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Every month, The State of Things hosts a conversation about a topic in film. Host Frank Stasio talks with Laura Boyes, film curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and Marsha Gordon, film professor at North Carolina State University. And we want to hear from you. Submit your choices by email or tweet us with #SOTMovies.

Movies On The Radio: Which Is Better- The Book Or The Movie?

The Great Gatsby movie set
Wikimedia

  The Hunger Games. Harry Potter. The Great Gatsby. Blockbuster films or popular literature? Do you ever walk out of the movie theater and hear, "The book was so much better than the movie."? Or do you prefer the silver screen adaptation of your favorite novel? Turning a book into a movie poses all sorts of challenges.

Marsha Gordon, film professor at North Carolina State University and Laura Boyes, film curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, return to The State of Things to talk with host Frank Stasio about literary adaptations in film.

The North Carolina Museum of Art will show two adaptations of The Talented Mr. Ripley. The first is Purple Noon on May 2 at 8pm and the second is the 1999 version, The Talented Mr. Ripley, on May 9 at 8pm. 

'Nobody ever sets out to make a bad film. The people who work on these disastrous films from great novels think that they are doing everyone a service by bringing it onto the screen but there's this confluence of audience and product that creates this magical space where some things work and some things don't.' - Laura Boyes, North Carolina Museum of Art film curator

Laura Lee was the managing editor of The State of Things until mid February 2017. Born and raised in Monroe, North Carolina, Laura returned to the Old North state in 2013 after several years in Washington, DC. She received her B.A. in political science and international studies from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2002 and her J.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law in 2007.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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