Supermallet

I'm guessing this makes Adaptation simultaneously the best and worst film in the history of cinema.

duff beer

Hmmmmmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Abob Teff

In his defense ... I read the initial post and I understood it. Give the guy some props!

majorjoe23

Don't worry sir, an ambulance is on its way. Many people make a full recovery after having a stroke.

joliom

How is a director making a film from someone else's original screenplay any different than adapting a book/play/short story/comic, etc. into a film? By that logic, 95% of all cinema has "no credence as pure cinema." Also, as others have rightly pointed out, there really aren't any original stories when you get right down to it - just new twists on familiar existing ones.

hanshotfirst1138

Tarantino actually said something similar when he was on Charlie Rose about the difference between starting with a blank page vs. an adaptation, and his stronger creative admiration for the former. At the very least, I think it explains why he's not a fan of John Huston. Personally, I don't buy it; interpreting or reinterpreting someone doesn't make you any less of an artist in my eyes, not in the least because it invalidates Kubick, Huston, and God knows how many other geniuses.

Jaymole

I know that 2001: A Space Odyssey was only partially adapted from Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". The novel was written at the same time the film was being developed....so the movie is only half crap

joliom

Yeah, like all of these guys:

Cecil B. DeMille
Fritz Lang
John Ford
John Huston
Alfred Hitchcock
Frank Capra
Howard Hawks
Victor Fleming
George Cukor
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
William Wyler
Jean Renoir
Luis Bunuel
Orson Welles
Billy Wilder
David Lean
Elia Kazan
Otto Preminger
Yasujiro Ozu
Akira Kurosawa
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Ingmar Bergman
Jean-Luc Godard
Francois Truffaut
Federico Fellini
Stanley Kubrick
Arthur Penn
Don Siegel
Sergio Leone
Sam Peckinpah
Robert Altman
Roman Polanski
William Friedkin
Steven Spielberg
Peter Weir
Martin Scorsese
Terrence Malick
David Cronenberg
David Lynch
Wes Craven
John Carpenter
Ridley Scott
Michael Mann
Oliver Stone
Joel Coen
Tim Burton
Peter Jackson
Ang Lee
Yimou Zhang
Quentin Tarantino
Christopher Nolan

GoldenJCJ

I'm not sure I buy it either. Technically they ALL start out as a blank page, it just includes one more step in the filmmaking process. When Mario Puzo sat down to write The Godfather he started on a blank page. Unless Tarantino insists on no additional help what-so-ever (which is never the case in filmmaking, even for Tarantino) it's kind of a non-issue.

Coral

Being an adaptation doesn't exclude Godfather from being perfect. There are other reasons why Godfather isn't perfect.

Guru Askew

The line between adaptation and original work on The Godfather is fuzzy at best. Paramount Pictures financed Mario Puzo when he was writing it. They basically developed the novel like you would with a screenplay. There are even instances of Paramount's influence present in the original novel like Michael's physical description which would have allowed a fair-skinned/haired actor like Robert Redford to play the part.

So yeah, end of thread.

Solid Snake

Ohhhhhhhhh snap.

Mr. Salty

So, in a way, this thread is an adaptation of that discussion. That makes this thread crap.

Groucho

Considering that there are two personal attacks in the first four posts, I don't see a reason for this to stay open.