Another novelist turned filmmaker flops…

Everyone wants to direct. It’s the law of film. Screenwriters, producers, actors, cinematographers. Even costume designers and grips. Generally, the results are mixed (to say the least). But the worst track record must go to novelists who direct their own works.  Recipe for disaster?  Ask Paul Auster or Norman Mailer. John Sayles started as a novelist and earned respect in the literary world for Union Dues (nominated for a National Book Award) and Pride of the Bimbos before turning to B-Movie screenwriting with Roger Corman and indie filmmaking. A dog-eared paperback of Union Dues lingers on my book shelf. I tried reading it once but didn’t get past the first chapter. That sometimes happens with books I come to appreciate later though so I probably need to give it another chance. In any case, ex-bad boy of French literature Michel Houellebecq fought for the right to adapt his much maligned novel, Possibility of an Island, into a film. The results are even worse than the worst reviews of the book. Even when he was bad, nobody ever called him boring.