Guy Ash's List: Week 3: Annotated Bibliography

ADAPTATIONS: From Short Story to Big Screen 
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The Good, the Bad and the Unadaptable 

  The paradox is this: Great stories often make poor movies and vice-versa In his 1999 Hopwood Lecture, Lawrence Kasdan (Silverado, The Big Chill) said that he found this idea both liberating and inspiring: "My experience is that high art often starts in low places." And in fact, some of the most successful movies of all time have come from "low places." In the early days of cinema, potboilers were everywhere, and so were their film adaptations. Classic films like Stagecoach, All About Eve, and Bringing up Baby were all adapted from fiction found in mass market magazines. (In fact, "Stage to Lordsburg," the basis for Stagecoach, and Hagar Wilde's "Bringing Up Baby" were published in the same issue of Colliers). Stories like these were routinely snatched up by the studios on the off chance that they might make a good film. And if the quality of writing was mediocre, it didn't matter. What mattered was the story.