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What book or fictional story would make a good movie?

Posted on 05/21/2015 8:30:11 PM PDT by MNDude

It seems like there's not many original ideas in Hollywood...how many remakes is there of Dracula or King Kong?

Yet, I'm sure there's got to be thousands of great books and stories that have never been made into a movie. Which fictional stories would you like to see as a movie?


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To: jobim
Heart of Darkness, 1993 film:

And:

Brave New World (1980 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brave New World is an American television film first shown in 1980. An adaptation of the novel with the same name by Aldous Huxley, it was directed by Burt Brinckerhoff for Universal Television and first shown on NBC on 7 March 1980.[1][2] The screen adaptation was written by Doran William Cannon. The filming location was entirely in Universal City, California.

101 posted on 05/21/2015 10:30:27 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users contnue...)
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To: BenLurkin

That would be a great movie.


102 posted on 05/21/2015 10:35:19 PM PDT by saminfl
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To: Swordmaker

Time Enough for Love ...
Now I know I have to go back and re-read (the Title has me) and they were all good.
I can’t pick a favorite because they all run together for me, it has been so long.
Michner, same thing.
Back in day in the Navy I read everything I could get my hands on... then things changed, Wife, Kids and a different Life.
Now single and old, it will be like re-living my youth but with a whole new perspective, so I think those Heinlein stories will take on a whole different meaning and deliver a different level of Enjoyment.

TT

Still want to do them Paper, may have to get a Library Card


103 posted on 05/21/2015 10:36:01 PM PDT by TexasTransplant (Idiocracy used to just be a Movie... Live every day as your last...one day you will be right)
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To: a fool in paradise
Is there any background to the writing of King Kong? I mean, whoever wrote the screenplay didn"t make it up out of thin air. It had to have been drawn from some popular stories of the time, e.g. ape man reports from the Pacific Northwest and Canada. J.W. Burns was writing about these things in McLean's in the '20s!

I'd love to read those stories were the origin.

104 posted on 05/21/2015 10:38:26 PM PDT by Oratam
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To: jobim
Actually, If I recall correctly, The Heart of Darkness has been made into a movie three times. In one, a 1958 TV movie version. . . Boris Karloff played Kurtz. It's even been made into an Opera. In 1978, Francis Ford Coppola moved the setting from the Congo to the Mekong Delta, and changed the story's name to Apocalypse Now and made a mint with Marlin Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz and Martin Sheen in the "Marlow" role, Captain Benjamin L. Willard.
105 posted on 05/21/2015 10:40:38 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users contnue...)
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To: MNDude

The Vicar of Christ


106 posted on 05/21/2015 10:42:22 PM PDT by satan (The tree of liberty is dying in the drought.)
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To: MNDude

Boy’s Life

By Robert McCammon


107 posted on 05/21/2015 11:06:44 PM PDT by Chasaway (Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?)
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To: MNDude
This man wrote a book about his capture in the Philippines, transport to Japan as a prisoner, and liberation after witnessing the effects of one of the nuclear weapons.

http://qctimes.com/news/donald-nichols/article_6ce98020-a666-5544-9db0-395e13bd2806.html

http://www.amazon.com/You-cant-conquer-them-American/dp/B0006QGKHK

108 posted on 05/21/2015 11:14:23 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Against Obama. Against Putin. Pro-freedom. Pro-US Constitution.)
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To: Swordmaker

Thanks for the info. I saw Apocalypse when it came out and knew it was based on Conrad’s book. The Making of Apocalypse Now by Coppola’s wife is a fascinating documentary as well. I didn’t know about the Karloff & Malkovitch versions. Do you happen to know if they are any good?


109 posted on 05/21/2015 11:20:21 PM PDT by jobim
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To: BenLurkin
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/bryan-singer-tackling-sci-fi-778949

Bryan Singer Tackling Sci-Fi Classic 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' for Fox (Exclusive)

110 posted on 05/21/2015 11:20:37 PM PDT by Hetty_Fauxvert (FUBO, and the useful idiots you rode in on!)
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To: MNDude

How about The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison? Might be good for a few laughs.


111 posted on 05/21/2015 11:29:06 PM PDT by Red.Lensman
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To: jobim

Great list! Brave New World is being made now, or is in development. Heart of Darkness was made as Apocalypse Now. Master and Man is one of the greatest things ever written, feels more like a great short subject. I’d love to see it. I have read Demon Lover, but given your taste, I’m going to now!


112 posted on 05/21/2015 11:29:07 PM PDT by Nationale7
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To: TexasTransplant

A Couple of other good RAH novels were “I Will Fear No Evil” and “Double Star”, which won the 1956 Hugo Award.


113 posted on 05/21/2015 11:30:50 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users contnue...)
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To: jobim
Thanks for the info. I saw Apocalypse when it came out and knew it was based on Conrad’s book. The Making of Apocalypse Now by Coppola’s wife is a fascinating documentary as well. I didn’t know about the Karloff & Malkovitch versions. Do you happen to know if they are any good?

Since it was made entirely inside a studio, I kind of doubt the Karloff version was. The Malkovich version might be. . . but IMDB gives it only a 5.6 rating out of 10 possible. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a critics rating of 40% and a viewers rating of 39%. . . not good.

114 posted on 05/21/2015 11:33:43 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users contnue...)
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To: Oratam

I’ve heard that the ideal of the locale came from fictional films like Chang and even Nanu of the North.

I’ve got some books on King Kong but I don’t recall much for details at this point.

I think the stop motion animator had already done films with dinosaurs.


http://www.horrorfilmhistory.com/index.php?pageID=KingKong

Cooper took his inspiration for Kong from both fact and fiction. As a small boy he was inspired by the adventure stories of Paul Du Chaillu, African explorer, whose embroidered tales of battles with hippopotami and giant apes in the depths of the jungle were a strong influence on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. Years later, he managed to borrow enough money to fund a North African expedition for the purposes of making a documentary about the nomad Bakhtiari tribe: Nanook of the North wowed audiences in 1922 and he though he could capitalise on the new fascination with anthropology. He was accompanied by an ex-combat photographer, Ernest B. Schoedsack, who had honed his post-war camera skills at Mack Sennet’s studio. They joined the tribesmen’s migration over the mountains, and, over twenty-six gruelling days shot the footage that would become the documentary Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925). Paramount offered a distribution deal, and it grossed many times its original $10,000 budget. Jess Lasky was persuaded to give Cooper and Schoedsack $60,000 to make their second documentary, Chang: A Drama of The Wilderness(1927) which focused on a Lao tribesman, Kru.

...He also worked on a book about baboons, which led him to recall the adventure stories of his boyhood, and his more recent adventures in Asia. He began to work on a treatment for King Kong, but struggled when it came to the effects. He ruled out using a real gorilla, but couldn’t find a believable alternative.

Cooper was lured back into entertainment by legendary producer David O. Selznik, who was then working at RKO. Willis O’Brien, stop motion animation genius, was also part of the studio, working on a silent project, Creation, which was ultimately dropped. O’Brien had wowed Hollywood with his work re-creating dinosaurs in The Lost World (1926), and offered sophisticated solutions to Cooper’s technical difficulties. RKO funded some test footage, shot by Schoedsack - three model gorillas (18” high) shot against miniatures of Skull Island and Manhattan. RKO were sufficiently impressed by this footage to give Cooper a budget of $500,000 (later upped to $650,000); impressive as the country was beset by the worst privations of the Great Depression....


115 posted on 05/21/2015 11:38:06 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Funny how Hollywood's 'No Nukes' crowd has been silent during Obama's Iranian nuclear negotiations.)
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To: MNDude; All

I read a book back in the late 80s or early 90s that I would love to read again and which I think would be a good movie. Unfortunately I do not own it and can not remember the name.
Has anyone read a book about the assassination of some members of the British royal family and the search for the killers while trying to protect those royals still alive? It was a good book, lots of action and could be an equally good movie.


116 posted on 05/21/2015 11:40:04 PM PDT by kalee
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To: MNDude
In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.

In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms in the Southern Ocean, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision means the difference between life and death.

This is a great story. . . great drama, comedy, and human foibles. Some of these "sailors" took of on solo voyages having NEVER sailed so much as a boat in a bathtub! One faked his voyage, and only one completed the circumnavigation, if I recall correctly. Great drama in storms, months alone at sea, no communications. . . etc., and it's a race.

117 posted on 05/21/2015 11:41:36 PM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users contnue...)
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To: Nationale7

Spielberg or Lucas or somebody like that is involved, I think, in making it into a TV series. I don’t see any good coming of that venture. Glad to know another soul who values that deep & great & subtle Tolstoy story. I used to drag sophomores through that - not easy, given the pace - but there were some who were moved. Demon Lover has not the depth of Tolstoy, but she in her spare style conveys a scene bizarre and uncomfortable. So many more great short stories that could lend themselves to film in the right hands.


118 posted on 05/21/2015 11:51:40 PM PDT by jobim
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To: doorgunner69

My selections:
1. The Epic of Gilgamesh—The first story ever writen by man. Lots of monsters and treachery.
2. True History by Lucan—a trip to the moon in Ancient Times.
3. Carson of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs
4. Bats Fly at Night, Erle Stanley Gardner
5. The DA calls it Murder, Erle Stanley Gardner
6. The Chinese Parrot, Earl Derr Biggers


119 posted on 05/22/2015 1:47:22 AM PDT by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll Onward! Ride to the sound of the guns!)
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To: doorgunner69

Heinlein’s early books aren’t too bad in that regard, though there are hints if you read them carefully. Got all into homoeroticism and mother-son incest in later years. Guy definitely had issues.


120 posted on 05/22/2015 2:03:17 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
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