The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Oscar-Winning short) UPDATED

The best movie I've seen so far this year is only fifteen minutes long.

From the "Things That Are Inspiring Me This Morning" files, this animated short by Moonbot studios of Shreveport, Louisiana has been nominated for the Oscar in a category that is usually dominated by Pixar.   In fact, one of the founders of Moonbot was a conceptual artist on Toy Story, sprung from that fertile breeding ground for artists that is Pixar studios.

Speaking of Pixar, in order to take the trophy home, this little short is up against the Disney-owned juggernaut's "La Luna" and that's a pretty tall order.  Still... I'm predisposed to root for the little guy.

The LA Times turned out some great coverage of the unlikely film from Shreveport, including the formation of Moonbot in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the death of Michael Jackson. But I think that Moonbot says it best in their artist's statement on Vimeo:

"Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story."  

http://vimeo.com/35404908)

Whatever its pedigree, it's one of the most delightful bits of animation I've seen in quite some time. But I'm such a booklover that I'm probably too biased to be objective.  So I'll let you decide for yourselves.

For your consideration...


The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, Trailer


The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore Trailer from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

UPDATE: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won the academy award for best animated short. Unfortunately, this means that they have taken down the full video. I've replaced it with the trailer, which at least gives you a feel for the thing. I'm sure that if you hunt around, the internet being what it is, someone has if available somewhere. I personally join you in hoping they make the full thing available soon for legal download or purchase.       -Scott
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You Ruined It! :: Movie Adaptations of Favorite Books, Redux

The other day, a friend of mine pointed me to a news story about Tom Cruise being considered to play Lee Child's itinerant vigilante, Jack Reacher.

The outcry from fans was immediate and vigorous. Reacher is an unstoppable 6' 5", 250 pound, package of whupass. Cruise, generally speaking, is not. Child is on on record with the Guardian, saying "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way," Nevertheless, the cry went up from the halls of fandom: "You're ruining it!"

Every so often, this discussion rears its head and I've discussed it before in relation to Harry Potter as well as Where the Wild Things Are and Inkheart. And I'm on record as saying that there's no manner in which a movie adaptation can "ruin" a book.  They can screw up a story, they can make a bad movie, but nothing they do can have any effect on the book they were (allegedly) based upon... or can it?

A Moment Captured

Just a moment's pause to remember how many ways there are to tell a story.  This is beautifully done.


Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Writers In Real Life :: Cue the writing montage!

It sounds so easy.  Think up some characters, give them something to do and when they're done, write "The End" and then pack it up, send it off to the publishers and wait for your royalty cheque.  I think there's supposed to be a couple of bottles of scotch consumed in there somewhere, but really, hi diddly dee...it's Castle's life for me. 

If only it could be like that.

Writing is hard work.  It's a job.  And like any other job, there are moments when the clock ticks perceptibly slower and you take as many coffee breaks as you can manage without getting fired.  Only because you work for yourself, you'd have to let yourself go... and if you do, you end up playing video games in your pajamas.

That's when those two bottles of scotch I mentioned appear and then disappear, I think.

Let's blame Hollywood.  They're always a good go-to when blame must be levied.  There are simply too many TV shows and movies where - when it comes time to write a story - the actual writing is a montage of quick cuts of typing like the wind or otherwise looking like you've not a care in the world between the moment the paper is rolled under the platent and the moment you rip it out and throw it aside.  Too much Castle and Murder She Wrote, not enough... actually I can't think of any television shows that display writers as just trying to get through the day. 

Movies are a bit better, but there's still far too many uplifting tales about writers almost flippantly turning out reams of amazing stories with the flick of a pen and the stern but loving teacher spouting writer's aphorisms.  "Write what you know!"  they cry and off the students gallumphing go to become bestsellers.  There's too many Finding Forresters and not enough Wonder Boys where Grady Trip stumbles through the movie in a drugged stupor because he can't think of an ending.

These movies and television shows are written by writers... you'd think they'd know better. Face it, there's not nearly enough Misery in these stories.

Not that I'm advocating that we all get kidnapped by rabid fans, nor that we all become become dissolute wordsmiths, wandering drunkenly from our bottle of scotch to our typewriter.  Nor do I think that all television shows should join Stephen King's seemingly bottomless oeuvre of  "Writers have a hard enough lot that I can write endless reams of horror novels about it."  But I do wonder where this meme of writer-as-wealthy gad about comes from.

Maybe we should be blaming Fitzgerald and his lot instead.

Honestly, I like most of these movies and television shows that I'm griping about.  Castle is mental popcorn and a heckuva lot of fun to watch.  And while I'm sure that there are authors out there like Castle and the rest, I'm equally certain that they are few and very very far between.

The problem with those depictions of writers is that it makes me feel a little odd sometimes to be sitting in front of the keyboard when I should be out there "whooping it up" (as my grandmother would say).  But books are the damndest things.  In order for them to come into existence, some poor schmuck has to sit down and write them.

As Peter DeVries famously said, the worst part about being a writer is the paperwork.

Books don't happen accidentally, scribbled on napkins while being chauffeured from one posh shindig to the next.  At least not novels worth the reading.  Writing a novel-length story is an act of will.  It takes an almost fanatical devotion to the language and the ability to ignore distractions like video games, the internet, books you'd rather be reading, other things you'd rather be writing, and also the aforementioned scotch.

So... in a sort anti-NaNoWriMo pep talk I say this: If you want a life of swanky parties and adulation from the masses, become a musician or an actor.  Good luck to you.  Break a leg and all that.   (Or you can do what I do and maintain friendships with actors and musicians so you'll get invited to their parties... but I digress.)

Writing is about telling your friends and family to leave you alone for extended periods so you can swill coffee and put words on a page.  On the bright side, rarely does it require you to hire a band or a DJ or a caterer and the cleanup usually amounts to washing a few coffee cups.

In this time of writers making YouTube videos and keeping blogs and Facebook pages and whatnot, it's amazing that anyone doesn't know this already, but writing is a job. You have to show up every day and sit down and write actual words on an actual page.

Either it's your profession (and you treat it that way) or it's not and never will be.

This, I think is the great value of NaNoWriMo for the working novelist and the publishing industry in general. Hundreds of thousands of people are learning each and every November that novels don't occur randomly in nature.  It's not a swirl of cocktail parties and gala openings, it's a lonely, difficult slog through the dictionary in hopes that you'll reach the other end and look back to see a coherent story behind you.  And looking back at what you've accomplished makes the effort worth the journey.

So this is my NaNoWriMo pep talk for the publishing industry and all the naysayers out there among the professional novelists. I think that this event which celebrates the act of writing also serves the purpose of reinvigorating in the minds of all the people who participate, an appreciation for the novel as an art form.  Especially those who drop out halfway through.

So take heart professionals and amateurs alike.  Monday marks the halfway point.  And when the novel is done - or at least the first draft - that is when you get to party.  Don't forget to put out a bucket of pens and those all-important cocktail napkins in case inspiration should strike your guests.

Editing for Length & Pacing :: Lessons from YouTube

I get YouTube videos sent to me all the time.  Most of them are cats or gerbils practicing to ride their Roomba tanks to prepare for world domination, but every once in awhile it's something artsy and/or funny and sometimes they're just plain cool.  This morning, I found a lesson in editing that is very much applicable to writing.

The following video is very violent in a video game sense, and a cool homage to the game Time Crisis and any number of ancillary action movies, Hong Kong flicks and pop culture tidbits tossed in for spice.  The guy that makes these vids is FreddieW and there aren't many indie filmmakers on the net doing it better.

Go ahead and watch it and I'll see you at the end.  (Sorry about the political ad at the beginning, YouTube ads are what they are.)



Why did I just ask you to watch all that?  Because one of the things I heard a lot at PNWA and elsewhere is writers griping about cutting a manuscript. 

A manuscript -- especially from an unproven author -- shouldn't be over 100,000 words unless you're writing fantasy.  The first pass at Palimsest clocked-in at 120,000.  I could get a long way just eliminating a word here and there, but 20k isn't going to go quietly.  I had to cut something I really liked.  And that means examining each scene and asking myself "Why is this scene here?"

Cutting a manuscript is a lot like cutting a movie.  You take what you have and you try to craft the best story you can.  If necessary you go in and write additional material (re-shoots in the film world) but that's an expensive use of time and resources, so it's best to use what you already got.  At the end of this post is a video with the young filmmakers talking about the process of making and cutting this action sequence together.  They spend a lot of time talking about procuring enough cardboard boxes for the shoot and a little about shooting and editing it together, so if you want, you can skip to the 4:00 mark because that's when they start talking about editing.

"Remember -- With editing, the only thing that matters is the the movie as a whole.  It doesn't matter how "cool" it is, or how hard it was to get (or write).  If it doesn't add anything, it doesn't belong."

That's an important lesson for anyone working on a long project like a movie or a novel.  At least with novels you can 'reshoot' without worrying about matching the lighting or whether your actor cut their hair in the interim.



Cultural Cross-Pollination is a series of posts on how writers can draw from other creative venues like stage, film, games, and even cartoons to apply their lessons to writing.  Click the tag below to see previous posts in this series.

Making a Spectacle - An Open Letter to Hollywood

Dear Movie Producers (et al);

Some of your viewers have glasses. I'm not sure you're aware of this fact since you have yet to come up with a workable set of 3D glasses that accommodate this simple and common affliction.

Perhaps in Hollywood no one would be so déclassé as to wear glasses if they needed them or admit that they can't see the screen without them, so it hasn't occurred to you. I feel compelled to bring this to your attention on behalf of nerds everywhere who are suffering in silence, the quiet indignation of piling one pair of special eyewear atop another pair.

I feel it's important to point out that in many ways we are your target demographic. We are the ones who will watch your movies and then go discuss them endlessly on the internet, giving you the word of mouth validation you so desperately crave. We will not continue to do so if the only option you give us for movie enjoyment is piling a pair of goony glasses on top of our already goony glasses. It is not a good look even for us. And it's not terribly comfortable or prone to increasing our moviewatching experience.

Your failure to serve our needs is... shortsighted. (Ahem)

We have enough headaches in our lives already, believe me. And giving us one more is not going to increase the chance that we'll like your latest plot-deficient blockbuster. Please come up with an option for those of us saddled with spectacles so that we can better appreciate your spectacles. A clip on option for your 3D nerd glasses would be adequate.

I admit that clip-on sunglasses are about as sexy as a pocket protector... perhaps less so. But since you decided to go with the nerd glasses aesthetic for your new generation of 3D watching equipment anyway, we won't look any goofier than the people sitting next to us. And that's all we ask... to not look any goofier than the people next to us and yet enjoy the movie just as much. Perhaps more.

Sincerely, Scott Walker Perkins (Nerd)
cc. World HQ - Nerd World Order

Movie Adaptation

The other morning, the Engineer threw a magazine at me. It was the September edition of Writer's Digest, and it had apparently been languishing far too long on the dining room table for her taste.

We were on our way out the door, so I stuffed it in the backpack (which is very similar in many respects to "putting it away") and headed off to the cafe to do my morning writing. After I finished writing my five pages, edited a couple dozen and wrote a blog entry likening my character to Bugs Bunny, I opened the magazine. In the back of my mind, I was noodling with my ongoing series of posts on "Cultural Cross-Pollination". I've already done Commedia del Arte, Playwriting, Role Playing Games, Kinetic Text and Cartoons. I either needed a good hook for talking about movies or I needed to just let it lie fallow for a little while.

How movies can, should or should not affect our fiction writing is a bit of a poser, I don't mind saying. It's a big topic for one thing, and for another, I've already touched on it a little bit. Then it hit me... exactly like a rolled-up magazine left too long on the dining room table. In WD and just about everywhere else that writing is discussed, the ability to write "visually" is discussed, dissected and otherwise touted as one of the hallmarks of marketable writing. In the "MFA Insider" column, author Joshua Henkin posited that movies and television and the onslaught of "Write more visually" advice from writing books and magazines have cumulatively eroded our willingness to create introspection in our stories. To prove his point, he gave a writing exercise that entails going through your story or manuscript and highlighting everything that can be filmed in one color (action) and everything that cannot be filmed in a contrasting color (internal dialogue).  In "too many" stories, there would be an imbalance -- the external story would outweigh the internal struggle of the characters, the parts that cannot be adapted for film.

I'm not sure he's right. For one thing, recent and upcoming movies are challenging what's "Filmable". Where the Wild Things Are takes us into the lengthy interior monologue of a young boy at war with himself. Assuming they don't screw it up The Road will be a challenging movie of silences and bleakness where the characters never refer to one another by name.

Has visual media cracked the whip of visual writing? More to the point, have novels been overtaken by authors who would be better suited writing screenplays?

I undertook his experiment with my own manuscript and without compiling exact statistics (there's a limit to how much free time I have) I think my writing is about even. Between the "filmable" sequences and the internal dialogues, I was looking at a pretty decent balance of colors. While there are extended action sequences, I temper that with the fact that my characters are pretty brainy and have a tendency to live inward.

Speaking of "filmable" writing, Paul Levine is an entertainment attorney and agent who represents a lot of screenwriters as well as authors. At PNWA, he told a full room that aspiring screenwriters should write the book first. Movie rights were easier to sell with a publishing contract to back them up and getting a screenplay over the transom at the moment was almost impossible without that. The other editors and agents on the panels all agreed. Hollywood wants a sure thing now more than ever. This is why we're seeing sequels and adaptaions packed cheek by jowl on the marquee right now. Hollywood wants someone else to play taste-maker, to vet the stories for them, to see them succeed in another venue before they plunk millions of dollars into a film project.

To bring it back to novel writing, I used to wholeheartedly agree with Henkin on the impact that visual media has had on writing... for better and worse. And I still do to some extent. But talking to Levine, I got the feeling that there was a bit of the tail wagging the dog -- that movies are following print as much or more than it goes the other way around. Films are delving into territory that was long thought impossible to bring to the screen. Introspective movies are elbowing for room alongside the usual action and adventure. Rather like you will see in my screenpla... um... novel.

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Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

Contact Me

Here There Be Wild Things

One more Wild Things post and then I'll move on to other topics, I promise.

Something I forgot to mention (I was reminded by a friend on Facebook) is that the source material for the movie included more than just the Caldecott Award winning picture book. It also included the story Max at Sea by the masterful Dave Eggers, which he has since turned into a novel (which I cannot recommend because I haven't read it... yet). Eggers is credited as cowriter for the screenplay.

Of course, Mssr. Eggers is almost absurdly talented: not only has he contributed to The Onion, he co-founded McSweeney's and has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer.  

You can read Max at Sea here at the New Yorker (click).

As is his habit, Eggers is astoundingly brilliant in the guise of a pre-adolescent boy. If you haven't read Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius you don't know what I'm talking about, but you should and then you would. It's no wonder previous attempts at the movie failed, they didn't have Eggers on staff. Every movie should be so lucky.

Also also... yesterday, I mentioned that Lasseter took a stab at a cartoon of Where the Wild Things Are. It's on YouTube (linked below). Lasseter, of course, went on to Pixar where he probably produced or directed every movie the company ever made that you actually liked.

A boy pretending to be a wolf pretending to be a king

I loved Where the Wild Things Are. It was my favorite book as a child. Sendak, along with HA Rey, Richard Scarry and a little-known fellow named Charles Schultz were my earliest artistic muses. I spent hours and hours copying their works, trying to unlock their styles and create my own curious monkey, Busy Busy World, Wild Things island, and Peanuts Gang.

I've written extensively about how I feel about movie adaptations of beloved books. And though I approach any movie adaptation of a beloved book with trepidation, I stand by what I said back in July: "No matter how far afield a two hour Where the Wild Things Are movie takes a 48-page children's book, the impact that this seminal book had on my life won't be undone."

But this is Where the Wild Things Are.

A couple of years ago, I heard a great interview with Maurice Sendak. He mentioned all the attempts to get this book onto the screen that ultimately failed. Even John Lassiter of Pixar fame did a test version for Disney and they couldn't make it work. At forty-eight pages, but only nine sentences, Sendak left a lot of silence for us to interpret the book for ourselves. And the interpretations have been diverse.

There have been many who thought it inappropriate for children, that it somehow condoned acting-up and being a wild thing. Sendak was amused by this interpretation. Most people don't get that the story this book tells - mostly in pantomime - is that even after this kid has been a little monster throughout the entire book, his mom brought him dinner anyway. Even though moms yell and send them to their room and might even get mad and punish, etcetera. Sendak thought it was an important lesson for children that yes they need to behave, but even when they're at their worst, their moms still love them. At the end they're still a family.

The movie is made by a man who "got it" and written by someone else who "got it", the incomparable Dave Eggars. It holds tightly to Sendak's themes. It doesn't change Max. It doesn't change the Wild Things. It doesn't water down the raw intensity of what it is to be a boy at a certain time in life.  It fleshes out Sendak's pantomime. It keeps the dangerous edge that the book had, this little boy pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be a king.

If you've read the book I feel that I cannot really spoil this movie for you. But SPOILER ALERT nonetheless because there are details below.

Spike Jonez gave the movie a modernist, hyper-real look that's hard to describe. There's a documentary air about it, with lot of handheld-cameras. The lighting is realistic, not glossy. Natural lighting without the Hollywood gloss. Jim Henson's creature workshop built the Wild Things, so they're on set and the boy is obviously interacting with physical specimens. The CG special effects are constrained to the faces and some of the super-human jumps and the like. They remain supportive of the story rather than overpowering them.

Max is a little monster, but he's really just a little boy looking for control over something. Anything.

His sojourn among the Wild Things has a vision quest feel to it. He's journeying inward and there is danger there, his hold on them as their king is tenuous at all times and you feel it. Every scene reflects his inner chaos and his relations with his family. Each Wild Thing is a facet of the boy's personality with the most dangerous and mercurial of the lot, Carol, masterfully brought to life by the actor in the suit (as are all the monsters) and the voice of James Gandolfini. Underlining the metaphor is that Max holds sway over the wild things by his fingernails. He can guide them, he can cajol them, he can sometimes get therm to expend their efforts in creative and wonderful ways, but he ultimately only controls them by the barest margin. At all times there's the threat that he'll lose control and they'll consume him.

Jonez brings the sense and sensibilities of a real kid. Throughout the movie you can feel Sendak moving behind the scenes. This movie is the book and it's not. It's everything the book was, plus. It's ultimately a tale of a kid who lives mostly inside his head, with few friends and an older sister who is taking the first steps into adulthood, down a path that young Max isn't ready to follow. She is leaving behind a younger brother who is feeling the sundering of what you get the impression was a close relationship at some point, lost playmates spinning apart in a family that's spinning apart in the wake of the loss of his father.

But Jonez lets you infer a lot from very little and I found it very artfully done. The parts of the movie that take place outside Max's external world are few and just enough to let you see the glory and tragedy of being a little boy. Max Record, the boy who plays Max is fantastic. He carries off the role of a boy who simultaneously hates what's happening to him and around him and hates his lack of control over himself and the events that shape him. His beleaguered mother is brought to life in few short scenes and artfully so. A woman trying to raise two kids, hold down a job and find a life and happiness for herself.

In the contractual terms of any vision quest, there is self-awareness dawning slowly throughout the movie. Max grows up a little, realizes the tightrope he walks, but not all things can be resolved. Not every side of him will suffer the bit and bridle. And Max attains some understanding of himself, of his family, of his creativity, of his ability or lack thereof to contain and control his monsters. And in the end he has to get in his little boat and come back. Mom gives him a hot meal and they are a family, Wild Things and all.

Is this a kid's movie or a movie about a kid? I don't know. I don't have a kid. The child Scottie would love this movie, though. He wouldn't catch all the undercurrents or the metaphors, but it's the right kind of scary and the good kind of dark to trip the same triggers that Labyrinth found when I was my nephews' age. Kids movies don't have to be happy. The best among them have multiple threads that give the kids something and their parents something and then the kids something to come back to and find when they see them again with their kids. I think Where the Wild Things Are aspires to the latter realm. And it's not for me to say whether or not it attains it. But as a boy who has been a wolf, a king and a wild thing, I loved it for it similarities to the book as well as its differences.

Booknews Roundup

This week the Pirate Bay sale threatened to run aground after the buyers were accused of being on the take and de-listed on the Swedish stock exchange. Allegories abound and metaphors were sighted off the port bow. I wonder if Johnny Depp will get a role in the eventual movie. (via WIRED magazine) Speaking of movies and metaphors, the challenges faced by an award-winning and beloved childrens book that's only about ten sentences long shouldn't surprise us, but it does. This transition from pre-adolescent fantasy to post-modern film is brought to you by the letter N, Y and T. But this tale of a childrens book's coming of age wouldn't be complete without this compelling illustration edition. That Gap ad is magical. (Five words I never thought I'd write.) (via NewYorkTimes and Geektyrant) Tuesday is the big day and the District of Columbia grits its teeth and braces for the onslaught of conspriacy buffs as it makes preparations "to be Dan Browned" on Tuesday (I prefer my cities medium-rare, thanks). Meanwhile, the Publishing Industry prays to be Dan Browned. Makes me wonder where I left my decoder ring. (via MSNBC, AFP, the L'il Orphan Annie show and the makers of rich, chocolaty Ovaltine) Of course there isn't a publisher or bookseller who doesn't wish Dan Brown could take a leaf from James Patterson's playbook. Patterson writes a couple books a day, I think and gets by with a little help from his friends. To his credit, Patterson's a heckuva nice guy and it reportedly very generous to his co-authors. As a writer, it must be odd to be the CEO of "Your Name Here" Inc. (Speaking of the Beatles, do you think there's much hope we'll see an author's edition of "Rockband" that comes with a typewriter and a bottle of Scotch? Maybe not.) (via Reuters, .CNET, Paul, John, George and Ringo) And in other news: This article on flexible screen makes me wonder if my pondering about dancing text isnt so far off, and the melee of authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians and lawyers currently centered on Googlebooks is giving me a headache. If you can summarize it or make it funny, more power to you. (via WIRED magazine, Yahoo/Reuters, ALA, and NewYorkTimes).

You Ruined It!

Hollywood is chock full of milquetoast renditions of great books. I just read a thoughtful comparison between the movie Inkheart and the book by Cornelia Funke upon which it was based over at the book blog We Be Reading (the movie - though enjoyable - varies drastically in character and tone from the book). It was all handled delicately and she was most gentle when discussing the variance between the two, but it stoked a mental fire that I've been tending for quite some time.

What I appreciated most about Kristen's assessment of the two (book and movie) is that she never once implied that the one destroyed the other. Last night I watched the new Harry Potter movie and came home to finally read the reviews without fear of spoilers (though reading the books was spoiler enough, I suppose) and was surprised at the number of fans taking it to task for varying too much from JK Rowling's story and "ruining the book".

Yes things were deleted. And things were added. And people were shuffled. Can't say I minded much. And it certainly didn't ruin the book.

That's a complaint I hear and read a lot and I can't say I understand it. The list of books I've heard fans complain of being "ruined" by their filmic translation is seemingly endless and ranges wildly from James Bond to James and the Giant Peach. The popularity or critical success of the movie seems to stand somewhat apart from the reaction of the dedicated fans.

I have to admit that upon hearing that one of my favorite books will be set to film, I too sometimes find my teeth grinding. Why is that? No matter how far afield a two hour Where the Wild Things Are movie takes a 48-page children's book, the impact that this seminal book had on my life won't be undone. So why do we care so much?  

Bladerunner was an excellent movie that never got anywhere near Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Watchmen was simultaneously praised and lambasted for its adherence to Allan Moore's graphic novel. Yet classics by Dickens, Austen and God-knows Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been endlessly made and remade without the pantheon of English Literature spiraling into oblivion... So why does my hair stand on end when I hear that a Neuromancer movie is in the works? It can't really "ruin" the book. Can it?

There are certainly movies I've seen that made me slink out of the movie theater wishing for a trick of Space & Time to allow me to go back and regain the hours lost. (A good argument for investing heavily in time travel research). And I'm sure many of them were based upon books, sometimes a mite too loosely. But did the 2002 adaptation of The Time Machine alter my perception of the HG Wells story? No. At most it ran afoul of the wholly-imaginary movie I've spent the last thirty years casting and re-casting in my head. Is that what's really being 'ruined' by these film adaptations? That's not really the same as ruining a book, is it?

I've been told by some that the mental impression left by film is stronger than the impression left by text. And while sounds somewhat plausible in our remarkably visually-oriented society, there's at least one interesting scientific study that seems to indicate that the reaction to scenes on the screen and on the page are essentially the same. If you follow that link above, you'll find a WIRED article about the scientists who determined that "what's disgusting on the screen is just as disgusting described in a book" -- ultimately the brain doesn't care if it's seeing it on the silver screen or imagining it from a passage of text. Is this the neural chemistry that's hampering the ability of some to differentiate between the movieplex and the bookstore? Is the image flickering on the screen overwriting the memories of the original story? Not for me.

My problem is that the idea implies that there isn't room on my mental bookshelf for the filmic adaptation of Coraline and the Neil Gaiman book despite the similarities and differences between the two. In the current climate books are transforming from ink on a page (or at least only ink on a page) to a picture on a screen, whether we're closing the gap between the two or they are already on the verge of overlapping is a bit of a debate.

For the nonce, I think that it behooves us to remember each for its charms, quirks and merits. Revel in the quiet elegance of the inner dialogue only possible in print, in the images that flicker behind our eyes as we doze off with a beloved book on our chests and don't confuse it with the communal event found in the darkness of a movie theater.

Make a movie. Write a book. Adapt one into the other. Heck, re-imagine Mystic River as a Broadway Musical. There is too much to enjoy (or revile) in any one format that I cannot help but regard each as a separate entity to be praised or damned on its own merits. The movie sits beside the book on my shelf rather than replacing it... or ruining it.