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/lit/ - Literature

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19117499 No.19117499 [Reply] [Original]

The truth is that this book could be easily made into a film; it is not "unadaptable". However, the subject matter tackles the time period with realism and was written in the mid-80s by an author born in the 30s. It is almost impossible to subvert without completely changing the story. Compare to RDR 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XhWIffjt1k

>> No.19117514

>>19117499
More than hour of the movie would have to be panoramic shots of deserts to be faithful to the book. Without the prose, it will be hard to keep interest nomatter how great the cinematographer is.

>> No.19117553

You're not being coherent, anon. I'm going to take a shot at what I think you're trying to say, though:

Blood Meridian is hard to adapt not because of its content or its "subversability" but because it's a story made for the medium its in and that's hard to put on screen because of how much the text works to convey its themes. It's the same reason you don't really see many adaptations of Moby Dick or Gravity's Rainbow. Without the text, the stories and themes change significantly.

I'm not sure what you mean by subversive, as an aside. Blood Meridian is a subversive novel in that it confronts the reality of Western Expansionism by using the western as a framework. It deliberately subverts many of the notions people hold as true about history and the nature of western society, so what are you even talking about?

What's the difference between reddit spacing and paragraph breaks on 4chan? I never got that. Maybe you mean to say that Blood Meridian isn't "subversive" in the way a lot of current media is, and generally I'd agree. Most current media subverts virtue in favor of the state.

>> No.19117555

I dont think the issue is subversion, the novel's innately critical of concepts like manifest destiny and you could make progressives slurp that up, even though, ironically, it actually was a progressive ideology of the time. I think the real reason they haven't made a movie isn't because it's "unfilmable" or has the wrong politics but simply that it lacks mass appeal. It is too grave and too erudite. It lacks even the cathartic final gunfight of an Unforgiven and focuses on metaphysical concerns that over half of America is too stupid to understand or take interest in. It sold less than 2500 copies before All The Pretty Horses blew McCarthy up with the Oprah crowd.

>> No.19117569

I've never seen a 'good' movie in my life

>> No.19117663

>>19117553
>What's the difference between reddit spacing and paragraph breaks on 4chan?
Basically, when you do a line break on reddit, it automatically separates the two lines with space. On 4chan, a line break does not, and a conscious decision is required to add spacing between two lines. The belief that the space is aesthetic pleasing is due to one's constant reading of reddit, thus the ridicule of those who add the space. The below looks perfectly formatted:

You're not being coherent, anon. I'm going to take a shot at what I think you're trying to say, though:
Blood Meridian is hard to adapt not because of its content or its "subversability" but because it's a story made for the medium its in and that's hard to put on screen because of how much the text works to convey its themes. It's the same reason you don't really see many adaptations of Moby Dick or Gravity's Rainbow. Without the text, the stories and themes change significantly.
I'm not sure what you mean by subversive, as an aside. Blood Meridian is a subversive novel in that it confronts the reality of Western Expansionism by using the western as a framework. It deliberately subverts many of the notions people hold as true about history and the nature of western society, so what are you even talking about?
What's the difference between reddit spacing and paragraph breaks on 4chan? I never got that. Maybe you mean to say that Blood Meridian isn't "subversive" in the way a lot of current media is, and generally I'd agree. Most current media subverts virtue in favor of the state.

>> No.19117715

>>19117499
Yeah, but nobody can make the film be as beautiful as the book. Have you seen the As i lay dying movie? the things that are great in the book look weird on screen. The characters monologues that are great in the book don't look great on scree.
For example, this is the opening passage from blood meridian:
>See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes
the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods
beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and
drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he
quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches
him.
Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did
fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.
The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who
would carry her off. The father never speaks her name, the child does not know it. He
has a sister in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed.
He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.
All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.

Tell me how a director could pull that off in a film, and make it as beautiful as that passage? Not even the coen brothers, who did very well with No country for old men, could adapt Blood Meridian.

>> No.19117734

>>19117715
>Tell me how a director could pull that off in a film
My approach would be staging it, shooting it with a camera, and then editing it together

>> No.19117741

>>19117514
This. This is the exact reason why the greatest novels aren't made into movies. It's the prose that makes the novels beautiful. There is no good Faulkner movie, no good James Joyce movie, in fact Frankenstein doesn't even have a good faithful adaptation.

>> No.19117804

>>19117499
Do I have to watch the 1 hour long political video game video essay you included to understand your post?

>> No.19117842

>>19117499
What would you do about trees of dead babies, smashing babies skulls by swinging them by the leg against rocks, beheadings, anally raping indian women and children, disembowling them mid-rape? I don't know of any big budget R rated movies that depict that level of violence

>> No.19117866

>>19117514
Snyder or Tarantino could do it easily, and Iñárritu would doubtlessly improve on the original

>> No.19117954

>>19117842
Maybe there's ways around it. American pyscho was a good film despite being based on a very graphic and violent book. Audiences are now more used to violence and gore than ever before. It's everything else about the book that would be difficult to adapt

>> No.19117957

>>19117741
There's two great McCarthy novel adaptations in film already. He's a very visual writer.

>> No.19118015

>>19117957
Nfcom is a retooled screenplay and The Road was never released to wider audiences for fear of bombing.
Blood Meridian is a different beast entirely than his 21st century work.

>> No.19118020

>>19118015
I've read every book he's written and I disagree.

>> No.19118027

>>19118015
>for fear of bombing
What?

>> No.19118028

>>19118027
Box office bomb

>> No.19118033

>>19117499
>Content to dollar ratio
>Rivaled only by the Witcher 3
puke

>> No.19118040

>>19117866
Tarantino is shallow as fuck. His whole shtick is
>CRASH ZOOM
>BLOOD SPLATTER
>QUIRKY MUNDANE DIALOGUE
his movies are entertaining but McCarthy deserves much better.

>> No.19118044

>>19118020
I too have. Atph was a completely inspid adaptation precisely because it was trying too much to be like the book despite being one of McCarthy's most accessible works with a solid plot for a change. Even McCarthy thinks so. Any adaptation of BM will have to change it too much to fit the screen at the expense of faithfullness. Yes, he is a visual writer but his visual work will not translate well to screen. The most successful adaptation of his work was one with the least descriptive prose.

>> No.19118049

>>19117663
This looks fucking horrible without indentation though.

>> No.19118087

>>19118040
It seems ironic to call him shallow by critiquing surface level aesthetic trademarks and overlooking any themes developed in his works. It's like saying that McCarthy is shallow because his schtick is not using quotation marks. There is a lot more to both of them.

>> No.19118168

Lookie 'ere. The medium is the message, mah man. And film is of the visual culture; it is vastly different from written literature. And visual culture is on the rise and books are on the decline; an' if they turn your favorite books into films, you gotta judge it from a moviegoer's standpoint and not a book reader's one. An' doncha say any books are "unfilmable" or some shit, because the filmmakers can and will do it.

>> No.19118242

>>19118049
Please return to reddit.

>> No.19118788

>>19117866
Why would anybody let Hack Snyder touch Blood Meridian, one of the greatest novels ever written? He couldn't even do a good job with Watchmen. If i could pick anyone to direct it, i would choose Robert Eggers.

>> No.19118790

>>19118242
please read books nigger

>> No.19119443

Only Mel Gibson could do it justice

>> No.19119565

>>19118049
>>19118242
It does look like shit, I wish it wasn't a thing

>> No.19119587

>>19117663
>The belief that the space is aesthetic pleasing is due to one's constant reading of reddit
This isn't true because I used to do it on here pre-reddit.

>> No.19119596

>>19117715
Voice over with visuals, it's not hard

>> No.19119611
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19119611

>> No.19119662

>>19119611
kekekekekek