Now that the ever-so-eagerly anticipated David Fincher adaptation of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is out in theaters, fans of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy have had the chance to see how Fincher’s take stacks up — not just against the books, but against the previous Swedish film version, and more specifically in the representation of iconic heroine Lisbeth Salander. The role was played in the original films by Noomi Rapace (currently appearing in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows); for the American films, Rooney Mara takes over.
Who’s better in the role? It’s a tricky question — and one that comes up every time multiple actors take their turns playing a beloved literary character. The critics have weighed in on who plays Lisbeth better, but after the jump, we’ll take a look at ten previous cases of “different actor, same role.”
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Max Allan Collins’ latest mystery, The Consummata (with Mickey Spillane) will be released next Tuesday, so we decided to wrangle him into writing about his favorite lurid PI stories for us. He writes, “First, an admission – not every title on this list was published in a pulp magazine. Some, in fact, were first published in hardcover by respectable, even hoity-toity publishers like Knopf and Random House. But these writers, whether graduates of Black Mask or The Saturday Evening Post, fueled the pulp fiction that followed.”
“I could have filled this list with just books by Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, and still have been frustrated by omissions,” he continues. ”So I limited myself to one book per author. I regret leaving off several of my favorites, notably Chester Himes, Richard Stark and Jonathan Latimer.” So read on, dear readers, and let us know what books made you want to become a private eye or what covers caught your attention.
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Two of literature’s most popular writers shared an intriguing conversation in 1958. Raymond Chandler — whose hardboiled pulp protagonist Philip Marlowe has become synonymous with the American detective novel — and Ian Fleming — father of the British spy, playboy, and adventurer, James Bond — chatted about heroes, villains, and the differences between the American and British thriller in this 24-minute long interview for the BBC. They share an obvious mutual appreciation for each other’s work, and Fleming often defers to Chandler — at one point even saying, ” … You write better books than I do.” Chandler questions Fleming’s use of torture in his stories, but also admits, “I know what it is to be banged on the head with a revolver butt.” Fleming describes his frustration with the hero label when it comes to 007: “I never intended my leading character, James Bond, to be a hero. I intended him to be a sort of blunt instrument wielded by a government department … On the whole I think he’s a rather unattractive man … ” For more fascinating confessions and tales from two scribes who are masters of their craft, hit the jump to listen to the deliciously crackled tape recording, or download a PDF copy over here.
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Few headlines will draw our attention faster than “Pin-ups based on Haruki Murakami books.” Little did we know that Super Punch’s post would lead us to something even more wonderful — Portland, OR gallery Benjamin Benjamin’s Adaptation: A Show of Authors. The exhibition pairs artists with writers to create work inspired by everyone from Edgar Allen Poe and Willa Cather to Kurt Vonnegut and Roald Dahl. Click through for a glimpse at several pieces from the show, including three Murakami pin-ups by Johnny Acurso, and if you’re in the Portland area, you can find details about seeing the art in person here.
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A while back we did a post on literary love letters to NYC, but we knew at some point we should honor the entertainment capital of the world, so today is our offering for Los Angeles. It’s a tough town, as the authors below know all too well, and it can be a very dark place sometimes. But as long as people keep dreaming of their name in lights, LA will remain as the city to go to become a star. So here’s to all the film buffs, rock stars, and waiters waiting for a lucky break — keep toughing it out, and enjoy the scenery in the meantime. All hail Tinseltown, in all its troubled, frightening glory.
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In the late 1920s, newspaper columnist, reporter, playwright, and Algonquin wit Herman J. Mankiewicz moved from New York, the hotbed of American literary activity, to Hollywood. A few months later, he sent this cable to his writer friend Ben Hecht: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.” Sooner or later, though, it did. Since their inception, the moving pictures have offered scribes the opportunity for comparatively easy money — a few weeks’ work dashing off a screenplay or a punch-up job to subsidize the year it’s going to take to write The Great American Novel.
Yesterday’s news that Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon will take a pass at the script to Disney’s Magic Kingdom movie (in the wake of Pirates of the Caribbean, that studio will not rest until every square inch of its theme parks have been turned into films) wasn’t a huge shocker — and not just because Chabon has done previous work for Disney, or worked on the script to Spider-Man 2. He is simply the latest respected author to take Tinsel Town up on the offer of a generous paycheck. Join us after the jump for a look at ten other literary figures that did the same.
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Bullocks Wilshire, photo credit: Catherine Corman
Catherine Corman‘s October 31 release Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler’s Imagined City
takes readers on a black and white tour of fictional private eye Philip Marlowe‘s real world haunts. As Jonathan Lethem says in his intro the book,
“If architecture is fate, then it is Marlowe’s fate to enumerate the pensive dooms of Los Angeles, the fatal, gorgeous pretenses of glamour and ease, the bogus histories reenacted in the dumb, paste-and-spangles cocktail of style. Remove the dead bodies, and the living ones, as Catherine Corman has done in her own supremely evocative catalogue of haunted places, and the force of Chandler’s insight becomes even more terrifyingly urgent: these streets and buildings we have erected in order to give order to our solitudes, to keep them from being piled unbearably atop one another, they are actively trying to forget us.”
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Thomas Pynchon’s new novel officially comes out today, and it seems like every book critic in the world has already weighed in. The debate over the book’s merits reminds us of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Inherent Vice is a detective noir set in ’70s L.A.; the Times calls it Pynchon Lite, but the Wall Street Journal wonders if the book could actually be “a classic Pynchon opus masquerading as a light read.”
After reading seven different reviews, the only thing we can say with certainty is that the reviewers seem to share a lot of the same reference points. Read More »
The Fiction Fix is your weekly dose of short story. If that’s not your drug of choice, too bad: consider it medicine. Every week, we’ll scour the literary magazines you don’t have time to read, online and in print, and let you know where to find one story worth reading.
This week, Narrative magazine** offers up not one, but four excerpts from upcoming thrillers. According to Narrative’s introduction, these excerpts are “in the vein” of this quote from Raymond Chandler: “In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.” We love Raymond Chandler, so we’re totally on board, and the authors- an ex-P.I. and a James Patterson co-author among them- do not disappoint. They’ve got sex, drugs, rock and roll, jungle spirits (!), drive-by shootings that might not be as random as they appear, more drugs, more guns, plus essays by and interviews with the authors.
**Narrative magazine requires registration for full access, but it’s fast, free, and will not result in spam.
RAYMOND CHANDLER immortalized 1940s Los Angeles with crime novels like THE BIG SLEEP, the now legendary protagonist, Philip Marlowe, at the center of the burgeoning metropolis.
JUDITH FREEMAN, author of THE LONG EMBRACE: RAYMOND CHANDLER AND THE WOMAN HE LOVED, studied Chandler’s marriage to CISSY PASCAL, a woman twice his age and twice-divorced by the time they married.
Pretty unique relationship by 1940’s American standards, eh?
After the jump, Freeman discusses her own “detective work,” and her fascination with Chandler and Cissy with Flavorwire.
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