Lit to Lens

The guys discuss the film adaptation of HAMNET, based on the 2020 novel Maggie O’Farrell. … Hamnet is an historical novel that reimagines the life and death of William Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet. Set in late 16th-century England, the story centers on Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, a woman known for her independence, herbal knowledge, and deep intuition. The novel traces Agnes and Shakespeare’s cou...

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER The guys discuss the film adaptation, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, based on the 1990 novel, VINELAND, by Thomas Pynchon. … Vineland is set in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan’s reelection, but primarily told in flashback. The story follows several characters who provide remembrances of their revolutionary life in the late 60s during a time of “fascistic Nixonian repression” an...

The guys discuss the film adaptation, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, based on the 1926 novel by Upton Sinclair. … In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are...

The guys discuss the classic film noir adaptation, IN A LONELY PLACE, based on the 1947 noir fiction novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. … In post World War II Los Angeles, Dix Steele is a former service member who roams the city at night, maybe or maybe not strangling women who cross his path. After reconnecting with his friend from the army, Brub, who is now a police detective, Dix offers to help him so...

The guys discuss the classic film noir adaptation, KISS ME DEADLY, based on the 1952 pulp detective novel by Mickey Spillane. … One evening, private detective Mike Hammer picks up a strange woman, Berga Torn, who has escaped from a nearby sanitarium and is standing on the side of the road wearing only a trench coat. They’re stopped by mobsters who push Mike’s car off a cliff, killing Berga and ins...

The guys discuss the classic film noir adaptation, THE BIG SLEEP, based on the 1939 pulp detective novel by Raymond Chandler. … The Big Sleep is the first novel in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe series. The novel follows private investigator Marlowe as he’s hired by the old but wealthy General Sternwood to stop a blackmailer involved with his daughter, Carmen. Marlowe soon uncovers a web of bla...

The guys discuss the film adaptation, MICKEY 17, based on the 2022 science fiction novel by Edward Ashton. … Mickey 7 tells the story of Mickey Barnes, an expendable, that is a body that can be reprinted again and again, who is part of an expedition to colonize and terraform the ice planet Niflheim. The planet is inhabited by cockroach, rolly polly, armadillo like creatures called Creepers, who st...

The guys discuss the film adaptation, NICKEL BOYS, based on the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead. … Nickel Boys tells the story of Elwood Curtis, a black teenager growing up outside Tallahassee, Florida in the 1960s. One day, as he attempts to hitchhike his way to a historically black technical school to take courses for college credit, he unknowingly catches a ride with a wan...

The guys discuss the film adaptation, CONCLAVE, based on the 2016 novel by Richard Harris. … The Pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become...

In an adapted recap of 2024, the guys discuss their favorites from the past year of cinema, literature, and (self-indulgently) themselves. … Top 3 films we saw this past year (that were also released in 2024) Top 3 books we read this past year (can be released before 2024) And our favorite Lit to Lens episode from this past year … Happy New Year! We are looking forward to a big 2025, and we hope y...

The guys discuss the film adaptation, SING SING, based on an article published in October 2005 by John H. Richardson. … The Sing Sing Follies (A maximum security comedy) is a magazine piece that tells the story of a group of inmates in Sing Sing prison who, through the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, are working to put on a play, called Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code. The play is about six con...

The guys discuss the film adaptation of THE OUTSIDERS, which is based on the 1967 novel written by S.E. Hinton. … THE OUTSIDERS tells the coming-of-age story of Ponyboy Curtis, a greaser living in Oklahoma in the 1960s. After his parents die in an automobile accident, Pony and his two brothers work to survive in a town divided on class lines. Gang and class conflict, friendship, cigarette smoking...

The guys discuss one of the all-time classic film adaptations, THE GODFATHER, which is based on the 1969 best-selling novel written by Mario Puzo. … THE GODFATHER tells the story of the Corelone family, one of the largest and most powerful crime families operating in the New York City area circa 1946. When Don Vito Corelone refuses an offer to participate in the narcotics trade by a rival family,...

The guys discuss the new film from Francis Ford Coppola, APOCALYPSE NOW, which is NOT directly based on any source material such as a novel or play. But, the release of MEGALOPOLIS fits nicely within our season on Francis Ford Coppola, and this may be the last opportunity to witness an opening release for the acclaimed director. … MEGALOPOLIS tells the story of a conflict between Cesar, a genius a...

The guys discuss one of the all-time classic film adaptations, APOCALYPSE NOW, which is based on the century-old (also) classic British novella, HEART OF DARKNESS. … HEART OF DARKNESS tells a story within a story, following Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in invest...

The guys discuss the new MAX series THE SYMPATHIZER, directed by Park Chan-wook based on the Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. … THE SYMPATHIZER tells the story of The Captain, a North Vietnamese mole working undercover for the South Vietnamese army. The story traces his escape from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, his acclimation to Los Angeles and working in Hollywood, to...

The guys discuss the film THE ZONE OF INTEREST, the Jonathan Glazer adaptation from the Martin Amis novel of the same name. THE ZONE OF INTEREST, the fourteenth novel from British writer Martin Amis, is set among a group of German commanders at an unnamed concentration camp, taken to be Auschwitz. The story traces the fall of the Third Reich from three interweaving perspectives: Angelus Thomsen, a...

The guys discuss the film AMERICAN FICTION, the Cord Jefferson adaptation from the Percival Everett novel ERASURE. AMERICAN FICTION, follows Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a frustrated novelist of general fiction, who decides to write a “Black” book full of tired and offensive tropes to profit off the publishing industry’s possibly misguided demand for those stories. He uses a pen name to write an out...

In an adapted recap of 2023, the guys discuss their favorites from the past year of cinema, literature, and (self-indulgently) themselves. … Top 3 films we saw this past year (that were also released in 2023) Top 3 books we read this past year (can be released before 2023) And our favorite Lit to Lens episode from this past year … Happy New Year! We are looking forward to a big 2024, and we hope y...

The guys discuss the film adaptation of POOR THINGS, the Yorgos Lanthimos adaptation from the Alasdair Gray novel of the same name. The book follows the account of Archie McCandless, a Scottish public health officer, who falls in love with a strange woman named Bella Baxter, created by his medical friend Godwin Baxter by implanting her unborn child's brain into her lifeless body. Bella is animated...

The guys discuss the film adaptation of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, the Martin Scorsese adaptation from the bestselling David Grann nonfiction novel of the same name. It tells the story of the investigation of a series of murders that took place in the early 1920s in Osage County, Oklahoma. After big oil deposits were found under their land, the Osage people were awarded headrights to the profits...

The guys discuss the film adaptation of FOE, the story of Junior and Henrietta, a married couple living on a remote farm in the near future. One day, a mysterious man named Terrence arrives. Terrence works for an aerospace corporation called OuterMore and tells Junior he’s been selected to travel to the Installation, a large space station that orbits around earth, to test its livability for human...

The guys discuss the film adaptation of THE LONG GOODBYE, a classic hard-boiled detective fiction novel written by Raymond Chandler, that tells the story of Philip Marlowe, a private detective living in Los Angeles, who is pulled into a mystery when both his friend Terry Lennox, and his wife, turn up dead, the latter by murder and the former by suicide. Or were they? While Marlowe investigates the...

The guys discuss the series adaptation of WOOL, a science fiction novel written by Hugh Howey, that tells the story of a dystopian future where generations of survivors live together in a subterranean silo. The society is stratified into blue and white collar workers and governed by strict regulations designed to protect the residents from the perceived horrors of the outside world. But when a sma...

The guys discuss the series adaptation of DAISY JONES & THE SIX, a novel written in an oral history format by Taylor Jenkins Reid, that tells the story of a rock n’ roll band in the 1970’s, and details their meteoric rise to the top of the charts and their chaotic fall to oblivion. The series adaptation stars Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Suki Waterhouse, Camila Morrone, Nabiyah Be and Timothy Olypha...