The Name Game

I think short stories make the best source material for movies, since they're short enough to provide inspiration and basic plot that allows the screenwriter to take over, while plays and novels lose too much in the translation.

I recently read Stephen King's short story"1408" to see how it compares to the movie. If anything, I think the movie improves on the story. King introduces the idea of a writer spending a night in a haunted room, but once the guy gets there he falls apart immediately. The movie has to give it more structure, and so we see the writer (played by John Cusack) falling in deeper and deeper before he makes his final play to get out. In fact, most of the incidents in the screenplay are not in the original. I bet if they changed a few other items here and there, they wouldn't have had to credit the story. Of course, that would miss the point. "Stephen King" is valuable, so they could toss out his story entirely and they'd still use his name. Same way that Howard Hawks threw out most of Hemingway in To Have And Have Not, but the author's name was featured prominently in promotional material.

Speaking of famous authors contributing nothing to the final version of the movie, check out the F. Scott Fitzgerald extended joke known as "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button."