With the opening weekends of movie adaptations of "Water for Elephants" and "The Help" around the corner, we at the Daily got to thinking about which pieces of literature we would hate to see on the silver screen.
10. Snooki's "A Shore Thing": Excessive tanning, boozing, foul language and rampant sex on the Jersey Shore. No movie necessary — we can just turn on MTV to see that.
9. Webster's Dictionary: Not only would the movie version last about 10 years, but things would start to get pretty repetitive as soon as we entered the "re"s. No pun intended.
8. Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (1951): To make it low-budget, the screen could simply flash "smoke more drugs."
7. Hitler's "Mein Kampf" (1925): Contemporary audiences may not prove fully sympathetic to a movie about Hitler's "struggle."
6. Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" (1854): It's boring enough to watch the pond freeze over when you have access to the narrator's thoughts — in a movie, you're just watching a pond freeze over.
5. Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" (1985): Not only would a film never live up to the classic, but does anyone really want to see 11-year-olds kill other 11-year-olds?
4. Philip Roth's "The Breast" (1972): We feel like the Kafka allusions may be lost in an NC-17 film about a breast trying to penetrate young girls with its nipple.
3. The Kama Sutra: The plot is just too complex — viewers wouldn't be able to handle all the twists and turns the story (and actors) would take. Though if James Cameron started developing a 3-D adaptation, we'd probably buy a ticket.
2. Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" (1952): Scene one — the old man boards his boat. Scenes two through 67 — the old man sits in his boat. We won't spoil the ending.
1. Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" (2005) Oh, wait...
—compiled by the Daily Arts Department
