Found in Translation

(aka, “The Godfather Effect”)

It is nearly axiomatic that great novels often make lousy movies. But ever since Francis Ford Coppola turned Mario Puzo’s pulpy and meodramatic Mafia mayhem novel into one of the masterpieces of cinema, many of us (especially screenwriters) have become interested in finding out why crappy-to-middling original material is often better than a classic Russion doorstopper for translating to the screen.

Here’s a growing Clan list of story gems excavated in the process of transmedia translation: