Film feeds off literature as sharks off a marlin’, film theorist George Bluestone once said. Stanley Kubrick was a compulsive reader, sometimes tearing through a book a day in his constant search for new material. Alfred Hitchcock told of imagining the shape of a film, then having to search for a story to fit his visualization. Howard Hawks claimed that the hardest part of making a movie was finding a good story and then figuring out how to tell it.” [From the introduction of our short story anthology.]
Did you know that many of your favorite movies are adaptations from short stories? Each week we will read a short story (from 10 to 40 pages) and then watch the film adaptation. From noir, to sci-fi, to horror, to westerns. Was the story faithfully translated, or did the director seek to convey a feeling, rather than plot details? Did an “auteur” director make the story their own, leaving the original author “in the dust” so to speak? Perhaps the author wrote the screenplay. What changed in the adaptation from story to screen?
Join us for this 14 week SDG, where we will explore these questions and more. The source anthology includes 35 short stories that have been adapted to film. I have selected 14, but may allow substitutions from the anthology.
The final list of films, discussion leaders, and presentation dates will be determined at the pre-meeting.
