How 52 Literary Gems Became Films We Love (Rerun)

Originally released on Sept. 14, 2023

Love the movie? Read the book before it’s banned! In this episode, host Sandra Abrams chats with Kristen Lopez, author of "But Have You Read the Book? 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films” in association with Turner Classic Movies. Kristen knows her topic as creator of the Ticklish Business podcast and a film editor with entertainment daily, TheWrap. Film buffs will get the behind-the-scenes story of how THE THIN MAN, DUNE, and PASSING went from book to an adaptive screenplay and then beloved classic film. They also discuss the impact of the current banned book atmosphere on future screen-based works.

Find the book wherever books are sold, including: Hachette Book Group

Ticklish Business podcast

www.thewrap.com/author/kristen-lopez/

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Transcript

This past summer saw the resurgence of people heading back to the movie theaters, the catchphrase. Barb Heimer was everywhere. Barbies based on a beloved toy while Oppenheimer's based on a 721 page book. In fact, some of our most beloved films have started as some type of intellectual property before they got to the big screen.

I. I'm your host, Sandra Abrams, and in this episode I'll chat with Kristen Lopez, the author of, but Have You Read the book? It's an Essential Guide to 52 Cinema Classics and the books that served as their inspiration from Withering Heights to Crazy Rich Asians. But first, let me introduce our guest Kristen.

Kristen is a pop culture essayist, critic, and editor whose articles have appeared in Variety T C M and Roger Ebert. She was also the TV editor for IndieWire, where she was nominated for a Southern California Journalism Award and a national journalism award by the LA Press Club. She has her master's in English from C SS U.

She's also the creator of the Classic Film Podcast, ticklish Business, and will ask her about that title. Kristen is now a film editor with the Wrap. Welcome Kristen De Median monuments, and congratulations on your first book.

Thank you so much. It's still very weird that I have a book.

I read, some of your articles for the rap and I can see why you have a book. You're an excellent writer.

Oh, thank you so much.

Well, first I wanna ask you how you connected with Turner Movie Classics. 'cause it says Turner Cla Turner Classic Movies presents an essential guide to the 52 Cinema classics and the literary works that served as their inspiration.

Yeah, so I had a coworker who had written two books for T c m,  and I was very fascinated with how one gets to be an author for a network. I love, I figured that you had to have written another book, that there had to be these really big logistics, like you have to be invited, in, into this, and.

No, he was just like, do you wanna meet the publishing arm of T C M? I said, of course I did. which made me feel very much like it's the la thing of, it's who, you know. I talked to John Malhi, who is the fantastic publisher at tcm. He's unfortunately no longer with them, which is very sad. and we had a long talk, none of which was about this book did not talk about it at all.

But eventually he came back to me and said that they had a bunch of books that had already been. Greenlit the idea. They were just looking for an author and he said, we notice you have a master's in English. Do you read a lot? And I had to laugh because yes, I do read a lot. And also this was the first time anybody had ever cited my degree.

I. As a relevant thing. so it finally paid off. but I said yes and he started explaining that they wanted to write a book about adaptations. And as soon as I heard that, I was in, because I am a person that is incredibly impatient, so I always read the book first, especially if somebody I love is in a movie, I will go out and buy the book because I can't wait the year or two years that it takes for a movie to.

Come out, I need to know what I'm getting into, how excited I should be. So as soon as he said that, it was really just a perfect union of something I was already doing, a topic I was interested in, and what they were looking for.

one of the things that you said was that you're the type of person who goes and gets the book and because you don't wanna wait for the movie to come out, and I'm the same way. You did talk about Michelle. Yo. For example, and Crazy Rich Asians, and I remember her, I read Memoirs of a Geisha and then I remember seeing her in the movie.

but there are some people who say, I don't need to see, get the book. I can just watch the movie. That's the Cliff note version. Why should people buy the book?

I think it really depends on what you're looking for. You know, a good book can enhance the world of a movie that you love. it can give you more background characters that maybe aren't in the film scenes. That aren't in the film. I. It just really expands the world of a movie that you are interested in.

It makes you appreciate dialogue. screenwriting is really just a, an extension of prose writing, not that all authors. Can be screenwriters or should be, nor should all screenwriters be authors. But it helps you appreciate words and the ways that people write and convey information.

it's just a really great compliment, I think, to movies. I don't think they have to compete. I think that you can love both of them for different reasons, and that they exist for different reasons.

one of the things that you, talked about was these 52 books. So the, you start with 1931 Frankenstein based on Mary Shelley's 1818 book all the way up into Rebecca Hall's 2021 film passing. And that's based on the 1929 story by Nila Larsson, which I did a little research on her, and she's fascinating in and of herself, I wanted to ask you, why this selection of these 52?

Because there were other books as far as you picked, clueless as part of the representation of Emma. So what happened? So why these 52?

T C M and I went back and forth on the list of what was gonna be included. We both agreed that we wanted diversity of authors. We wanted. Diversity of eras genres. Make sure you have authors of color. Make sure you have directors of color, women authors, women directors. So we both agreed we wanted a nice mix of eras and creatives.

and then after that it was just balancing things out. the one thing, the one movie they told me I had to include was Dune, because that was their big release at the time I was writing it. So that was. already included. The books had to be readily accessible. They had to be in English, they had to be easily obtainable.

It couldn't include anything that was outta print. They had to be actual books. So no short stories, no novellas, no anthologies. and so from there it was really a test and adjust period of, giving them some titles. They would come back at me with some titles. I had to make sure that I was including stuff that was popular, that was well known.

I couldn't include some of the weird choices that like, I would include where I'm like, I, I have thoughts on the movie. Nobody saw the movie, nobody read the book. Nobody really cared. I also made a decision. I didn't wanna include books. I didn't like, the title's called, but have you read the book?

I wanted people to read the book, so I intentionally skipped movies where I love the film, but I don't like the book. so from there it was a lot of just going back and forth until we finally settled on a number. I wish I could say I picked 52 'cause it was one movie a week for the whole year.

It really just came to a point where I was like, I can do 52. 52. Sounds like a doable number. so not a lot of thought went into that.

No, I thought the first thing I thought of was that it mirrors the 52 weeks. It's a movie a week, so that if you're a student of film, here's your lesson. go and take the book and go and take the movie and you can go and watch that. So I guess that gets back to, and picking these selections and what I had mentioned, the different.

versions that you picked. I guess that's one of the questions I wanted to ask about, for example, little women. So I had just seen, saw recently, I liked the June Allison Peter Lawford version. and I thought, oh, you picked, the Greta Gerwig, version. So was there any reason behind the different versions of, when there's multiples.

Yeah, so when there were multiple versions, I went with one that would yield the most interesting story in terms of what I was trying to convey with the process of adaptation. So like with the case with little women, there's a version for every generation. I grew up with the 94 version, but I love.

The 49, which is not a popular choice unfortunately. And I don't know why, but I think the, the Peter Lawford one is my second favorite. but if you really look at Greta Gerwig interpretation, she was the first one to really critique. The novel itself and the process of writing a book, and how we immortalize a piece of text.

so I thought that was really interesting and, you know, could write from that. And something else, like true grit. Where you have the Cohen Brothers version. I didn't pick that one. I picked the original John Wayne, because it's really interesting how that film became a John Wayne film and is not necessarily considered an adaptation because a lot of the changes to the book are to enhance John Wayne's persona.

So it really did, it did force me to confront like what version yields the most interesting way. how a screenwriter approaches adapting, a text.

and speaking to John Wayne, one, I had marked that because that was actually one of my surprises in reading your book. You have John Wayne was fascinated with true grit from the minute he read Margarita Roberts script. And I thought right there, a woman's script writer, back then. And it says Roberts was blacklisted during the House Un-American Activities Committee era alongside her husband, John Sanford's.

Despite that, Wayne went to bat for her script, especially making sure her name was on the credits, and I thought, wow, what a great piece of history to learn from your book about that.

And it's really ironic considering that John Wayne was very much an anti-communist, did not. Really suffer, the people that had been blacklisted. But I think he recognized a good script when he saw one, regardless of personal politics. And, the original film is really interesting to look at as a John Wayne film.

It's considered, one of his highlights. he really was hoping he would get the Oscar for it, and I think because, He didn't necessarily think he was playing John Wayne. He thought he was, he. He was playing Rooster Cogburn. and I think a lot of people that. Watch the Cohen Brothers film are disappointed that Jeff Bridges is not John Wayne.

You know that GE Jeff Bridges is playing the character, and yet John Wayne became that character and really did use it as a launchpad. he would play Rooster Cogburn again in, in a kind of spiritual sequel, and he ended up taking the character and making him a John Wayne figure. But it's a really.

Fascinating symbiosis of character and actor, that people get disappointed when they see the Cohen Brothers version. It doesn't hit the same way.

I would have to say I agree on that point. One of the other things that I thought was really interesting, where you put out the, you put these little titles at the beginning or these little, I guess I would call 'em, log lines, and you have on page 1 66 and you selected Fight Club. And the line that you picked, was, I want you to hit me as hard as you can, and the line that I really liked was, don't talk about fight clubs.

So I guess I wanted to find out like, why did you pick these particular, I guess I would call them log lines with this, the movie.

Yeah, I think that for me, I really wanted to showcase interesting writing, in, in the scripts because, I. Part of what people, when they go to an adaptation, they start, they usually start with the movie. So I wanted to showcase that, script writing can yield just as beautiful or interesting writing as a novelist can.

And with Fight Club there's so many fascinating and prolific one-liners that people remember. part of it was space, so I had to keep it to a sentence or two. and I also think that, It's definitely one of those where it just says so much about what you're gonna read in the next, however many pages or however many minutes of the movie.

with the Thin Man I, I went with, the line about, I want you to serve the nuts. And I think that's a really funny line in a book, for an adaptation of a book that is not necessarily comedic.

Yeah. It says waiter. Will you serve the nuts? will you serve the guests? The nuts?

Exactly. And it tells you so much about what the movie is. it's a screwball comedy. so that if you haven't seen the movie, you read the, those little one-liners and you think Hey, maybe I should go watch this movie now. 'cause that's a funny or quippy or an interesting line.

one of the things though that I found interesting was that. These adaptations, you go, wow. They followed the books in some cases, and in other cases they didn't. And in some cases  because of these early days, some of the early films that you selected in there, they had the haze code or production codes, so they couldn't put certain things that were in the movie.

and I think, oh, well then if you go back to the book, you'll read about X, Y, Z. And I think that's one of the reasons why you should read the book.

Yeah, a lot of changes, especially in the studio era was because of the haze code. you couldn't have villainy triumph, you, it always had to. Make sure the good guy won. your women could not be promiscuous, which is hilarious to read something like a needle loses gentleman prefer blondes, which actually skewers the haze code.

And the 1950s film, does actually do a lot of subversive things in its own way while still adhering to the haze code. but as the studio system starts to fall apart, less of a. Studio censorship and more of screenwriters trying to maybe not offend. a great example is like Rosemary's baby.

The book is a very religious, Catholic story about Catholic guilt and the arrival of the Pope is a huge thing in the novel. And Roman Lansky took a lot of that out. 'cause he didn't want to offend Catholics. so it's fascinating to see that as the studio system starts to fall apart, directors and screenwriters become more aware that they are trying to get butts in seats.

you start to see changes, more to make it open to groups that might not be interested or change things for story purposes. which has always been a thing. but it's fascinating to really look at how. Mores with books would change as the decades would go on.

What I also found interesting was that the book. When it was adapted into a movie, the author himself or herself did not like it. And I think of The Shining, and Stephen King, I'm actually reading his book on writing now. And so I thought, wow, he's really, that's a great book if you wanna learn about writing, and then to read your book and find out this little anecdote that he did not like the movie, the way the screenplay was, and he did not like Jack Nicholson's character playing the protagonist.

He did not, you know, this was kind of a personal story for King.  the book, which this was the first time I'd ever read the novel. I grew up with the movie, but I'd never taken the time to. Read the book, and it's a very dark and complex story of, childhood, abuse and of dysfunctional family and alcoholism.

which was very personal to King, as somebody who had grappled with alcoholism in his own life. And, he did not like that Kubrick, took all that out. Made it into a straightforward ghost story. He thought that Jack Nicholson was a character that from the minute you saw him, you thought that he was gonna turn evil.

and so he was not pleased about it. He slowly come over to, begrudgingly liking it. But then King did get the opportunity to do his version. He wrote the script for a TV mini series, that did not do well and was not that well regarded. but, he did get his opportunity to do that.

And. I think a lot of authors, they spend time with these characters. A lot of them are extensions of themselves and so it's not surprising that they don't like these adaptations. role Dahl is another good example. He hated Gene Wilder as, Willy Wonka. he thought that he was too goofy.

and again, we did get another version later on that, that Tim Burton directed that is somewhat closer to the novel. and I think that. You are trying to please two different mediums. and I've talked to screenwriters that have worked on adaptations and they've said adaptation is incredibly hard.

it seems easy because you have a book, you have the guide, you can just copy that, right? He's, they're like, no, you have to deal with the fact that a film audience is only going to accept so much. For so long. So you know, you have to condense within into a timeframe. You have to do things in a structure that a film viewer is going to deal with.

And you also have to appease both people that have read the book and love the book and know the book. And people that have never read the book, never heard of it, just wanna go see a movie. And that can often be two very disparate audiences. So, I think any screenwriter that takes on an adaptation is a rockstar because I would just not know what to do and it's really a very delicate needle to thread.

I think people should be able to look at when they read your book, they can understand that particular award. When it comes, there's so much more going on behind the scenes. And I think of, right now I'm thinking of, the social network and Aaron Erkin did win for Best Adaptive Screenplay, so there is a lot going on behind the scenes.

Yeah, and even something like, the social network when you're dealing with real people, there, there is, it's tough because you have this piece of, written work, but then you're also dealing with real people who may be. they were okay with the book, but now it's in a film medium.

And if you read, Ben Mez, Rich's, book that, that the social network is based on, it really doesn't. Yeah, it really doesn't have set villains and heroes in it. it's very much kind of an ensemble cast showing the interplay of all of these different characters. And I know that after the movie came out, the real Winklevoss twins felt that the movie portrayed them as, dumb jocks and, the Sean Parker character that I think is actually based on Sean Fanning, that Justin Timberlake plays, he complained, he felt that the movie misrepresented him as this, douche that dated underage girls.

it's very fascinating to read. So a book that is a biography or based on real people and see how, the social network is a great example because there you have see, lighting and you have how the camera plays on somebody and the, that movie tells you very clearly, this person is a bad guy.

This is who you root for, and I think that the social network's a really great example too, of how. Things, time changes, so what we now know about Mark Zuckerberg is very different from how Mark Zuckerberg was portrayed in, the mid two thousands. and even then, the movie sets him up as this kind of Love Lauren Nerd, who, didn't get a girl, and thus he created this social network.

it's very much Sorkin trying to condense a lot of information into a three act structure doesn't work. Eh, that's still, I think the jury's still out on that one. but that's a great example of having to appease a totally different audience than somebody that read the original book.

One of the things I wanted to ask you about was the fact I looked at your bibliography and I thought, how did this particular piece of source material will be right, or this partis. Particular piece, and I thought you had a good variety of different things going on in there. How did you, first do your research and then whi it down?

Yeah, if there's any silver lining to a global pandemic, I had a lot of free time. so what I would do, is I would start with, I'd watch it, the movie first. my, my structure was I would read the book, I. In chunks, start I starting on Monday, I'd watch the movie first and then I'd read the book in chunks.

And then Sunday I would write, and then it would start, the whole process starts all over again. So I would start with the movie and look at the bonus features, look at interviews, look at all of the things that are available there. And then it would just be a Google search, and start and looking on j o r and articles that would pop up.

so I really did call all of the. spaces of media that I could, aside from the library, I did not do nearly as much In library text reading as I'd have liked. but I really did try to look at, articles that were written today, articles that were written back when the movie came out.

I would look at old reviews, original reviews when they, were released, just to try to get a picture of how things were. Upon the release of the book, upon the release of the movie, and then find a way to decide what was interesting, what was gonna be my through line for the section.

And then, find the little bits of research that would, suit I.

I wanna ask you about, what's happening now, as far as there's book banning going on, and I thought I wanted to ask you. Having done this, I. Looking at books and adaptations to movies, what impact do you think, given this current book, banning environment we have may or may not have on, future, source material and storytelling?

Yeah, I mean I think that, adaptations have always been something we've done, since film first started, but I. It's really changed over the last several decades. you would have a book that could permeate the cultural zeitgeist, whether you read it or not. And I think when I'm asked like, what's the last book that did that?

it would probably be something like Harry Potter. You didn't have to read Harry Potter, but you knew all of the characters. You knew what it was about. it permeated every. Bit of the landscape. and it became more than a book as it has become. but with that, we have a lot of back and forth now about, the future of future appreciation of Harry Potter in a land where, people see JK Rowling is being anti-trans.

so I think authors are more on the spot now to become public figures a lot quicker. because as. Film has changed. We're seeing a lot of desire for built-in ip, and books are part of that. it's easier to take an existing book that people already know. You're guaranteed those viewers.

But at the same time, the content has to be something that a wide audience is gonna be interested in. The author has to be impeccable, and it can't have any problems. so it becomes a far more. Scrutinized medium, and at the same time, there is just so much content now that most people don't even know if something is maybe based on a book like they used to.

there's so many series, on, on all the different streamers that you're like, oh, that's based on a book. It is. nobody really has that cultural unifier with a text anymore. and on top of that, I think a lot of. A lot of creatives are looking for books that are inherently successful.

so New York Times, you wanna get on a New York Times bestseller list so that somebody will buy the movie. The rights to your book. I know a lot of fiction, writers right now in the book space who are, having their agents talk to them about make it. So that it can be turned into a movie or a TV series, like that's where the real money is.

And I think that unfortunately that's gonna change how people write books and write stories because the goal is they want it to be made into a film or a TV show.

Yes, that does seem to be one of the lines that you see in the ads. as far as promoting, this is based on the New York Times bestseller novel. As part of, this is why you should go see it. I also wanted to ask, we're currently chatting in the middle of the writer's strike and the SAG Afro strike, what impact do you think that will have going forward?

optimistic that will get resolved. but what, do you have any thoughts on that? Any, anything about that?

Yeah. I mean it's a complex issue, and I think that as we're seeing among all sectors of what. Is now being dubbed hot labor summer. people wanna be compensated fairly. And I think what's interesting about this strike is that. We're dealing with really uncharted waters. This is, we're writing the rules, at this point for what's gonna happen 10, 20 years.

now, we've always had strikes when we're dealing with new technologies. So the last time we had a strike was in the 1960s when film was transitioning to tv and we had to craft the concept of residuals. And TV was a new, newish medium that. people were using, but they didn't really know where the money was.

And in this case, we're seeing the desire for residuals from streamers. how is a residual system going to work with a Netflix or a Hulu or an Amazon so that people can do this job? people, actors especially have been exceedingly unable to live in LA or New York and work in this industry in a way that will sustain them.

and so I think that we need to have a residual structure at the same time. you have ai, which is a huge deal, in terms of how are we using people's images and their voices and compensating them fairly, it's not unimportant to forget that, to remember that Paul Newman.

Put in his will when he died, I think in the, two thousands, that you could not utilize his image for any AI generator or hologram technology. And he saw the writing on the wall that eventually older actors would be utilized in this way. I think Frank Sinatra was also, or not, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, didn't wanna biopic about his life.

so you saw a lot of actors deciding to. Deal with their images and how those images would be changed long after they were gone.  And I think that's what we're seeing now is, how can actors and screenwriters have autonomy in a world where we are increasingly reliant on technology and only want to pay people the exact bare minimum that we have to.

Just to keep them around. So it's gonna have longstanding implications. I, I hope it doesn't go on too long. 'cause the longer it goes on, people are outta work. They lose their homes, they, people have to feed their families. but at the same time, the implications are bigger than them and they understand that.

And I think that it's amazing to see. How many people are continuing to be out on those picket lines every day because they understand it's not gonna be about what's gonna happen tomorrow. It's gonna be what's gonna happen 15, 20, 30, 50 years from now.

Exactly. So I just wanted to ask you last question. So you had these 52. Is there any one, if you had to pick one that was your favorite, that you'd go, wow, I really, between the book and the movie, I really, this, I love this one. I.

It is tough. I change the, my favorite every day. but for me, I think it's Withering Heights. Withering Heights is the book that made me fall in love with books. it's one of my favorite movies, even though the Lawrence Olivier version only comprises like the first, like 15 ish chapters of the book.

but I think that the novel is, Beautiful. It's frustrating. It's a little dated, but it's just, it's amazing. It's an amazing bit of writing, and I think that the film is fun. the film is Sweeny and romantic and it's been made over and over again. and I just, I love the book, and I was so happy to go back to my academic roots and kind of use  that as a,  springboard to write about the rest of these movies.

So always holds a special place in my heart.

Well, Kristen, thank you so much for joining Media and Monuments. The book is, but have you read the book available wherever books are sold? Get your copy today. There are 52 great stories in the book that became classic movies. I. Her podcast is www ticklish business.com, and you can find more stories by Kristen about the entertainment industry at the wrap.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure.