One of the joys of reading the source material from favorite movies is experiencing the way the original author cast the story. The twists and turns that weren’t in the movie, or vice versa. How the characters changed. Sometimes you like the book better than the movie. Sometime the movie version is best. But occasionally, the book and movie are so close that reading the novel is almost like rewatching the movie.
I watched the movie Red a few weeks ago. It is an interesting and disturbing character study about the effects of privilege, lax parenting, and dealing with grief. The movie starred Brian Cox and was good but disturbing (for me especially) because it involved the brutal killing of a pet dog. However, I was intrigued enough to read the novel by Jack Ketchum. With one or two minor changes, it was almost identical to the movie. But the writing was good, so it was a worthwhile read.
Another story along the same lines was The Gypsy Moths, a character study set in the world of skydiving. I rewatched the movie recently (first saw it in the theater when I was 13). It has a great cast, including Burt Lancaster, Gene Hackman, Scot Wilson, and Deborah Kerr. It is a slow-paced but thought-provoking movie, with terrific acting. The source material is a novel by James Drought. I picked up a used copy of the book online and found that with one or two minor changes, it was again very similar to the movie. It was a bit overwritten for my taste (too much description), but at only 128 pages it was worth finishing. As with the movie, I found it slow paced but thought-provoking.
I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover, but can sometimes judge a book by its movie.