Carrisa did this on her blog and I think it was a really good idea. I have a cold which includes a fever and big headache and stuff, and thinking is mighty tough for me right now, but I’m going to do my best. I betcha my choices will all be silly choices and people will be like “What? Louise reads dreck!” which might be true but I also read actual literature (in two languages! I’m smart! I’m smart! I really am!)… I just can’t remember any of it right now.
Often when I’m reading a book, I think about what it would be like as a movie. I think of who would be cast in the characters’ roles, what the movie would look like, if parts of it would have to be changed to make the movie actually fit into the two-hour movie time allotment.
The thing is, in my opinion, movies of books never turn out to be as good as my imagination. Either they’re completely different from the book (has anyone ever read Forrest Gump? I did, long before the movie came out. Strange how the movie never mentions Forrest going into space with an orangutan named Sue), or they change what the characters are supposed to look like (I mentioned this in Carrisa’s comments: The novel In Her Shoes portrays the main character, Rose, as being a size 16. Her insecurity about her weight is a HUGE part of her character development, in the book. In the movie, she’s played by Toni Collette. Who is an amazing actress. And it makes me sad that either a) she’s what’s considered “fat” or b) the movie people thought that people wouldn’t like a “fat” character so they did away with that facet of her). Sometimes they cut characters out, often they remove scenes that I consider pivotal to the storyline. ALL OF THAT.
That being said… here I am going to list my top 5 books that I would like to see made into films, if I had complete creative control and the movies were allowed to be 30 hours long and they had to make the movie the way I “saw” it in my head.
1) The entire Outlander series. This is my favourite series of books, of all time. It’s very difficult to explain what it’s about (here, read wikipedia), but I fell in love with the characters, the imagery, the story, all of it. And there are more books to come. The first one was published in the early 90s, though, and there are more books to come. Since there are at least 7 (long, the shortest is about 700 pages) books in the series, and so many dozens of IMPORTANT characters and plotlines and subplots, I can’t see it being made into movies anytime soon. Even though it would make a wonderful movie.
They would have so much trouble with the casting, though. The author herself says that she can’t think of who would be well cast as Jamie or Claire. In the 90s, when I first started reading the novels, I thought that Alex Kingston (you might remember her from ER – by the way according to Google Image Search she loves to get her boobies out) might be a good match for Claire, but if they made the movies now, she’d be too old for the early novels, and too young for the later ones. If we were relying only on looks, I think that Laura Prepon could play Jamie and Claire’s daughter. Beyond that, I have no idea who else could play who. And I have to think of 4 more books so I’ll stop talking about these ones.
2) Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner. Seeing what they did to In Her Shoes, I doubt that they’d do a great job of Good In Bed, though. (although if they did, I’d also love to see the sequel, Certain Girls, made into a film)
3) The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. What’s that you say? They already made a film of the novel? Yeah, that movie sucked. They need to make a new one, with proper casting (sorry, Scarlett, but no), and actually follow the story in the novel. As it was they took a slightly historically inaccurate but really interesting story and totally changed it to make it 100% garbage.
4) Lots of Terry Pratchett books. Actually the BBC has been making some of his books into miniseries, and doing a great job of it. I’d love to see the Tiffany Aching books, or the Granny Weatherwax ones, made into movies.
5) I had 2 more books/series I was going to suggest but since I only had one space left I have to choose between them I guess.
I was a teenager in the 90s. I loved the Weetzie Bat series. I also loved (now this is a bit more embarassing) the Vampire Diaries series. Seeing as they are already using the Twilight series as basis for movies, and we don’t need too many human girl falls in love with vampire and a friend turns into a werewolf movies, then I’m going to choose Weetzie for a movie.
Okay so, as Carrisa said, if you want to leave your top 5 books to be made into movies in my comments, you should. Or you could just do this on your own blog. You should let me know if you do though, because I’m nosy. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be all crazy-wordy like I was. I just talk too much. You know that.
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