Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
March 11, 2005 • Friday
I saw Million Dollar Baby a few weeks ago, before it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I'm not surprised it won, but the movie didn't strike me as Oscar-quality. (In fact, none of the nominees did, though Finding Neverland was close.)
If you've read this blog in the past couple months, then you know in January I read F.X. Toole's story "Million $$$ Baby," which the film was based on. While sitting in the theatre viewing the film, I began to contemplate the common theory that the book is always better than the movie. The truth is, I've never found that cliché to be true. Nor, however, false.
For instance, The Shawshank Redemption was slightly better than Stephen King's story "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” On another King note, the film Lean on Me was better than "The Body." However, Sebastian Junger's book The Perfect Storm was better than the following film (if only for reasons of depth and analysis), as was F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gastby better than its celluloid counterpart.
(Let's not even begin comparisons of the Harry Potter books and films. I’d have a hundred million worldwide children practicing Cruciatus curses on me.)
While thinking about the issue more, a pattern did occur to me: In each case I could remember, whether I preferred book or film depended on which I encountered first. I saw Shawshank ... before I read it; I read ... Gatsby before I saw it. Was my opinion tainted by first impressions?
Apparently not. Just now I scanned my bookshelves and found this: October Sky. It’s one of my favorite modern books. I loved the film, but I liked reading the book even more. I read the book in 2004. But I saw the movie in 1999.
The same, I’ve realized, goes for John Irving's The World According to Garp, which I first saw as teenager and then read in my late 20s.
What about the works of my favorite writer, John Steinbeck? When it comes to The Grapes of Wrath, I didn't make it through the book or the film. Of course, I was 13 at the time. Perhaps, 20 years later (and hopefully at least 10 years more mature), I should give them another chance. The book first.
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