Episode 305: Books on Screen – Our Favorite Film Adaptations

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On this week’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, and Atlee Northmore talk about their favorite film adaptations of books they like and why they think these are worthy adaptations. Genres of movies they discuss include adaptations of classic books, kids and family films, film noir favorites, beloved directors, and so much more. They also share some “hot takes” on movies they liked better than the books, and vice versa. We hope this lighthearted, chatty episode will be a little treat for your listening enjoyment during this holiday season.

Join us back here again next week for the beginning of our new series on Moliere’s Don Juan.

Happening now–the House of Humane Letters Christmas sale! Head over to the website to peruse the discounted webinars and mini-classes on sale, already discounted, no coupon code needed.

Don’t forget to check out this coming year’s annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, “The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human”. Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks.

Commonplace Quotes:

The photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely, space, time and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely, attention, memory, imagination, and emotion.

Hugo Münsterberg, from Shakespeare and the Moving Image

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost/ And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions/ That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss./ For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

T. S. Eliot, from Four Quartets

Having your book turned into a movie is like having your oxen turned into bullion cubes.

John LeCarre

It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It

by Anthony Hecht

Tonight my children hunch
Toward their Western, and are glad   
As, with a Sunday punch,
The Good casts out the Bad.

And in their fairy tales
The warty giant and witch
Get sealed in doorless jails
And the match-girl strikes it rich.

I’ve made myself a drink.
The giant and witch are set
To bust out of the clink
When my children have gone to bed.

All frequencies are loud
With signals of despair;
In flash and morse they crowd   
The rondure of the air.

For the wicked have grown strong,   
Their numbers mock at death,   
Their cow brings forth its young,   
Their bull engendereth.

Their very fund of strength,   
Satan, bestrides the globe;
He stalks its breadth and length   
And finds out even Job.

Yet by quite other laws
My children make their case;   
Half God, half Santa Claus,   
But with my voice and face,

A hero comes to save
The poorman, beggarman, thief,   
And make the world behave   
And put an end to grief.

And that their sleep be sound   
I say this childermas
Who could not, at one time,   
Have saved them from the gas.

Copyright Antony Hecht, 1990. Reprinted here for educational purposes only.

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