The Third Policeman"

"Another Irish novel (what do you expect, when Freud said the Irish couldn?t be analysed?), this one was recently name checked by hit TV series Lost. It was a clever attempt to get people to furiously read it, for it has little to do with the confounding show. Although more conventionally written than Ulysses, it?s far more insane. Its narrator commences a journey to find a black box, supposedly containing money of the man he, and friend Divney, killed. The narrator (and his soul Joe, whom he often converses with) wanders into a police station, and thus enters a world of wordplay, bicycles becoming people (and vice-versa), a stick so pointy you only have to think of it to be hurt, and other bizarre trinkets and characters, leading to a damning twist. While hilarious, Flann O?Brien?s book contains little of the three-act structure, instead revelling in the asides, footnotes, and distractions, making it unappealing for Hollywood.

If anyone can do it: Spike Jonze is a man willing to film anything, plus the oddball humour of Being John Malkovich may suit the novel?s wit. When Tim Burton was good (well over a decade ago), I would have loved to have seen his grotesque sets. But please, please, do not let M Night Shyamalan anywhere near it, lest he make another 90 minute preamble to a twist."


I've never read this. I also didn't know Freud said that the Irish couldn't be analyzed. Doesn't surprise me (I admit to four Scots-Irish grandparents)

 

I don't know. I think At Swim-Two-Birds might be more unfilmable than The Third Policeman.

Flann O'Brien > James Joyce

 

Ze list for both the last two novels. I may have to resort to abebooks.

 

Ze list?

The Modern Library recently released the complete novels of Flann O'Brien in a $25 hardcover.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is, unfortunately, only available in abridged translation. The translator had a mandated length limit. He even gave the publisher both the abridgment and a full translation in the hopes they'd do the right think, but they didn't. Why abridge Murakami? It's ridiculous.

 

100 Years of Solitude

"This astounding piece of fiction resists the camera because it lacks any central character. Rather, it charts a century of a fictional South American town and its several generations of families. Gabriel Garcia Marquez?s novel is passionate, amusing, slightly satirical, and often surreal. Characters will fly past windows waving hello, and no one bats an eyelid. One character disappears from the novel by suddenly floating up into the air. It?s no wonder that this is one of the few books in this article that no one has even attempted to film.

If anyone can do it: It?s a toss between fellow Spaniards Pedro Almodovar and Julio Medem. Almodovar is more touching and his early films were fun, but I feel Medem is the better film-maker. The latter?s films are often literary in story, but manage to combine that with a sensual style of visualisation that makes films such as Sex and Lucia and Lovers of the Arctic Circle so wonderful."


For some reason, I thought they had tried to film this one.

 

Love in the Time of Cholera is the García Marquez book that's coming out as a movie, I believe. And I agree... this would be an almost impossible book to film. It's confusing enough on paper, I can't imagine trying to get the same understanding and feel on film. Um... of course, in my case some of the confusion may have something to do with the fact that I tried to read it in Spanish, which I don't recommend unless you're better at it than I was, but I think the comment still stands.

 

That was the one I was thinking of, I guess.

 

I really have a hard time imagining "100 Years of Solitude" working as a movie. I've read it many times in both English and Spanish, and so much of what makes it memorable simply wouldn't work on film, but if anyone could make it work, I would have to say it would be Peter Jackson, because of his work in Heavenly Creatures.

 

I love 'The Third Policeman.' I imagine it could be done best as an animated short with psychadelic music and very little dialogue, if any at all. Something along the lines of Roger Waters' 'The Wall.'

 

Now there's an idea...I bet several of these books could work in an animated format.

 

I thought The Brothers Karamazov would have had a chance of making it on there. A director would need quite a group of actors to pull a film adaptation off... even then I don't think one could properly convey all the emotions and thoughts of the various characters.

I'm only familiar with a few of the titles on the list and can agree on the nigh impossibility of proper film adaptation.

 

Next: "Remembrance of Things Past"

"Also known as ?In Search of Lost Time? (which makes it sound like a Jules Verne yarn), Marcel Proust?s contribution to the world of literature is so difficult to film as it?s so damn long. The novel is divided into seven books, each one long enough alone! Although I?ve only managed to read the first two books, the entire volume seems to be autobiographical, about a sickly young man who aspires to be a writer, despite the distraction of 19th Century society. Proust?s novels incorporate the idea of scents, sounds, and certain objects pushing associated memories to the fore. Probably more suited as a TV serial, there have been a few films, mostly adapting one of the books. The best is Time Regained, starring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich

If anyone can do it: The closing moments of Terence Malick?s New World displayed the kind of editing that can summarise years in seconds with aesthetic brilliance. He?s the man for such a mammoth, ethereal task, though half of it would probably be shots of trees."


Very long, very hard to adapt.