Authors Who Hated The Movie Versions Of Their Book

Stacy Conradt has a really cool article titled, "11 Authors Who Hated  The Movie Versions Of Their Book."  (www.mentalfloss.com)

Did you know there is a reason Catcher in the Rye is not a movie?  Actually -- I hadn't noticed until Conradt mentioned it!  But, sure enough, it's not on screen!  Turns out J.D. Salinger was big time ticked at the way his short story Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut was translated to film, and never again allowed his books to go to Hollywood!  The same is true of the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  (Kind of like Stephen King refusing to allow his stories to be recorded as abridgments after Thinner.)

I love this line Conradt quotes from Gump and Co, "“Don’t never let nobody make a movie of your life’s story,” and “Whether they get it right or wrong, it don’t matter.” Turns out Groom had  reason to resent Hollywood. . . they cheated him out of his royalties!

Of course, we all know Stephen King was not overly fond of The Shining -- and that puts him at #2 on Conradt's list. . . right after Mary Poppins.  What could be wrong with Mary Poppins?  That's like someone asking a King fan, "what's wrong with The Shining?"  (Nothing, if you ask most of us!)  But for King, the movie failed to tell his story.

About Mary Poppins, Conradt writes, "Despite having script approval, Travers’ edits were largely disregarded. Travers loathed the movie’s animated sequences and was perturbed that Mary Poppins’ strict side was downplayed. After some heated meetings, Travers reluctantly approved. She would have been shunned from the star-studded premiere had she not shamed a Disney exec into an invite. The 65-year-old Travers spent most of the movie crying and ultimately refused to let Disney touch the rest of the series."

And then about The Shining, Condrat says,

Stephen King probably made movie buffs cringe when he said he hated what Stanley Kubrick did to The Shining.“I’d admired Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for the project, but I was deeply disappointed in the end result. … Kubrick just couldn’t grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn’t believe, he couldn’t make the film believable to others.” He was also unhappy with Jack Nicholson’s performance – King wanted it to be clear that Jack Torrance wasn’t crazy until he got to the hotel and felt that Nicholson made the character crazy from the start. With director Mick Garris, King ended up working on another version of The Shining that aired on ABC in 1997.

Here's the raw list, but check out the article:

1. Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers.
2. The Shining, Stephen King.
3. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
4. Forrest Gump, Winston Groom
5. Sahara, Clive Cussler
6.Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut, J.D. Salinger
7. A Clockword Orange, Anthony Burgess
8. American Psycho, Bred Easton Ellis
9. Charlie and the Chocolate Facotry, Roald Dahl
10. One Flew Over  The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey.
11. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

The full article is delightful.  Check it out here: mentalfloss.com