Author: stridernolan

by Michael S. Katz

I’m one of those people who like to read a book before the movie version comes out. I never stopped to wonder why before, but I think I have the answer. Movies are rarely as good as the books, so wouldn’t you want to experience the better version first?

Why are books so tough to adapt to film? Well, to start, a typical novel has way too much material for a 90 minute film. Longer than 90 minutes and you risk turning off your audience, so unless you have a lot of diehards salivating at the chance to see their favorite books come to life, like fans of Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, odds are people will be turned off by three-hour movies.

During the transition from page to screen, something has to go. Subplots and characters are usually the easiest to do away with. Often, you’ll see characters combined for the sake of a film. Other times, you’ll wave goodbye to a lesser character who may have had an interesting storyline that didn’t do anything to advance the rest of the narrative. And then there is the need to change things simply for the sake of movie magic, like adding action scenes to take advantage of the audience’s need for special effects extravaganzas.

Hollywood relies on books more and more these days. Part of the reason is that movie producers are afraid to shell out a lot of money on an unknown project. If a novel has had success, it is more likely to receive word of mouth marketing. People who read the book are going to want to see the movie, and will likely tell other people to read the book themselves or at least see the film. That gives Hollywood some assurance of success, similar to the reasons for sequels and remakes: people with interest in the property are already out there, so there is a baseline of sales that they can depend on.

Heck, these days, many projects that once would have made a single film now are extended into two or more films, like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay or The Hobbit—the latter being a rare situation where a great deal of material is added to a story for the film version.

by Michael S. Katz

I’ve never been much of a fan of espionage fiction. Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler … I’ve always thought the plots were just too convoluted for my more simple tastes, I suppose. So when I started reading my first Daniel Silva novel, I didn’t expect to complete it.

Surprise. A year later and I’ve finished the eleventh Gabriel Allon novel. Maybe some of the entertainment value—for me—is that these read like spycraft procedurals, rather than infinitely looping mysteries. I love to learn about the inner workings of the Mossad, the CIA, and MI5 (among other agencies). According to Silva, much of his writing is based on true facts. I recently read Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, and can see how much of the background material about the Mossad finds its way into these novels (although modified by Silva for his purposes).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I like historical fiction because I like to learn at the same time I am being entertained. One can never have too much knowledge. Silva sets his stories in the present, but often provides a great deal of history by way of background, and also discusses current events (at least at the time each book is written). I have learned a great deal from reading Silva’s work.

For example, in Portrait of a Spy, not only are connections between Saudi Arabia and terrorist networks delved into, but Silva also describes how oppressive life is for women in Arab countries, inhumane living conditions among the working classes, political snafus caused by the American government’s dependence on Saudi oil, and the growth of jihadist elements in European countries. All this is icing on the cake—the cake being an entertaining story focusing on an interesting character with real human emotions, one who has grown along with the series.

It also interests me to no end that this character—Gabriel Allon, a spy for a fictional version of the Mossad—has been able to anchor a bestselling series in a world where anti-Semitism is still way too prevalent. I don’t want to go off on a tangent here; many of my thoughts on being Jewish are contained within my novel, Shalom on the Range, although I did my best to hide them deep down within the humor and action elements. I may even finish the sequel one of these days. But Daniel Silva’s writing similarly contains action and suspense, but also manages to find time to subtextualize what it is like to be Jewish, or what it is like to be Israeli. Amazingly, Daniel Silva was not born Jewish, he was raised Catholic, but he converted to Judaism after he had started the Gabriel Allon series because he fell in love with a Jewish woman and wanted their children to be brought up Jewish.

Each book in the series is full of fascinating material, on many different levels. Even in a fictional universe, there is room for the reader to learn about the real world around them.