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At times I wonder if the best idea is not to make films from short stories, like The Green Mile.
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Yes, Jazz makes a good point. Short books or stories are often better to adapt because there's less to cut.
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I've yet to see a movie based on a book that was anywhere near as good as the book itself.
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I think people's opinions about this will be down to if you're a book person or a film one. I'm a film one (I figure since I see more films than I read books, though I like to read) and some films that were
better than their books, I guess (not read them), are
The Godfather,
Jaws,
The Shawshank Redemption,
Gone with the Wind,
About Schmidt,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
Trainspotting,
A Clockwork Orange,
Cold Mountain,
The Talented Mr Ripley,
Gone Baby Gone and
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I have read
The Lord of the Rings though, and those films were better than the book, and the same goes for
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and
...The Goblet of Fire - not because the books were bad, they weren't - but because those two films were so, so brilliant. The other HP films are on the same quality level as their corresponding books, pretty much, though the next one(s) probably won't be as good as the last book. The
Bourne films are better than their books (based only on having read the first one).
American Psycho and
A Clockwork Orange are films that are exactly as good as their books.