Why Can't Movies Be Like Books?

[Sauron the White]

Meriadoc...

since it was my quote that you used to start this

"Please, lets get it through our collective heads --- a book is one thing while a film is quite another. What works in one medium does not always work in the other."

allow me to directly post this to you in response to your attempt to dismiss it with these comments

I quoted this from anothetr thread, and I have ran across many statements written like this, and always as a statement of fact.

Should we just accept this notion as fact? Why? What is the empirical evidence to back it up?

If you think that I am in error - that books and films are not so different, that indeed what works in the one can work in the other, just do this:

Take the LOTR book, page by page, line by line, and picture it as a complete film. Cut nothing. Condense nothing. Combine nothing. Film everything as if the book is the script.

Then think about what you would have and ask yourself how many people would have both seen it and enjoyed it.

For that is the ultimate test to see if a book can be just like a film and vice versa. Make the book your shooting script.