Can Great Books Makes Great Movies? 7 Writers Just Say No!

"Can Great Books Makes Great Movies? 7 Writers Just Say No!" is an article printed in the July/August 1987 edition of American Film. For the previous three years, the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City had hosted a series of screening-lectures entitled "Novels Into Film" and "Plays Into Film", organized by Laura Kaminsky, the associate director of education. Among those appearing at the events were Edward Albee, Jules Feiffer, John Irving, John Knowles, Arthur Miller, William Styron, and Vonnegut. The article is a composite of quotations from those evenings, creating a "round table" discussion. Some questions came from the audience, some from the moderators—which included John Leonard, Shelley Moss, and Jane Moss—while others were altered or added for the article.

Summary

Margaret Mitchell, 1941

Stating that he and Margaret Mitchell are the two novelists who should be most grateful to Hollywood, Vonnegut says he is fond of the film version of Slaughterhouse-Five, which had little to do with him. He advised Stephen Geller, the film's screenwriter, whom he has still never met, to view the book "as a friendly ghost" that he was under no obligation to pay attention to. When Geller said he couldn't grasp the character of Billy Pilgrim since he "doesn't want anything... [or] like anything", Vonnegut replied that Billy loved his dog, which solved the problem for Geller. Vonnegut went to Hollywood for the shooting and played a small part as "the Harvard historian", but his scene was cut. He thought of a sentence that should have been in the book and asked director George Roy Hill if he would include it. He refused, as was his right since "[i]t was his movie". In the book, each death is accompanied by the phrase "So it goes" and a scene change. In the film, the phrase is absent, but the same is accomplished with editing to immediately jump to a new scene, such that there is never an opportunity to mourn.

Vonnegut recounts how he unwisely sold the rights to Cat's Cradle outright without an option, meaning he has been unable to authorize any adaptations of it. He says his mistake was that Kilgore Trout is mentioned in Cat's Cradle [sic] as well as Breakfast of Champions, which Robert Altman had considered directing. Thus did he have to buy back rights to his own character for $15,000. The film version of Slapstick, which he calls "simply awful", was directed by "a kid, twenty-two years old, and he didn't do so good". It's the only film with Jerry Lewis that didn't make money. Turning novels into film is a kind of alchemy, attempting to transform substances. A Hemingway work, for example, has never been filmed properly because it's always missing Hemingway. But in a capitalist economy, novelists, using the services of a "big-time agent" with the right connections, sell movie rights to make the money they need to keep writing. Given this fact, Vonnegut is mostly satisfied with his treatment by Hollywood. At a party once, Susan Sontag—who intimidates Vonnegut since she's "the smartest woman in New York"—said she also liked the film of Slaughterhouse-Five. A good film should be judged on its own sense of wholeness rather than its fidelity to his original work.