Book to Movie: How to and How NOT to..

One source for movie scripts has always been the world of books. You've seen it yourself. This movie is "based on the book by," that one is "inspired by the book ..." and so on down the line. And as with everything else, there is a right way to do a movie based on the book, and a wrong way. I think we've all been there at some point. We find out they're making a movie based on a book we've readd and enjoyed and hope they do it justice. Sometimes they do. Sometimes.....yeah. Here are two recent movies based on books, one of which got it horribly wrong, and the other put it pretty close to the target.

First the failure.

Last April, The Soloist, a movie baseed on the book of the same name by Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez, made it's way into theaters. It's the story of the author and his burgeoning relationship with Natahaniel Ayers, a resident of the city's Skid Row who it turns out is a virtuoso on the violin, but his gifts ar eimpeded by his long struggle with schizophrenia. Sounds easy enough to pull off, right? If only they would have succeeded. The first bad sign this movie fell victim to was a switch in release date, from late 2008 to April 2009, about a week before all the summer roster of movies starts to come out.

What did the movie get right. The names of the two major characters and that was about it. Other than that, it seemed to me as though they played fast and loose with things, adding an unncessary religious facet to a musician Nathaniel meets when he gets to the LA Philahormonic as one example of this. Next, was the work of the movie's director, Joe Wright (Atonement). It seemed as though, he was trying to make a very artsy film, talking what I called the "Terrence Malick approach to Cinema --(if you've sat through The Thin Red Line, this will make perfect sense) the character the scene should focus on, the sky, a tree, some lights, and on to something else. All this together combined for a movie that I felt was so bad, I did something I've only ever done once before--I walked out of the theater, waiting for the people I went to see the movie with in the lobby.

Did this sour me on seeing a movie based on a book? To some extent, yes. But then I saw one that more or less got things right.

The Blind Side is based on the book of the same name by author Michael Lewis. It takes a look at the background and life of former life of former Ole Miss offensive lineman Michael Oher, focusing on the period of time after he was befriended by the Tuohy family.

To be honest, when I first saw a preview for this movie, I thought I saw the major flaw I found with this movie, in two pieces. The first of these was the casting of Sandra Bullock as the matriarch of the Tuohy family, Leighanne, and its part of what I perceived as the "Disneyification" of the story, in that everything in Oher's life, professional year included, was wrapped up in a happy little bow. I couldn't been further from the truth. The filmmakers had actaully created a flick where the only real issue I had with the film was that Tuohy child Collins is the same year in school in real life as Oher, not the year younger she is depicted as in the film. The movie also won points with me for introducing the concept of the "blind side" the same way the book did, by talking about the play in 1985 where Joe Theissman had his career ended after his leg was broken by Lawrence Taylor who came from the QB's blind side. Knowing the grisly nature of the injury, I covered my eyes till the film itself started.

There are so few errors in this film that I actually have to reach for one, which isn't really an error. Houston Nutt is depicted as the coach of the Arkansas football team who comes to recruit Oher. Nutt WAS at the time, but was Oher's coach at Ole Miss during the latter's academic and athletic career there. Not really an error, but I just felt like being knit picky.

Two films. Two books. Two completely different executions. One good. One bad.


They just happened to be focusing very heeavily on the positive ending in the marketing campaign. In other words, the film got everything right.