I watch a lot of movies. So many, actually, that I often run out of current and recent movies and wind up re-watching those I've seen many times before. At least those are easy to find: I have three dozen boxes, each holding 26 DVDs, scattered around the house, plus God knows how many more DVDs on and underneath the bookshelves here in my home office. It's enough to make my wife scream. Thank goodness I'm a great husband in all other respects (he said modestly).
Anyhow, I recently rewatched The Quiet Man, a lighthearted John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara movie set in Ireland, which on the one hand is not my usual kind of movie and on the other hand is one that I always enjoy. And it occurred to me, when it was finished and the credits were rolling, that this well-known and award-winning film was adapted not from a novel but from a short story, first published by Maurice Walsh in The Saturday Evening Post in the early 1930s. Whoodathunkit?
That, of course, got me thinking about other film adaptations from the short stuff. And since I had an upcoming and uncompleted SleuthSayers column that needed to be completed . . .
Here are my highly-biased (and always changing) picks for the ten best movies adapted from short stories:
1. It's a Wonderful Life -- from "The Greatest Gift," Philip Van Doren Stern
2. Rear Window -- "It Had to Be Murder," Cornell Woolrich
3. High Noon -- "The Tin Star," Mark Casper
4. Bad Day at Black Rock -- "Bad Day at Honda," Howard Breslin
5. The Quiet Man -- "The Quiet Man," Maurice Walsh
6. Hondo -- "The Gift of Cochise," Louis L'Amour
7. The Killers -- "The Killers," Ernest Hemingway
8. The Swimmer -- "The Swimmer," John Cheever
9. 3:10 to Yuma -- "Three-Ten to Yuma," Elmore Leonard
10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," F. Scott Fitzgerald
Five runners-up: The Birds ("The Birds," Daphne du Maurier), Stagecoach ("The Stage to Lordsburg," Ernest Haycox), The Tall T ("The Captives," Elmore Leonard), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty ("The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," James Thurber), Million Dollar Baby ("Million $$$ Baby," F.X. Toole)
Continuing with this idea of short fiction to screen, the following are my picks for the ten best movies adapted from novellas:
1. The Shawshank Redemption -- from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King
2. Stand by Me -- The Body, Stephen King
3. The Thing -- Who Goes There?, John W. Campbell, Jr.
4. The Mist -- The Mist, Stephen King
5. Apocalypse Now -- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
6. Silver Bullet -- Cycle of the Werewolf, Stephen King
7. Hearts in Atlantis -- Low Men in Yellow Coats, Stephen King
8. The Old Man and the Sea -- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
9. The Man Who Would Be King -- The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling
10. The Snows of Kilimanjaro -- The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Hemingway
NOTE: Yes, I like Stephen King.
Five runners-up: A River Runs Through It (A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean), Minority Report (The Minority Report, Philip K. Dick). The Fly (The Fly, David Cronenberg), Breakfast at Tiffany's (Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote), Shop Girl (Shop Girl, Steve Martin)
Breaking news: I was reminded, by SleuthSayer Joseph D'Agnese's column yesterday, of several more good movies that started out short: Arrival, All About Eve, Brokeback Mountain, etc. (Joe, do great minds think alike, or what?)
Okay, which ones, Faithful Readers, did I leave out? Which do you think shouldn't have been included? Have you writers had any of your short stories or novella-length fiction adapted for the movies or TV? (For me, no.) Anything pending or promising? (No.) Any near-misses? (Yes.) Sold any film options? (Yes.) Do you have cinematic hopes for future projects? Who knows, right?
Who knows, indeed. If you're like me, and none of your fictional creations have made it to the big screen, don't lost hope. Hold steady, stick to the plan, maintain the course.
Anything's possible . . .
What fun. "A New Leaf" based on "The Green Heart" by our beloved Jack Ritchie. And "Duel" based on the short story of the same name by Richard Matheson.
ReplyDeleteRob, as you know, I liked "A New Leaf," and now that you've reminded me, Duel should've been on that top ten list. (See? It's already changing.) Another Matheson short story that became a cool movie was "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."
DeleteInteresting article, John. As I read this, three movies immediately came to mind, all sci-fi. Curiously all three, if I remember right, aren’t merely based on individual short stories but on short story collections. How common is that? The films I’m thinking of are:
ReplyDelete• 2001, A Space Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke)
• The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury)
• I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
Leigh, yes, I think you "remember right" about those. And I think the Bradbury short story "A Sound of Thunder" was adapted into a movie also--but I seem to remember it was disappointing.
DeleteAs you know, there were also some really good short SF stories made into episodes of The Twilight Zone. (One of the best of those otherworldly shorts for TZ was a Western called "The Grave.") Lots and lots of good story adaptations in that series.
The Illusionist (2006) is a movie I've watched multiple times. It's based on Steven Millhauser's short story Eisenheimer the Illusionist.
ReplyDeleteYay! I'm glad you mentioned The Illusionist, Anne. Another one I'd forgotten. As I remember, The Prestige came out around that same time, and the fact that they were both about magic was unfortunate for them, box-officewise.
DeleteThanks!
What a fun post! I know the majority of these films, but didn't realize how many came from short stories or novellas. As a quibble, is "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" really long enough to qualify as a novella? I always think of it as a short story. I have two collections with "Rear Window" included, both using that title, but one credited to Woolrich and the other to his pen name, William Irish.
ReplyDelete"Shane" by Jack Schaeffer is a novella, too. While I think the novella is superior to the film, many people would probably call it a classic. An all-star cast, too.
Steve, I think you're right. I'm guessing, but I bet Snows wasn't much more than 10,000 words (I've read it several times), and I consider anything under 18K or so to be in short-story range. But look what that would've done to my "top ten" lists!!!
DeleteAs for Shane, I always liked the book better than the movie, but it seems EVERYbody's seen the movie and NObody's read the novel. I read it in high school, and loved loved loved it. When I got around to seeing the movie, I remember being stunned by the casting of Alan Ladd as the gunfighter. Boy was that a long time ago.
Regarding length, my copy of the Shane novel is pretty long, probably 70 or 80K words.
Thank you as always for reading my rants, and offering your thoughts.
It's never been credited, but I believe in my heart that "The Matrix" was based on Philip K. Dick's novelette "Faith of Our Fathers" (published in the 1967 anthology "Dangerous Visions" and I still have my tattered copy, and you can have it when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.) For one thing, the premise is that the entire population is kept docile with hallucinogens that give everyone the same hallucination - and when given an anti-hallucinogen, the "hero" sees reality, but finds out that it's different for everybody.
ReplyDelete"The Life of Chuck" is being released in June. It's based on yet another Stephen King novella, and it looks quite promising. If you haven't seen the trailer on YouTube yet, I recommend you do so! And if you haven't read the novella yet (it's collected in King's book IF IT BLEEDS), I recommend you do so before watching the movie! It's a strange story—not exactly horror—but strangely touching and fantastical and beautiful ...
ReplyDelete