I do have a pet theory that it's easier to make a good movie from a bad book. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Manchurian Candidate (1963) being prime examples. For one thing, they're bad novels, so the screenwriters can chuck large elements of the source in favor of something better.

Then again, overall, I think it's a crapshoot and a matter of the right kind of people meeting the right kind of project. There have certainly been plenty of lifeless, annoying adaptations of good books, but there are also plenty of lifeless, annoying adaptations of bad books.

I mean, Broadway has got an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on The Woman in White. We are truly a culture of pathetic recycling.

Blade Runner, although the original is a short story and very different.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a novel, and different, sure, but plenty of elements translate across.

As for the title:

The title comes from Alan E. Nourse, who wrote a story called "The Bladerunner". William S. Burroughs took the book and wrote "Bladerunner (A Movie)" in 1979. Rights to the title only ("in perpetuity") were sold to Ridley Scott. Similarities between Nourse's "The Bladerunner" and Scott's BR are in name only. Nourse's title refers to people who deliver medical instruments to outlaw doctors who can't obtain them legally. [Source: Locus, September 1992: p. 76.] Scott thought the title made a good codename for Deckard.

We are truly a culture of pathetic recycling.

Have we ever not been? How many King Arthurs or Brer Rabbit/Anansis are out there?

To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the best example in the world of great book--->great movie, Ginger.

Princess Bride was a wonderful adaptation of book to movie, especially in how they replaced the author's snarky commentary with the framing device of Peter Falk reading to his grandson. (Favorite Falk line? "Yes. You're very smart. Now shut up (or is it "be quiet?".")

Be quiet.

I just wrote a paper about The Princess Bride, among other things.

Thanks, Dana!

You almost have to chuck elements from the book to make the movie. A book has too much in it. And cinematography can make up only so much of the descriptive passages.

We watched the movie in class. There were three or four of us who nearly had to put our hands over our mouths so we wouldn't recite the dialogue.

"Who are you?"

"No one of consequence."

"I must know!"

"Get used to disappointment."

Have we ever not been?

Probably not. But ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER.

I've seen a number of period costume dramas that are quite good movies. Many of them largely unfaithful to their source books, but good movies. The Wings of the Dove, Sense and Sensibility (that one was mostly faithful), like that.

A book has too much in it.

Plus, there's the challenge of taking things like internal monologues (for example) that are important to the plot and character, and finding a way to get that element across on screen. There are things one can do in a book that are impossible to do on film and vice-versa.