It's been on my mind, now and again, the concept of movies "adapted from" or "based on" some other work or true experience. I wonder how exact they "should" be? What standards there are?

I think about Disney's fabulous "Hunchback of Notre Dame," and how egregiously different from Hugo's novel it is. I also think of the recent film "The Scarlet Letter," and how that differed from its source material. I always considered this a strike against TSL, but not an issue with Hunchback, and I've worked out two reasons that seem to explain it.

First off is the issue of "inspiration" versus "derivation." Hunchback is so far removed from its source that I don't think it can be seriously argued that it's truly based on Hugo's novel; to my thinking, this moves it into a different camp. No attempt was really being made to tell *Hugo's* story - the screenwriters were making their *own* story, using Hugo's characters and settings. The trouble with this theory is that it's terribly vague, and almost sounds more like an excuse. It leads to the whole problem of "how far is too far?"

So I prefer my second theory, which basically says "if it's a bad film on its own merits, its distance from its source material will drag it down. But if it's a good film, said distance will be irrelevant." The important thing here is *the film* - considerations about what it *isn't* are secondary to what it *is.* I think Best Picture "A Beautiful Mind" is an excellent example - the film's detractors tried to belittle it by pointing out differences between film and source, but it won the award anyhow, because it stands on its own.

I think that probably came out garbled (I'm rather tired; forgive me), but I said what I meant to say. What does everyone else think? And do you figure it's more of an issue when it's "based on a true story" rather than on another fictional work?

- Daryam