Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Confess

Daily Stats:
Words: 3000+
Caffeine: morning cup
Evil Calories: pretzels with melted hershey's kisses on top
Reality TV: Biggest Loser

I have to just get this off my chest, and I apologize to any of you who have never read the book, or have never had an interest to read the book, or who think the book is fluff and wouldn't come near it with a ten foot pole, but...what the crap have they done to Confessions of a Shopaholic?

Now, before you out click on me, just listen. I don't care if you only ever read historical-sci-fi-erotica-YA-romance, if you're a chick and at ANY point in your life you've chosen a pair of shoes over groceries, you should really read this book. To this day, it is one of the funniest books I've ever read. (And let me specify that I'm ONLY talking about the first book. By the second book I wanted to push Becky Bloomwood out of a moving cab.) But now the movie is coming out, and every time I see the trailer for it I want rip my head off and throw it at the TV. They have totally destroyed this poor book. They made Becky American (weird because the girl that plays her is actually British), they put her in NY instead of London, they made her this muffy, airheaded fashionista who pines for a job at a fashion magazine, and, the biggest kick in the nards, they have Luke Brandon "speaking Prada". And she works for him or something, and they appear to get along, ugh, I mean, COME ON!!!!!! The best thing about the book is that she spends most of it hating him. Oh, and they gave Suz black hair. OH THE HUMANITY!!!!!!!

You know where my mind immediately goes? To Sophie Kinsella. Did you know that she was already a writer under her real name, Madeleine Wickham, and when she wrote Shopaholic she queried her own publisher under the name Sophie Kinsella and she sold it without them knowing it was her. And now she's sitting there watching her book get dismembered. That cannot be a pleasant feeling. And this could happen to us one day, peeps. These books that we're pouring our souls into could be miscast, gutted and rewritten beyond recognition. How would you handle it?

8 comments:

Amy said...

I am completely boggled by them moving the entire story to NYC and making a Brit play American when the character is Brit to begin with! (Yet they kept Luke British!) It makes absolutely no sense! From the trailer, Becky seriously seems like Amy Adams character in Enchanted! Which, of course, WORKS in that movie because she's supposed to be a wide-eyed bubble head fairytale character!

Seriously, all the people who would go see this are those who read the book, and it was a bestseller! So it's not like they didn't already have an audience for it.

Stupid stupid stupid.

Debra Lynn Shelton said...

I haven't read the book, although I'd probably love it. I don't know why Hollywood always feels the need to prove the book is a gazillion times better than the movie. Where is the logic? The justice? The freaking Hollywood magic? This was true with Sideways. They made a blonde-haired California surfer girl in the book into a black-haired Asian girl in the movie. WTF???

Jewel Allen said...

Shoes are my weakness. This makes me want to read the book and skip the movie.

Rags said...

In my own confession, I have to admit I have never read the book, and am not filled with the overwhelming desire to see the film either!

But it must be horrid for the author to sit and watch their much-loved baby that took them a year to mould, turned into the complete opposite of what was intended! Its almost like the movie people saying to them, "yeah, I see where you were going with that, but its total tosh so we've done it better"!!

Jodi Picoult is my all-time favourite author - My Sisters Keeper is one of her most famous books because, quite simply, it is utter brilliance. And when you read the whole book, when you think it can't get ANY better, it is absolutely MADE by the last few pages. It is incredible.
Yet the people who are making the movie want to change the ending to the complete opposite of what happened in the book - which would just destroy the story!

This is why I struggle to let people even read my writing, let alone think about handing over the rights to its life to some idiotic-money-grabbing-whore of a movie producer.
Pah.
Rant over.

Ray Veen said...

I have never once chosen shoes over groceries. Give me another analogy and then I'll tell you if this sounds like a book I'd like.

Amy said...

Robots over groceries?

Carrie Harris said...

I haven't read it, but if someone mauled one of my books in film, I would probably handle it with lots of chocolate and bitterness. In private, anyway. In public, I would smile. And wish I had more chocolate.

Tracey said...

I haven't read it.
I will be such a high-powered writer that when someone wants to make a movie of my books I'll get to sign off on the production and have a hand in adapting the screenplay. Now I'm off to smoke a little more crack ...