Role-playing Adapted Worlds

[John Kim]

This is a sub-thread off of http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13520">A wild and an untamed thing - how literature refuses gaming.  There have been related discussions http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13560">On RPGs and Text [LONG] and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13558">Revision and interpretation in role-playing, but they don't seem to be tackling the more immediate thrust of the essay by M. John Harrison.  

The specific question is: is it acceptable to role-play in a setting created by a literary work?  M. John Harrison seems pretty clear that he believes that people should not role-play in his worlds or, for that matter, in other literary worlds.  He considers it a negative cultural expression.  First of all, does anyone agree with him on this specific point?  

His objection was:

Given this, another trajectory (reflecting, of course, another invitation to consume)  immediately presents itself: the relationship between fantasy and games--medieval  re-enactment societies, role-play, and computer games. Games are centred on control.  "Re-enactment" is essentially revision, which is essentially reassertion of  control, or domestication. (The "defusing sequels" produced by Hollywood have  the same effect: as in Alien 2, in which the original insuperable threat is  diminished, the paranoid inscape colonised. Life with the alien is difficult, but--thanks  to our nukes and our angry motherhood no longer so impossible as it seemed.)

As I read this, I am in complete agreement about what is happening here.  Role-playing is an assertion of control.  It is active participation as opposed to passive acceptance.  And I think of that as a good thing.  I would much prefer that my readers take my words/ideas and use them or extend them, rather than passively letting my words wash over them with no effort to imagine anything beyond the words that are printed.  

I would deny that it is inherently revision.  It is rather commentary, or dialogue.  Someone who role-plays in Middle Earth can still be aware of Tolkien's works as distinct from their role-playing game.  He is creating his own work which has its own distinct expression.  This can and will be different than Tolkien's vision.  This is the same with any other adaptation or extension.  i.e. The film version of The Wizard of Oz was distinct from the book, but it was an interesting artistic work in its own right.  

Anyhow, this is a bit moot unless someone actually agrees that role-playing in a literary world is bad.

[GaryTP]

Re: The specific question is: is it acceptable to role-play in a setting created by a literary work?

Answer (maybe): it all depends on how much in control the author wishes to assert. So the answer will vary on who you ask.

I think what irks authors of large works is that they have control over their work, not others. By playing in the world they created, players and other writers muddy the work with their own changes. Then, if this happens, the world is diluted to a point where it no longer is what the author originally intended. The characters may weaken, the focus or original meaning of the story may suffer, etc.

Now there are lots of works where authors have let others write follow up books in the same vein as the original, but with slight changes. Once again, it depends on the author. It's hard to say exactly when an author loses control of his or her work. Their body of work, after all, is the brand by which others see them. Some authors refuse movie adaptations, or only want certain directors or writers involved in the process. In this instance, there would be only a few people with access to the author's world. But in roleplaying, you suddenly have thousands who would be walking through it, messing it up.

So, does the author view someone wanting to roleplaying in his world as a compliment, or a threat.

I don't believe this can be answered with any accuracy.

Gary

[John Kim]

Re: The specific question is: is it acceptable to role-play in a setting created by a literary work?

Answer (maybe): it all depends on how much in control the author wishes to assert. So the answer will vary on who you ask.
...
So, does the author view someone wanting to roleplaying in his world as a compliment, or a threat.

I don't believe this can be answered with any accuracy.

So your view is that it depends on the author's attitude.  That seems reasonable, although I disagree with it.  Personally, I have no qualms about role-playing in a world even if the author is annoyed by it.  Legally, it falls under Fair Use -- but more importantly, morally I don't believe in this sort of control.  My personal ideal would be more like songs.  i.e. A songwriter is entitled to receive credit and money for his work, but bands can do covers of the song without her permission.  The author should receive credit and profits from the work, but not control over how others use their ideas once bought.  

A question -- if someone published a game, would you feel obligated to take their opinion into account about how you should play the game?  You're still using their intellectual property.

[GaryTP]

Re: Personally, I have no qualms about role-playing in a world even if the author is annoyed by it. Legally, it falls under Fair Use -- but more importantly, morally I don't believe in this sort of control.

I totally agree with you. I was speaking from the point of view of author(s). Some like it, some don't. It's just a fact.

Re: A question -- if someone published a game, would you feel obligated to take their opinion into account about how you should play the game? You're still using their intellectual property.

Personally, I'd take their opinion into account and try it, but if it didn't jive with what I thought it should be, then I'd go off and do my own thing with it. I'd have no problem running about Middle Earth, messing with that which should not be messed with:)

It's funny, had a bit of a discussion like this with someone talking about Unaris. I said something to the effect like "I hope people run with "hacks" and evolve it." He said something like "I'm glad you said that, I was going to try to do it my own way." So in my personal view, people should be free to evolve whatever I create. I just know that most authors can be a bit protective.

Gary

[Marco]

As someone who usually invents his own worlds, I don't find myself facing this--but I think John is on the money. Furthermore, for an author to claim they control the idea-space in which their work exists seems naive at best. If they wanted absolute control over what anyone thinks or says about it they should never have published it.

I imagine these people are really bitter about their critics too.

-Marco

[clehrich]

My impression is that Harrison is talking about a type of fantasy in which a central issue at stake is the wildness and uncontrollability of the fantasy itself.  Alien 1, for him, is about the impossibility of the situation: there is no dealing with the alien, for it is utterly unlike and incomprehensible.  Sort of like the way Lovecraft formulated his awful cosmic horrors: essentially so inhuman as to be desperately alien and frightening.

If you then go and run a game -- or make a sequel, or write one -- in which this unbridgeable gulf is bridged, I think he's saying that you have in effect asserted that this was always the case.  We can get along with Cthulhu, we just need to see where he's coming from, you know?  Kumbaya, Cthulhu, kumbaya.

Taking Lovecraft as the example, since there is indeed a famous game adaptation, let's get back to your question.  Is CoC acceptable, or anything like it, or is it intrinsically unacceptable to appropriate Lovecraft's work for a game in which control is necessarily included to at least some degree?

Depends what you mean by acceptable.  I do see where Harrison is coming from.  He thinks it's disrespectful to him and his work.  I think we have to respect that.  That doesn't mean we can't run Viriconium games, but I do think we have to respect the fact that he doesn't want us to, and we need to think seriously about why.  Having read his comments, I must say that I would not run a Viriconium game.  But I wouldn't think you a great sinner if you did.

As to Lovecraft, who after all is dead lo these almost 70 years.  Well, no.  I think it's okay.  But I do think that CoC isn't Lovecraft, and I think that's unfortunate.  I have encountered people who talk glibly about the Cthulhu Mythos and whatnot and who have not, in fact, ever read any of Lovecraft's work.  All they have read is CoC or Deities and Demigods or both.  If we are going to see CoC as a tribute, at least in part, then I do think it's incumbent upon its writers to encourage players to read the original works.  But to be fair, I think Sandy Peterson does that, and if some of his readers are schmucks who can't be bothered to read the originals, I don't think we can fault CoC on that score.

I just don't think this is a radical moral question.  My sense is that Harrison is more concerned about an aesthetic issue: if you strip out of Lovecraft the awful yawning abyss between humanity and the unholy insane madness beyond the stars, what's the point in doing Lovecraft at all?  But the fact remains that nothing in principle says that RPGs cannot formulate those yawning abysses -- they just can't do it in text, and must use other methods distinctive to the form.  And if they find ways to do that, then yes, I'm all in favor of it, just as I don't have a problem with serious attempts at film adaptations of Lovecraft.  But just as you can't just slap a Lovecraft story on the screen by putting in a big rubber monster and seriously claim it's Lovecraft at all, you must think very seriously and deeply about what you're doing in the game and why and how.

Interesting thought: by Harrison's quick formulation, is Alien 1 in some sense a film that does what Lovecraft did in print?

[Callan S.]

The specific question is: is it acceptable to role-play in a setting created by a literary work?  M. John Harrison seems pretty clear that he believes that people should not role-play in his worlds or, for that matter, in other literary worlds.  He considers it a negative cultural expression.  First of all, does anyone agree with him on this specific point?

He doesn't have much choice. Hand a book to ten intelligent people and you are likely to get ten 'takes' on what that book was all about. Just like the aliens movie...some might think it wasn't hopeless, if they worked together. Others might think the corporation made even that hopeless. Others might just think it was hopeless regardless.

It's too late, the cat is out of the bag and people are making their own minds up about the events portrayed. And roleplay isn't different from that.

[komradebob]

What about other art forms?

I was at a gallery opening and was checking out a photographer's work. I was enjoying it, and it was inspiring a wonderful series of thoughts. I glanced over and the artist had put up a sheet talking about his work and what he was trying to accomplish with it. It was completely different in almost every way from what it was inspiring in me.

Now, if I was to use that inspiration, sparked by the photographer's work, in a creative project of my own, am I guilty of vast corruption of that artist's intent? Is it realistic to say that the photographer has some ownership right over my creative endeavor because their work sparked it originally?

If I got prints of the photos and used them as visual references and mood setter for a rpg, would it be reasonable for the photog to pop up and say "No, No, No- that's not the sort of thing I meant at all! Please, no more using my photos in your game!". Admittedly, I find that hard to imagine in the first place, but please play along. Similarly, should I pop out the ouija board and contact the ghost of Billy Holliday to see how she feels about using her work as background mood music?

For that matter, what would the reverse reaction likely be for a game designer contacted by a writer who was inspired by their rpg to write a novel? I imagine the conversation something like this:

Writer: " Hey, I really enjoyed reading your game. It gave me some great ideas for a deep, meaningful story about these characters based in your setting."

Designer: " Wow. That's great. Be sure to credit my game, I really need to sell some more core books."

[Caldis]

I'm not entirely sure I agree with your reading of his point but for interest sake I'll play devil's advocate and present an arguement that it is indeed wrong to set a game in a literary world.

As I see it Harrison's central point was that the best literary worlds are created specifically to make a point, to preach a sermon as he put it.  Everything in them is designed to build and create that point and add to the statement being made.  By taking the elements that make up the statement and using them in a different context you run several risks for very little gain.  

First you can use the elements already used in the literary world and try to keep their meanings intact.  The problem with this is that when you try and impart your own meanings and create your own story they may conflict with the original and thus blur your meanings and/or weaken the original sermon.

Second you may take the original elements strip them of their meaning and use them without any attempt to provide a sermon.  This leaves a hollow shell, an attempt to literalize as Harrison put's it, that so misses the point of the original that it resembles the supposed source material in only a very superficial manner.

If you wish to use Tolkien as inspiration for your fantasy game pick on some of his themes, through together some funny name and a plot to highlight the themes you've chosen and bam you have your own world where you can make your own sermon without treading on J.R.R's toes.

[Callan S.]

Surely that devils advocate only works if I care about keeping the authors meaning intact. If I'm interested in keeping the meaning I got from it, there's no problem.

I mean, if I see a battle in real life and draw some meaning from it, that's what I draw fromit. If a novel depicts a battle or some conflict, why's the authors message the one I must grasp? Like real life, why isn't his just another reading of the events?

Of course, there are good authors who will show you their meaning and you will think 'Ah, I get that'. But if you get it, it's not going to be lost in your derivitive works developed from that.

[John Kim]

But I do think that CoC isn't Lovecraft, and I think that's unfortunate.  I have encountered people who talk glibly about the Cthulhu Mythos and whatnot and who have not, in fact, ever read any of Lovecraft's work.  All they have read is CoC or Deities and Demigods or both.  If we are going to see CoC as a tribute, at least in part, then I do think it's incumbent upon its writers to encourage players to read the original works.  

Hmm.  It's funny.  I have the opposite reaction.  As I see it, CoC should not be Lovecraft.  If it were, there would be no reason for it to exist.  And while I have some emotional feeling similar to you about the sacredness of the original text -- I realize that this is an anti-myth sentiment generated by the dominance of mass media.  In a mass media world, the re-telling is a poor substitute which should aspire to the mass-produced version.  There is a sacred text which must be held as canon.  However, in a world of living myth, the re-telling is what is valued.  

We can certainly see this in action in many places in the modern world.  Characters like Batman or stories like The Wizard of Oz and others are constantly retold and adapted in different stories.  These stories vary wildly in what is told while still drawing from the same source.  

However, many modern people despise oral tradition and re-telling.  They sneer at people who have just "heard of" Odysseus via some adapted version of the story rather than reading Homer's text.  Myth is acceptable and even respected if it happens among, say, some tribesmen in Africa -- but it is wrong to do in the civilized world.  

If you strip out of Lovecraft the awful yawning abyss between humanity and the unholy insane madness beyond the stars, what's the point in doing Lovecraft at all?  But the fact remains that nothing in principle says that RPGs cannot formulate those yawning abysses -- they just can't do it in text, and must use other methods distinctive to the form.  And if they find ways to do that, then yes, I'm all in favor of it, just as I don't have a problem with serious attempts at film adaptations of Lovecraft.  But just as you can't just slap a Lovecraft story on the screen by putting in a big rubber monster and seriously claim it's Lovecraft at all, you must think very seriously and deeply about what you're doing in the game and why and how.

Well, I agree with the last part -- but not at all with the former part.  When I do my game, I want to rip into the original.  Now, it should be a thoughtful or at least creative shredding, but you must acknowledge and celebrate that it is a shredding.  If you want Lovecraft, put your dice away and read Lovecraft.  

For example, that is what I did with my original series Star Trek games.  I deliberately stuck to the letter of most details -- but I attacked much of the meaning, like idealism and in particular the Prime Directive.  In my campaign, the Prime Directive was a political expedient.  The Federation allowed worlds of varying technology levels into itself, but it was also a democracy with each world getting a fixed number of votes.  And the founders were not the most advanced technologically.  This meant that it needed some way to prevent the more advanced members from using their advantage to essentially buy the votes of others.  

Now, someone could rightly say that original series Star Trek is not itself without the moralizing and idealism.  To put in political bickering and dissent within the Federation is counter to the essence of the original.  And I don't disagree with them.  That violation, that taming (as M. John Harrison put it) is the point of gaming.

[clehrich]

As I see it, CoC should not be Lovecraft.  If it were, there would be no reason for it to exist.  And while I have some emotional feeling similar to you about the sacredness of the original text -- I realize that this is an anti-myth sentiment generated by the dominance of mass media.  In a mass media world, the re-telling is a poor substitute which should aspire to the mass-produced version.  There is a sacred text which must be held as canon.  However, in a world of living myth, the re-telling is what is valued.

I'm not really talking about re-telling, but about transposing a work into another medium, and I don't think that's quite the same thing.

I think maybe there are two approaches to gaming in an author's world.  There's what you did with Star Trek, where you use the world to tell a different kind of story, or better to challenge and think about the same sorts of issues as the original author did but on different grounds.  And there's what I'm talking about with Lovecraft, where you're trying to produce a true adaptation into a radically different medium.

Both of these can, I think, be respectfully and seriously done.  I don't think it's really a matter of the sacrality of text, though.  If you're aiming for an adaptation, you have to use the medium to render the original on different terms.  A literal filming of a novel is often not really an adaptation at all; because some elements of a novel cannot be filmed because of differences in medium, and because the adaptation is literalist and thus attempts to add nothing to the novel treated as a script, you end up with a film that is less rich than the novel.  An adaptation considers seriously what is necessarily dropped from the novel and asks the question, "What can I do in my medium that would in some sense be functionally analogous to what I have had to drop?"  A wonderful example is the film of The Wizard of Oz, which certainly adds things and restructures and whatnot, but I think is in many respects deeply faithful to the novel.  What is added has to do with the shift of medium, of what you can do in film that you cannot do in prose and vice-versa.

If on the other hand you made a film set in Oz that was somehow about themes and issues that are really different from Baum's, and you did this through all sorts of distinctive techniques and methods of film, let's say in a weird way making Truffaut's Beauty and the Beast set in Oz, then what you're doing might well be a very interesting film.  But it would be inappropriate, I think, to call it The Wizard of Oz.  One of my least favorite examples of this is Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.  If he wants to call it Dracula that's fine, but whatever else it is it isn't Bram Stoker's anything.  It is an extreme revision and restructuring of the text, not only telling a different story (which is trivial) but actually deliberately inverting a number of Stoker's themes (e.g. by making Lucy Westenra essentially a slut).  This, I think, is disrespectful.

So if we take your Star Trek campaign, I think it's not disrespectful because you never claimed that this was the further adventures of the Starship Enterprise, nor that this was "straight" Trek.  You never claimed, that is, that the game was an adaptation.

However, many modern people despise oral tradition and re-telling.  They sneer at people who have just "heard of" Odysseus via some adapted version of the story rather than reading Homer's text.  Myth is acceptable and even respected if it happens among, say, some tribesmen in Africa -- but it is wrong to do in the civilized world.

I know what you're saying, John, but I think this is an unfortunate example.  The Odyssey is a constructed work of verse fiction, which rests upon mythic roots but appears to be the product of one poet's vision.  This is of course much debated, but my understanding is that there's general agreement that the form we know The Odyssey in is at least in the main some one poet's construction.  And yes, I do think it's sad if people think that The Odyssey is only the fabula it tells, only the story-line.  I don't sneer, myself, but I think it's sad, for the same reason as I would think it sad if someone told me he knew Hamlet really well and loved it -- but had only read it in the form of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.  Lamb hoped to get children to want to read Shakespeare when they were older; if his adaptations for kids replace Shakespeare's verse, yes, I think that's sad.

And incidentally, I do not think that "Myth is acceptable and even respected if it happens among, say, some tribesmen in Africa."  I think everyone accepts and respects this -- so long as it's kept at a distance.  How many people encounter such myth through the grossly distorting lens of Joseph Campbell?  How many people read myths in some sort of literary-ized form and think, "Gosh, how deep, how very much we can learn from these noble savages"?  Bleah.  Myth "in the raw" doesn't sell, so people clean it up and package it as the Wisdom of the Dark Continent or whatever, and people eat it up and think they're very deep and liberal-tolerant.  That's why nobody seems to know what myth is: all they ever see is myth transposed to become somewhat peculiar literature.  Anyway, that's off-topic a bit.

Now, someone could rightly say that original series Star Trek is not itself without the moralizing and idealism.  To put in political bickering and dissent within the Federation is counter to the essence of the original.  And I don't disagree with them.  That violation, that taming (as M. John Harrison put it) is the point of gaming.

Yes, I think that's correct, except that I'd make it a point of gaming.  It is an effect of the gaming medium that probably cannot be overcome, and so rather than pretend to do so we should celebrate it and take it seriously, as you do.  But I do think that Harrison has some right to be bothered by the colonization of his world, don't you?  Especially since, as I've said, I think part of his point with Viriconium is to create a world that cannot be comprehended, that is flatly alien yet disturbingly familiar.  Thus in this particular case the structure of gaming is such as to go directly against his purposes, not merely to cut across them or prioritize differently.  But that is specific to his notion of what fantasy is, and what Viriconium is.  I respect that, and no, I wouldn't run a Viriconium game for that reason.

Incidentally, someone said a few posts back that Harrison can't stop people from adapting his work into games and he should just get over it.  True, but you know what?  You can't stop me from adapting your work and promoting it among my friends as my own.  So long as I don't sell it, that's just tough luck.  Does that make it right?

[John Kim]

I think maybe there are two approaches to gaming in an author's world.  There's what you did with Star Trek, where you use the world to tell a different kind of story, or better to challenge and think about the same sorts of issues as the original author did but on different grounds.  And there's what I'm talking about with Lovecraft, where you're trying to produce a true adaptation into a radically different medium.

Right.  And I'm saying that I am opposed to the latter.  I consider it pointless regurgitation or at best an elaborate technical exercise of trying to fail as little as possible.  

If you're aiming for an adaptation, you have to use the medium to render the original on different terms.  A literal filming of a novel is often not really an adaptation at all; because some elements of a novel cannot be filmed because of differences in medium, and because the adaptation is literalist and thus attempts to add nothing to the novel treated as a script, you end up with a film that is less rich than the novel.  An adaptation considers seriously what is necessarily dropped from the novel and asks the question, "What can I do in my medium that would in some sense be functionally analogous to what I have had to drop?"  A wonderful example is the film of The Wizard of Oz, which certainly adds things and restructures and whatnot, but I think is in many respects deeply faithful to the novel.  What is added has to do with the shift of medium, of what you can do in film that you cannot do in prose and vice-versa.

I couldn't disagree more.  The Wizard of Oz film succeeded because it was willing to pervert the original to mean something distinctly different.  I think it is respectful in a sense (I appreciate the opening, for example), but it also goes somewhere quite different.  It radically rewrote the original to make the whole thing into a dream.  This isn't a minor technicality.  

In the original book, Dorothy was always in the right.  She was the only point of color to the grey landscape of Uncle Henry's farm.  The events of the book tested her devotion to her home.  She went home not because it was safe and good -- it wasn't.  It was a horrible horrible place.  But it was a sign of her goodness that she wanted to help her Aunt and Uncle.  

In the movie, the story is quite different.  Dorothy deep down wants to go away from home and has to be taught a lesson to stay there (via her dream).  Throughout the movie, changes are made to reinforce authority.  Glinda watches over her from the beginning, and saves her from the poppies.  Glinda could have sent her back at any time, but held off because Dorothy had to learn her lesson.  The film constantly undercuts the populist sentiments of the original.  For example, the munchkins are rewritten from being simple farmers into, well, freaks.  

Now, someone could rightly say that original series Star Trek is not itself without the moralizing and idealism.  To put in political bickering and dissent within the Federation is counter to the essence of the original.  And I don't disagree with them.  That violation, that taming (as M. John Harrison put it) is the point of gaming.

Yes, I think that's correct, except that I'd make it a point of gaming.  It is an effect of the gaming medium that probably cannot be overcome, and so rather than pretend to do so we should celebrate it and take it seriously, as you do.  But I do think that Harrison has some right to be bothered by the colonization of his world, don't you?

Well, I think he is entitled to his opinion.  He also has the right to be bothered by critics who deconstruct his work -- perhaps reading things into it that he is uncomfortable with.  Similarly, parents have a right to be uncomfortable when their children leave home.  But that doesn't change my mind about what the right thing to do is.

[clehrich]

If you're aiming for an adaptation, you have to use the medium to render the original on different terms.  A literal filming of a novel is often not really an adaptation at all; because some elements of a novel cannot be filmed because of differences in medium, and because the adaptation is literalist and thus attempts to add nothing to the novel treated as a script, you end up with a film that is less rich than the novel.  An adaptation considers seriously what is necessarily dropped from the novel and asks the question, "What can I do in my medium that would in some sense be functionally analogous to what I have had to drop?"  A wonderful example is the film of The Wizard of Oz, which certainly adds things and restructures and whatnot, but I think is in many respects deeply faithful to the novel.  What is added has to do with the shift of medium, of what you can do in film that you cannot do in prose and vice-versa.

I couldn't disagree more. ....

Urgh.  I should have known better than to choose that film with you, John.

Okay, someone who's into film and fiction.  Can anyone out there help by providing a really good film adaptation of a novel?  By "really good" I mean a film that is not slavish literalism, and does very much its own thing in a cinematic or film-ic or whatever way, but at the same time where these alterations to the original novel are consistent with what was going on in the original novel.

I don't think LOTR is a great example, before we get into that.

But... any suggestions?  Because John and I are never going to be able to talk about this intelligently without a decent example we can at least sort of agree on.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Sorry Chris,

I think you're screwed on this one.

For example, I think the LotR movies are a terrific cinematic adaptation of the books.

You and I could go around and around on the forever.  Why?

First, what we got from the books, what we focus and care about will be different.

And then, once we process that through what you and I care about in cinema, we've got a whole new set of negotiations to make.

Just off the top of my head, I'm assuming you and I have very different priorities, agendas and passions about film.  Your "win" condition for a good film adaptation would probably be miles from mine -- if only because you'd weight the win closer to the book, and I'd be thinking, "Given the material, how do we shape it into the best movie movie we can make."  

Again, I think Jackson did a phenominal job shaping that merial into a beautiful set of movies.  And I could break down for you clearly why his choices worked so well as movies.  And you would break down for me why they didn't work. (We'd also have ideas that would meet and we'd go, "Oh, that would have been cool.)

The agenda of lit (langauage based, thoughtful, delighted in minutia), has ltitle to do with cinema (extroverted, image based, moving, always, onto the next beat with little time for reflection).  The forms themselves reveal a different temperament toward life itself.  To move one series of narrative events into a completely different form -- an alien form -- and be successful in the new form is to translate the meaning of the tale.  By definition.

And there we go...  

How could someone who loves both literature and movies will be able to help here?  Such a person would have to throw up his hands here (with a laugh) and say "The forms are so different, the needs for success are so different, there's no way a good movie is going to come from an honest adaptation of the book."

(And I'll reiterate, what people take from the book is already going to screw up the chance of getting people to agree on what the adaption should be like anyway.)

Best,
Christopher

PS.  I look forward to someone offering up the excellent example of what you're looking for. Such a movie/book would clearly teach a lot.

PPS it is common wisdom in Hollywood that the best movies are always those from an original screenplay. Why? Becaused they meet the needs of cinema first and foremost and all the way through to their bones.  The best adaptations are those the that say, "But, remember, we're doing a movie first and foremost."