Which is better? The movie or the book? For many, the answer is easy and with one of the greatest children's books of all time Where The WIld Things hitting theaters nationwide today, I decided it was time to take a look back at the greatest books adapted into feature films. Since nobody has the time or inclination to read books anymore, movies provide us with the visual cliff notes we need to experience some of the greatest novels ever written. Now let's just hope they never take L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction novel Battlefield Earth and turn it into... oh right, it's too late.
#10 Jurassic Park - The master of adapting books into movies, Speilberg turned Michael Crichton's New York Times #1 best seller into one of the highest grossing films of all time. The film for some strange reason also meant the extinction of Laura Dern's acting career.
#9 Forrest Gump - While the film differs substantially from Winston Groom's novel, Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks proved that if you "don't go full retard" you can created one of the most successful book adaptations in movie history.
#8 Breakfast At Tiffany's - Truman Capote's novel turned out to be the "Perfect 10" of Blake Edwards directing career and made Audrey Hepburn one of the most iconic actresses in Hollywood history. And I think Truman Capote and the rest of the civilized world can all pretend that Jennifer Love Hewitt's CBS movie of the week remake never happened.
#7 One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman and Jack Nicholson turned Ken Kesey's book into the first film in movie history to win all five major academy awards(Best Picture, Actor In A Lead Role, Actress In A Lead Role, Director and Screenplay) and made everyone realize that a getting a labatomy is an extremely unpleasant experience.
#6 Schindler's List (Based On The Novel Schindler's Ark) - Spielberg adapted Thomas Keneally's book about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jewish refugees during the Holocaust into a masterpiece and the one movie you don't want to get caught making out during.
#5 Apocalypse Now (Based On The Novle Heart Of Darkness) - Francis Ford Coppola took Joseph Conrad's book Heart Of Darkness and turned it into what is widely-considered the greatest war movie of all time even though Dennis Hopper doesn't remember filming it.
#4 Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese took crime reporter Nicolas Pileggi's book Wisguy based on the real life story of mobster turned informant Henry Hill and created his gangster movie opus. It also made every man in America want to be a gangter from now to enternity.
#3 Jaws - Steven Speilberg took Peter Benchley's novel and turned it into the "father of summer blockbuster movies" in 1975.
#2 The Godfather - Francis Ford Copolla adapted Mario Puzo's novel into one of the greatest movies in the history of cinema giving the men of the world enough quotables to last a lifetime.
#1 Gone With The Wind - Scarlet O'Hara may not have give a damn, but Margaret Mitchell's book win the Pulitzer in 1937 and Gone With The Wind also took home the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1939.
