Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for April 22, 2014

What exactly has she been reading on her laptop?

Television is too slow! I want my 1-second talking point! Now!

The fastest way to get a failing grade. Watch the movie and report on that. The teachers always took a special delight in calling students out on this. Screenwriters thrive on creative license, particularly when adapting literature.

At least she should watch Masterpiece Theatre. Their multipartadaptions are more faithful than theatrical films. Theatrical filmsseem always to leave out whatever it is that makes the book whatit is.

The only thing “instant” about TV today is the DVR fast-forward button that can zap through the four-minute commercials.

I remember an episode of “The Cosby Show” where Theo & Cockroach had to do a report on something from Shakespeare. They got a record, as in LP, of the play. Then Denise told them about Cliff’s notes (not the dad). Of course they did not do well.

Is it any wonder why people are so shallow nowadays?

I tried that with a comic book version when I was in college. That didn’t work out so well either, but at least Beowulf (the original) didn’t take too long to read and there was no middle English involved. “The hall-thane’s hatred: he held himself afterFurther and faster who the foeman did baffle.”.

I can get a month of savoring adjectives out of just one Readers Digest. My husband’s done in an hour. Ahhhhh: night time.

I remember 4 books that were just like the movies because I think they were written for the sole purpose of becoming movies: “Rosemary’s Baby;” “Platoon;’” “The Deer Hunter;” “Love Story.” There was no more depth to them than the movies.

You said: “…I sometimes wonder why the studios bother to pay for the rights.”-————To keep from being sued.James Cameron once told an interviewer how much he loved the old TV series, “Outer Limits,” and that he came up with the Terminator by combining ideas from two episodes (“Demon With A Glass Hand” and “Soldier”).The writer of those two shows, Harlan Ellison, who has fought for decades against Hollywood’s policy of stealing ideas, sued and won.(BTW, Avatar was also “inspired” by an “Outer Limits” episode, “Chamelon.”)

I thought the whole idea was to finally get to to the point, after telling a story. But then again, I am (or was) a librarian, so what would I know?

book readers, like church goers are way down… people today can’t understand either.

Awesome comic.Recommended reading: “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman.

Poor Danae, Kate will have ta explain that books came way before….the idiot box. Instant gratification is lethal. One slippery road to addiction. Oh yes, for too many, its ‘da american way’…..

When Hamlet, pretending to be mad, was asked by Polonius what he was reading, he replied, “Words, words, words.” I guess Denae would go along with that.

Any, thanks Wiley for having Danae and her family back. She should or could nicely clash with Eddie…..

Danae needs to get in touch with Bucky from Get Fuzzy today.

Oh, you mean like global warming?

because the title is pre-sold.

The best example of this I’ve seen is “To Have and To Have Not,” by Hemingway. The book other than the name of the main character and the setting bore no relationship to the movie and vice versa. Movie was a zillion times better, in my opinion anyway.

Amen to that brother.

What? nothing from punster Varnes???

What? nothing from punster Varnes???

What? nothing from punster Varnes???

What? nothing from punster Varnes???

What? nothing from punster Varnes???

What? nothing from punster Varnes???

As an (unpublished as of yet) author of many short stories, let me take a contrarian view. I find myself flipping through the pages of many novels and longer short stories, because writers have confused filling pages full of adjectives with telling a story. -To me, this is one of the reasons why books these days discourage readership. Even for those of us who love reading and set aside time from work, family obligations and the like to read, it can be very disappointing to read descriptions of a place or a person when that turns out to have little to do with the actual plot of the story. Publishers seem to weigh manuscripts and if they are too short, order more ‘filler’.-Many of us who meet with published writers in workshops find that they urge us to ‘start at the beginning’, meaning start at the beginning of the real story. Not reams of poetic description included to either meet a required word count, or establish unneeded ‘atmosphere’.

@StCleve72Absolutely, just read anything printed a hundred years ago or more.

When I was in high school, we had Classics Illustrated comics, Cliff’s Notes & a competitor to Cliff’s Notes.Wrote many book reports from those, never go lower than a C.

I remember seeing the animated TV movie for the Hobbit a few years back (more than 25 to be exact) NOTHING like the book…..creative license PLUS edited to fit a “time slot”.

Jahoody, AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……….AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!

hphundt, A friend of mine used to say, “Figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure….”

Making movies from books is hampered by a couple of things….In a book, you get the inner world of what’s going on in peoples minds, why they are doing what they are doing.. who they like, and why….. A book has the time….I love movies that have narration….It makes things a lot clearer….You can be told what the heroine is thinking…..Then they also have to compress the story to fit into a two hour movie…. movie…Scenes get left out….And doing it exactly like the book doesn’t always help much, either…Carl Hiaasen’s Strip Tease was done faithfully to the book…But it was nowhere near the book..(Insert gratuitous remark about Demi Moore’s performance. Which was something…….)…Now, the movie of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, actually worked….For some reason they didn’t dare alter a thing on that story. Read the book or word devices first………

Required reading is a pain in the neck. I was forced to read a trashy novel called the scarlet letter.

Other than Christie, Zhivago had music.Too much snow, tho.

There was once a James Bond novel that Ian Fleming hated so much that he told Cubby Broccoli that he could use the title in making a film; but he had to throw away the rest of the book. Granted, Broccoli threw away a lot of what was in a Bond book; but never the whole novel.