But the Book Was Better

Amateur Homeric scholar Ben Friedrichs returns to the podcast to break down the movie of the moment: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey . Apple Podcasts link This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit charliesmartin.substack.com

On this episode I am joined by my friend Matthew Duhamel to break down Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 blockbuster adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s classic 1959 sci-fi novel Starship Troopers. Heinlein’s book, which details a distant future when Earth is governed by a military order wherein only those who have served are allowed to vote as humanity is engaged in a war with a highly evolved bug species, was a...

On this episode I’m dissecting Mike Nichols’ 1970 adaptation of Joseph Heller’s classic World War II-set satire Catch-22. Considered unfilmable upon publication, screenwriter Buck Henry and director Mike Nichols were given a blank check to take a stab at an adaptation coming off the astounding success of The Graduate . While the film was stacked with acting talent, including Alan Arkin, Jon Voight...

On this second episode of my new podcast miniseries on film adaptations of books, I’m tackling the biggest book in the Western canon: the bible. Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 adaptation of the gospel according to St. Matthew is a radical work of biblical interpretation that is, in my opinion, a stone cold masterpiece. How did an atheist Marxist end up tackling a film about Jesus? Wh...

I’ve long been fascinated by the art of film adaptation. Most movies based on books simply visualize the material and cut out much of it, usually leading to an unsatisfactory experience. Producers and directors salivate at the thought of name brand actors speaking dialogue from our best writers, but often the creative thought process doesn’t go much further than that. To me, these types of rote ad...