Book vs. Movie

Whenever a book is made into a movie, the people who've read the novel usually say, "The book was better than the movie."

I saw "The Devil Wears Prada" three years ago when it came out and even own the DVD, but I've never read the book. I have a friend who said when the movie came out that she liked the book better. Looking for something interesting to read, I recently decided to buy it and read it myself. Now, I'm struggling to get through it.

Maybe it's because I just happen to really like Anne Hathaway, the actress who played the main character Andy Sachs, but 107 pages into the book, I like the movie better. Andy in the novel is too neurotic for me. As I read, I think, Yes, your boss is crazy, but you're the one who took the job, so just deal with it! She turns every deranged request by her boss -- like flying the as-yet-unreleased copy of the latest Harry Potter book via private jet to Paris -- into a "poor me" melodrama that makes me want to tell this pathetic girl, "Get over it, already!"

As I read, I can see why the screenwriter made the choices she made. Andy is more relatable as the confident, strong-willed woman she is made out to be in the movie, instead of the whimpering girl who agonizes over every little detail that causes her anxiety about her job.

And instead of her boss, Miranda Priestly, spending the first month in the book out of the country and barking orders to Andrea over the phone, she appears within a few minutes of the storyline in the movie. That was a wise screenwriting choice, because Andy may be the main character, but the over-the-top controlling fashion magazine editor Miranda is what makes the story so delicious.

The tension between Andy and the other Runway magazine employees for the first half of the movie is also more interesting and makes more sense than the way they accept and befriend Andy right away in the book. I know the novel is semi-autobiographical, but I find it hard to believe that the beautiful people who work at Runway and dress in thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes every day for their jobs would take to Andy -- who wears basic white button-down shirts and skirts from the Gap -- so easily.

I hope that as I observe the choices that other writers make it will inform my own writing. Not that I plan to ever write a novel that will be turned in to a movie, but I am trying to put more thought into my words as they filter from my brain to the page or computer screen. It's a start, right?