Unfilmable Novels

 CounterCraft ended the year with What Makes an Unfilmable Novel?.  I cannot comment on the novels referred to in the article, other than Lolita (but of which I have never seen the Kubrick film). If you read Dracula, you will never find a movie that approaches it. There was where I found the difference between a novel and its film adaptation.

But to CounterCraft's two types of unfilmable movies, I think there is a third. That is the one whose themes cannot be filmed. Robert E. Heinlein's Starship Troopers comes to mind first. That one had to do public service to be a citizen was, at best, obscured in the move version. I know there is a film version of The Sound and the Fury because I saw 10 minutes of it about 40 years ago, but I cannot imagine it even winked at the incest of the novel. Seems to me that anyone approaching a Hollywood studio with a script for Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man would be guilty of inducing a stroke.

Well, I need to get to my own writing. Anyone reading this who would like to add other examples, feel free to use the comments below.

sch 12/31/22