Random Authors Who Loathed Movie Adaptations of Their Books (15 items)

• 

  (#8) Anthony Burgess

  • A Clockwork Orange, Inside Mr. Enderby, Joysprick, Homage to Qwert Yuiop, Little Wilson and Big God, Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess, 1985, The Wanting Seed, The Kingdom of the Wicked, Earthly Powers, Man of Nazareth, A Dead Man in Deptford, Abba Abba, Enderby Outside, Language Made Plain, A Mouthful of Air, Any Old Iron, The Pianoplayers, Tremor of Intent: An Eschatological Spy Novel, Mozart and the Wolf Gang, Shakespeare, A free reference library for Northampton, The Swilly and the Wee Donegal, Beds in the East, The Enemy in the Blanket, The Right to an Answer, One Hand Clapping, M/F, Time for a Tiger, The Doctor Is Sick, Devil of a State, Beard's Roman Women, You've Had Your Time: Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess, The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End, Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby, New York, Napoleon Symphony, A Vision of Battlements, The Worm and the Ring, Honey for the Bears, The Eve of St. Venus, Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life, Byrne: A Novel, Oberon Old and New, One Man's Chorus: The Uncollected Writings, The End of the World News: An Entertainment, The Devil's Mode (Stories), The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy, Enderby, A Long Trip to Teatime, This Man and Music, Ninety-nine Novels, Blooms of Dublin, On Mozart: A Paean for Wolfgang : Being a Celestial Colloquy, an Opera Libretto, a Film Script, a Schizophrenic Dialogue, a Bewildered Rumination, A, Publick affections, pressed in a sermon before the House of Commons assembled in Parliament, Urgent Copy: Literary Studies, Ernest Hemingway and His World, Offshore on the Southern, Les puissances des ténèbres, The Age of the Grand Tour, L' orange me canique, Railways in Ulster's Lakeland, Rom im Regen, Smoke Amidst the Drumlins, Revolutionary sonnets and other poems, The difficulty of, and encouragements to a reformation. A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at the publike fast, Septem. 27. 1643, Dernières nouvelles du monde, Hommage a qwert yuiop, Zavodnoĭ apelʹsin, Rencontre au Sommet, Chasing the Flying Snail, The Novel To-day, A Christmas Recipe, Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D.H. Lawrence, Conversations with Anthony Burgess, Re Joyce, Obscenity and the arts, Cyrano, Moses: A Narrative, Cyrano de Bergerac

  The Novel: A Clockwork Orange (1962)

  The Film: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

  Here's another dig at Stanley Kubrick. According to Anthony Burgess, Kubrick missed the entire point of his novel, which, as per Burgess, is about redemption. Burgess also took exception to Kubrick's use of graphic violence, and how the movie turned turned a group of rapists and murders into pop culture icons. 

  In His Own Words:

  "The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation."
• 

  (#7) E. B. White

  • Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Elements of Style, Essays of E. B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan, Letters of E. B. White, Here Is New York, Sti͡uart Litl, Boxed Set: includes, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do, One Man's Meat, Farewell to Model T and From Sea to Shining Sea, Quo Vadimus or the Case for the Bicycle (Essay index reprint series), Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976, Le sexe pour quoi faire ?, La Tienda Hinchable / Unstable Store, Subtreasury of American Humor, The lady is cold, Petit Stuart, Pearls from My Oyster, E.B. White reader, Kleine Stuart, Alice through the cellophane, The wild flag, Shārotto no okurimono, Three Books for Children by E.B. White, E. B. White, 3 Vol, The second tree from the corner, No ordinary mouse, Notes on our times, Wilbur's Adventure, The fox of Peapack, and other poems, E B White Treasury Boxed Set, Once More to the Lake

  The Novel: Charlotte's Web (1952)

  The Film: Charlotte's Web (1973)

  EB White's story about a lovable pig named Wilbur and his friendship with Charlotte the spider is the best-selling children's paperback of all time. When White agreed to sell the rights to his novel to Hanna-Barbera, he asked that the film not be turned into a musical. White's request was denied.

  In His Own Words:

  "The movie of Charlotte's Web is about what I expected it to be. The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I don't care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney World, with 76 trombones. But that's what you get for getting embroiled in Hollywood."
• 

  (#11) Billy Hayes

  • Midnight Express

  The Novel: Midnight Express (1977)

  The Film: Midnight Express (1978)

  Midnight Express tells the true story of an American college student caught trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey. Both the film and the autobiographical novel depict Hayes's terrifying years spent in a Turkish prison and his daring escape. Hayes's main issue with the adaptation, from a screenplay written by Oliver Stone, is how the movie depicts the Turkish people, who, according to Hayes, weren't all bad.

  Additionally, the ending of the movie differed greatly from the source material. In the film, Hayes kills a prison guard who was preparing to rape him. In actuality, Hayes broke out of prison, stole a dinghy, and rowed 17 miles from his island prison on the Sea of Marmara to the city of Bandirma. From there, he crossed into Greece.

  In His Own Words:

  "I wish they included the real ending. I sat with Oliver [Stone] in a room in the May Fair Hotel in London working on the script. Oliver was young and crazy. Totally crazy. There was a lot of weed, he snorted a ton of coke, was guzzling Bloody Marys. He wanted to see beneath the lines of the book. Oliver put it in the original draft of the script, the sea escape in the boat, but it never made it into the final draft."
• 

  (#6) Clive Cussler

  • Raise the Titanic, Sahara Romanzo, Trojan Odyssey, Treasure, Golden Buddha, Arctic Drift, Skeleton Coast, Valhalla Rising, Inca Gold, Sacred Stone, Black Wind, Dark Watch, Atlantis Found, Vixen 03, Treasure of Khan, Shock Wave, White Death, Iceberg, Blue Gold, Fire Ice, Flood Tide, Cyclops, The Mediterranean Caper, Plague Ship, Dragon, Pacific Vortex!, Night Probe!, Lost City, The Thief, The Tombs, The Kingdom, The Silent Sea, The Navigator, Deep Six, Serpent, Polar Shift, Corsair, The Spy, The Sea Hunters: True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks, The Jungle, Poseidon's Arrow, The Storm, The Race, Das Todeswrack, Flammendes Eis, Akte Atlantis, Muerta Blanca, Hebt die Titanic. Roman, Im Zeichen der Wikinger, The Sea Hunters II, The Chase, Devil's Gate, The Eye of Heaven, Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt revealed, Two complete novels, Clive Cussler: Two Novels, The Mayan Secrets, Ghost Ship, Zero Hour, The EXP Navigator, The Striker: An Isaac Bell Adventure, The Bootlegger, Chasseurs d'épaves, Mirage, ORO AZUL, El Imperio Del Agua, L'incroyable secret, Schockwelle, La ciudad perdida, L'or des Incas, Pánico en la Casa Blanca, El Tesoro De Alejandria / Treasure, Exploracion Nocturna/Night Probe, Das Alexandria - Komplott. Roman, Dirk Pitt Car Collection, The adventures of Vin Fiz, Um Haaresbreite. Roman, Rescaten el Titanic / Raise the Titanic, Im Todesnebel. Roman, Höllenflut, La Odisea De Troya/ the Odyssey of Troya, Operation Sahara, Cyclops X, Cyclops Unabridged, La Cueva De Los Vikings, Die Ajima- Verschwörung, BUDA DE ORO, EL, DEEP 6 X, The Numa Files 2, Cyclop. Roman, UC Lost City Disc. Unabr. Cass, Cueva De Los Vikingos, La, Onde de choc, Incursion Nocturna, The Wrecker

  The Novel: Sahara (1992)

  The Film: Sahara (2005)

  There's a reason novelists aren't typically involved in adapting their own work. Movies have to cut away a lot of parts in a novel, which can be a painful process for authors. The industrialist/wannabe producer who funded Sahara gave Clive Cussler tremendous creative control over everything from casting to approval of director and supervision over the script (which ended up having ten authors). 

  In the end, things got ugly. Cussler was upset he didn't have final say on the screenplay, and he bad-mouthed the movie before it opened. Sahara, starring Matthew McConaughey and Penélope Cruz, was a box office disaster. Cussler sued Crusader Entertainment for not giving him full authority regarding the script, then Crusader counter sued for him publicly sabotaging the movie. 

  In His Own Words:

  "They deceived me right from the beginning. They kept lying to me...and I just got fed up with it."
• 

  (#2) J. D. Salinger

  • The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, For Esmé—with Love and Squalor, The Varioni Brothers, Last Day of the Last Furlough, Hapworth 16, 1924, The Stranger, The Young Folks, Seymour: An Introduction, A Boy in France, The Heart of a Broken Story, Soft-Boiled Sergeant, I'm Crazy, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All, The Hang of It, Teddy, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls, Once a Week Won't Kill You, De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period, Elaine, Both Parties Concerned, Blue Melody, Personal Notes of an Infantryman, The Long Debut of Lois Taggett, Just Before the War with the Eskimos, Down at the Dinghy, The Laughing Man, Go See Eddie, This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise, Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes, The Inverted Forest, Slight Rebellion off Madison

  The Short Story: Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut (1948)

  The Film: My Foolish Heart (1949)

  There have been plenty of Catcher in the Rye-esque coming of age films made over the years. Ever wonder why there was never a direct adaptation of Salinger's classic? Blame the adaptation of his short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut (called My Foolish Heart).

  My Foolish Heart was the only film adaptation of the reclusive author's work. The writing team at MGM turned Salinger's sullen story, which aims to indict middle class society, into a sappy love story with a pat, happy ending. Salinger was so dismayed by what the studio did to his story, he vowed to never sell the rights to any of his works ever again.

  In His Own Words:

  Salinger said he was "humiliated" and "appalled" by what MGM did to Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut. That the film did well at the box office and received two Academy Award nominations infuriated him even more. When asked about selling the movie rights to Catcher in the Rye, Salinger responded, "No, no, no. I had a bad experience in Hollywood once."
• 

  (#15) Elizabeth Wurtzel

  • Prozac Nation, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction, The Secret of Life: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, The Bitch Rules, cal sanity, Radical Sanity

  The Novel: Prozac Nation (1994)

  The Film: Prozac Nation (2001)

  Elizabeth Wurtzel's autobiography details her experiences with major depression while she studying at Harvard. The memoir highlights the author's drug and alcohol abuse, self-mutilation, and deep gloom. Wurtzel was placed on Prozac following a suicide attempt.

  Despite a strong performance by Christina Ricci as Wurtzel, test audiences were unimpressed. Many felt Wurtzel as a film character came across as unsympathetic and narcissistic. Prozac Nation never received a national release in the US, and the author claimed she wept when she first saw the movie. Wurtzel thought Ricci's voice-over narration should have come verbatim from her book.

  In Her Own Words:

  ''As you should have figured out by now, it's a horrible movie. It's just awful. If they thought it was good, they'd have released it long ago.'' She added, "You could argue that I'm a terrible writer, but I'm the best version of me that there is.''

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