“Is the movie better than the book?”  We won’t try to settle this age-old debate in this class; instead, we will explore the challenges of film adaptation. We will study fiction and film from different genres, with a primary focus of examining how words on the page are adapted to moving pictures on a screen. Our attention will turn to how truthfully the fictional narrative makes it onto the screen, and what cinematic and compositional elements help convey the narrative visually. In essence, this is a genre study course; we will study a variety of fiction, and then we will learn how to study, analyze, and critique a variety of film genres. The course will culminate with a final assignment that allows students to create their own short adaptations or film critique. 

Fiction and film pairings likely to be included in the course: Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are), Charles Portis’ True Grit (Coen Brothers’ True Grit), Jonathan Nolan’s Memento Mori (Christopher Nolan’s Memento), Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox).