The Princess Bride: A clever, hard-to-put-down book. Then I saw the movie (on the basis of filling in various classics I seem to have missed as a kid), which was horrible, and I think if I were to try and read the book again I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it because I’d just be picturing the characters from the movie. After watching, I went back and read the author’s introduction to the book which was all about how “everyone’s seen the movie and it’s a beloved classic but now here’s the book, you’ll probably enjoy it too”, and how the movie was made and how pleased he was in how it turned out, and that made me lose most of my respect for the author (William Goldman, not to be confused with William Golding who wrote The Lord of the Flies). If he believes his vision of the story in the book was translated well into the movie, then his vision and mine can’t possibly match, and I read a different story than he wrote.

On the other hand, Goldman also wrote the screenplay and invested a great deal of time and effort in the movie. So my question is: could he, conceivably, publicly announce “sorry about all that, I can’t believe how horribly this movie turned out, I put so much effort into it and involved lots of other people and in the end it completely sucked”. I hope that were I in his position I could certainly do something like that on the basis of honesty and just telling it like it as and moving on, and I’m certainly critical of things I make when I believe they haven’t turned out well. But that’s because I’m working alone, and something I make is wholly mine to criticize. When you’re part of a large team, there’s diplomacy involved, especially when you’re in an elevated position within the team. So being responsible for having written the screenplay and assisted with the casting, for Goldman to publicly criticize the movie would be to insult the work of everyone involved in the, or “his”, project. Now, how much insult any particular person would actually take is based on other factors, and I’m not assuming anything about Goldman’s true feelings regarding the movie. I’m just pointing out by way of example based on idle speculation how in general politeness and diplomacy prevent us from just calling as we see it (and probably how most people see it). I can’t even say whether that’s always a bad thing, because it’ll depend on the circumstance. Based on the length and content of the introduction to the book, it’s hard to see that Goldman was disappointed by the movie in any way; based on the content of the book itself, which demonstrates the intelligence of the writer (and the fact that I enjoyed the book, from which I originally assumed that the writer and myself appreciate similar styles), it’s hard to see that he could possibly think the movie worthwhile.

["Oh bother", said Pooh, as all his carefully constructed logic dissolved in a tragic axiomatic anomaly.]

Note: I didn’t link to the earlier book because I couldn’t find the edition I have (with that introduction) on Amazon. Bought it at a run of the mill megabookstore, though. Here‘s their base item with reviews.

Here’s the movie. I guess a lot of people liked it. Fine, it’s a classic, and it has some amusing scenes and memorable lines here and there… but it was something completely different from the book, and that’s probably why I was disappointed. I remember that the first 100 pages or so of the book went by in a couple minutes of the movie… all the cleverness and nuance of the writing was lost.