Entry Time Now . . .

Okay, yeah.  So I’m actually going to attempt a real entry here.  But I don’t really know what to write about.  I’m discovering more and more exactly how much of a purist I am for books transferred to movies.  Or in the case of Phantom, play to movie.

I mean, take a movie like Phantoms.  The book is by Dean Koontz, and it’s basically about this little town, no more than five hundred people in it, that experiences one of those mass disappearances.  Like Roanoke Island.  Everyone just disappears.  And the two sisters who were driving back to the town tell the police about it, and help the investigation, etc.  Then, there’s an entire sub-plot thing that ties into the ending.

Well, in the movie, they changed the size of the twon to about 5,000, instead of five hundred.  They cmpletely changed the little sister’s personality from this shy, sweet, fairly quiet girl, to a dilinquient who was coming to the town to get her away from a bad influence boyfriend.  They completely changed the appearance of this one pervert cop.  He was supposed to be a 500 pound, cigar smoking, gross slug of a man.  Instead, they cast the guy who played Cottom Weary from the Scream series to play him.  You kow, the tall, thin one?  Not to mention that they changed the ending.

That one, though, I can admit, taken by itself, FAR away from the book,it is a pretty good horror flick.  It has the shock value and all that, and for a movie, once again, taken FAR away from the book, the ending works.  But you compare it to the book, and it is the worst, most God-awful thing to have ever reached the screen!

I mean, when it says “based on the book,” you expect the similarities to be more than just, “this town got emptied by this strange thing that’s been around since the dawn of time, and these two sisters are the main characters.”

I suppose that’s what bothers me.  Enough people read these books.  And a lot of times, the authors write the screen play for these things.  Why the heck do they change things so much?  I mean, are they catering to what they think people want to see on the screen?  Are they giving us more “believable” characters?  If they feel their book characters aren’t believable enough for the screen, then why are they believable enough for the written page?  I mean, seriously.  I swear, if any of my books ever get to the point where they’re filmed, I want full rights to assembling the screenplay.  I’d want some say in the casting, but that would be up to the director, mostly.  But I would write the script, and any problems the actors had with their lines, they could come to me about.

It’s funny.  It half drives me absolutely nuts that Mike Keller hates the Lord of the Rings movies.  Cuz, frankly, I think they’re the greatest thing to have hit the screens since . . . I don’t even know what.  Yet, the other half of me perfectly understands why he doesn;t like them.  They are SO different from the books.  Though with those books-to-movies, there are a lot of things that do need to be simplified.  Like I was saying to Shannon and Mike a few nights ago, if they kept the council as it was in the book, that segment alone would have taken up the first disk.

I do wish, though, that they had shown what became the extended editions in the theater.  I mean, no one can use the argument of, “They were long enough already” as an argument that holds water in my opinion.  Cuz, Mike brought up this point: What would you rather spend six bucks on, a three and a half hour movie, or an hour and a half one?  Especially with the night movie prioce being nine bucks, I’m gonna go with the three and a half hour movie!  The people who want to see them are gong to sit through it, they’re going to want to see everything that Peter Jackson has to show, and in all honesty, it doesn’t feel like three hours is going by when I watch those movies.

Honestly, I feel anyone who insists that three hours for a movie is ‘such a long time’ and all that rot doesn’t have the attention span to sit through it.  And I find that pretty sad.  Especially in terms of my generation, pretty much ranging in age from 15-27, we’re the MTV generation.  Taught to expect things now.  Most of us have absolutely no patience, no ability to wait for things to come to us, and everything is shown.  No one wants to sit down and read anymore.  No one wants to take the time to sit down and pay attention to a long movie, like Lord of the Rings.  No, insted it’s all brought to us in half hour stints of sitcoms.  And even there, we’re not getting half an hour worth of show.  The ones who make these shows don;t even expect us to be able to sit in one place for half a freakin’ hour!  There are commerical breaks, advertising more stuff for people to see if they can instantaneously buy, or allowing us to get up and take a break from watching the TV!

And I know there are exceptions.  I’m an exception.  Because frankly, I still want to sit down one day, and watch all three extended editions of Lord of the Rings in one day.  I just need to find the time to do it.

I do wish I had more time to read.  I mean, in high school, I was reading a new book every other week.  Or if not a new book, then an older one.  Maybe I’ve read it a few times, but you know what?  I’m still reading something.  Now, I’m lucky if I read two books in a month.  True, I’m busy working on my own, but I should be examining more of what’s out there in the teen fiction category.

::Sighs::  Oh, well.  I’ve got a routine going.  I just need to start working within that routine to accomplish more.  I do that, and get my finances straight, and I’ll be on my way.  Woo-hoo.

Okay, I’m climbing off my soapbox and going to watch the other half of the extended Return of the King now.