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In this corner: the Book. A collection of words that represent ideas when filtered through the lexical systems in a human brain. From clay tablets to bound collections of wood pulp to units of stored data, the book has been around in one format or another for some 3,800 years.

And in this corner: the Movie. A 112-year-old kid born in France to a guy named Lumiere and raised primarily in Hollywood by his uncle Charlie "the Tramp" Chaplin. This young upstart has quickly made a huge impact on society, rapidly becoming the most financially lucrative form of storytelling in the modern world.

Both square off in the ring again as Box Office Prophets presents another round of Book vs. Film.

Yes Man

London-dwelling 32-year-old Danny Wallace is a Scottish humorist who has met with considerable success in the U.K. The author of such books as How to Start Your Own Country, Join Me and Random Acts of Kindness has also worked extensively with the BBC both on TV and radio. The prolific humorist also does a great deal of work online. As popular as he is overseas, Wallace has yet to reach a very wide audience in the US. That's about to change as Wallace's autobiographical nonfiction book Yes Man gets an Americanized Hollywood film treatment in a big budget, big release movie starring Jim Carrey. How does the autobiographical work of an idiosyncratic Scottish humorist stand up to a mega-market Hollywood mutation?





The Book

On the very surface of things, Yes Man is yet another in a growing line of autobiographical one year-long project books. It's a weird sub-genre of nonfiction wherein the author agrees to do something somewhat restrictive for an entire year. In 2001, Kevin Murphy agreed to watch a film in a theater every day of the year for his book A Year At The Movies. In 2004, Julie Powell spent a year making every recipe from a Julia Child cookbook and out came Julie & Julia. More recently, A. J. Jacobs spent a year following the Bible as closely as possible, resulting in The Year of Living Biblically. With Yes Man, Danny Wallace chose a relatively simple year-long project that nonetheless ended-up effecting his year in a very invasive way. During a casual conversation on a London bus, a stranger told Wallace to say yes more often. Wallace took the offhanded comment to heart and decided to spend a year saying only yes to every single question posed to him.

The project ends up guiding Wallace through a series of gradually more and more difficult series of yeses that have bigger and bigger effects on his life. From agreeing to a service he doesn't need from a telemarketer to paying for round trip airfare from Australia to the UK for a woman he's attracted to, Wallace's yeses take him from casual freelance work with BBC radio to a substantial promotion working as a producer with BBC TV. There are a few negative effects that result from some of his yeses. He has some of his first experiences with narcotics through saying yes. He gets alarmingly close to being ripped-off by Internet scams simple better judgment would have normally steered him away from. The overall effect of the project on Wallace's life is generally quite good. While not specifically designed as an inspirational book, (the US publisher categorizes Yes Man under, "humor,") the overall theme here revolves around the power of positivity. Thankfully, Wallace's writing style comes across with far more heartfelt and honest conviction than most inspirational writing ever manages. Yes Man ends up being sort of an inspirational book for people who normally wouldn't dream of venturing into the self-help section of a bookstore - a positive message that is effectively delivered by what appears to be Wallace's genuine desire to change his own life.

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