Thursday Theater

I was thinking of spending some time comparing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the films based on it or The Hobbit to the new movie, but conversations I’ve had about the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka have always gone something like this:

Someone Else: I just love that movie!

Me: It’s okay, but I wish it would have followed the book better.

Someone Else: I never read the book.

Me: [Barely suppressed sigh/groan]

Chances are, either you already know all of the places where the movie deviates from the book in these stories, or you really don’t care. My comparisons would probably seem needlessly grumpy or totally boring. Let me just say, however, that for me, the book is always the real story. Whether it’s the geese that lay golden eggs in Willy Wonka or Radagast’s bunny sleigh in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, anything that shows up in the movie that wasn’t in the book is a lie.

If you love books, however, it’s another thing altogether for there to always be that something that you can’t quite put your finger on that doesn’t allow a film to measure up to a book. That something probably has to do with another person’s imagination (ie the film director’s) not matching very well with your own. I have less of a problem with this, myself, since the images from my own imagination tend to mix and meld with those in the film and I forget what was my own picture and what I saw in the movie. If your mind’s eye has clearer vision than mine does, however, you’ll likely have a harder time shifting gears to someone else’s idea of what the story looks like. In that case, I think these few paragraphs from A Year at the Movies by Kevin Murphy contain some great thoughts and good advice for enjoying both media without sacrificing your own intellectual dignity. Murphy was writing about the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but I think it applies equally to other well-loved stories…such as The Hobbit and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

 

If you’re like a lot of people, you were captivated by how the story played in the theater inside your own skull. It opened up your imagination. Like all good stories, it inspired you to illuminate the story in your own mind’s eye. … If J. K. Rowling has done nothing else truly remarkable in her pages, she used modern language to absolutely illuminate a fantasy world, and she’s done this in a way that leaves the illumination in the hands of the reader.

            Sure, these images were born of J. K. Rowling’s book, but they were nurtured and decorated and set upon the stage by you. This is your movie, your screenplay, adapted for your own imagination by you. And since you’re working with good material, you probably have a terrific cast, splendid art direction, and a fabulous soundtrack. It’s a slam dunk. Like shooting ducks in a barrel.
             But now you’re going to shelve all that and let Chris Columbus and about three hundred people under contract to Warner Brothers coin all those images and characters for you. Will you be disappointed? I hope so. Entertained, yes, but disappointed, because your imagination has been co-opted, redesigned, copyrighted, licensed and sold back to you. And you’re paying for the privilege…
            Here’s all I’m suggesting: Before you go out and pay good money for the rights to your own imagination, mull the story over in your mind. Not so you’ll know it by rote, but so you’ll reflect on why you like it so much. Hold your own adaptation of Harry, hold it close, and maybe you’ll enjoy the Chris Columbus version, even though it pales next to your own.

  

Perhaps there is a way to love both movies and books. Perhaps we can all just get along.

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before