Uncategorized | September 18, 2004

More than half the films nominated for 2004 Academy Awards were adaptations of novels, including House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III; Charles Frazier’s 1997 National Book Award-winner Cold Mountain, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring; Denis Lehane’s Mystic River; J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, originally published in 1954; and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which compressed 20 Patrick O’Brian novels into one two-hour movie. Since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out Oscars in 1927, nearly 30 of the films that won in the Best Picture category have been based on novels; only 20 were made from original screenplays.

So how do novels get made into movies? Glenn Deutsch, a doctoral associate in fiction at Western Michigan University and the editor of WMU’s Third Coast, provides some answers in a TMR web-exclusive, “The Novelist in Hollywood.” In the article, Robert Eversz, John Dufresne, John McNally and Mark Jude Poirier, novelists and short-story writers all, discuss their interactions with Hollywood, screenwriting, and adaptations.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.