Movies and books.

I like reading and I like movies so when a book is made into a movie it should be all tea and crumpets.  Not quite.

Have you ever read John Steakley's "Vampire$"?  Did you see John Carpenter's "Vampire$"?  That film was supposed to be based on the book.  It even said "based on Vampire$" in the credits.  Some scenes were but they took out the main character from the novel.  I can just imagine the meeting where someone is saying "this character, Felix G?  Let's get rid of him."  He's the main character.  "No problem, the people watching the film won't know."  I beg to differ.  I noticed.  This is probably one of my favorite vampire books and they bastardized it for the big screen.  There is a scene in the end with Jack Crow they couldn't do because Felix G wasn't in the film.  Read the book, you'll see what I mean.

Some times the "translation" is awesome, the Harry Potter series is great.  Is it great because the author wouldn't let them change things or because the books were already so popular?  I think the author's vision meant a lot.

At the end of "Alien" is a credit:  "Inspired by "Black Destroyer"".  What is this?  I found the short story (by A. E. Van Vogt) and read it.  There were similarities but not enough for you to think that the film would be like the movie.  Saying that it was "inspired by" was honest and a bit of an homage.

Recently I watched "Parker" which is based on a novel by my favorite author, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark.  They didn't get Parker quite right but most people would hate Parker.  In the books he's a very honest (unless it's in his interest not to be) ruthless bastard.  Everything he does has a very sound and logical reason behind it.  In this film he almost waxed philosophical.  Parker is not philosophical, he's...efficient.

At the end of the film was a line in the credits "In loving memory of Donald Westlake".  I didn't see based on this or that, I was okay with that because it mentioned Westlake.  He is my favorite author, you know.