Frankly my dear, I DO give a damn!

So this post really has nothing to do with getting pregnant or motherhood whatsover but it was something I was thinking about last night as I finished one of my favorite books. Why do filmmakers sometimes drastically change a book when they make it into a movie? Sometimes you can't even recognize the book at all. I realize that sometimes the book is just an inspiration for a movie but for the ones that are supposed to be a visualization of the book...why change it? My favorite book of all time is Gone With the Wind and then Scarlett (written by another author but still very good and very true to the characters) which is the sequel. Then my favorite movie of all time is of course, Gone With the Wind. I know that the book was very long and even though they cut out a lot of things the movie was long as well. BUT...they stayed true to the book and didn't cut out anything too critical. In the book, Scarlett had a child with her first husband, Charles Hamilton and another child with her second husband, Frank Kennedy. They were cut out in the movie. Makes sense since they didn't really play that big a part in the book. They also cut out a lot of the secondary characters from her hometown and some of the secondary plots. Nothing that really changed the heart of the story. Now as far as the made for tv movie for the book Scarlett....that's a different story. They stuck with the removal of Scarlett's two kids from her first two marriages. They weren't vital to the story. They did add Will Benteen, who was cut out in the first movie. He was a soldier who appeared after the war was over and helped out at Tara and eventually married Scarlett's sister Suellen. He wasn't a big deal in the first book to be needed in the movie but he was definitely needed for the second movie. I'll have to rewatch the movie this weekend to refresh my memory but I think the beginning of the movie held fairly true to the story. Once Scarlett goes to Ireland and has the baby is when it starts to stray. The relationship Scarlett develops with her new daughter does not do justice to the book. Then the story goes off on a tangent which ends up with Scarlett being accused for the murder of some Lord even though it was her knocked up maid who was carrying his child. Where in the hell did they come up with that? They had Scarlett on trial and Rhett came and saved her. Ridiculous! This is a women who does NOT need saving! That was what the whole story was about! She gave up her life in America after it didn't work out with Rhett and decided to start a new life in Ireland with her daughter. She built her own town from the ground up for crying out loud! I also didn't like the actress who played Scarlett. I think it was Joanna Waley-Kilmer or something to that effect. First of all....she had BROWN eyes. Scarlett's eyes were green! At least put some colored contacts on! In spite of all it's shortcomings and those of the infinite movies that spawned from books it's still fun to see the characters that started in the back of my mind come to life on the big screen. Even if they don't have the right colored eyes.