The Movie is Better Than The Book

Image Credit: Tom Gauld

It's rare. But it happens.

Sometimes the movie is better than the book.

That's super rare, though, as most people will tell you.

Anyone can name books they've read that are better than their movie counterparts. For example, I've read (and watched the not-as-good movie or TV show of) Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, The Relic, Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Expanse, to name a few.

But can you name a case where the movie is better than the book?

That's a little harder.

I have two: Children of Men and Love, Simon / Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda.

I watched Children of Men as soon as it came out -- it looked like my kind of sci-fi. While I read and watch an awful lot of Star Trek, I'm actually not a fan of science fiction with aliens. (I think it's because all too often the aliens are bent on destroying Earth, turning it into a horror movie (like Alien) or an action movie (like Independence Day).)

Children of Men -- the movie -- sees a near future world where humanity can no longer have children. The youngest person in the world is an adult. And then a woman gets pregnant. What follows is a harrowing and tense movie as they try to get the pregnant woman to safety with a humanitarian group. I loved the movie.

Shortly after watching it, I picked up the book... because the book is always better, right?

Unfortunately, not the case here. Well, I shouldn't be so absolute in that statement. The issue was that the book took a far different approach than the movie, and I preferred the movie's approach much more. The book focussed on the sociological aspect of a world no longer having children. Dolls become a treasured thing, with fully-grown adults purchasing expensive lifelike dolls to treat like real babies. It's definitely an interesting thought experiment and is definitely a good book. I just though the movie was better.

I had been eyeing the book for a while before buying it -- but it was the strength of the movie that finally made me make that purchase.

I don't think I would have read it if the movie was bad (or if the movie had never been made). And I don't think I would have watched the movie if I had read the book first.

Anyway, this was several years back in 2006.

To find a movie that's better than the book is a rare thing and I never expected it to happen again.

Then I watched Love, Simon. (I wrote about this a few weeks back -- I, along with most of the theatre, sobbed through the whole thing because it's such a touching movie.)

Love, Simon is a rather typical teen rom-com, but with a gay romance at its core. It's super cute and speaks a lot to the "gay experience" that really gets lost in media. In the movie, someone posts on an anonymous blog that's popular with the school that they are secretly gay. Simon, the protagonist, is closeted and feels alone for being gay -- so he reaches out to this anonymous person. From there is a movie full of trying to figure out who this secret person is as he and Simon develop an over-email-relationship, to the point where they express their love for each other, despite not know who the other person is. (Well, the love interest eventually learns who Simon is, but Simon doesn't learn who the other boy is until the end of the movie.)

I loved the movie on so many levels.

So, naturally, I had to read the book.

Like with Children of Men, the book (Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda) takes on a different approach... and I didn't like it.

I wouldn't have read the book if I hadn't seen the movie. And I wouldn't have seen the movie if I had read the book first.

The book takes a different approach -- which is really good on it's own, but I was expecting the approach the movie took. There's still the same secret love and there's a blackmail subplot in both the book and the movie. But the book really doesn't focus on the romance -- it's almost a background thing. Instead, the book seems to really focus on the message that "gay kids are normal kids", which, of course, they are. Most of the book follows Simon doing normal things that teenagers do, with him keeping the secret that he's gay. It's a damn good book -- but I was expecting something like the movie.

Seeing Love, Simon and reading Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda has been an interesting experience. As soon as I walked out of the theatre, I decided I want to write a YA gay romance. Four weeks and 66,000 words later, I have a first draft that has made a beta reader cry and is already super polished. (It's been a hell of a long time since I've written anything without a sex scene.) I'm busy submitting it to agents now. With YA, I think the market is really in physical bookstores, and you need to access the traditional publishing market to get there. My writing group (and my husband, an editor) feel this is strong enough to get a publishing deal -- fingers crossed -- but if that doesn't happen, I'll be self-publishing it and cracking into another YA.

I wrote this book because I had been inspired by the movie. But if I had read Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda first, I likely wouldn't have bothered with the movie. And if I hadn't bothered with the movie, I wouldn't have written my own book.

Sometimes the movie is better than the book. And when that happens, it's a rare and treasured thing.

Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Silent Hearts. He is publisher at and co-founder of Deep Desires Press, member of the Indie Erotica Collective, and hosts two podcasts, Deep Desires Podcast and Sex For Money. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

The Past is a Foreign Country

There have been so many good posts on this subject so far!

Despite the risks, I love writing historical fiction and the necessary fact-checking spadework. What I don’t love (or can’t bring myself to write) is heterosexual romance set in a time when women had no rights, but which implies that this is really not a problem as long as the Hero and Heroine are in love. Since I wouldn’t want to make an unbreakable commitment to a man who would have the legal right to “correct” me through beatings (and confinement and starvation, all the standard methods of torture), rape me over and over, get me pregnant without my consent, and prevent me from initiating any action, I wouldn’t wish that on any woman – even an imaginary one.

And to anyone who claims that Good Men have never done these things to women, I would ask: then why have laws and social customs allowed such drastic inequality? And under such circumstances, what is “good” and who defines it?

Cultures that deprived most women of the rights of citizenship generally did the same to men of the “lower orders,” however these were defined. And anyone who was defined as a lunatic or an outlaw could expect even worse treatment. Feh.

Yet there have been interesting loopholes and inconsistencies in every social system. However you define historical “progress,” it is never a smooth highway to nirvana.

Visiting the past is like visiting a locale that seems exotic because it is different from where you live. Having to learn what your characters ate, what their houses or dwelling-places were like, how they spoke, what they wore, how they travelled, what they did for entertainment, how they earned money, and how they worshipped their Deity(ies) and then work all that information into a story without interrupting the plot with long info-dumps is not only an interesting writing challenge. Becoming aware of the texture of a past era, like visiting another country, is a way of becoming aware of the texture of your own everyday life. This is guaranteed to help the writing, regardless of when or where the story takes place.

Changing technology and passing fashions enable all writers – if we survive long enough – to recognize our own early work as “historical.” Consider a one-act play I wrote in high school in the late 1960s. Two girls (one painfully shy, bookish, self-conscious, and one aggressive, determined to survive in the teenage jungle) compete for the attention of an easy-going boy who is mildly attracted to Shy Girl but bewildered by the intensity of both girls. There is a portable record-player and stack of vinyl records in an empty classroom. The boy puts on a record and dances with Shy Girl until Sassy Girl (in fashionable psychedelic-print miniskirt) pulls him away. Shy Girl has bangs (fringe) that almost cover her eyes.

My motive for looking up this piece, typed on paper that has yellowed over the years, was to decide whether I could make it “relevant” (1960s term) to current times. I was dismayed. OMG! (Not a 1960s expression.)

The vinyl records (usually with scratches on them that altered the sound), the classroom with blackboard and chalk (no computers, no cell phones, no i-whatevers), the clothing, the hairstyles, the assumption by all three young characters that they are living in a culture so “advanced” that their old-fogey parents and teachers have no grasp of the current zeitgeist – I would have to update all the physical details and several of the unspoken premises to bring this dinosaur back to life. And I probably wouldn’t succeed.

On the other hand, if I ever want to write a longer play, story or novel set in the 1960s, I have a primary document which could be adapted to my current plan.

Historical fiction that works always has to involve sleight-of-hand because some of the assumptions of yesteryear don’t seem to travel well into the present. For example, the basic plot of Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, circa 1890s, about sexual exploitation and its aftermath, is still gripping enough to have inspired more than one movie and a television mini-series when the novel was a century old. But who remembers
the theological debates in the novel?

On that note, I know that one of the conflicts that divided my mother’s family during her childhood in the 1920s was between Baptist and Methodist theology. (My mom, then little Jane, was taken to church by her Methodist aunt while her father, a Baptist convert, thundered about the evils of alcohol, dancing and card-playing. And Jane’s mother wrung her hands but went to church with her husband.) Do I care? Not really.

The question of whether my scandalous party behaviour (dancing and drinking wine) could send me to Hell has never kept me awake at night. Yet if I ever write a realistic piece about the flavour of little Jane’s upbringing, I will have to find a way to make this conflict interesting to the reader or viewer.

Any piece set in English-speaking culture before approximately 1450 AD either requires subtitles or “archaic” language that a current audience can still understand. The writer has to function as an interpreter who can make the past intelligible to his or her contemporaries. It really isn’t that different from what we all strive to do: show the story in our minds to our readers, and hope they understand.
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