SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
All right. Here is something that you probably hear a lot when someone talks about a book that got made into a movie - the book is better - to the point that it's honestly pretty impressive when a movie can come close or even surpass the original source material. Why is that, and is it even true? I don't know. To talk about it, I brought in two people I love talking about books with. It is NPR's Book Of The Day podcast host Andrew Limbong - hey, Andrew...
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey. What's up, Scott?
DETROW: ...And NPR editor Barrie Hardymon. Hey, Barrie,
BARRIE HARDYMON, BYLINE: Hey. How's it going?
DETROW: Why don't we start, with both of you, with that first question? The book is always better than the movie - true or false, Barrie?
HARDYMON: Utterly false, utterly false - and in fact, I try really hard not to say the book was better when I have that feeling. I try to say, oh, have you also read the book? - because there are so many wonderful adaptations. And I really feel kind of strongly that we should not - as a book lover, do not be that person. And in general, the whole idea is that there's two creative enterprises, right? There's the person who wrote the book, which is its own thing, and then the person who wrote the screenplay and then conceived of the light and the acting and all that other stuff. They're different.
DETROW: Andrew, are you going to agree or disagree?
LIMBONG: I don't live in absolutes. I don't think...
DETROW: Then why are you even here?
LIMBONG: Yeah. Come on.
HARDYMON: (Laughter) Get out.
LIMBONG: Let's get some hot takes.
HARDYMON: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: Yeah. I don't think - I obviously think it's - they're so different. I will say, if you have a feeling, a certain emotional attachment to a book, it's kind of hard to watch a movie and have someone else's take be...
DETROW: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...That take. And so I understand where the inclination comes from. I just think it's incorrect.
DETROW: I think we can all agree it is hard. Especially, like, the bigger a book is...
HARDYMON: Yeah.
DETROW: ...The harder it is to create a movie out of it. Why do you think that is?
LIMBONG: There's a certain amount of ego death, and there's a certain amount of egoism, right? As - depending on, you know, the sort of, like, background - what kind of, like, hands - the author generally doesn't have that much say over it, but I think if they, like, have to necessarily kill themselves - like, not literally, obviously...
(LAUGHTER)
LIMBONG: ...In order to just, like, let this bird fly. And then also, you, as a filmmaker, have to have enough ego to say, hey, you know that book I really loved? I'm going to change it drastically in order to fit this different medium.
HARDYMON: Yeah. I also - I will say, I think that there's faithful and there's loyal, right? Like, there are sort of two different ways to think about how much you're going to try to hold on to the word by word versus the intention. And then you lose, like, the possibility of creative genius. Like, one of - actually, one of the great things about the Gen X "Romeo And Juliet" - the Leonardo DiCaprio one - is that it actually does something I've never seen on stage. And I'm calling this a book, in this case. But I've never seen where Juliet wakes up before Leonardo actually dies, so they have a moment where they connect. I've never seen that on stage.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ROMEO + JULIET")
CLARE DANES: (As Juliet, crying) Poison. Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after.
HARDYMON: Talk about ability to - like, to have real ego on the filmmaker's part - Baz Luhrmann, lots of that - and say, I have this real idea and I'm going to do something different than William - I want to say...
DETROW: Fricking Shakespeare. Yeah.
HARDYMON: Exactly. I couldn't think of what the...
LIMBONG: I did - I watched his - I tried to watch his "Great Gatsby" movie with Leo in it. Bro, I had to...
(LAUGHTER)
HARDYMON: To tap out? Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
DETROW: That's a - I think...
HARDYMON: Actually, my 8th grader said the same thing.
(LAUGHTER)
HARDYMON: So yeah.
DETROW: Too much.
HARDYMON: Yeah. Yeah.
DETROW: So setting that "Great Gatsby" movie...
LIMBONG: Yeah.
DETROW: ...Aside.
HARDYMON: Yeah.
DETROW: Past quarter-century have given us a lot of examples of really iconic books that become iconic movies, and they live together in different ways. Like, you could argue "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy - the movies expanded on it. They made it a bigger cultural thing. They became their own thing that I think some would argue supplanted - I'm actually somebody who, like, actually ignores the movies and loves the books...
LIMBONG: Oh, wow.
DETROW: ...And repeatedly rereads the books.
HARDYMON: Oh, I forgot.
DETROW: I appreciate the movies. I'm not a hater on the movies. They just don't have the same attachment for me, even though I'm, like, the exact age of people who love the movies, right? So there's that. There's the "Harry Potter" movies, which I think - they're kind of, like, dual tracks, you know? And then let's throw another example in - "Twilight," where I feel like the movies just, like, did not hit the books in the same level.
Like, what do you think these tell us about, like, when it works and when it doesn't work? Maybe you disagreed with everything I said.
HARDYMON: No, I just - well, first of all, I'm trying to think of a way not to say that I think that "The Lord Of The Rings" movies are better...
DETROW: That's - it's fair.
HARDYMON: ...Straight to your face...
DETROW: That's fair.
(LAUGHTER)
HARDYMON: ...Because I really do think they improve on the books. And I know the books are beloved and important.
DETROW: Yes.
HARDYMON: But the other one is, I actually think that - I think that the first "Twilight" movie is much better than the book. In fact, it's a great example of when the source material is beloved but maybe a - not as sharp. You know, the books were a moment, but they aren't, like, high art in and of themselves. And so...
DETROW: I think that's a fair statement.
HARDYMON: Yeah. But I actually think there are - that the first one is great. There's tons of chemistry.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TWILIGHT")
KRISTEN STEWART: (As Bella Swan) I know what you are.
ROBERT PATTINSON: (As Edward Cullen) Say it.
STEWART: (As Bella Swan) Vampire.
HARDYMON: They gave the book something that they didn't actually have.
LIMBONG: I think we don't often think of the MCU movies as literary adaptations.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER")
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: (As Natasha Romanoff) Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier.
LIMBONG: I was a kid when "Winter Soldier" came out - like, the...
DETROW: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Comic books, and those were a big deal to me. And "Civil War" was a big deal to me. And turning those into gigantic movies that - you know, I was a comic book kid, and that - all of a sudden, like, normal people - hot, good-looking people were also into this thing that I was into.
(LAUGHTER)
LIMBONG: I think these - like, these adaptations of books have a way of spreading the gospel, so to speak...
HARDYMON: Yes.
LIMBONG: ...Of what makes this stuff so good.
HARDYMON: Yeah. No, that's such a good point.
DETROW: You both talked about a couple examples, but is there any other example that you feel like is, like, the best movie to point to when it's just, like, this is an adaptation, but it is far, far, far out there, like, stretching the bounds of any sort of relationship at all, and yet still works?
HARDYMON: I think for me - and this is an old one - but "The French Lieutenant's Woman," which is a John Fowles book and is the first book of - yes, I'm going to say this word - metafiction. I try not to ever say it, though. I don't - I really do. And I loved it.
And the adaptation with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons - which I think is, like, an '80s adaptation - is so fascinating because, you know, the book is telling this love story in different layers, different ways it could be told. It's interacting on all these different levels. And the movie is doing it with the actors. So the actors are having this relationship at the same time that they are telling the story of the story. It's such a creative way to do it. And once you see it, you think, oh, there's no other way this movie could have been made.
LIMBONG: I'm thinking - you talked about - you said metafiction. I thought immediately about that last part in "Killers Of The Flower Moon" where Scorsese himself shows up...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON")
MARTIN SCORSESE: (As Radio Show Producer) Mrs. Mollie Cobb, 50 years of age, passed away at 11 o'clock Wednesday night in her home. She was a full-blood Osage.
LIMBONG: ...And kind of was like, this is the story I'm telling you. This is why I'm telling you. This is why I have to kind of, like, put my chips in and tell this story, which is something that, like - you know, you - obviously, the David Grann book is pretty, like, just the facts, ma'am, and he sort of, like, tells it. And then him, like, introducing this sort of authorial intent on adapting that book, I think, changes the entire movie in retrospect in a really interesting way.
DETROW: Yeah.
HARDYMON: Yeah. That's a good point.
DETROW: I fell asleep 2 1/2 hours into that movie, and I didn't get to this point.
(LAUGHTER)
LIMBONG: No, I feel you. Yeah, I had to get - I had a whole popcorn - I had a whole strategy in.
DETROW: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Like, the Swedish Fish were not going to be opened until, like, 2 1/2 hours in.
HARDYMON: Oh, that's smart.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
HARDYMON: I just did it in two nights.
DETROW: That is NPR's Andrew Limbong and Barrie Hardymon. We could have talked for another six hours. Thanks for coming by.
HARDYMON: We probably will.
LIMBONG: All right, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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