Adaptations
From Short Story to Big Screen: 35 Great Stories That Have Inspired Great Films
Published on 26. April 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
640 pages
978-1-4000-5314-8 (ISBN)
Description
An Eclectic Collection of Fiction That Inspired Film
Memento, All About Eve, Rear Window, Rashomon, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are all well-known and much-loved movies, but what is perhaps a lesser-known fact is that all of them began their lives as short stories. Adaptations gathers together 35 pieces that have been the basis for films, many from giants of American literature (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) and many that have not been in print for decades (the stories that inspired Bringing Up Baby, Meet John Doe, and All About Eve).
Categorized by genre, and featuring movies by master directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Frank Capra, and John Ford, as well as relative newcomers such as Chris Eyre and Christopher Nolan, Adaptations offers insight into the process of turning a short story into a screenplay, one that, when successful, doesn't take drastic liberties with the text upon which it is based, but doesn't mirror its source material too closely either. The stories and movies featured in Adaptations include:
•Philip K. Dick's "The Minority Report,” which became the 2002 blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise
•"The Harvey Pekar Name Story” by reclusive graphic artist Harvey Pekar, whose life was the inspiration for American Splendor, winner of the 2003 Sundance Grand Jury Prize
•Hagar Wilde's "Bringing Up Baby,” the basis of the classic film Bringing Up Baby, anthologized here for the first time ever
•"The Swimmer” by John Cheever, an example of a highly regarded story that many feared might prove unadaptable
•The predecessor to the beloved holiday classic A Christmas Story, "Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid” by Jean Shepherd
Whether you're a fiction reader or a film buff, Adaptations is your behind-the-scenes look at the sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliantly successful process from the printed page to the big screen.
Memento, All About Eve, Rear Window, Rashomon, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are all well-known and much-loved movies, but what is perhaps a lesser-known fact is that all of them began their lives as short stories. Adaptations gathers together 35 pieces that have been the basis for films, many from giants of American literature (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) and many that have not been in print for decades (the stories that inspired Bringing Up Baby, Meet John Doe, and All About Eve).
Categorized by genre, and featuring movies by master directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Frank Capra, and John Ford, as well as relative newcomers such as Chris Eyre and Christopher Nolan, Adaptations offers insight into the process of turning a short story into a screenplay, one that, when successful, doesn't take drastic liberties with the text upon which it is based, but doesn't mirror its source material too closely either. The stories and movies featured in Adaptations include:
•Philip K. Dick's "The Minority Report,” which became the 2002 blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise
•"The Harvey Pekar Name Story” by reclusive graphic artist Harvey Pekar, whose life was the inspiration for American Splendor, winner of the 2003 Sundance Grand Jury Prize
•Hagar Wilde's "Bringing Up Baby,” the basis of the classic film Bringing Up Baby, anthologized here for the first time ever
•"The Swimmer” by John Cheever, an example of a highly regarded story that many feared might prove unadaptable
•The predecessor to the beloved holiday classic A Christmas Story, "Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid” by Jean Shepherd
Whether you're a fiction reader or a film buff, Adaptations is your behind-the-scenes look at the sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliantly successful process from the printed page to the big screen.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Random House USA Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
BW IMAGES
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
964 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4000-5314-8 (9781400053148)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stephanie Harrison teaches in the state university system of Florida.
Content
The Directors: Translators, Magicians, Collaborators and Thieves
“Jerry and Molly and Sam” by Raymond Carver
Robert Altman: Short Cuts (1993, DVD)
*“Blow-Up” by Julio Cortazar
Michelangelo Antonioni: Blow-Up (1966, VHS)
*“Your Arkansas Traveler” by Budd Schulberg
Elia Kazan: A Face in the Crowd (1957, VHS)
“It Had to be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich
Alfred Hitchcock: Rear Window (1954, DVD)
Science Fiction: Kubrick and Spielberg, Spielberg and Kubrick
“The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968, DVD)
“Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg/Kubrick, 2001, DVD)
“The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick
The Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002, DVD)
Horror: Cue the Gore
“Spurs” by Tod Robbins
Freaks (Browning, 1932, VHS)
“The Fly” by George Langelaan
The Fly (Neumann, 1958, DVD and Cronenberg, 1986, DVD)
“Herbert West–Reanimator: Six Shots by Midnight” by H.P. Lovecraft
Re-Animator (Gordon, 1984, DVD)
Westerns: Tonto Means Fool in Spanish
“Stage to Lordsburg” by Ernest Haycox
Stagecoach (Ford, 1939, DVD)
“A Man Called Horse” by Dorothy M. Johnson
A Man Called Horse (Silverstein, 1970, DVD)
*“This is what it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie
Smoke Signals (Eyre, 1998, DVD)
Graphic Stories: Flying Under the Radar
**“The Harvey Pekar Name Story” by Harvey Pekar
American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman, 2003, DVD)
**“Hubba Hubba” by Daniel Clowes
Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001, DVD)
Five All-But-Lost Stories
*“The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950, DVD)
“A Reputation” by Richard Connell
Meet John Doe (Capra, 1941, DVD)
*“Mr. Blandings Builds His Castle” by Eric Hodgins
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (Potter, 1948, VHS)
*“Cyclists’ Raid” by Frank Rooney
The Wild One (Benedek, 1954, DVD)
*“Tomorrow” by William Faulkner
Tomorrow (Anthony, 1953, VHS)
The Good, the Bad, and the Unadaptable
“Bringing Up Baby” by Hagar Wilde
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938, VHS)
“Babylon, Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Time I Saw Paris (Brooks, 1954, DVD)
“The Swimmer” by John Cheever
The Swimmer (Perry, 1968, DVD)
Suspense = Style
*“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway
The Killers (Siodman, 1946, DVD)
*“The Basement Room” by Graham Greene
The Fallen Idol (Reed, 1948, DVD)
“Memento Mori” by Jonathon Nolan
Memento (Nolan, 2000, DVD)
Classic Family Fare
“My Friend Flicka” by Mary O’Hara
My Friend Flicka (Schuster, 1943, DVD)
“Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid” by Jean Shepherd
A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983, DVD)
“Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa” by W.P. Kinsella
Field of Dreams (Robinson, 1989 DVD)
International Cinema
“In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Japan: Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1951, DVD)
“The Lady with the Pet Dog” by Anton Chekhov
Italy: Dark Eyes (Mikhalkov, 1987, VHS)
The Independents: Money Changes Everything
*“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates
Smooth Talk (Chopra, 1985, VHS)
“Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” by Paul Auster
Smoke (Wang, 1995, DVD)
*“Emergency” by Denis Johnson
Jesus’ Son (Maclean, 1999, DVD)
*“Killings” by Andre Dubus
In the Bedroom (Field, 2001, DVD)
“Jerry and Molly and Sam” by Raymond Carver
Robert Altman: Short Cuts (1993, DVD)
*“Blow-Up” by Julio Cortazar
Michelangelo Antonioni: Blow-Up (1966, VHS)
*“Your Arkansas Traveler” by Budd Schulberg
Elia Kazan: A Face in the Crowd (1957, VHS)
“It Had to be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich
Alfred Hitchcock: Rear Window (1954, DVD)
Science Fiction: Kubrick and Spielberg, Spielberg and Kubrick
“The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968, DVD)
“Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg/Kubrick, 2001, DVD)
“The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick
The Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002, DVD)
Horror: Cue the Gore
“Spurs” by Tod Robbins
Freaks (Browning, 1932, VHS)
“The Fly” by George Langelaan
The Fly (Neumann, 1958, DVD and Cronenberg, 1986, DVD)
“Herbert West–Reanimator: Six Shots by Midnight” by H.P. Lovecraft
Re-Animator (Gordon, 1984, DVD)
Westerns: Tonto Means Fool in Spanish
“Stage to Lordsburg” by Ernest Haycox
Stagecoach (Ford, 1939, DVD)
“A Man Called Horse” by Dorothy M. Johnson
A Man Called Horse (Silverstein, 1970, DVD)
*“This is what it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie
Smoke Signals (Eyre, 1998, DVD)
Graphic Stories: Flying Under the Radar
**“The Harvey Pekar Name Story” by Harvey Pekar
American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman, 2003, DVD)
**“Hubba Hubba” by Daniel Clowes
Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001, DVD)
Five All-But-Lost Stories
*“The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950, DVD)
“A Reputation” by Richard Connell
Meet John Doe (Capra, 1941, DVD)
*“Mr. Blandings Builds His Castle” by Eric Hodgins
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (Potter, 1948, VHS)
*“Cyclists’ Raid” by Frank Rooney
The Wild One (Benedek, 1954, DVD)
*“Tomorrow” by William Faulkner
Tomorrow (Anthony, 1953, VHS)
The Good, the Bad, and the Unadaptable
“Bringing Up Baby” by Hagar Wilde
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938, VHS)
“Babylon, Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Time I Saw Paris (Brooks, 1954, DVD)
“The Swimmer” by John Cheever
The Swimmer (Perry, 1968, DVD)
Suspense = Style
*“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway
The Killers (Siodman, 1946, DVD)
*“The Basement Room” by Graham Greene
The Fallen Idol (Reed, 1948, DVD)
“Memento Mori” by Jonathon Nolan
Memento (Nolan, 2000, DVD)
Classic Family Fare
“My Friend Flicka” by Mary O’Hara
My Friend Flicka (Schuster, 1943, DVD)
“Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid” by Jean Shepherd
A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983, DVD)
“Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa” by W.P. Kinsella
Field of Dreams (Robinson, 1989 DVD)
International Cinema
“In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Japan: Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1951, DVD)
“The Lady with the Pet Dog” by Anton Chekhov
Italy: Dark Eyes (Mikhalkov, 1987, VHS)
The Independents: Money Changes Everything
*“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates
Smooth Talk (Chopra, 1985, VHS)
“Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” by Paul Auster
Smoke (Wang, 1995, DVD)
*“Emergency” by Denis Johnson
Jesus’ Son (Maclean, 1999, DVD)
*“Killings” by Andre Dubus
In the Bedroom (Field, 2001, DVD)