MovieChat Forums > Endless Love (2014) Discussion > Has anybody read the book??!! Holy moly....

Has anybody read the book??!! Holy moly...

posted 11 years ago by jojove3
30 replies | jump to latest

If this is gonna be PG-13 then they might as well have made a whole other movie with a different title and called it a day.

Honestly, I don't think anyone remembers the 80's movie with Brooks Shields which is why the filmmakers are going to get away with straying so far from the source material.

I kind of understand why Pettyfer didn't go for Fifty Shades of Schlock because this is a teen version.

The obsession that the dude has for the girl is totally CRAZY. I guess the movie won't go that far in expressing that level obsession. This is all speculation of course. I remember the book and the film were really close in portraying the lengths he went to to get the girl/Jade and be with her. It was so claustrophic almost like no one existed but those two crazy kids. I was a preteen/teenager when I read the book and I can't tell you how it was a deliciously graphic read at that age. Me and a friend obsessed over reading that novel! Talk about having certain pages and passages marked...yep.

Anyway the cast looks great (Bruce Greenwood? Joely Richardson? Robert Patrick?) I'd check it out but it looks so shiny and pretty, not at all like the gritty messy world that obsessive love and sex exists within.

Tesla WAS ROBBED!!!!

[–] Connie_n_Raymond_Marble 11 years ago

This dog of a movie has nothing to do with novel. Scott Spencer is already bashing it.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/09/10/spoiler-alert/

Sorry, don't know how to make it clickable.

We'll see whose the filthiest person alive! We'll just see!

[–] BoSoxRule 11 years ago

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/09/10/spoiler-alert/

There ya go.

I'm happiest...in the saddle.

[–] cookiela2001 11 years ago

Oh crap....

[–] jojove3 11 years ago

WOW!! I'd do better to re-read the book in this case, preferably the one without that slick updated cover not that it matters. That sucks for him but is so common.

Tesla WAS ROBBED!!!!

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] joan6350 11 years ago

I'm not surprised.

[–] petrapinezic 11 years ago

I'm reading book right now, I'm on the half and it looks nothing like this movie. But, hey, maybe this movie will be good on another level. And I read what writer said and I'm sad he don't like the scrip, but he aready sold the movie rights.

[–] jojove3 11 years ago

Let me know what you thought of the book. I haven't read it in YEARS. I'm sure my impressions of it if I read it now would be totally different. I'm no longer a teenager and look back on that sort of over the top angst would be interesting, I think. I didn't even know the writer went on to write more books and win things after he penned EL.

Not surprised he got screwed by Hollywood either. Always painful to see your work get butchered especially as a writer.

Again, the movie doesnt' even look as if its attempting to capture the mood/tone of the book. It looks as if it's another generic teen romance. Ugh.

Tesla WAS ROBBED!!!!

[–] BoSoxRule 11 years ago

I actually read the book fairly recently and loved it. Pretty dark stuff, not at all like this schlock of a movie.

I'm happiest...in the saddle.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] kimdragonchild 11 years ago

I read the book over 20 years ago, but had no interest in seeing the movie. I actually thought liked the book at the time. Of course reading it now I might have a totally different opinion.

I just don't want to hear that song again. Ever.

http://jerzygirl45.wordpress.com/

[–] ecjones1951 11 years ago

I loved the book so much, and knew how different (and apparently awful) the 1981 movie version was from it, that I didn't watch the movie until just a couple of months ago. Ugh. No wonder Scott Spencer is bitter, although he freely acknowledges there was no gun to his head when he sold the movie rights to his novel away forever. I'm sure he feels the same way about the Jennifer Connelly/Billy Crudup movie version of Waking the Dead. This is my favorite of all his novels; I've read it many times and love the humor, his gift for writing female characters especially, and his ability to write about obsession in a way that doesn't make it sound creepy, or disturbing or deviant, but like passion and desire run amok, which it can very often be.

For some reason, even books that can be turned into good screenplays aren't always, and the movies made from these lousy scripts are lousy, too. Scott Spencer is finding this out for the third time. Movies made from novels like his always seem to fail for the same reasons. The filmmakers ignore the structure of the novel; for example, events in the movie Endless Love unfold in chronological order, but they move back and forth through time in the novel, for a reason. Filmmakers will decide to strip away subtlety and nuance, and reduce nicely fleshed out supporting characters to one dimensional plot devices. Then they ignore physical descriptions of the characters that the novelist also employed for a reason. Jade Butterfield is not beautiful in the novel, and David is barely old enough to shave, but they wouldn't be the attractive (and consenting age) couple Zeffirelli needed to fill theater seats, and to have Lionel Richie celebrate in a dreadfully vacuous theme song.

[–] Snarky247 11 years ago

Amazing, beautiful book...which has now spawned two crap movies and one of the worst songs EVER.
Scott Spencer, my heart aches for you.

[–] ecjones1951 11 years ago

[–] Steppy412 11 years ago

I don't remember the original movie, but reading about the book makes me think of that movie with Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon - Fear?
Sounds creepy.

[–] Darvidd 11 years ago

Two words-'Wuthering Heights'.

'What is an Oprah?'-Teal'c.

[–] jojove3 11 years ago

So book is pronographic-ish?

"pronographic-ish" is a word???!!

Tesla WAS ROBBED!!!!

[–] mattfoley_motivational_s 11 years ago

"Endless Love" was one of the few fiction books I've ever read. I read it after I saw the Brook Shields movie. The book was boring and a real waste of my time. It lacked the truly passionate aspects and agony associated with a real endless love. The Shields movie was good to a certain extent but was bogged down with a labored attempt to try and stay close to the book which in of itself was a mistake.

[–] BoSoxRule 11 years ago

"The book was boring and a real waste of my time."

Well, I think you're alone in that opinion, my friend.

I'm happiest...in the saddle.

[–] mattfoley_motivational_s 11 years ago

Totally alone? You don't think I can find someone else who found that massive book boring?

[–] Sofistali 11 years ago

Anyone who read it expecting a love story was undoubtedly traumatized. I read it at 15 after seeing the 80s movie, and the movie faded from my mind like a candle next to a forest fire. That book is scorching, and I don't mean in a sexy way. I mean in an aggressively heart-wrenching way. I re-read it again a few years ago and it's even more of a punch in the chest now that I understand it better.

There's so much more to it... shoot, just the politics of the parents (both sets) are a snapshot of America in the 1960s, and David and Jade are almost more victims of their parents social and political experiments and disappointments than anything else. David's despair by the end of it made me feel like my heart had been burned out, although he was a spoiled little snot through out it, but it's so thoroughly to be expected, given his age and his homelife... and Jade was clearly damaged by her parents' self-absorbed, narcissistic lifestyle...

And those years in the mental institution. YEARS.

Geez, it's like whoever wrote the script glanced over the book and all they could remember is that there was sex and a housefire.

[–] mattfoley_motivational_s 11 years ago

Sofistali,

I think that pretty much defines my thoughts and expectations of the film and the book.

My feelings about the book are that instead of a love story, we got a traumatizing drama that bears little resemblance to a love story but instead more of a diary of a sociopath.