The Silence Of The Lambs

[urgeok]

Originally posted by jenna26
I will say that she did the best with what she was given to work with. It wasn't easy on her walking into a role that everyone already so strongly identified with Foster. But the movie was mediocre for reasons that had nothing to do with her.

I agree Urge....it did feel as if he were influenced in that way. If he didn't have the creative vision for another one, he should have let his characters rest in peace rather than forcing it just so the powers that be would have another moneymaker on their hands. But that is how it happens, not likely to change anytime soon. It is disappointing when a decent writer gets pulled in like that though.

i think Rowlings - who is in the best position in all of book-movie history to have had this happen - has fared a lot better.

after reading the last potter it seems she is following her origional plans for her books and only the tiniest nonconcequential influences of the films are sneaking through

[horror_master]

I haven't read the book yet, but now I want to. I saw the movie the movies was pretty good. :)

[jenna26]

Originally posted by urgeok
i think Rowlings - who is in the best position in all of book-movie history to have had this happen - has fared a lot better.

after reading the last potter it seems she is following her origional plans for her books and only the tiniest nonconcequential influences of the films are sneaking through

You're right, in fact, I personally haven't really felt the influence of the films at all in her books yet. She is in a slightly better position though, I think, because she had such a clear idea of where the books were heading. She knew pretty much from the start how many books there would be, what paths her character were going to take. Hell, she already has the last chapter of series written. So she is writing toward an idea that is completely untainted by the films and their success.

[urgeok]

Originally posted by jenna26
You're right, in fact, I personally haven't really felt the influence of the films at all in her books yet. She is in a slightly better position though, I think, because she had such a clear idea of where the books were heading. She knew pretty much from the start how many books there would be, what paths her character were going to take. Hell, she already has the last chapter of series written. So she is writing toward an idea that is completely untainted by the films and their success.

yeah i was thinking the same points ...

still though - it has to be a pretty powerful lure .. she now has a lot of caught on film substance to her imagery .. thats hard to ignore once you've seen it.

i did catch a couple of things in the last book that were particularily descriptive ...that seemed to come from the movie .. i cant remember it all and it was so small it didnt taint my experience .. but they definately had to come from the filmmakers fleshing out of her vision ..

this woman is going to be the richest person in the world if these things are done correctly ..

[Zero]

Personally, I think Harris has been going down-hill sense Red Dragon. RD is a wonderful book - intelligent, haunting, fast-paced - really the ideal "profiler/serial killer" book - which I suppose is why so many people have imitated it. SOL was a fair book, a bit bloated and under-developed, and the film was actually better than the book - tight, stream-lined, more impact. Hannibal was excessively bloated. But, contrary to Urgeok's opinion, I think Harris wrote the book to be unfilmable - a kind of "hey, try to adapt this psycho-philosophical babble" into a thriller. Of course, Demme wouldn't /couldn't do it - and Ridley Scott just wanted to show someone eating his own brain (which helped the film break records for opening of an R-rated film!).

I doubt there will be another Hannibal book - or that Harris will ever write anything of worth again. Maybe he'll go back to reporting for that newspaper in Waco.

[urgeok]

unfilmable ?
i didnt think so at all .. every page was full of 'lets give the people what they want. (the movie audiences - not the harris fans)


no book is unfilmable ... at least 3 or 4 Kurt Vonnegut's books have been adapted to film and they are far more complex and
surreal than anything Harris wrote ..

what made you think it was unfilmable ?

[Zero]

Originally posted by urgeok
unfilmable ?
i didnt think so at all .. every page was full of 'lets give the people what they want. (the movie audiences - not the harris fans)


no book is unfilmable ... at least 3 or 4 Kurt Vonnegut's books have been adapted to film and they are far more complex and
surreal than anything Harris wrote ..

what made you think it was unfilmable ?

I think the long forays into the "palace of the memory" excursion into philosophical ruminations, the graphic violence and the screwed up "role-reversal" ending. My feeling at the time, though I could clearly be all-kinds-of-wrong, was that Harris was trying to make a book so utterly "not-silence" that it would either escape the fame of the previous book - or so infuriate fans of SOL (film and book) that it would break the "chains of success". Who knows?? Apparently Thomas Harris is intensely reclusive - so there's really no way of knowing. I just recall that the initial reactions in the press (and in hollywood trade publications) was that the film would be a really hard sell. That, apparently, is part of why Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster ditched out.

That said, there are clearly some "edge-of-your-seat" moments that seem very cinematic.