No refund for Sara!!

November 20, 2009 at 22:32 (1)

I received the following email from a lady called Sara this morning, which gave me a great chuckle:

After seeing the movie, The Vampire’s Assistant, I bought your book, read half and have decided to take a few moments to tell you what I thought.  I am SHOCKED that such a good movie could come from such a poor manuscript.  Are you aware that your main character is extremely unlikable?  He is selfish, whiny and mistreats animals.  This book is too violent for children or young teens and anyone older will be bored will it’s dull, plodding pace.  You’re book is in the trash, Mr. Shan, and I believe you owe me $12.99 as well as a HUGE debt of gratitude to the person who turned your drivel into a passable screen play.  What a wearying task that must have been.

Heh heh — now I know how the people at Universal must feel when they get fans of the books complaining to them about the changes made in the movie!!! Oh well — you can’t please everyone. My only regret is that Sara threw the book in the bin — in these days of global warming and emphasis on recycling, that seems highly irresponsible to me!! If I don’t like a book, I give it to someone else, or to a charity shop. Throwing away a book isn’t a blow against an author you don’t like — it’s a blow against the planet!!!!

Another person who liked the film, while not seeming to be overly enamoured with my books, was the writer Orson Scott Card. I must admit that I haven’t read any of Card’s work (at least not that I can recall) but obviously I’m very familiar with his name, having seen his books in stores all over the place — he’s one of those writers I keep meaning to check out, but haven’t quite got round to yet. He posted a highly favourable review of the film — you can check it out by CLICKING HERE. I don’t think the film’s potential financial tally will be quite as disastrous as Mr Card assumes — the film has been doing well outside the USA, and is still to open in more than 50 countries worldwide, so it could well hit big in some of the major overseas markets (e.g. Japan). But even if it doesn’t, it will be interesting, as he notes, to track its movements when it comes out on DVD. Though the film has divided people, there seems to be a lot of folks out there who really like it. They don’t seem to have been able to convince huge numbers of their friends to go see it at the cinema (perhaps because they were all going to Paranormal Activity, or saving themselves for New Moon), but maybe word of mouth will continue to spread and more people will give it a chance on DVD and Blu-Ray. I know the film-makers shot a lot more material than they used in the final cut, including lots of scenes of the circus freaks, so if they put together a varied, exciting package on DVD, that might add to the movie’s appeal.

I read an article about American Werewolf in London in Rue Morgue recently, and hard as it might be to believe today, that film received lots of terrible reviews when it first came out, and didn’t do particularly well at the box office. But it found a fan base and its legend grew over the years, and today it’s still going strong. There’s no denying that Cirque’s performance at the American box office was disappointing, but I’d be a lot more depressed and worried if it had done quite well on a wave of hype but wasn’t drawing good, positive reaction like Orson Scott Card’s. Really good films are those which make an impression on people and stand the test of time, and I think Cirque might well end up doing that yet.