8 Comments Everything Must Go, starring Will Ferrell, is based on the story “Why Don’t You Dance” by Raymond Carver. It comes out this month.
Often, when movies are based on short stories, it reminds me of the use of samples in hip-hop. The screenwriter take a memorable nugget, the hook of the story, and builds up around it.
In honor of Short Story Month, here are some more movies based on short stories:
I Bet It's Not As Scary As It May Seem
Raymond Carver liked to get a draft of a story down in one go, “I write the first draft of a story as quickly as possible, preferably at one sitting. Then I revise it, and revise it yet again” (Conversations with Raymond Carver 80). Janet Burroway agrees this is a good method because, “you are more likely to produce a coherent draft when you come to the desk in a single frame of mind with a single vision of the whole than when you write piecemeal, having altered ideas and moods” and “fast writing tends to make for fast pace in the story” (Writing Fiction 16).
I am not a fan of being required to write a complete first draft in one day or even two, let alone one sitting. It was during a writing binge last week (for a deadline for my writing group) that I was so miserable I began seriously questioning why I even bother (see all the negative comments I left on blogs last week for evidence to support this claim).
I asked my mom on the phone why humans bother exerting so much time, energy, and thought to write stories that no one wants to read or publish anyway. She told me that even if one person gains insight from something another person wrote then it’s worth it. I liked that idea. She also said the self expression that occurs through writing must be useful to the writer in some way. I insisted that what I’m doing is far more complex than self-expression. Read more »
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