>>The UPS guy was just by to deliver a copy of "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney, which I ordered on a whim this week to reread. ($2.68 used from Amazon -- can't beat it with a stick). The cover photo is of Michael J. Fox in the movie version, which was in my opinion dreck. It got me thinking it might be a fun, non-combative thread to list books that were better than the movies made from them, and the other way around.
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>>Two starters --
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>>"Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney -- book better
>>"The Godfather" by Mario Puzo -- movie better
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>I highly dislike the comparison, movies and books are different, and I specially hate when people think that the movie should be like the book! I see it as two different stories recounted by different people, they will never and should never be the same story as each teller view the story from different perspectives, the closer the tellers were when the story unfold, the closest their stories will be (movies that closely resembles the original book) and the "further away" the tellers were they stories will be wildly different, so for example if book and movies are very different I like to think that the author of the book was close, in time or space or both or even a witness thus has one vision of to the story and probably is closer as he was the guy who created the story :), while the teller of the movie got the story distorted by the pass of time or the distance (thus he listened from the story not directly by witnesses but from the people that listened to people who listened to people .... who talked to the witnesses or were part of it.
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>In short I never understood why there are so many people that instead of enjoying a re-telling of a good story expect that said story should be exactly how they imagined it was.

I agree with that completely. What I meant was better or worse, not identical.

The people who are merciless on this topic are younger children. If there is a movie based on a book they like, they expect 100% fidelity. This is why the Harry Potter movies have not strayed off the path. The kids would be yelling and throwing tubs of popcorn at the screen. There is comfort to them in familiarity. When my daughters were little I read to them a lot. Once in a while I would change a word to see if they were paying attention. They busted me every time.