Top 10 Popular Films Adapted From Crazy Sources
10.
The Producers (2005)
Moviegoers could be forgiven for being a little confused about 2005’s The Producers, an
adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name.
Or was it an adaptation of the 1968 Mel Brooks film?
Both?
Who knows?
The 2005 film is a rare successful example of a recursive adaptation – that is, an
adaptation to medium A from medium B, which was originally adapted from medium A.
The 1968 film was adapted into the Broadway musical, which was then adapted back to film
in 2005.
The, um, producers of the 2005 film never even looked at Brooks’ original – it was
wholly an adaptation of the musical, which had been running since 2001.
It was a great adaptation but, if it gets adapted back into a stage play based solely
on it, we think that the fabric of reality might start to get a little wobbly.
9.
An Inconvenient Truth
After his defeat in the 2000 Presidential election, Al Gore returned to a topic that
had fascinated him for years – global warming.
He finished compiling a slide show on the subject that he had started years earlier
and took it on the road, giving his presentation to hundreds of audiences over several years.
In 2005 the presentation was seen by Laurie David, a television producer and part-time
environmental activist, who somehow got the ball rolling on convincing Gore to turn it
into a movie.
Now, Gore was very passionate about his subject, but was not exactly known as a dynamic speaker.
Yet instead of getting, say, The Rock to narrate, he chose to do it himself.
The 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth is largely just a filmed version of Gore’s presentation,
making it the only film we can think of to be adapted from a lecture.
We won’t argue with the potential importance of its message, but we will argue that its
success was probably singular, and that “Adapted Lectures” do not need to become a regular
thing.
8.
Adaptation
Ask any screenwriter to adapt a narrative-free rumination on orchid poaching and life, like
Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief“, and you’ll likely end up with pages and pages
of unusable garbage, and a screenwriter hanging by his neck in the closet.
Unless the writer is Charlie Kaufman, in which case you’ll end up with an epic mindscrew
containing Nicolas Cage’s two best performances, filmed from one of the greatest screenplays
ever written.
Kaufman turned the unadaptable novel, itself based on Orlean’s original New Yorker article,
into a meditation on the nature of adaptation itself – not only in the literary but the
evolutionary sense – with himself as the star, a screenwriter struggling to adapt a
screenplay which, of course, will eventually be made into the movie you’re watching.
It’s an approach only Kaufman could have pulled off, and whoever’s bright idea it
was to make “The Orchid Thief” into a movie should thank their lucky stars that
Kaufman was their writer.
7.
He’s Just Not That Into You
This 2009 Affleck-and-Aniston wankfest is a pretty standard ensemble rom-com on the
surface.
It’s one of a handful (a very small handful, mind) of ill-advised self-help book adaptations-
this one a 2004 Oprah Book Of The Month that was inspired by, O Holy Grail of creative
inspirations, a line of dialogue from “Sex And The City.”
The book is essentially a long series of really obvious telltale signs that the person you’re
pursuing is – wait for it – not into you.
How to pad this out into a feature film instead of, say, a damn commercial?
Why, by turning several of its points into a series of (supposedly) comic vignettes in
the style of a bland, vacuous rom-com with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston!
Needless to say, the movie did not do very well critically or commercially.
Moviegoers were just not that into it, and es that joke as ridiculously obvious, but
it was right there.
We’re not even sorry.
6.
The Box
For his next trick, following the epic argument starter Southland Tales, Richard Kelly turned
to an adaptation of a classic … okay, an underrated … fine, a really obscure story,
whose most well-known version is as a 15-minute segment from the 80’s Twilight Zone revival
called “Button, Button,” which itself was adapted from a very short (8 pages!) story
by Richard Matheson.
The story is too thin to fill out 15 minutes of TV, let alone a feature film, and the film
itself got very mixed reviews, to say the absolute least.
You wonder why labyrinthine-plot-meister Kelly would turn to it at all rather than, you know,
just coming up with another of his wackaloon original stories.
Sadly, it’s starting to look less and less like Kelly is ever going to make another movie
as unbelievably awesome as Donnie Darko.
5.
The Shop Around The Corner/You’ve Got Mail
Quintessential chick flick You’ve Got Mail is essentially an updated version of the 1940
romantic comedy The Shop Around The Corner, repackaged as a vehicle for Tom Hanks and
Meg Ryan, and co-starring AOL instead of the US Postal Service.
The earlier film was adapted, for some reason, from an obscure Hungarian play called “Parfumerie”
that was never even translated into English, let alone performed for English speaking audiences.
Many of the plot tropes have become standard issue for rom-coms, so the next time you’re
watching one, and find yourself wondering why in the heck all of these movies have virtually
the same plot, you can thank Hungarian playwright Miklós László.
Or go back in punch his lights out; that works too.
4.
The Fast And The Furious
Vin Diesel’s surprise hit from 2001 was loosely based on a Vibe Magazine article about
illegal street racing, titled “Racer X.”
The 1998 article chronicled the underground drag racing scene, which had been spreading
throughout Southern California in the early 1990’s.
While we suppose a movie about the scene makes sense, we’re surprised there was apparently
no other source material to adapt.
For that matter, we’re surprised an adaptation was even necessary.
Just one in a long, long series of one film based on Vibe friggin’ Magazine, The Fast
And The Furious spawned a ridiculous series of five films (soon to be six) that are still
going strong, almost like an engine of some kind.
3.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
This 1997 film is known mainly for ripping off the vibe of the previous year’s Scream
- perhaps because it was written by the same guy – and also for Jennifer Love Hewitt’s
breasts.
Like Scream, it’s a kind of combination slasher flick / whodunit with a twist ending,
and it’s also pretty damn gory.
Unlike Scream, or practically any other slasher movie, it’s adapted from a novel.
And not just any novel; the kind you used to order from Scholastic catalogs when you
were a kid.
Yes, this movie was originally a Young Adult novel – from freakin’ 1973.
Of course, the novel did not feature any gory murders (one character was shot, but survived),
and being a YA novel, its focus is largely on the romantic relationship between the female
protagonist and her hunky boyfriend (giggle!)
Which begs the question: why didn’t the filmmakers just come up with an original story
for their slasher flick?
Why adapt any novel, let alone this one?
2.
Braveheart
The 1995 historical film Braveheart is fondly remembered as one of the last films in which
Mel Gibson was undisputedly awesome.
It is NOT typically remembered for being based on a 15th century epic poem entitled – we
kid you not – “The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir
William Wallace” by a poet known as Blind Harry.
Not only did we not make that up, we can’t even pronounce it.
As one of the only historical records of Wallace, the poem’s accounts of his deeds were leaned
on heavily for the film’s story, even though almost as little is known about Blind Harry
as about Wallace.
1.
Live Free Or Die Hard
The Die Hard films have a history of adapting weird crap, but none this weird: the 2007
installment takes its premise from a 1997 (timely!)
article in Wired magazine by John Carlin.
The article describes “war games,” of the sort meant to anticipate and respond to
an information attack, the type that wouldn’t be possible for several years.
Originally set to be adapted to film in 1999, as its own entity, the project stalled until
it was absorbed (like so many other things) by the Die Hard franchise.
The PG-13 rated film notoriously failed to please fans, or anyone else really, with its
bloodless violence, neutered dialogue and absurd explosions.
Fortunately, the 2013 installment A Good Day To Die Hard is rated R and – get ready for
this – is not an adaptation of anything, but an original story for the first time
in franchise history.