Boooo. Stop being such a spoilsport!

Or alternatively please apply the same logic to Schua’s blogs. Ooooooooooooops!

I have seen quite a few films based on books and no matter how praiseworthy the adaption I have yet to see such which adds more than it loses. What is lost is usually the absolutely essential “inner thoughts” or “situation analysis” which are so difficult to include in a visual medium, especially when these are lenghty passages. What is also frequently lost is huge and significant chunks of the plot due to the time constraints. I can agree some stirling efforts have been made in the field of adaption, but better than the original? No way.

I suppose there may be a film somewhere based on a third rate book where almost any modification would be an improvement, but I haven’t seen one.

http://xkcd.com/386/

We’ve all been there.

#23: “It … is little more than sanctioned plagiarism. The artistic originality belongs only to original author.”

#26: “If these guys were that talented they would have original ideas themselves.”

#37: “It [The Wiki for the film version of Dune] starts out by saying Dune… written by David Lynch. It wasn’t.”

#46: “An adapter who added absolutely nothing, not a single new idea, to the original idea is not a writer.” (Well, actually, I agree with you on this one, but I find the premise to be at fault in this instance!)

The reason I have continued to engage with you on this subject long after there seemed to be any point is that I disagree heartily with you with regards to these assertions. I apologise for using some aggressive language along the way (sorry Rowly) but I’m afraid that your attitude has got my goat. Basically, I don’t see what gives you the right to completely write off works of fantastic vision, originality and creativity that build on existing works.

I’m just going to repeat something that I said above, highlighting where I intended the stress to be: “many would argue that it is significantly more difficult to successfully adapt an existing work (book, play, whatever) than to start from scratch.” To do so successfully requires immense skill, and yes, creative and original thought.

The author of an original book is a primary writer. It’s adapter is merely a secondary writer (if one must use writer which I prefer not to, regardless of what the person may have done elsewhere). Without the primary writer the secondary writer is out of a job. So listing the credits in a way which implies elevating the secondary writer into being of greater importance than the primary writer is a) wrong b) belittling to the primary writer.

Cheers
Rowly.