Why Novels are Better than Movies

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Friday, August 24, 2007
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You're being sniffy, I told myself. And defensive. Standing up for the novel when nobody's attacking it. He didn't say movies are better than books, he just said his dream was to become a filmmaker, and everyone's entitled to a dream. But for some reason I felt the need to point out just how impotent a director is in comparison to a novelist.

"With film," I said, "you have to rely on so many people. A novelist has absolute control. He writes the script, casts the roles, performs the parts and dresses the sets. He controls the camera. He doesn't answer to producers because he doesn't need a budget. No one looks over his shoulder and second-guesses. The director has to work through others to achieve his art, which means he's a manager as well as a creative. The novelist is free to sink or swim on his own merit."

I had a little experience to back this up. One of the hats I'd worn throughout the nineties involved writing and directing corporate training videos, so I knew what it was like to intend one outcome and end up with something altogether more modest. Sometimes the set designer couldn't give us the look we wanted, given our limited budget, and sometimes the cameraman couldn't get the shot. The talent we could afford to put in front of the camera wasn't always top notch. By the end of a long day of shooting, I knew that things would never turn out quite how I wanted, and I was fine with that. "It's not art," I'd remind myself.

But what if it had been? Film and stage directors who manage to put their stamp on a work have my utmost admiration, because I know just how difficult that can be. When I talk to aspiring filmmakers, I often come away with the feeling they don't know. Because the technical side of low-budget movie-making has gotten so easy, they assume that it all has. But the artistry is every bit as illusive, I think.

Still, that's no reason to discourage a beginner, and that's precisely what I was doing -- trying to convince him that novels are a nobler thing and that to write them is a much worthier goal toward which to aspire. Why was I being so petty?

My own insecurities, no doubt. When you've thrown your lot in with the novel, you can't help getting a little defensive. All the signs point to obsolescence. Fewer people are reading at all, and the ones who maintain the tradition don't exactly inspire us with their choices. (The situation seems so desperate, though, that it seems ungrateful not to say something like, "At least they're reading" or "Anything that gets people reading again is a good thing.") Aspiring to write novels feels a little bit like opening a hat shop. You spend as much time admonishing people for going around bare-headed as you do plying your trade. The fact is, people don't want what you're trying to sell, and that makes you touchy.

But the thing is, I love the movies. In another lifetime, I can't imagine anything more satisfying than to be able to point to an hour and a half of black-and-white film, or a Criterion Collection DVD, and say, "I did that." I love talking about movies as much as I love talking about books, and I find aspiring filmmakers fascinating. Whenever I meet one, I ask about influences, share favorites, and try to be as encouraging as I can be -- because let's face it, the path of the novelist is easier than that of the director. If you think convincing a publisher to put a few grand into your big trial balloon of a novel is hard, try convincing investors to dig deep and finance your film.

I wasn't being an encourager this time, though. Quite the opposite. In effect, I was telling this guy that his dream was impossible, even more so than mine. Why was I doing it?

You know the feeling. The words come out and, while they're your words, you don't exactly own them. You'd like the conversation to end, but your mouth won't stop moving. You're saying things that reveal too much about your inner life, only you don't know what they reveal because this is new territory. It's as if you're your own therapist, trying to weigh the import and implications of each sentence only to be interrupted as the next one comes. I was -- to use an archaic term -- venting my spleen. I'd stored up some resentment and something cut it loose.

I resented the fact that, having put so much into writing, I seemed to have so little to show for it. I resented my disillusionment. Because of the choices I'd made, I would never be a director, and I must have resented that too -- the idea that this guy might become something that, years ago, I might have been. It's complicated and banal, the way resentment usually is. Maybe I resented his talent, or felt I'd wasted my own. Who knows? Feelings like this don't bear much scrutiny. Better to purge them and move on.

And now I wonder, what would it be like if novels were made like films? A separate author for each character, specialists to supply scenery and sensory detail, a director to shape it all into a coherent whole. Some novels, of course, are collaborative efforts -- but not usually in the sense that movies are. When I contemplate such a change, I can't help thinking the novel would suffer. You can't do art by committee, I tell myself. But a lot of art is done collaboratively. Some art can't be accomplished any other way. Why should the novel be any different?

Really, it's a question of temperament. Some of us hunt in packs, others alone. The loners tend to gravitate toward the forms where their sensibility is respected. If I'd been more outgoing, more willing to work with others, I might have found directing a more amenable project, but since I preferred to be in control of everything, with no responsibilities except to myself, writing fiction proved more hospitable. It's not as if artistic disciplines are mutually exclusive -- actors can write novels, poets can direct films, etc. -- but I wonder whether practitioners of the lonely arts tend to stick with those avenues, and practitioners of the communal arts do likewise?

Perhaps in every art, we must be sometimes lonely and sometimes communal. My resentment, come to think of it, must have stemmed from the frustration that my lonely art had not yet flowered into something communal. I had been forced to keep it too long to myself, and it began to erupt and assert itself in inappropriate ways. I'll never know. Fortunately, my bad mood seemed to go unnoticed by the would-be filmmaker. He indulged me the way you would a crazy uncle, but didn't take anything I said too much to heart. I'm glad. Sometimes our feelings prompt us to say things we don't really believe. Sometimes we don't know what we believe. This is one of those occasions when, in retrospect, I was happy to be ignored.