Last night, my husband and I went to see the movie Paper Towns. We were the oldest people in the theater. Most of the movie goers were teenage girls who added sighs, giggles, and ahhs. I wondered what John Greene would have thought if he'd been there to see/heat their reaction. I wonder what he thought of the movie, which, by the way, did an incredible job of following the book. I think it would be hard to take a 300 page book and condense it into a 2 hour movie, although not as hard as taking a thousand page book and condensing it.
When I was in middle school, I developed a obsession with all things Gone With the Wind. I read the book in about a week, staying up late each night reading, being too tired to attend school, reading all day and into the next night. Because this was in the days before videos, DVD and streaming, I didn't see the movie until years after I'd read the book, and when I did, I was disappointed. At first. Clark Gable didn't fit my mental image of Rhett. But then in time, he did. I grew on me and I hung posters of him on my college dorm walls.
I heard a writer once say that the book we have in our head will ultimately be very different from the book we write on the page. The idea in our mind being not at all what we share with the world. This happens with conversations, relationships, and oh so many things, as well. The trick, I think, is to love and admire the creation for what it is, even its not how you had at first imagined.
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