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What makes a good book-to-film adaptation? We have thoughts (and favorites)

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What makes a good book-to-film adaptation? We have thoughts (and favorites)

Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet in 2019’s Little Women, written and directed by Greta Gerwig.

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“Wuthering Heights” is in theaters, so we’re thinking about the best book to film adaptations of all time.

What’s your favorite movie that started life as a book — and what makes for a great book-to-film adaptation, anyway? Do you want filmmakers to stay as rigorously true to the book as possible? Or are you okay with bold departures, big swings, out-of-left-field choices that evoke the essence of the book, if not every last detail?

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“Wuthering Heights,” for example, takes a middle road. Writer/director Emerald Fennell’s film keeps the familiar plot beats firmly in place, and casts actors who embody all the stuff that fans of the book need them to, but steeps them in the delirious hormones of a teenage fever-dream. Thus, Margot Robbie’s Cathy is headstrong, impetuous … and horny, while Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff is broody, Byronic … and horny. The two spend most of the movie trading lusty looks in the soaking rain as peals of thunder roll over the moors. Every set, every costume is styled to the gods. It’s a breathlessly over-the-top take that’s divided critics and is about to do the same for audiences this weekend.

We’ve got four examples of other beloved books that made the transition to the big screen. Here’s why we think each of them works, and why we believe they’re the best of all time.

Little Women (2019)

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This movie version of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 story about the March sisters is adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig. Gerwig does the impossible task of contemporizing the story while staying so faithful to the book. She does two things that haven’t worked in any other Little Women adaptations: She makes me tolerate the love story between Laurie and Amy. (I still have PTSD from the 1994 version.) And Gerwig allows for Jo — the protagonist, a liberated author who is writing her own story along the way — to have her cake and eat it too.

In the 19th century approach to this story, the woman has to have a man at the end. That’s just a given for these kinds of books and for these kinds of adaptations. But Gerwig made a decision that the writing of the book is essential to the plot line, and that within the book, Jo’s character ends up with a man — a scholar named Bhaer. But in reality, the book is the man — getting her first book published is the win — and that is her love. It’s so rich and smart. I just love it. B.A. Parker, host of NPR’s Code Switch podcast

Nickel Boys (2024)

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Nickel Boys was originally Colson Whitehead’s book about a boy wrongly sent to an abusive boys school in Florida during the Jim Crow era. It becomes a story about his friendship with another boy there. Within five minutes of watching the movie, I was hooked and felt like I was seeing something really new. Not just new in that it was different from the book, which I really respect. But because the whole thing is told from this immersive camera point of view — and because you are in the head, really in the head of the person experiencing it, it is somehow more immersive even than the book. Sometimes, watching narratives that have descriptions of truly awful things — like Boys Don’t Cry and 12 Years a Slave — I find myself covering my eyes. But because of the point of view in Nickel Boys, I couldn’t. It not only showed me what it was, it showed me what it felt.

Director RaMell Ross is saying something about the experience of reading about these two boys being so badly abused in Jim Crow-era Florida. He’s also saying something about the way that we view it. He is saying something about how anyone who wants to see these things on screen should really think about how we have them in our heads, how they are portrayed to us, and how we react to that portrayal. It’s stunning, and I was absolutely jaw dropped about it. — Barrie Hardymon, editor, NPR investigations

Blade Runner (1982)

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Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became the 1982 film Blade Runner. Both the movie and the book are set in a future where androids are used as slave labor. Six androids escape, and a cop named Rick Deckard — how’s that for a perfect, hard-nosed, noirish name? — has to hunt them down.

Look, there are book people and there are movie people. I’ve visited the Reddit threads; I know that a lot of book people/Philip K. Dick fans hate this movie. But I would argue that the book does what books do well, and the film does what films do well. When you read a book, you live inside it — you’re intellectually and emotionally invested, because you create its world in your mind. And in this book, the author dutifully outfits you with absolutely everything you need to know, and somehow more: You learn about the nuclear war that left big areas of the planet uninhabitable. You learn about this fallout called dust. You learn a lot about how class and status works, and why people are headed to off-world colonies. There is also a tremendous lot about a religion called Mercerism, which is founded on the notion of empathy as the highest human attribute.

The movie carves out the thinnest possible slice of the book — the action, the hunting androids part. And while it pays deference to some of the book’s big ideas, it doesn’t concern itself with all that weighty lore and backstory. It doesn’t need to, that’s not what it’s for. After all, you’re not living in this dystopian future, as you are when you read the book. You’re just visiting it for a couple hours. Androids builds the world, but Blade Runner trots you nimbly through it, doing what films do: Swapping out all those blocks of prose for the fluid visual language of cinematic mood, action and performance. — Glen Weldon, critic and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast 

Starship Troopers (1997)

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My pick is a movie in which the director, Paul Verhoeven, straight up hates the source material, detests it and makes fun of it: 1997’s Starship Troopers. The 1959 book by Robert Heinlein is about space cadets and a guy named Johnny Rico going through cadet school and learning the philosophies of being in the military, and why it’s cool to live in a society in which only people who fight in the military can vote. The movie takes that premise and says — this idea: kind of fascist, right? It’s a hilarious parody of Heinlein’s book.

And yet, if you are a mouth breather, not fully understanding how it’s working on a metatextual level, the movie itself kind of rocks as propaganda, as a piece of action filmmaking. It feels like I’m watching Top Gun. Everybody’s extraordinarily good looking. It came out in the late nineties, but I first watched it on TV, and have always thought of it as a post-9/11 movie, in the context of being in school where people were trying to recruit us to join the military. It feels like an extension of Verhoeven’s RoboCop in a lot of ways, how everybody is acting not quite stiff, but extra. Everybody’s got a little asterisks on all of their lines. — Andrew Limbong, culture reporter and host of NPR’s Book of the Day podcast

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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‘Evil Dead’ Star Bruce Campbell Reveals He Has Cancer

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‘Evil Dead’ Star Bruce Campbell Reveals He Has Cancer

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‘Scream 7’ takes a weak stab at continuing the franchise : Pop Culture Happy Hour

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‘Scream 7’ takes a weak stab at continuing the franchise : Pop Culture Happy Hour

Neve Campbell in Scream 7.

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The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.

Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture

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Smoke a joint and get deep with flowers at this guided floral design workshop in DTLA

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Smoke a joint and get deep with flowers at this guided floral design workshop in DTLA

Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”

The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.

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Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.

Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.

Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event's offerings.
Herbal tea is part of the event's offerings.
Floral arranging is the main activity.

Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.

The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.

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The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”

Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”

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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.

In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.

During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”

The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.

Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (left). The workshop serves as a "third space" for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
LOS ANGELES, CA -- FEBRUARY 22, 2026: Participants smoke marijuana during The Flower Hour, a floral design workshop + floral smoke sesh at The ArtClub in downtown. Photographed on Sunday, February 22, 2026. (Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
LOS ANGELES, CA -- FEBRUARY 22, 2026: The Flower Hour is a floral design workshop + floral smoke sesh at The ArtClub in downtown. Photographed on Sunday, February 22, 2026. (Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.

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After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”

Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.

“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.

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The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements.

The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.

Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.

“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.

Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”

Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.

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Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
LOS ANGELES, CA -- FEBRUARY 22, 2026: The Flower Hour is a floral design workshop + floral smoke sesh at The ArtClub in downtown. Photographed on Sunday, February 22, 2026. (Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
LOS ANGELES, CA -- FEBRUARY 22, 2026: The Flower Hour is a floral design workshop + floral smoke sesh at The ArtClub in downtown. Photographed on Sunday, February 22, 2026. (Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.

Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”

On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.

To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.

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“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.

A finished floral arrangement.

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