RTW: My Huckleberry Friend
Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's
contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question to write
about on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination
and get everybody's unique take on the topic.
What movie have you seen that actually (gasp) IMPROVED on the book?
This was so easy for me. Too easy.
The book is always better than the movie. You know how much I love Gone With the Wind - the movie and the book? I mean, I'm obsessed with that movie. It's my All-Time Number One Favorite Movie in the Whole World. But the book is better than the movie. Of course it is!
Those Harry Potter movies? I LOVE them. I could sit down and marathon those movies in one sitting. The books? Better. Of course!
All Jane Austen movie adaptations: I don't care how much you love Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gwyneth Paltrow, or this guy (and I do) -- the books are better.
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But not Breakfast at Tiffany's.
I love that movie. I love Audrey Hepburn. I love Holly Golightly, the clothes she wears, her style, her elegance, her world view, her love of Cat, poor no-name slob. I love when she sings Moon River on the balcony and I love the last scene when she and Cat and Paul Varjack, the writer, W R I T E R, stand in the alley in the pouring rain.
Breakfast at Tiffany's - it's about belonging. Be. Longing. Longing to Be. Whether you're Lula Mae or Holly Golightly.
The summer before my senior year of college, I watched it again and again. I was searching already, you see, trying to find a place where I belonged. Most of my friends were a year older and moving on without me. I was trying to move past a relationship that had ended before it began (and would circle around again a few months later). I was trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. This movie spoke to me.
I found a used paperback copy of the book that summer at a store affectionately known as Chester Molester's. I had read In Cold Blood and Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote and liked both.
I finished Breakfast at Tiffany's in one sitting. And tossed it aside. I hated it.
The book made Holly into something I didn't want her to be.
And it didn't end well.
That was a long time ago. My world view has changed a bit since I was 21 and longing to be. I'm a better writer and I read much differently than I did then.
Maybe it's time to give Breakfast at Tiffany's another shot. Even if my opinion of the novella changes, though, chances are pretty good that I will still think the movie is better.
How about you? What movie outshines the book for you?
p.s. If you haven't seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, you should!