Are novels really superior to movies as an art form?

[Kire]

Yeah, but the Book Is Better
ESSAY
By Thane Rosenbaum
December 23, 2005

Whenever a film is adapted from a favorite novel, serious readers of fiction are prone to say, "Yeah, but the book is better." True partisans of the written page are always in conflict with those who like their stories cinematically revealed, projected onto wide screens that illuminate the darkness and pierce the quiet with Dolby Surround sound. The magic of movies, for so many in our increasingly visual society, is a far more stimulating and efficient storytelling experience than the labor intensity of reading.

I've had to think about this recently because one of my novels, "Second Hand Smoke," is being developed into an independent feature film, and I was asked to co-write the screenplay. I had never written dialogue that was naked of narrative, and so I learned a good deal about what goes into a screenplay and what has to be taken out of a novel in adapting it into a film.

While certain novelists have successfully written screenplays from their own books — John Irving received an Academy Award for his adaptation of "The Cider House Rules"; Vladimir Nabokov wrote the screenplay for his "Lolita"; Robert Stone co-wrote "Who'll Stop the Rain," which was adapted from his novel, "Dog Soldiers," and E.L. Doctorow lifted his fictional Rosenbergs from the page and brought them to the screen in "Daniel" (from "The Book of Daniel") — I'm not sure that there is, generally, a great advantage to having the author of the novel become part of the filmmaking team. After all, the novelist may know the story best, but perhaps he or she knows it too well.

Those who maintain that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery have obviously never been imitated; any ego boost is offset by the nervous laughter from having all those tics, gestures and intonations exaggerated to the point of caricature. The same is true with a film adaptation. Giving art a second life sometimes creates more of a mutant than a clone. This explains the natural impulse to preserve the story in its original form. Any adaptation results in something new, and thereby false when compared with the original.

More: http://www.forward.com/articles/7043