Books that read like movies

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I just read "Lost Nation" by Jeffrey Lent. I kept imagining a couple of the characters as Jack White and Renee Zellweger because I recently saw Cold Mountain. I think Lent wrote it imagining it would be made into a movie. Hard-scrabble farmers in a harsh landscape, shooting it out in the early 1800s.

Then there are books that could never in a million years be made into a movie, like "Wandering Soul" by Richard Powers.

Then there are books that get made into movies, but the book itself is so much deeper than the movie, like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

What books have you read when you thought the author was waiting for a Hollywood payout and it distracted you from reading, because you're watching a movie in your mind?

― maria d. (scott seward), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 01:51 (twenty-two years ago)

This has happened to me twice recently. I read Lullaby by Chuck Paluhnik(sic?), and maybe this was partially my fault, but i kept picturing brad pitt as the crazy boyfriend character a la fight club and while i thought the book was clever and entertaining a lot of the scenarios seemed like they were BEGGING for future filmic treatment.
The other book was Empire Falls by Richard Russo who has become one of those beloved folksy "literary" writers who in america are really beloved for spinning such great yarns about the past or a present that is delightfully similar to a mythical past of small town life. If that book could have asked for an Oscar it would have. It should have come in screenplay form. And the movie IS actually hitting theatres any day now. i should say that i really like the movie of Nobody's Fool and that I really enjoyed reading The Risk Pool & his collection of short stories, "The Whore's Child".

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 02:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Pretty much, yeah, anything by Palahniuk...Paluhnik...whatever. Also 'Gates Of Fire' and 'Tides Of War' by Steven Pressfield are crying to be made into films.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 02:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought Atonement by Ian McEwan had one eye on Hollywood. Enduring Love too. The balloon scene would be terrific on film.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 11:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Did anybody else read Lost Nation? Some parts read like stage directions. And to end with a girl getting a kitten! Oooof.

― maria d., Wednesday, 28 January 2004 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Complicity by Iain Banks. They made it into a film as well,
but the book worked better as a film than the film itself if you
see what i mean.

― WeeklyWeekly, Friday, 30 January 2004 03:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I fell into a book group only to be shanghaied when they voted to read "The Da Vinci Code." Having halfway completed my ascent of "Clarissa" and reached a good spot to take a break, I said, "What the hell." I've never read anything that seemed so intent on cashing a check for the movie rights -- although Palahniuk comes close. I'm sure Dan Brown was thinking "Gary Busey with red contact lenses" went he spent all that time on the shorthand description of the "hulking albino." So 50 pages in I fired it -- the first book I've formally fired in years. I took it back to Borders (an argument for not writing in books) and swapped it for the new Le Carre, a popular novel that nevertheless reads like an actual book. When I'm finished with that I'll be ready to return to "Clarissa."
I love books. I'm learning to hate book groups almost as much as I hate books masquerading as movie treatments.

― Hank Flower, Wednesday, 4 February 2004 17:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd think that pretty much anything (current) writen by Crichton would fit into this category. But I still think that his only work at all enjoyable was The Andromeda Strain.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 5 February 2004 11:20 (twenty-two years ago)

> Also 'Gates Of Fire' and 'Tides Of War' by Steven Pressfield are crying to be made into films.

You shall be happy to know than that a adaptation of GoF is in the works.

― Monkey Powered Reading, Friday, 13 February 2004 01:39 (twenty-two years ago)

three weeks pass...

Defimitely One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergis

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Sunday, 7 March 2004 23:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Snow Crash.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, 7 March 2004 23:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh in high school I read this book The Ultimate Rush by Joe Quirk (who knows if that's his real name) that was totally awful but I liked it anyway because it read exactly like it would've been a decent action/comedy movie. The guy completely missed his calling 'cause he could easily make a living writing scripts for hollywood. Actually, that was his only novel, I think, so maybe that's what he's doing today.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 05:47 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven years pass...

11 years pass...

In 2011, a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement was filed in the Northern District of California by author Joe Quirk, claiming Premium Rush was based on his 1998 novel The Ultimate Rush. The suit claimed many plot, character name, and scene similarities to Quirk's original novel.[10] In July 2012, federal judge Richard Seeborg declined to dismiss Quirk's claim that Sony Pictures, parent company of Columbia Pictures, had breached an implied contract. The production company Pariah, director David Koepp and co-screenwriter John Kamps are also named in the suit.[11] On April 2, 2013, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg dismissed this case, finding that the two works were not substantially similar.[12]

― the geographibebebe (unregistered), Sunday, 10 May 2015 02:36 (eleven years ago)

I was thinking John Dos Passos' USA was written with the idea but its been an age since I read it. Just think he based his use of narrative on movie film. Not sure if somebody today would pick up on that since a lot of technique will have changed in the interim years.

― Stevolende, Sunday, 10 May 2015 06:24 (eleven years ago)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32863603/Screenshot%202014-10-13%2022.24.28.png

― italosVEVO (wins), Sunday, 10 May 2015 08:12 (eleven years ago)

Snow Crash.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, March 7, 2004 7:46 PM (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have read that Stephenson originally envisioned it as a comic book. The action scenes at the end seem 'graphical' to me, too.

― poxy fülvous (abanana), Monday, 11 May 2015 09:40 (eleven years ago)

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