Dear Hollywood Directors: Media Meditation 3

Please stop making movies based on books, you're ruining them for me. I understand that movies appeal much more to the limbic brain because of all the images and sounds, but please if you're going to do it, do it right at least. I am an avid book reader myself and they have always been an escape for me, like movies are for some people and music for others.

I am an avid book reader myself and they have always been an escape for me, like movies are for some people and music for others. Since I can remember books have always been my best friend. There was nothing I enjoyed more than immersing myself into another world and yet be sitting in my room. I can remember who my first favorite author was: Natalie Kinsey-Warnock because she visited my school in fifth grade. My two favorite books by her were In the Language of the Loons and If Wishes Were Horses. Both of these stories employed use fantasy and led me to a world where I had never been before.

Upon entering eighth grade, my favorite author quickly changed to Sarah Dessen, a well-known writer of books were the plot of each one involves a young teenage girl falling in love in some beautiful and magnificent way. Of course, a young teenager such as myself at that age was drawn to these books, it brought literally story-book romance to me and made it feel like reality.

Photo Cred: JodiPicoult.com

As I reached my senior year of high school and now my freshmen year of college, I have less and less time to indulge in my guilty pleasure of books and due to this I am less inclined to know what books to even read. Therefore, I have been on a kick of reading books that movies are based on because if someone in Hollywood decides they want to make a movie off of a book, it must be good. It all started with My Sister’s Keeper a dramatic novel by Jodi Picoult depicting the lives of a family stricken with Leukemia in one of the children. It focuses mainly on the story of the youngest sibling who was genetically conceived in order to save her sister’s life and how she tries to fight her parents for her own medical rights. It is one of my most beautiful stories I’ve ever read and brought me to tears several times. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t.

The movie was directed by Nick Cassavetes (who also directed one of my favorite movies, The Notebook also based on a book) and starred one of my all-time favorite actresses, Cameron Diaz. The movie was beautifully done and brought the raw emotions of a family faced with cancer to the big screen but what it didn’t bring were pivotal pieces of the novel. The ending was completely altered to something much more predictable, and despite how sad it was, not nearly as sad at the real ending. The brother’s part of the story was completely cut out and the love story between the lawyer and the youngest sister’s guardian of the court was nonexistent.

Now, I am terrified, yes, terrified to watch the movie The Lovely Bones based on the book by Alice Sebold. I am even more afraid to use my Pandigital (oh, how convergent of me) to begin reading the book Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen because this summer the movie will be coming out. I don’t want another book to be ruined for me, especially books that are so vivid and emotionally jerking.

I get it, there is a shift from word to image, from analog to digital, from personal to participatory but whatever happened to writers in Hollywood coming up with their own material and ideas? These books of course make wonderful story-lines, but you Hollywood snobs are slightly making a mockery out of these amazing books and I’m amazed that these talented authors are letting Hollywood do this. I guess convergence is really taking over the world…