BOOKS AND MOVIES: DOUBLING YOUR PLEASURE

BOOKS AND MOVIES: DOUBLING YOUR PLEASURE

Okay, the world continues to go mad, with Covid-19, racism, and social injustice rampant. (Tonight, for instance, they’re tear-gassing people in D.C. again, coronavirus cases in Arizona are spiking, and two megachurch conmen are claiming they’ve invented a new air conditioning that kills 99.9 per cent of the virus. Note: They haven’t.)

I spend most of my days yelling and/or screaming at the TV and obsessing about how nuts everything is and how many things need to be fixed, and today’s no exception, but some of the time, just to keep a tenuous hold on our sanity, my family and I try to think about stuff that has nothing to do with the mayhem around us. To that end, my husband quilts, my daughter does the Getty Art Challenge, I read Agatha Christie mysteries, and together my daughter and I make up lists of favorite books and movies.

We thought you might need to take a mental break occasionally, too, so we’re sharing this, but I don’t want you to think that we’re not still VERY AWARE of how much is wrong and how much we need to do to rescue the world from its current messes.

So, in that spirit…

My daughter Cord and I had so much fun coming up with our lists of books that we reread over and over again, that we decided to put together another list, this one of movies and books that you should definitely read and/or watch.

People always talk like it’s a given that the book is better than the movie. There are certainly plenty of examples of that, from Ross Lockridge’s RAINTREE COUNTY and William Goldman’s THE PRINCESS BRIDE to Carrie Fisher’s POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE or any of the movie versions of Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA. But there are also some where the movie’s way better than the book, like, say, JAWS and NANNY MCPHEE. There are also some where both the book and the movie suck, like MOSQUITO COAST. (When I went to see the movie–mostly because Harrison Ford was in it–it was terrible, and I thought, “Well, that made no sense. I bet the book is better.” The book was NOT better.) And occasionally you may even get a weird outlier like MEAN GIRLS, which has a great plot despite being based on a nonfiction (albeit interesting) teen self-help book.

BUT there are also lots of books and movies which are both great. Here’s my top ten list (in no particular order of excellence):

1. BOOK: THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by John Buchan
MOVIE: THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (1935, with Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll)
& THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (2008, with Rupert-Penry Jones and Lydia Leonard)

Most people today don’t know who John Buchan was, which is a pity, because he wrote lots of exciting adventure novels, like GREENMANTLE, PRESTER JOHN, and WITCHWOOD, but his most famous is THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS. It’s the story of an innocent man suddenly accused of murder and involved in a dangerous conspiracy, which is why Alfred Hitchcock was probably drawn to it. He made it into a movie in 1935 which is still edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, but also has a charming romantic comedy in it, and wonderful visuals. My favorite scene is the one at the end where a really moving death is counterpointed by a line of chipper, kicking showgirls. It’s Hitchcock at his best. I also love the 2008 version, done by the BBC, a darker and daring version set in World War I, which keeps the best of the Hitchcock movie while adding terrific touches of its own–including a completely unexpected ending.

2. BOOK: THE YEAR THE YANKEES LOST THE PENNANT by Douglass Wallop
MOVIE: DAMN YANKEES

I grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers and hating the “damn Yankees,” who seemed to win every single World Series (because they did.) And nobody was more of a victim of the Yankees than the poor Washington Senators, so the book by Douglass Wallop was badly needed wish fulfillment, and it’s very good.
So is the movie that was made from it, DAMN YANKEES, partly because it has Gwen Verdon, and Ray Walston as the best Satan ever. (Warning: You may get “Those Were the Good Old Days,” with the line, “and cannibals munching a missionary luncheon” stuck in your head for weeks.) But it’s also because of “You’ve Gotta Have Heart” and “Two Lost Souls” and the ironic scene where Joe’s wife tries to help him and ruins everything. They’re both very enjoyable, and something to watch to get us through this sadly-missed baseball season.

3. BOOK: THE THIN MAN by Dashiell Hammett
MOVIE: THE THIN MAN (with William Powell and Myrna Loy)

The novel’s one of noir’s classics, along with THE MALTESE FALCON, which Hammett also wrote, and Raymond Chandler’s novels, and the movie’s a classic, too, and one of the very few films that shows
marriage as something that might actually be fun. From the very beginning, where Nora’s walking Asta, to Christmas morning, with Nick lying on the couch playing with the BB-gun he got for Christmas while Nora mixes martinis and looks gorgeous, it’s fun all the way through. And it’s full of gangsters, bookies, snitches, and society dames. As Nora says, “Oh, Nicky, you know such interesting people!” (Note: If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you definitely should, if for no other reason than to find out who the thin man is. It’s not who you think it is.)

4. BOOK: A BEAUTIFUL MIND by Sylvia Nasar
MOVIE: A BEAUTIFUL MIND (with Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, and Jennifer Connelly)

The book covers all of genius John Nash’s troubled life, battle with mental illness, his scientific accomplishments, and his winning of the Nobel Prize, which is something the movie can’t do. That’s one thing in which books have the edge–they can convey lots more information and much more detail than movies. But the movie does something I didn’t think was possible–it takes us right inside John Nash’s mind and makes us see the world as his schizophrenia made him see it. And it has one of the most stunning reversals I’ve ever seen in a movie. I literally gasped.

5. BOOK: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY by Jane Austen
MOVIE: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant)

It’s impossible to improve on Jane Austen, but Emma Thompson almost pulls it off in her brilliant script for the 1995 movie, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. She got rid of a bunch of extraneous characters and equally extraneous scenes and made the younger sister Margaret (a mere cipher in the novel) into a charming and fully-developed character who by the end was my favorite: “He’s kneeling down!”
Both the book and the movie are delightful, and if they don’t sate your appetite for SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, you can also read SENSE AND SENSIBILITY WITH SEA MONSTERS or watch the BBC miniseries with Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield. Or the modern-day adaptation set in East L.A. with two Latina sisters, FROM PRADA TO NADA.

6. BOOK: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L.M. Montgomery
MOVIE: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (1985 miniseries with Megan Follows, Jonathan Crombie, and Colleen Dewhurst)

The 1934 movie version I saw wasn’t very good, but it did one good thing–it led me to L.M. Montgomery’s wonderful series about Anne of Green Gables. I didn’t think it was possible to make a movie that would be as good as the books, but then in 1985 Canadian television did it, with a wonderful mini-series that captured everything that was magic and humor of the book and had the additional joy of being filmed on Prince Edward Island, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

7. BOOK: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP by Philip K. Dick
MOVIE: BLADE RUNNER (the Director’s Cut, with Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young)

Most of the movies I listed are here because they’re faithful to the books they were made from, but not in this case. BLADE RUNNER is completely different from DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? The book is thought-provoking and frightening, with great stuff like the artificial animals that replace the nature we’ve destroyed and the androids’ lack of a survival instinct, and BLADE RUNNER is, I think, the best science-fiction movie ever made. They’re both brilliant. (Note: Philip K. Dick is probably the greatest writer to ever write science fiction, and we here in Colorado get to claim Philip K. Dick as a Colorado writer, since he was born in Fort Morgan, only 50 miles from where I live, and buried there.)

8. BOOK: IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH by Jean Shepherd
MOVIE: A CHRISTMAS STORY

I don’t need to say anything about A CHRISTMAS STORY. It’s become a Christmas classic, and rightly so. In our house we constantly quote it–“I triple dog dare you!” and “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” and “Flick? Flick who?” One of the best things about the movie for me was that it introduced me to Jean’s writing, which I hadn’t known about before. I love all his books and essays, especially “Ollie Hopnoodle and the Haven of Bliss,” which captures my childhood family vacations better than I thought possible.

9. BOOK: OUTWARD BOUND by Sutton Vane
MOVIE: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (with Edmund Gwenn, Sydney Greenstreet, and John Garfield)

OUTWARD BOUND was a stage play and then a novel before it was a movie, and there are two versions, 1930’s OUTWARD BOUND and 1944’s BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. I recommend all of them, but especially BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. It’s about two lovers who find themselves aboard a ship headed for, they think, America during the war. The ship is running without lights, it doesn’t seem to have very many passengers, and there are other odd things about it. I first saw it on Academy Matinee when I was a kid and thought it was the creepiest and coolest Twilight Zone episode I’d ever seenThis pill must be stored at a room temperature which should be 15 from uk viagra to 30 degree. L-Arginine – It is an amino acid that helps boost nitric oxide in tadalafil 10mg uk the body. When your female free viagra india libido is having a plunge and your relationship have suffered an emotional and physical betrayal and modern studies suggest that this is on the rise. The affordable investment for the purchase of this tool is another purchase viagra from india factor that will attract you towards it. . It still is. Setting it during the war adds an additional dimension that makes it really special, but the book is terrific, too.

10. BOOK: THE SEARCHERS by Alan LeMay
MOVIE: THE SEARCHERS (with John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, and Natalie Wood)

Alan LeMay is my favorite Western writer of all time (with Larry McMurtry running a very close second), and his THE SEARCHERS is his best book, in my opinion, and the movie, THE SEARCHERS, is the best Western movie ever made. (If you’ve written it off as a John Wayne movie, you’ve obviously never seen a John Wayne movie. The stereotype of the prejudiced, violence-loving tough guy comes from Wayne’s later years, not from FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, STAGECOACH, and THE SHOOTIST, which are all wonderful movies and far ahead of their times.) Wayne’s character in THE SEARCHERS hates Native Americans, but he is NOT the hero. The movie and the book are different, and they have different endings. I recommend them both.

Here’s my daughter’s list (again in no particular order):

1. BOOK: BLACK HAWK DOWN by Mark Bowden
MOVIE: BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001, with Josh Harnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, etc.)

I saw this movie in the theatre when I was visiting a friend, and the next day I bought the 470-page book in the airport bookstore and started devouring it on the plane. My friends back home planned to see the movie one week later, and I was determined to get the book finished before I saw the movie again, which meant I was standing in the theatre lobby reading the last few pages as the previews were showing (but I made it!) Both the movie and the book do an amazing job of telling the story of this real event, and they absolutely complement each other: the book goes into greater detail about the background whereas the movie helps you experience the sights and sounds of modern-day warfare directly. I highly recommend both!

2. BOOK: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE by Paul Gallico
MOVIE: Irwin Allen’s THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972, with Shelley Winters, Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, etc.)

One of the earliest disaster films, my best friend Greta and I would regularly act out THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, with me as singer Nonnie, Greta as teenager Susan, and the two of us dividing up equally those characters who live and die. And did I mention we were 5-years-old when we were doing this? Not your typical favorite movie for little girls, but we loved it! When I was rewatching it on video years later, my mom mentioned it was based on a book, so naturally I had to read it. The book was much darker, but I loved it just as much. I prefer what happens to the young boy Robin in the book (because you never actually know what happened), but I prefer that in the movie you don’t see Linda get impaled!

3. BOOK: HIGH ROAD TO CHINA by John Cleary
MOVIE: HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (1983, with Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong)

Being set in the 1920s and involving romance, adventure, and biplanes, this was my favorite movie in junior high! I even got my hair cut just like Bess Armstrong’s! A few years later I discovered the novel the film was based on…and I discovered the novel bore little resemblance to the movie (or perhaps I should say it the other way around). However, I really enjoyed the book, which I never would have read without the movie.

4. BOOK: HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS by David Simon
TV SERIES: HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET (particularly seasons 1 & 2 from 1993-4, with Yaphet Kotto, Andre Braugher, Richard Belzer, etc.)

Here’s another non-fiction book that was adapted for the screen, this time the small one. Journalist David Simon took a year-long leave from his police beat at the Baltimore Sun to follow around a shift of homicide detectives from the Baltimore Police Department. This book is so informative, it was required reading in my forensics law class (but I’d already read it twice before that!) NBC decided to turn the book into a cop show, with the original characters based loosely on the real-life detectives and the first 13 episodes involving many of the actual cases from the book. While the show was an extremely accurate portrayal of the tedium of detective work, the network worried that there wasn’t enough action (in one episode not a single character leaves the building during a night shift) so more drama was inserted into the show in later seasons. But both the book and the show demonstrate how exciting the drudgery of paperwork can be when it leads to catching a murderer. However, if you like closure, these may not be for you—one of the central cases in the book (and dramatized on the show) was never solved.

5. BOOK: LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry
TV MINI-SERIES: LONESOME DOVE (1989, with Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Danny Glover, etc.)

I mentioned in our list of re-read books that I got into this novel via the mini series. The mini series has amazingly talented actors that perfectly embody their characters and will make you laugh and cry and feel like you’re actually on the trail with Gus and Call. It also has a great soundtrack, which I hear in my head when I’m re reading the book. The novel is long so it goes into more detail, and it’s so well written that you’ll want to read it more than once (or perhaps three times back to back!) I must admit that I prefer the TV ending, which uses an amazing montage of powerful moments to tie everything up (and makes me cry even as I type this!)

6. BOOK: ALICE’S ADVENTURE IN WONDERLAND & THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS by Lewis Caroll
ADAPTATIONS: Syfy’s ALICE (2009, with Andrew Lee Potts, Caterina Scorsone, & Matt Frewer)
& DREAMCHILD (1985, with Coral Browne, Sir Ian Holm, & Amelia Shankley)

I grew up obsessed with the ALICE books (and I played the caterpillar in our 4th grade musical), but I never felt any of the adaptations captured the creepiness of it all. The Syfy Channel created a mini series with a plot that is nothing like the original books…but it captures all the unease and wonder of what it would be like to suddenly find yourself in a Wonderland that is disturbing and unknown (plus it has Andrew Lee Potts as the sexiest Hatter ever!) And DREAMCHILD, which tells the background story of how ALICE IN WONDERLAND was written, is also a fave in our family, with my mom and me sobbing in the balcony of the movie theatre long after the credits were done! The scenes from ALICE that appear in DREAMCHILD–with characters performed by Jim Henson’s team with ST:TNG’s Gates McFadden choreographing the puppets!–are the only ones I’ve seen that truly capture the original books for me.

7. BOOK: A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances Hodgson Burnett
BRITISH MINI-SERIES: A LITTLE PRINCESS (1986, with Amelia Shankley & Maureen Lipman)

I love Shirley Temple, but I always disliked her version of this book bp[-ecause it was way too cheerful. The British mini-series made in the 80s truly captures everything I loved about this book. You get to experience the true weight of what is happening to Sara Crewe as if you, too, were living this riches-to-rags story, and while it has a happy ending, it’s not the saccharin one added to the Shirley Temple version. Interestingly, we discovered this version because it stars the Alice from DREAMCHILD as Sara.

8. BOOK: LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo
BRITISH STAGE MUSICAL: LES MISERABLES (1985, produced by Cameron McIntosh & music by Schoenberg)

I was introduced to this amazing work of literature through the musical. I remember my mother trying to give a “brief” synopsis of the 1232-page novel to me and my dad before going to see the touring company back in the 80s. I loved the show for years and had the entire British score memorized, so when the 25th Anniversary concert was aired in 2010, I realized that I was ready to read the book…and I’m so glad that I did! It was amazing to me that you don’t even meet Jean Valjean until p. 92, and many important book events are reduced to only a lyric or two in the show. But the visceral experience of watching the live stage show (or better yet, being in it!) brings this complicated, nuanced story to life, and any fan of one should definitely seek out the other. And while the 2012 movie tried hard with its “live singing” (and added in Gavroche’s elephant, which is my fave part of the book!), I don’t feel it truly captured the power that the stage show has.

9. BOOK: EMMA by Jane Austen
MOVIE: CLUELESS (1995, with Alicia Silverstone & Paul Rudd)

Believe it or not, I had never read a Jane Austen book when I saw CLUELESS. Therefore my mom had to point out that the plot of the movie was actually the plot of EMMA, and that’s when I started through all of Jane’s books. Many of the movie adaptations of Jane’s works are great–Colin Firth will always be Mr. Darcy, and I picture Mr. Kohli and his “No life without wife” in place of Mr. Collins–but I feel CLUELESS is the only EMMA adaptation that truly lets the audience experience the story in the way that Jane’s contemporaries would have, “as if’s” and all!

10. BOOK: THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
MOVIES: Peter Jackson’s trilogy THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001-3 with Elijah Wood, Sir Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, etc.)

My mom read THE HOBBIT to me as a wee thing, and as soon as I was old enough, she pressured me to read LotR. I admit I started it, but I petered out during the Tom Bombadil section and never got past it. But that didn’t mean I didn’t know the plot—my mom had often told me stories about Merry and Pippin being eaten by Old Man Willow or Aragorn and Arwen’s star-crossed love. When the first of the Peter Jackson movies came out, my mom said, “I’m so glad you love the movie because I know you won’t be able to wait to find out what happens.” Taking this as a personal challenge against my own stubbornness, I did read the books…but only after each successive movie came out(which meant I had to wait till after the RETURN OF THE KING film to read the Shelob section of THE TWO TOWERS). But the books were amazing, just as my mom had always said. I agree with most of the changes made for the movies (such as cutting out Tom Bombadil and having Merry recognize Eowyn in her Dernhelm disguise); if you miss those parts, the original books will always be there for you to reread, poetry and all (though is it possible to read “Home is behind, the world ahead” now without hearing Billy Boyd’s lilting voice?)

—

As you can see, we had a lot of overlap in the books/movies we love, and it was fun fighting over who got ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and figuring out who got which Jane Austen.

As you can also see, we found many of these books through the movies and vice versa, and Cord and I highly recommend that method of discovering new works and authors. I discovered ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by reading the credit on the 1930s version of the movie I watched on Acadamy Matinee, and I found Mary Stewart (one of my favorite writers) the same way, by noting the “Based on the Book by Mary Stewart” in the credits of THE MOONSPINNERS.

Happy reading and watching!

Connie and Cordelia Willis