The Literary Life

Bond Girl and Booksquare kick things off during Kirby Gann week over at the LBC. We know you've all been reading along at home and are anxious to join in the discussion of Our Napoleon in Rags, so please jump in!

Gann also makes an appearance on Dan Wickett's literary hotspot, the Emerging Writers Network. (He also reviews Gann's book here.)  Wickett, ever the energetic model blogger, also welcomed a couple of first time novelists over to his place last month to talk about the harsh realities of publicity. First-timers on Dan's guest list include our old pal, Dallas Hudgens. If you've got a first book and publicity on your mind, then this is the panel for you. (For a more jaded look, try Jeannette Winterson on touring—thx, Gwenda).

Liam Callanan, author of THE Cloud Atlas, pitch hits for Lizzie this week over at the Old Hag. Go pay a visit to our man in the Midwest and share some comment-y love. Liam discusses how his wonderful first novel came to share its title with another, well-known novel, both released at the same time.

Here on the Happy Booker we've got a special treat for you today. Amy Helmes and Kim Askew, loyal readers and wonderful bloggers, noticed our lack of recent postings and stepped up to offer us this incredible guest blog spot on the WORST film adaptations from favorite books.

Amy and Kim became fast friends after meeting at a Mediabistro event in Los Angeles where they quickly realized that they shared an obsession for literary adaptions. After two years of Horatio Hornblower marathons and Masterpiece Theatre movie nights, Romancing the Tome was born. Amy is a Los  Angeles-based journalist who called Tom Cruise a dodo in a national publication and co-authored Boys of a Feather: A Field Guide to North  American Males. Kim lives in San Francisco and is a contributor to The May  Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work and Pulling It All Together in Your 30s to be released in March, 2006 by Tarcher. Together they use their witty powers for good over at Romancing the Tome.  Thanks gals for the guest spot. THB owes you one…

Adaptations Gone Awry by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew

While there are plenty of well-documented lit-to-film abominations (like Troy ) to pick on, we wanted to shine the spotlight on a few adaptations that have managed to personally offend us for one reason or another. Our brief selection is confined to films from the last decade, as we have zero inclination to delve further into history for books on film that missed the mark, of which there are plenty. Granted, there have been several misguided small-screen adaptations as well, which we’ll leave for another time. (A&E’s The Great Gatsby with Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd, for one. Miss it? We’d rather get run over by a car before watching that one again. And don’t get us started on Ted Danson — yes, Ted Danson — playing the lead in that wretched Gulliver’s Travels miniseries.) So without any further ado, here are five films that made us indignant on behalf of the authors whose tomes got trashed. Feel free to let us know which movies we missed! — Kim and Amy

The Scarlet Letter (1995)
Gary Oldman may have been able to give a much-needed transfusion to the fairly abysmal Dracula , but even he couldn’t turn this clunker into a classic. Who can forget the sexual encounter between Hester and Dimmesdale in a grain loft, meant to be “erotic” but falling somewhere more between the realm of “bizarre” “comic,” and “sort of itchy.”  What’s more, the movie strayed so far from the book’s original ending that even a pious Puritan would have left the theater saying, “Thy movie sucketh.” (Shudder to think how many high school kids got “F”s on their Hawthorne papers after watching the movie in lieu of reading the book.) That said, if you’ve ever wanted to see Robert Duvall cavort around with a deerskin on his head, this is the movie for you.

Great Expectations (1998)
Classic literary adaptations morphed into a modern setting rarely work, especially in the case of this movie, which managed to suck all the Dickensian quirkiness out of old Chuckie D.’s masterpiece. The late Anne Bancroft plays a fine Miss Havisham (called Miss Dinsmore in this version). Yet as the beautiful Estella, Gywneth Paltrow and her deadpan face managed to elicit the character’s chilly demeanor, while sadly, also boring us to tears. (Particularly gotta hate the ads for this flick featuring Gwyneth posing languidly in the buff. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful…”) For a much better take on this tale, check out the BBC’s more faithful telling starring Ioan Gruffudd and Justine Waddell.

Jude (1996)
There are one too many adaptations of Jude the Obscure and after this melancholy attempt, it’s plain to see why. If you haven’t read Thomas Hardy’s novel, SPOILER ALERT: Almost everybody dies, including an entire brood of innocent children! Watching it unfold onscreen is frankly too much to bear, as is the endless use of train tracks representing just about everything (all of it miserable). This particular adaptation was directed by Michael Winterbottom (his Tristram Shandy bumbles into theaters this year) and stars the lovely Kate Winslet as Jude’s star-crossed lover, Sue Bridehead.

The Golden Bowl (2000)
We were so excited to see this Henry James novel about adultery — symbolized by the wedding gift of a flawed golden bowl — adapted for the screen. We remember it clearly: Settling in at one of our favorite art house theatres with a bar of gourmet chocolate, thinking it couldn’t get any better than this. That was during the previews. Once the movie started, our bubble burst all too quickly. Nick Nolte and Uma Thurman were ridiculously stiff (worse even than Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder in Dracula ) and they were the ones supposedly portraying Americans in the film! The costumes make it worth watching, but we suggest you put your television’s mute button to good use, or, even better, invent an elaborate drinking game involving veiled innuendos or bustles.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)
While I’ve probably seen the first Bridget Jones movie at least ten times, I will never, ever watch Edge of Reason a second time. What a disappointment! In the first BJ , the character was endearingly plucky and loveably flawed, just like in the book. But in the big screen adaptation of Edge of Reason (the funnier of the two books for my money), Bridget was so annoying, so irritating, so utterly obnoxious that she gave SWFs everywhere a bad name. Of course no one wanted to go out with her! It had less to do with the fact that she was a female thirty-something with “wobbly bits” and more that she was whiny, blatantly despo, and paranoid jealous. It was entirely unbelievable then, even for a romantic comedy, when she managed to win back the “genuinely gorgeous-bottomed” Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) in the film’s dénouement.