How Hollywood Convinced Everyone That Watching the Movie Counts as Reading the Book
The face. The window. The music. That's not the story.
Last week I wrote about reading My Husband’s Wife the moment it came out. Still reading it. Still very much awake at dawn because of it.
Which brings me to the people who are just going to wait for the movie.
You know who you are.
The entire point of a book is what happens inside the character’s head. The thoughts, the doubts, the small observations, the moment they notice something and spend eight paragraphs processing what it means. That IS the book. That is literally the whole thing.
The movie cannot show any of that.
So what do they do instead? They show you a face. Looking out a window. With music playing. Sad music if it’s serious, slightly hopeful music if there’s a turning point coming.
That’s it. That’s what replaced 40 pages of internal monologue. A face. A window. Clouds moving outside. A tear that may or may not be there depending on how close the camera gets.
Directors call this “subtle acting.” Film critics call it “a masterclass in restraint.”
I call it: you cut the entire book and replaced it with a window.
And somehow the person watching this in a reclining seat with a bucket of popcorn walks out of the theater and says “I know that story now.”
You don’t know the story. You watched a summary. You watched someone’s face react to events that the movie didn’t have time to explain properly because they were too busy filming window scenes.
The book spent 28 pages explaining exactly why the character made that decision. The decision that the entire story depends on. The decision that only makes sense if you understand everything that led to it.
The movie gave it 45 seconds and a meaningful look.
And yet the movie people always find something to complain about. “The casting was wrong.” Of course the casting was wrong. You spent 378 pages building a precise, specific human being inside your imagination. No casting director in the world can win that competition.
I’ve started asking people if they read the book before watching the movie. Just as a test.
One girl told me she watches the movie first “to see if the book is worth reading.”
I need to sit with that for a second.
You watch the 2 hour version, stripped of everything that makes it worth reading, to decide if the full version deserves your time? That’s like eating a photograph of a meal to decide if you’re hungry.
My friend Tosca does this with every book club selection. Watches the movie, shows up to book club, contributes confidently to the discussion. Nobody has caught her yet. She’s been doing this for three years. She told me this proudly.
The worst part isn’t the movie. Movies are fine. Some adaptations are genuinely good.
The worst part is when someone watches the movie and then tells you about “the book.” They describe the plot, the characters, the ending, with complete authority. And what they describe is completely, technically, accurate. Every plot point correct. Every character name right. And somehow still entirely wrong about everything that actually mattered.
That’s not the book. That’s the window version.
My Husband’s Wife will eventually become a movie. I’m sure of it. Five stars, Alice Feeney, it’s only a matter of time.
When that happens, I’ll be the insufferable person at the dinner table saying “the book was obviously better.”
Because I read it as soon as it came out. While the ink was practically still wet.
I’m already preparing my smug face.
Next month, Ryan Gosling’s Project Hail Mary hits theaters. Andy Weir wrote 496 pages of one of the most brilliant scientific minds ever put on paper. Every equation, every calculation, every desperate thought process of a man trying to save humanity alone in space.
I cannot wait to watch Ryan Gosling look out a spaceship window.