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Showing posts from February, 2012

JUST STOP IT ALREADY: FILMING THE UNFILMABLE

So, this is happening . In spite of the fine cast featuring every Irish actor ever, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a metafictional novel about an author's characters coming to life and interacting with the real world is unlikely to make a good movie. Why do filmmakers have such a compulsion to film unfilmable books? Why don't they pick on unfilmable plays, or comics or paintings for a change? Does the novel still have such a high place in our culture that movie makers have to try it "because it's there" like Mount Everest?  TOP SIGNS THAT A BOOK IS PROBABLY UNFILMABLE 1. It is just a series of events or arresting images without much of a narrative through-line ( Orlando, Naked Lunch, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues , Catch-22 ). Plotless movies can work, but the director has to set the rhythm to keep them from becoming either dull or frenzied, hard to do with someone else's material. 2. It's mostly about the author's style or a