Film novelizations

[Famous Mortimer]

Have a read of this MEL Magazine article

I really liked Alan Dean Foster's, way back when, but will admit to not reading too many in recent years. Any favourites? Do you have a sneaky collection of them?

[13 schoolyards]

Supposedly at least a few films managed to get different novelisations for the US and UK markets. The first Terminator is the one that comes to mind (though I'm pretty sure there were others), as Shaun "Slugs" Hudson wrote the UK one and made sure to play up the sex and violence and tone down pretty much everything else... which is why it's awesome.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I used to enjoy Alan Dean Foster's work but haven't read one in decades now, that article makes a great case for why some exist but I honestly can't think of a film I'd have any interest of reading the novelisation of.

That said, I came close to buying this in a charity shop back in July, just to see what it was like...

[Pranet]

I recently bought a novelisation of Dark Star out of curiosity when I realised it existed. I will get round to reading it. Alan Dean Foster, obviously.

[mothman]

God, I read so many of these when I was a teenager. Escapism I think. And easily a rebellion against what my father considered proper reading material. I'd no idea they were still a thing.

[The Culture Bunker]

Supposedly at least a few films managed to get different novelisations for the US and UK markets. The first Terminator is the one that comes to mind (though I'm pretty sure there were others), as Shaun "Slugs" Hudson wrote the UK one and made sure to play up the sex and violence and tone down pretty much everything else... which is why it's awesome.

I remember reading the Terminator 2 novel sometime in the early 90s and the best part being all the stuff in the future, notably some lad about to get his arse shot off by a robot but is saved by Skynet being beaten and all the machines instantly shutting down.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Alan Dean Foster's Alien novelisation was incredible, completely off the rails in a way no editor would conceivably allow these days.

This is the first paragraph in Chapter 1:

Seven dreamers.

You must understand that they were not professional dreamers. Professional dreamers are highly paid, respected, much sought-after talents. Like the majority of us, these seven dreamt without effort or discipline. Dreaming professionally, so that one's dreams can be recorded and played back for the entertainment of others, is a much more demanding proposition. It requires the ability to regulate semiconscious creative impulses and to stratify imagination, an extraordinarily difficult combination to achieve. A professional dreamer is simultaneously the most organized of all artists and the most spontaneous. A subtle weaver of speculation, not straightforward and clumsy like you or me. Or these certain seven sleepers.

I mean fucking hell. I've read almost all of Gravity's Rainbow and I find that a bit hard to parse. And it's all like this

His Aliens by contrast was a totally straightforward script-to-book job with no fanciful purple prose at all, bit of a disappointment.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Edit: Quoted instead of editing

[holyzombiejesus]

I had the novelization of ET - by William Kotzwinkle I think - and it had the word penis in it. I think it may have been the first time I'd seen it written down. Used to like those film novels, especially when they had the glossy photos in the middle. My dad had one for The Island of Doctor Moreau ad the photos were really freaky, but I don't know if it was a novelization of the film of the novel or just a pimped up version of the HG Wells original.

[mothman]

I own two near-identical copies of the film tie-in US edition of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. One which might be a first edition. Or maybe not. I just don't know. Obviously it diverges quite a lot from the film because they were produced side by side.

[madhair60]

Shout-out to Retro Reading Time. Archiving this sort of nonsense in ePub form.

The only one I physically own is the Blues Brothers one because it's my favourite film and it offers a staggering amount of additional context and backstory from the unused phone-book-sized original script.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Alan Dean Foster is obviously the king of the movie novelisation. He also often seemed to be working from early scripts or even just story outlines. It's pretty much an open secret that he, not George Lucas, penned the one for Star Wars, which opens with historical extracts from inside the Star Wars universe (the Journal of the Whills), characterising Palpatine not as the ultimate bad guy and evil Force wizard, but as a vain little twerp who, on gaining power, just pratted about while his advisers took over actual control. In his version of The Black Hole, the downright religious ending of the film is changed into an odd, abstract metaphysical piece where the Palomino crew somehow become some giant gestalt consciousness spanning the Cosmos. His take on Dark Star is less Absurdist Comedy in Space and more an in-depth and often angst-ridden character study of the crewmembers, longing for lost girlfriends and the simple delights of proper food. And in Alien, not only do we get stuff like that opening paragraph above, but we're made privy to the thoughts and feelings of Jones the cat, from Jones's point of view. To name but a few of them.

Arthur Byron Cover's novelisation of the 1980 Flash Gordon is a real eye-opener. The film has a certain nudge-nudge, Carry On-style humour, but the novelisation is outright pervy. We're made privy to Flash and Dale's sexual fantasies, Flash apparently practises Tantric sex long before Sting started boring on about it, Zarkoff letches over Dale's legs, Ming doesn't just have a 'power potion' but secretes 'various devices to increase the pleasure' in his clothes before heading off to the harem; Aura cracks outright stiffy jokes with Barin...the list goes on and on. Made for a very interesting Yuletide read when it turned up as one of my presents that year.

[Mister Six]

Not a film novelisation, but I have Arthur Byron Cover's adaptation to the Infocom text adventure Planetfall, which I picked up cheap. Takes massive liberties with the game, by the looks of it, to the point that it's basically unrecognisable. Haven't given it a proper read yet though.

[Alberon]

I own two near-identical copies of the film tie-in US edition of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. One which might be a first edition. Or maybe not. I just don't know. Obviously it diverges quite a lot from the film because they were produced side by side.

I wouldn't call that a novelisation though, more a proper novel. As you say Kubrick and Clarke wrote the screenplay and novel effectively side by side.

Orson Scott Card wrote a book based on James Cameron's The Abyss which was far closer to a novel than the standard novelisation.

I'm surprised novelisations are still a thing though, they made far more sense in the pre-video age.

[Keebleman]

I had the novelization of ET - by William Kotzwinkle I think - and it had the word penis in it.

The film has that word in it too (Elliot calls his brother 'penis breath').  It also has the Uranus joke and at least one 'shit'.  And it was a U certificate!  Twenty years before all of that would have been enough to get it slapped with an X.

[A Hat Like That]

On the recommendation of someone on here, I picked up a cheap copy of the Jaws 2 novelisation.

My favourite chapter is the one from the POV of a Navy porpoise

Spoiler alert

, who dies feeling sad that he let his buddies down

[close]

. He was a good boi.

[13 schoolyards]

Alan Dean Foster is obviously the king of the movie novelisation. He also often seemed to be working from early scripts or even just story outlines.

I don't know about now, but back in the 80s and 90s (when I used to buy novelisations by the armful) it wasn't a secret that to get the books and other tie-in media out in time the authors were working from pre-production scripts. Often if you looked closely (or even if you didn't) you could spot where the finished film had changed things - I dimly recall the novelisation of the first Tim Burton Batman movie was pretty different in parts from the film.

Also at least one of the novelisations of the first Terminator had the deleted scene where it turns out the final battle took place in the Cyberdyne factory, which tied everything up in a neat bow (and would have made the second film largely pointless)

[Famous Mortimer]

I don't know about now, but back in the 80s and 90s (when I used to buy novelisations by the armful) it wasn't a secret that to get the books and other tie-in media out in time the authors were working from pre-production scripts. Often if you looked closely (or even if you didn't) you could spot where the finished film had changed things

You should read the article I linked, it has some interesting stuff along those lines in it.

[Catalogue Trousers]

As a Facebook friend pointed out when I raised this issue, Larry Milne's adaptation of Ghostbusters is pretty good. The really neat bit is that he tells the whole tale in the present tense, as though you're being spun a tall tale or a shaggy dog story by some guy in a pub. It's a conceit that works really well and elevates the sometimes pedestrian prose.

(And yeah, he keeps the ghost blowie scene.)

The film has that word in it too (Elliot calls his brother 'penis breath').

In the novelisation, though, Elliot's divorced Mum momentarily ponders wistfully on being in the sort of situation where someone might seriously call her the same thing...

[mothman]

Funny thing,I'd made a mental note to mention the Ghostbusters novelisation with its present tense. It's an odd experience.

I can't remember who wrote the Superman 3 book - Kotzwinkle? MacIntyre? - but it's bloody funny.

[willbo]

Indy and the Last Crusade novel was one of the first books I ever read. The scene where he bangs into the library floor to the rhythm of the librarian's stamp? Totally gone. In the book he just quietly prises up one of the tiles. I always wondered whether it was in the script (but skipped over as it wouldn't really work in a book) or ad libbed

[McChesney Duntz]

Speaking of G. Lucas properties, the novelization of Howard the Duck, by the brilliant literary parodist Ellis Weiner, is so much better than the movie it's promoting it's practically criminal. (Not quite on-topic, but Weiner also wrote a paperback spoof of Dune that came out around the time of the Lynch version which is also reliably hilarious.)

[holyzombiejesus]

I'd quite to read a novelization of Under the Skin (as opposed to the novel that the book's loosely based on).

[bgmnts]

They have the Alien 3 film novelisation free on Audible with a membership by the legend himself, is it worth a listen? I found the lost William Gibson script audio production with Biehn and Hendriksen quite good so it could be cool going back to the proper one as well.

[Small Potatoes]

Speaking of G. Lucas properties, the novelization of Howard the Duck, by the brilliant literary parodist Ellis Weiner, is so much better than the movie it's promoting it's practically criminal.

Yes! That book is an absolute hoot. Got it for Christmas in 1986, and I still go back to that tatty original copy now and again and marvel at the absurd splendour of it all.

[Norton Canes]

Arthur Byron Cover's novelisation of the 1980 Flash Gordon is a real eye-opener. The film has a certain nudge-nudge, Carry On-style humour, but the novelisation is outright pervy. We're made privy to Flash and Dale's sexual fantasies, Flash apparently practises Tantric sex long before Sting started boring on about it, Zarkoff letches over Dale's legs, Ming doesn't just have a 'power potion' but secretes 'various devices to increase the pleasure' in his clothes before heading off to the harem; Aura cracks outright stiffy jokes with Barin...the list goes on and on. Made for a very interesting Yuletide read when it turned up as one of my presents that year

Long, long time since I read it, but I'm sure the adaptation of Close Encounters contains a few mildly salacious lines, like references to Neary seeing visions of Devil's Tower not just in mashed potato but also the shape of his wife's breasts. Always assumed it was another Alan Dean Foster effort but checked now, it was written by Spielberg himself.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Long, long time since I read it, but I'm sure the adaptation of Close Encounters contains a few mildly salacious lines, like references to Neary seeing visions of Devil's Tower not just in mashed potato but also the shape of his wife's breasts. Always assumed it was another Alan Dean Foster effort but checked now, it was written by Spielberg himself.

Close, but not quite. What happens is that, after doing the mashed potato, Roy has what seems to his family to be a full-on breakdown and ends up sobbing in the shower, fully clothed (one of his own sons runs in and yells angry abuse at him) - after which his wife comes in and tries to pull him together, to which he responds by getting the horn (there's a line about him suddenly remembering how his wife 'had a really amazing body', or similar) and dragging her off to bed. She regards this as him doing 'something positive'. All feels a bit rapey, to be frank.

The novelisation also retains the scene where Roy rigs the lights of a big office/skyscraper-type building to spell out UFO, which is thankfully less rapey but a lot more daft.

Oh, and just to add one more 'what were they thinking?' candidate to the mix...

Campbell Black's rendition of Raiders Of The Lost Ark has minor differences - Toht dies during the desert chase when his staff car goes over a cliff, rather than still being around to be melted into goop when the Ark is opened - but there's one decidedly dodgy aspect which can only be excused with a desperate 'well, they were different times' (both when the film was made and when the story was set), when we learn that Marion had a passionate, physical relationship with Indy - which, yes, it's made pretty clear that she did in the film - but, in the novelisation, this specifically happened when she was a 15-year-old student of his. Worse, it's implied that she was far from the only underage pupil of whom he took such advantage. Yeesh.

[Boycey]

Close, but not quite. What happens is that, after doing the mashed potato, Roy has what seems to his family to be a full-on breakdown and ends up sobbing in the shower, fully clothed (one of his own sons runs in and yells angry abuse at him) - after which his wife comes in and tries to pull him together, to which he responds by getting the horn (there's a line about him suddenly remembering how his wife 'had a really amazing body', or similar) and dragging her off to bed. She regards this as him doing 'something positive'. All feels a bit rapey, to be frank.

The novelisation also retains the scene where Roy rigs the lights of a big office/skyscraper-type building to spell out UFO, which is thankfully less rapey but a lot more daft.

Oh, and just to add one more 'what were they thinking?' candidate to the mix...

Campbell Black's rendition of Raiders Of The Lost Ark has minor differences - Toht dies during the desert chase when his staff car goes over a cliff, rather than still being around to be melted into goop when the Ark is opened - but there's one decidedly dodgy aspect which can only be excused with a desperate 'well, they were different times' (both when the film was made and when the story was set), when we learn that Marion had a passionate, physical relationship with Indy - which, yes, it's made pretty clear that she did in the film - but, in the novelisation, this specifically happened when she was a 15-year-old student of his. Worse, it's implied that she was far from the only underage pupil of whom he took such advantage. Yeesh.

Could have been worse. Lucas' original brainstorm was that Marion could have been 11/12 years old when the affair started

https://www.polygon.com/2015/8/3/9089181/indiana-jones-abusive-creep

[mothman]

God, I read that book. Just seeing the name "Campbell Black" takes me right back...