The Slippery Art of Adaptation

Salman Rushdie on 'Slumdog Millainaire':

"Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

This is just an excerpt from a rather long article in which Rushdie not only bashes the Slumdog phenomenon, but takes the opportunity to comment at length on the slippery subject of adapting language-based art forms to film, and also the way in which movies like Slumdog undermine the genre of magical realism with plots that, even considering their claim to 'the magical', nevertheless remain utterly implausible. Here's the whole article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/salman-rushdie-novels-film-adaptations

And on a related note, it seems that Stephen King is also on record trashing Stephanie Meyer's vege-vampire romance, 'Twilight'; comparing her books to those of JK Rowling, the primary difference being that "JK Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."

Apparently, Meyer's fans were quick to rally behind her work, claiming King to be "just a bloody guy who is jealous of Edward's good looks." Of that much, I would say there is little doubt. Full article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/05/stephenking-fiction