Most big projects have many cooks, some credited and some not, and the resulting product is usually a hodgepodge of different ideas and threads from multiple sources. If the material is based on someone else's work, the original creator may be involved and give input, or they may be shut out of the process and have absolutely no say in the adaptation, even though their name will be on the final result and may be part of the marketing.
So although we've touched on this topic before, it might be interesting to look again at instances where the creator of a work disliked the adaptation.
- Bret Easton Ellis either dislikes or is ambivalent about almost all of the adaptations of his novels, including Less Than Zero and American Psycho. With Less Than Zero, the film is usually remembered for its very 80’s aesthetics and a too-true-to-life performance by Robert Downey Jr., who was experiencing some of the same demons of his character. Ellis has discussed the problems with the film on his podcast during an interview with the film’s star, Andrew McCarthy, wherein at almost every step of the process the studio neutered and/or changed much of the tone and intent of the novel. Ellis’s Less Than Zero novel functions as a tour through the decadence of the young, rich, and white in Southern California of the 1980s, with the main character, Clay, coming home for Christmas break disillusioned with it all. The film version decided to make Clay, who’s bisexual and has his share of vices in the book, into a heterosexual goody-goody who comes home trying to save his friends from drugs, and augments the novel’s tour through partying hell with a redemptive arc and a love story. The film iteration of American Psycho has become something of a cult classic, with many critics thinking it's one of Christian Bale's best performances. However, Ellis thinks the film is flawed because it conflicts with the nature of his novel, believing the visual medium tips the scale of whether the story is real or imagined. Ellis has also been a bit sexist with his opinion about female directors, which the film adaptation of American Psycho had with Mary Harron at the helm of the production. In Ellis’s view, a female film director lacks a proper “male gaze” and “male sensibility,” since women are not aroused visually in the same way as men.
“American Psycho was a book I didn’t think needed to be turned into a movie. I think the problem with American Psycho was that it was conceived as a novel, as a literary work with a very unreliable narrator at the center of it and the medium of film demands answers. It demands answers. You can be as ambiguous as you want with a movie, but it doesn’t matter — we’re still looking at it. It's still being answered for us visually. I don’t think American Psycho is particularly more interesting if you knew that he did it or think that it all happens in his head. I think the answer to that question makes the book infinitely less interesting.”
- Roald Dahl seems to have hated most of the film adaptations of his works. He despised The Witches and found it "utterly appalling." The only thing he was said to have liked was the casting of Angelica Huston as the head witch. Reportedly, Dahl was so angered by Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory he reportedly decreed in his will that Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator could never be made into a movie. Dahl found the movie to be "crummy," thought Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka was "pretentious" and "bouncy," and criticized director Mel Stuart as having "no talent or flair." Dahl also chafed with the changes to the Oompa Loompas. In Dahl’s novel, the Oompa Loompas were originally African Pygmies brought in ”large packing cases with holes in them” from “the very deepest and darkest part of the jungle, where no white man had been before” to be workers in Willy Wonka’s factory. When the NAACP voiced some objections to the Oompa Loompas basically being quasi-slave labor for the film adaptation, Dahl called the campaign against the story “real Nazi stuff.” Interestingly enough, 40 years later Gene Wilder was the one doing the criticizing with the release of Tim Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
- The recent film Saving Mr. Banks is a fictionalized history of the making of the 1964 Disney classic Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Saving Mr. Banks takes some artistic license with what actually happened (in fact, some have accused Disney of historical revisionism with Saving Mr. Banks), but the basic facts are true in that Walt Disney pursued the film rights to Mary Poppins for many years. Author P.L. Travers ultimately relented and was involved in the development of the film. However, most of Travers' suggestions were disregarded and she hated the final product because of changes made to the story (e.g., Travers wanted Poppins to be much sterner, as she is in the books) and her dislike of the animated sequences in the film. At the Mary Poppins premiere, Travers broke down in tears after the film finished, while at the same time the audience was giving Mary Poppins a five-minute standing ovation. When a stage musical based on Mary Poppins was being developed in the '90s, Travers made it a condition of her approval that no one from the film production could be involved with the musical, including the Sherman brothers, who wrote "Feed the Birds," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," "Let's Go Fly a Kite,” and the Oscar winner "Chim Chim Cher-ee."
From Caitlin Flanagan at The New Yorker:
The première was the first Travers had seen of the movie—she did not initially receive an invitation, but had embarrassed a Disney executive into extending one—and it was a shock. Afterward, as Richard Sherman recalled, she tracked down Disney at the after-party, which was held in a giant white tent in the parking lot adjoining the Chinese Theatre. “Well,” she said loudly. “The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney looked at her coolly. “Pamela,” he replied, “the ship has sailed.”
- Ernest Hemingway loathed Frank Borzage’s 1932 adaptation of A Farewell to Arms starring Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper. The novel is semi-autobiographical and was based on Hemingway's own experiences on the Italian front during World War I. The movie focuses much more on the romance between Henry and Catherine Barkley than the book, and downplays some of the elements of horror in World War I that Hemingway wrote about. The movie also changes Hemingway's ending.
- With so much being made into a film, why has The Catcher in the Rye never been adapted into a film? J. D. Salinger's short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut was adapted to a film called My Foolish Heart in 1949. The film took many liberties with the source material, and Salinger hated it so much that he never again relinquished the film rights for any of his works.
- In general, Alan Moore tends to run the gamut between disliking and hating the attempts to translate his stories to film. Moore has claimed to have never watched any of the movie adaptations of his stories, which include V for Vendetta, From Hell, Constantine, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Watchmen. Moore has stated his opposition is based on his belief these stories were created to be graphic novels and not films, and they're meant to be experienced in a certain way. Moore has gone so far as to ask for his name be removed and not used in marketing for any film he doesn't own. He also refuses to accept any money from these adaptations.
- A major theme of Stanislaw Lem's work is communication and understanding. Solaris has one of the most intriguing questions of any of his novels. If we have problems communicating with each other as humans, or coming to terms with our own internal feelings, how do we expect to talk to and understand something alien? Both film adaptations of the novel, the 1972 film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and the 2002 version by Steven Soderbergh, focus on human relationships and the impact to the personal psyche of the characters than the larger question of trying to understand the nature of the alien intelligence that is a sentient planet called Solaris. Lem has stated that both movies miss the point of his story.
"To my best knowledge, the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space ... As Solaris' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled "Solaris" and not "Love in Outer Space."
- A Clockwork Orange is an interesting case of "creator backlash," given the attitude author Anthony Burgess came to have toward the film adaptation. Reportedly, the story of A Clockwork Orange was inspired by the assault and rape of Burgess' wife, Lynne. Burgess expected the audience to be repulsed by Alex and the Droogs. But instead, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange is considered one of the director's best, and the Droogs became iconic in pop-culture. That led to Burgess coming to regret he wrote the book in the first place.
From the forward to Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence by Anthony Burgess:
“We all suffer from the popular desire to make the known notorious. The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.”
- Ayn Rand hated the 1949 movie version of The Fountainhead, even though the screenplay was written by her and barely altered. She refused to let any of her other novels be filmed unless they let her pick the director and edit the film herself. It was only after her death the film rights to Atlas Shrugged were finally sold by her estate.
- One of Audrey Hepburn’s most iconic roles is that of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. However, if it was up to Truman Capote, it would never have happened. Capote felt the film production of his novel had “double crossed [him] in every way” with the casting of Hepburn. For Capote, his Holly Golightly would have been Marilyn Monroe. Beyond just this, Capote is reported to have pushed to be the male lead. The sexuality of the unnamed narrator of the novel is left ambiguous but either seems asexual or hinted to be gay (and Holly is bisexual in the novel as well). For the film, the male lead of the writer Paul (George Peppard) becomes a possible love interest for Holly.
- The works of Clive Cussler, especially the adventure novels featuring the character Dirk Pitt, have been horrendous adaptations hated by Cussler. Raise the Titanic! was adapted into a 1980 film starring Richard Jordan that was a critical disappointment and a huge box office bomb. Cussler then refused to option the rights to any of the Pitt novels unless he had both casting and script approval. Eventually Cussler agreed to sell the film rights for Sahara, which starred Matthew McConaughey and Penélope Cruz. As per his agreement with the production company, Cussler retained casting and script approval only until a director was hired, and then those rights would be reduced to "consultant." However, this was not Cussler's understanding of his powers in the production. Eventually a director was hired and the production proceeded without Cussler's agreeing with its direction that involved 10 different writers taking turns writing the script. Cussler then sued the production company claiming breach of contract. The production company countersued Cussler claiming fraud and that his actions had sabotaged any possibility of success for the movie. The legal issues surrounding Sahara spent years in litigation before being resolved with no one getting anything.
- Anthony Burgess was not the only author to be pissed off by a Stanley Kubrick adaptation of their work. Stephen King loathes Kubrick's version of The Shining, so much so that he made his own version for ABC back in the '90s. King has said his book was about a normal man who goes crazy, where Kubrick's film is about a crazy man who goes absolutely bonkers. King has also stated he disliked what Kubrick did with the character of Wendy Torrance, and feels the characterization is misogynistic and sexist. In order to get what he thought would be a better performance out of Shelley Duvall as the meek, terrified wife in The Shining, Kubrick verbally abused her, told the crew to treat her like shit and did everything he could possibly do to put her through misery during the shoot. The scene in which Wendy confronts Jack Torrance and nails him with a baseball bat is in the Guiness Book of World Records for "The most retakes for one scene with dialogue." Kubrick made her redo it 127 times in order to wear her down to the point she was actually hysterical.
From Will Gompertz at BBC News:
King: "[It’s] cold, I'm not a cold guy. I think one of the things people relate to in my books is this warmth, there's a reaching out and saying to the reader, 'I want you to be a part of this.' With Kubrick's The Shining I felt that it was very cold, very 'We're looking at these people, but they're like ants in an anthill, aren't they doing interesting things, these little insects’ ... Shelley Duvall as Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film, she's basically just there to scream and be stupid and that's not the woman that I wrote about."
- Peter Benchley came to regret writing Jaws. Benchley didn't like some of the changes from his novel to Steven Spielberg's film. For example, Richard Dreyfuss' shark scientist Hooper and Chief Brody’s wife (Lorraine Gary) have an affair in the novel, which is dealt with karmically at the end of the story when Hooper is eaten by the shark during the climax. The film excises that and replaces it with an ending that has an oxygen tank that goes boom, spreading pieces of shark all over the ocean. However, that's not why Benchley regretted the book and the film. When he learned that drastic overfishing was driving many shark species to extinction, Benchley came to believe he was at least partially responsible due to Jaws contributing to a fear of sharks around the world. Benchley became a very vocal ocean conservation activist.
- With One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the Miloš Forman film adaptation of Ken Kesey's story won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay at the Oscars. However, Kesey disliked the shift of the point of view away from Chief Bromden to McMurphy, and also thought Gene Hackman would have been a better fit as McMurphy than Jack Nicholson. Kesey long claimed that he had never watched the film and had no interest in doing so, but Kesey's wife, Norma Faye Haxby, claimed his position on the movie softened over time.
- Ursula K. Le Guin despised the Sci-Fi Channel version of her story, which was very loosely based on her Earthsea trilogy. The adaptions change key elements of the story, including whitewashing many of the characters, who were persons of color, with a very white cast. And Le Guin seemed to get really ticked off when the people involved with the production started giving interviews where they claimed to know what her intentions were with the novels.
"I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions. That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth. [Director Rob] Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books."
- When you say the title Death Wish, you probably think of Charles Bronson gunning down criminals on the subway. Based on Brian Garfield's novel of the same name, the story involves a middle-aged New York City architect whose life is irrevocably changed after his wife is killed and his daughter is raped and left comatose by thugs. The movie, along with Dirty Harry and other films of the mid-70s, tapped into concerns and fears over rising crime rates. However, the film is always on the main character's side as he transitions from being a pacifist to walking the streets of Manhattan with a .32 caliber Colt revolver looking for criminals to gun down. In Garfield's book, the shift is much more ambiguous, and the vigilantism is not seen as a good thing or is it as much about vengeance or deciding "we're not gonna take it!" anymore. It's an expression of the main character's desire to prove that he's still in control of his life. Each Death Wish sequel devolved and became more formulaic with each iteration. In response, Garfield wrote his own Death Wish sequel called Death Sentence which has the character having to deal with the effects of his actions. However, Death Sentence was also adapted into a film that is not what Garfield intended, either.
- The 1973 animated Hanna-Barbera adaptation of Charlotte's Web was something I grew up on as something the teacher would throw in on a chill day. However, E.B. White did not appreciate what was done to his story. White's only requests to Hanna-Barbera were final approval of the design for Charlotte the spider and a promise the movie wouldn’t be turned into a musical. Hanna-Barbera had other ideas. White saw Charlotte’s Web as an “amoral tale” about the nature of life. To this end, White wanted an orchestral soundtrack based on the works of Mozart. However, the powers that be decided to hire the Sherman brothers who used some catchier tunes.
White: “The movie of 'Charlotte's Web' is about what I expected it to be … The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I don't care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney World, with 76 trombones. But that's what you get for getting embroiled in Hollywood."