Why do these trashy books make great movies?
Jaws, Double Indemnity, and Psycho were all adapted from trashy, bestselling books. How did disposable books become classic movies?
Well, obviously, talent. The filmmakers were Spielberg, Wilder, and Hitchcock, three directors so monumental, I don’t even have to use their first names. They took these sleazy books and made the characters more lovable. Some examples:
In the book Jaws, the marine biologist sleeps with the police chief’s wife. Spielberg removed that subplot to focus on the growing respect between the three guys on the boat.
In the novella Double Indemnity, the insurance salesman and the investigator are just coworkers. Wilder makes them friends, and the final line between them, the culmination of the whole movie, is “I love you too.”
In the book Psycho, the murderer is creepy from the beginning. But Hitchcock makes him sympathetic until the ending.
In short, the forgettable books are about awful people being awful, and the beloved movies are about lovely people being awful. And, oh, how I wish I could end the analysis there! So tidy, so rich with lessons. But here comes The Shining to spoil our good time.
Because Kubrick did the opposite with Stephen King’s book. He made the characters less relatable, their psychologies more superficial. He turned a book about lovely people becoming awful into a movie about awful people becoming more awful in an awful world of awfulness. He leaned so far into awful that the story left reality completely, and the result is an abstract vibe ride. He turned a pulpy bestseller into a mood piece.
And that word “mood” answers the question lurking under the surface of this article: why did these great filmmakers want to adapt these trashy books in the first place? Answer: because these trashy books have compelling vibes. There’s a reason pulp novels have great covers; they evoke strong feelings, strong imagery… a mood. A shark in a sleepy beach town. A murder for money in the suburbs. A serial killer at a sleepy motel. Ghosts in an empty, grand hotel. Can you feel it?
The settings are all sleepy, empty places, and I could draw more conclusions from that. In fact, this whole subject feels rich with unexplored possibilities, like the many hallways of The Overlook Hotel, branching off into even more hallways. But I don’t have the time.