Why don't great books always make great films?

Shindler's Lists was the only movie better than then book in my experience.

Cult of "lost in translation".

"The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was magnificent as both a book and a film series. The James Bond novels were quite sparse and streamlined. The movie producers, writers and directors were smart to realize that they had to expanded and made larger than life to work on screen.
Some novels probably just will not transfer successfully to film in a literal way. To make the transition work, a skilled writer and director will have to make innovative additions and changes that will create a viable movie. When that is done, the public will often be unhappy with the changes, and there is, also, the potential for the whole project to go very wrong indeed.
The Science Fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a wonderful short story entitled "Nightfall." It has the dubious distinction of having two of the worst movies of all time made based on it. The only good thing about the first of these movies--there was nothing good about the second movie--was that it was filmed at Arcosanti, a rather fascinating architectural experiment in the Arizona desert.

because great books don't need to hire actors and pander to a fidgety audience.

Love good books and good movies, both of which take an amazing amout of work and time for all parties involved. I just re-read a book my child came home with for a book report, and we discussed it together. After the report is handed in, I cannot wait to see the movie again and most of all I get to enjoy it with my child who maybe would of never seen this great movie adapted from a great book, "To Kill A Mockingbird".

This rarely works well, simply because it would be a huge coincidence if a director cast the characters exactly how you imagine them.

Most annoying adaption?
Danny Wallace's Yes Man. Fantastic book, ridiculously pitiful film (and I haven't even seen it yet).

Books get inside the psyche of characters in a manner that film is incapable because of the limitations of narration. Even the best acting can't match a well-written description of a character's inner workings. I absolutely love a good movie, but a good book is always better.

Tom Clancy's books are too good for movie adaptations...

the worst movie based on a book I've ever seen was The Golden Compass. It was disgusting. A perversion of a beautiful book.

As I'm an avid reader I've run into this several times.

The worst example that I've seen was Dune. This was a great read but I hardly recognized the book in the movie. The producers seemed more concerned with the special affects than the story.

The movie that most closely follows the book that it was based on was the made for TV mini-series, Lonesome Dove. The book, by Larry McMurtry, was terrific. This in spite of the fact that cowboy books aren't my normal fare. I thought the movie was just as good. It's one of my favorites. In many places, even the dialogue matches.

The talent to bring a book alive in a screenplay, to paint the same story on a different kind of canvas, is the same one required to write the tale to begin with.

My friend read Twilight, and she says it's pretty lame.

Books marketed towards young adults/teens are usually lame.

I think the fact that the movie take out certain parts out of the movie that were in the book, plus most movies that were created from books, don't go in the order the book goes making most fans disappointed

I think it largely depends on the director's vision, the actor's portrayals, and the viewer's expectations.

Depends on what they do with the short story, for example A Sound of Thunder was made from the short story by Ray Bradbury but they didn't have enough plot to cover the movie they made. The stuff they added detract from the focus of the story and weakened the impact it had.

OTOH the movie that was made from Johnny Mnemonic the short story by William Gibson had all the right elements to make the story come alive as much did in the book.

Reason: they have to leave things out to fit it into a three hour screen play. If they actually stayed true to the book and put out a sixteen hour movie nobody would want to sit through that marathon. Now for those of us who have read the book and grown fond of these intricacies in the plot, we will always consider it a travesty when they leave out that part that, in are opinion, is far to important to the story-line to be ignored.

Because Twilight was a lame book in the first place.

short stories make the best movies, in my opinion. they usually have a good amount of content to draw from and don't get too in depth into certain aspects that are difficult to films.

One short story I would love to see turned into a movie is "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster.

(you can read it here: http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/prajlich/forster.html )

Video games can become even better movies..
Novels can become great films, its just dialogue of the actor, and what the actor has to do with the movies, the sound effects, the right scenes...a video game can be easily be made into movies, just convert the software into movie material and actors should be already there for the voices....A suggested assortment of video games that I recommend to be made into movies: Fallout 3, resistance 2, gears of war 2, Super smash bros brawl(SSBB), Crash Twinsanity, and tekken 5 dark ressurection...

heres a few

james bond was a book
lord of the rings
bully
the bourne identity series
...