O Flicks!

This is the cover of the copy of O Pioneers! I just read, which tells me that apparently they made a movie of it. I can't say I'll be scrambling to see it -while I loved both this novel and My Antonia, I'm wary of such a style of book working in a film. The best parts of Cather's writing were the beautifully detailed, ethereal love notes to the nature around her as well as describing the land as being hard and in turn hardening the woman protagonists. While that can work in prose, you can only stand there in a movie saying "Gee, this land is hard! Isn't this land hard? Boy, has it hardened me!" so many times without it being jarringly unnatural.

But of course, I could be wrong. Maybe it's a wonderful movie.

But I'm annoyed that the reason I know it's a movie is because of the book cover. This always annoys me, it always seems to cheapen the book for me - isn't this their way of saying "oh, fuck this book, just go watch the movie!!"?  I understand media/publishing tie-ins, but I never see the reverse. A movie never opens with "Hey, this is based on a book, which you should definitely run home and read after injecting hot buttered popcorn into your veins!" The phrase "based on the book _______" usually comes buried somewhere between the gaffers and caterers' and names.

One book I'd like to find a movie of is my superslice, A Day No Pigs Would Die. From what I can tell, there is none.

Of course, if they did it today Rob would be played by Will Smith's kid, there'd be the inevitable "all the pigs break out into a sing-along in the barn" scene, and instead of dying his dad would cause a slight controversy throughout town by changing his Facebook relationship status to "It's Complicated."