I\u2019m re-reading a novel by Thomas B. Costain called The Tontine<\/i>. It\u2019s one of those mid-twentieth century historical novels, a best-seller at the time and completely forgotten now. As is he. I always find it instructive to note how quickly best-sellers disappear from cultural memory. Some of his stuff is still in actual print, though.\r\n
Anyway, I\u2019m fond of the book, although it is objectively terrible. This one has never been filmed, as far as I can tell, although four of his books were in the fifties and sixties. And it occurred to me, as it has fairly often in the past, that it seems to me much easier to make a good adaptation of a bad book than a good one. Since the book is mostly forgotten, and wasn\u2019t good in the first place, you can just jettison anything that doesn\u2019t work and put in stuff that would work better.\r\n
This novel is set over the course of the 19th Century, mostly focused on two prominent British families and people connected to them. At the start of the book, the partners in Grace and Carboy begin a feud, dissolving the partnership. Samuel Carboy becomes a powerful industrialist and banker; George Grace becomes a reform politician. We follow them and their children, and their grandchildren, and their servants and their families, and their children\u2019s various associates and their families, etcetera etcetera. The sons travel. They all get involved in various historical events\u2014the Bonapartist conspiracy, the Haitian revolt, Bolivar\u2019s wars, trains, steamships. A really good or well-loved book would mean finding a way to film those specific scenes. Which might work\u2026 or might not. Maybe it would be better to get caught up in the Opium Wars! Or stuck in Bleeding Kansas. Or whatever. Fudge the dates however you want. No-one will have their favorite book ruined. Jettison all the dialogue, not just the racist part.\r\n
This is an instance of a general point that I have been on about for a while\u2014remaking bad movies seems like a much better idea than remaking good ones. Adapting anything that is both really good and has passionate fans seems much more difficult. I\u2019m not watching the Sandman<\/i> adaptation, or the League of their Own<\/I> series, or, you know, The Kite Runner<\/i> on Broadway, but it seems like making something like The Tontine<\/i> would just be a more sensible thing.\r\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger would probably keep the part about the tontine, but honestly, that could go, too.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-flim"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20801"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20804,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20801\/revisions\/20804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}