Book was Better?

“It wasn’t as good as the book.”

          I have heard this declaration so many times that I have begun to take it with a grain of salt.  The comment is invariably heard whenever one leaves a movie theater that is showing a movie that has been based on a book, and I have begun to suspect that maybe people sometimes say this simply because it is expected.  Maybe some of these people just want to sound smart and want to let people know that they have indeed read the book.  More often, I suspect, people say “the book was better” because it is politically correct to do so.

          Yes, political correctness extends beyond our attitudes toward controversial issues and our diction when referring to people of different nationalities, races, or religions.  It even extends to the conventions of informal film discussion.  To be politically correct, a movie-goer has to follow certain rules.  Hence, comedies that make you laugh – as opposed to those that make you think – must be described as “stupid.”  Blazing Saddles and Meet the Parents, for example, may be based on subversive wit and a skilled escalation of comic anxiety (respectively), but they are still described as “stupid” even by those who admit enjoying them.  Another PC rule is that Hollywood produces drek while independent cinema is invariably marvelous.

          Yet the line between Hollywood and indie cinema is blurred today.  Miramax is now owned by Disney and one-time indie gods Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith bring us computer-generated Hollywood product like Spy Kids and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.  So now more than ever, people are falling back on the old, reliable “book was better” comment to make themselves sound like sophisticated viewers.

          Granted, sometimes the book really is better.  But the reverse can be true as well.  The Graduate and To Die For, books by Charles Webb and Joyce Maynard, respectively, would be completely forgotten now if not for Buck Henry, who adapted them into the movies that are now so well known and respected.  Buck Henry is just one of those people who can use a mediocre book as a thread that spins into movie magic.  William Goldman is another example.  Misery is certainly not Stephen King’s best book, but Goldman’s screenplay, by emphasizing the claustrophobic premise, turns the story into a more effective tale of suspense.  Indeed, Goldman’s talent at adapting books to the screen is so complete that even his own parodic novel, the over-rated The Princess Bride, becomes a movie that is infinitely better at balancing satire with sincerity.  Of course, both Misery and The Princess Bride were directed by Rob Reiner, whose beloved Stand by Me draws inspiration from “The Body,” one of King’s least compelling novellas.  And so on.

          All of these films share one thing in common:  They are not so much based on the details of the original stories as they are inspired by the spirit in which those stories were written.  In making a movie, a filmmaker’s priorities should be art and entertainment rather than word-for-word transliteration.  As Roger Ebert argues, fidelity should be a high priority with marriage, not with movies.

          One could learn a lot from The Mothman Prophecies, a movie based on the book of the same name by John A. Keel.  I am no auteurist, but I posit that of all cinematic genres, horror is most definitely a director’s medium.  Atmospheric direction in a horror film can cause viewers to overlook cheesy acting and weaknesses in the story’s logic.  Mark Pellington, the director of The Mothman Prophecies, knows this and goes all-out, pulling out all the stops to create such a level of unease that even the eyes of Debra Messing, that familiar face from “Will and Grace,” become nightmarishly creepy.

          The Mothman Prophecies, like so many other adaptations, sports some key differences between book and film versions.  Character, setting, and structure are all altered for the sake of translation from one form of entertainment to another.

          In terms of character, the key difference is the protagonist.  The protagonist of the book is the author himself, a parapsychologist and UFO analyst.  Keel is someone whose life revolves around looking for paranormal activity, so it is little wonder that he finds unexplained phenomena and points to it as proof of the extraterrestrial or supernatural.  Imagine meeting this guy at monthly cocktail parties.  He’s always talking about Bigfoot, demons, ghosts, and UFOs, so when he starts talking about the Mothman, who may be some weird amalgam of two or more of the above, no one would blame you for dismissing the subject with a roll of your eyes.  The book has an identical effect.  Keel comes across as a fanatic, a man who has spent so much of his life obsessing over the paranormal that his life has become consumed by it.

          John Klein, on the other hand, the protagonist played by Richard Gere in the film, has never given much thought to the supernatural.  Like Keel, Klein is a writer, but Klein has nothing to do with UFOs and the like.  A political commentator of some repute, Klein earns his living by analyzing some very mundane aspects of the real world.  Klein is a man who has both feet on the ground, which makes his plunge into the bizarre aspects of the Mothman prophecies all the more eerie.  The implication is that if such events can happen to a man like Klein, they could happen to anybody.  The unintended implication of the book, on the other hand, is that if such events can happen to a man like Keel, he’s obviously a nut.

          The events depicted in the book allegedly happened in 1966, but the movie wisely updates the story to the present, making the possibility of the Mothman more immediate.  Another significant change is in structure.  The book’s structure is erratic, as Keel jumps from incident to incident, subject to subject, with random abandon.  Yet aside from one significant transition – that old, reliable standby “two years later” – the movie maintains a narrative flow that the book most definitely lacks.  In both versions of The Mothman Prophecies, impossible occurrences and incredible coincidences abound, but in presenting these oddities from one particular character’s point of view, the movie effectively creates the illusion of an attempt to make sense of the mystery.  Indeed, some dialogue seems to slyly poke fun at the book’s frequent jumps in logic and time:  When the sheriff says, “He’s been dead for about three hours. . . when did you speak with him?” and Keel responds, “About an hour ago,” the sheriff grumbles, “I hate this!”

          The sheriff has no patience for disjointed continuity, and her frustration mirrors the feeling one gets from reading The Mothman Prophecies.  Does the book have its merits?  I suppose so.  But the movie was better.