franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

Can you name a film that was adapted not from a novel, but from a short story?
Here's one:

The Illusionist (2006)

@bookstodon

BunRab,
@BunRab@mstdn.social avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon
2001 A Space Odyssey - "The Sentinel" by Arthur Clarke

glauber,
@glauber@writing.exchange avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon
X Thousand Years of Solitude (I forget how many 🙂)

Johnny Mnemonic

The Minority Report

arratoon,
@arratoon@beige.party avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon Claire Keegan’s Foster was filmed as The Quiet Girl/An Cailín Ciúin (2022), and was a magnificent film. Her So Late in the Day is being filmed currently, I believe, and will star Cillian Murphy. Both novellas are less than 100 pages.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@arratoon @bookstodon
I haven't read the story. The film, however, it's beautiful. Devastating and hopeful all at once. And the young actor is magnificent.

templetongate,
@templetongate@mastodonbooks.net avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon Arrival, from "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. A Boy and His Dog from the story by Harlan Ellison. Total Recall from "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," by Philip K. Dick. Most PKD adaptations have been from short stories.

ShadowPlay,
@ShadowPlay@nerdculture.de avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon

Stand by Me (1986), based on 's novella, "The Body" (1982).

octothorpe,
@octothorpe@mastodon.online avatar
gevoel,
@gevoel@mastodon.green avatar

@octothorpe @bookstodon @franciscawrites I, Robot.
From a collection of short stories.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon Yes, from Issac Asimov. Sadly, the adaptation goes against everything he stood for.

gevoel,
@gevoel@mastodon.green avatar
adriano,
@adriano@lile.cl avatar

@franciscawrites @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon Seems consistent. Foundation is a series based on his short stories (then made into a book series) and it goes against the whole thing he wrote about.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@adriano @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon
The Foundation Series are full-grown novels not short stories. Regardless, I haven't seen the series but have no doubt Hollywood has done its thing again and turning them into the opposite of what the source material was about.

janbartosik,
@janbartosik@witter.cz avatar

@franciscawrites @adriano @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon While I would agree with the typical Hollywood twisting of books, I also have to say I have enjoyed the Foundation TV show. Which is a rare thing for my nerdy bookworm soul :)

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@janbartosik @adriano @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon

This series, any series, could be enjoyable and good even if it goes against the source material. For Asimov adaptations, though, my only reference is the awful Will Smith I, Robot. I Think my judgement is clouded by it. I may give Foundation a change, if it ever crosses my way.

adriano,
@adriano@lile.cl avatar

@janbartosik @franciscawrites @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon Oh, I loved the series. The Empire parts especially. But the whole thing about psychohistory is that "things would happen no matter what", and the series goes "Well there's this exact precise woman everything depends on".

elysegrasso,
@elysegrasso@historians.social avatar

@adriano @janbartosik @franciscawrites @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon I haven't seen the series, but I read the books decades ago. That 'precise woman everything depends on' sounds like the pivot in Foundation and Empire. They may be reasonably faithful to the books.

adriano,
@adriano@lile.cl avatar

@franciscawrites @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon The Foundation originally was written as a series of published short stories, at least for what then comprised the first book. I don't remember if Asimov wanted them to be a full novel from the start.

Jennifer,
@Jennifer@bookstodon.com avatar

@franciscawrites @gevoel @octothorpe @bookstodon I hated those books. Not one single woman. I really like the Apple adaptation.

alexlubertozzi,
@alexlubertozzi@mastodon.social avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon The Thing (both the 1950s version and 1980s John Carpenter remake) was based on the novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. And, though not many people have seen it, Spiderhead was based on the George Saunders short story "Escape from Spiderhead." Then, of course, there's Short Cuts, Robert Altman's adaptation of a number of Raymond Carver short stories.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@alexlubertozzi @bookstodon
You post made me curious about the original novella behind The Thing, so I went looking for it. Now I'm just waiting for it to arrive. Thanks!

Subumbral,
@Subumbral@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville was made into a movie with Crispin Glover, and another with John Scofield.

Rhube,
@Rhube@wandering.shop avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon The Shawshank Redemption, and I think it benefits from it. King's longer works rarely adapt in a faithful way that's also good, but being shorter enables the story to be told in full, at a good pace, with all the detail.

LauraRuthless,
@LauraRuthless@zirk.us avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon Brokeback Mountain was based on a short story by Annie Proulx.

dance_along_the_edge,
@dance_along_the_edge@socel.net avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, filmed in 1969 and 1996. Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, filmed in 1975.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@dance_along_the_edge @bookstodon
I haven't seen any of the adaptations but The Lottery is quite the story. So subtle and so powerful, it gets under your skin and stays there for long.

mozz, (edited )
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

@franciscawrites For quite a while, Stephen King would license one among his lesser-known stories to film students for $1. The program is now sadly closed, though.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@mozz
I knew about, but I thought it was three of his lesser-know stories, not one. Several student-films had been adapted from those stories. Yet, the stories involved aren't particularly good (IMO).

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

@franciscawrites

@bookstodon

Oh I thought there were a whole bunch on the list.

And the stories not being good isn't necessarily an obstacle... they made "The Lawnmower Man" without even bothering to pretend that it was related to the content of the story.

Also, holy shit - I just looked it up and there were some real masterpieces on the list. "The Last Rung on the Ladder" and "Night Surf", among some others I thought were outstanding little horror one-offs, were apparently part of it.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@mozz @bookstodon
Yes, several of the adaptations are far superior to the source material.
What's interesting, or at least that's how it was explained to me, is that the 1-buck rights deal was not for everyone but for cinema students and newcomers, which is the bast part of it, I think.

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon

Yeah, it was students only. I like Stephen King.

paxed,
@paxed@mementomori.social avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon Arrival, based on Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life"

jimkennedy,
@jimkennedy@mas.to avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon 'Korea' is adapted from John McGahern's short (24 pages...) story. It's pretty powerful, both short story and movie...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTmAPNWYUZ0

jimkennedy,
@jimkennedy@mas.to avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon The Dead by director John Huston is adapted from the James Joyce short story in the collection Dubliners. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkos62UPwVk

peachfront,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon

or a shorter story is PKD's Second Variety, made into a film called Screamers

in that case, i thought the terrifying & delightfully paranoid short story was less effective as a movie while Minority Report was pretty clearly better as a movie

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@peachfront @bookstodon
Agreed, about Minority Report. About Screamers, I've seen the movie but never read the story. I must remedy that.

pokitty,
@pokitty@vivaldi.net avatar

@franciscawrites @peachfront @bookstodon "Second Variety" is in the U.S. public domain, so it's readily available online. I like Standard Ebooks' PKD collection, which has it, but I imagine it can be found many places.

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/philip-k-dick/short-fiction

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar
peachfront,
@peachfront@toot.community avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon

how short? Minority Report was adapted from PKD's The Minority Report, a novella, but it was published in book form as a part of a short story collection

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@peachfront @bookstodon
I was surprised when I learned about this particular example, and rushed to read the story. It's still a short story, even if on the longish side.

HauntedOwlbear,
@HauntedOwlbear@eldritch.cafe avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon

Hellraiser was adapted by Clive Barker from his own novella, The Hellbound Heart.

(It's 30,000 words, okay?)

drawnonglass,
@drawnonglass@wandering.shop avatar

@HauntedOwlbear @franciscawrites @bookstodon And directing that film was (according to several interviews) a response to someone else making a terrible movie out of the short story "Rawhead Rex"

HauntedOwlbear,
@HauntedOwlbear@eldritch.cafe avatar

@drawnonglass @franciscawrites @bookstodon

Rawhead Rex was really done dirty.

Although honestly, Hellraiser expands on the imagery of his early short film The Forbidden so well, it would have been a shame if something hadn't pushed him into making a feature.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077571/

And I'm suddenly reminded that I need to replace my VHS copy with a DVD.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@drawnonglass @HauntedOwlbear @bookstodon
Good motivation to do it, risky move, though. It paid off, probably because he was familiar with writing scripts.

HauntedOwlbear,
@HauntedOwlbear@eldritch.cafe avatar

@franciscawrites @drawnonglass @bookstodon

There's a lot to be said for a theatrical background. I have one of the compilations of his scripts, and there's a great deal of consistency of vision between his theatrical, literary and cinematic approaches, IMO.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@HauntedOwlbear @bookstodon

Not often are authors asked (or request) to adapt their own works, it's interesting when one does, particularly when the results are as good as in this example. Now, adding to it that he directed the adaptation, well, that's rare.

tlariv,
@tlariv@mastodon.cloud avatar

@franciscawrites
The Dead (John Huston/James Joyce). A masterpiece.
@bookstodon

arratoon,
@arratoon@beige.party avatar

@franciscawrites @bookstodon El Sur/ The South by Adelaida Garcia Morales was made into a film of the same name by her then husband, Victor Erice. OK, technically it’s a novella, but at 50 pages I’ve read longer short stories. I actually started reading the novella last night, because I love the film, but finances were pulled from the movie production before the final third could be made, and I’ve always longed to find out what happened.

franciscawrites,
@franciscawrites@mastodon.scot avatar

@arratoon @bookstodon
Let's called a long-short story 😉
But, technically, less than 20k words is still a short story and 20k is about 80 pages.

Blinxeto,
@Blinxeto@mastodon.social avatar

@arratoon @franciscawrites @bookstodon

I’m gonna have to go look for the book now. 👍❤️

Blinxeto,
@Blinxeto@mastodon.social avatar

@arratoon @franciscawrites @bookstodon

And still a great film!

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