Book vs. Movie
The Taking of Pelham 123
By Russ Bickerstaff
June 15, 2009
Book Vs. Movie Vs. Movie: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
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.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Morton Freedgood was a New York native who worked for the film industry on the east coast in the early part of the 20th century. He'd been a PR guy for 20th Century Fox, Paramount and United Artists, among others. You don't become famous as a PR guy, though . . . Freedgood is better known as author and novelist John Godey, who had his most prominent success with a novel about the hijacking of a New York metro train in 1973. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three quickly became a bestseller. The following year, United Artists released a film adaptation of the novel directed by Joseph Sargent starring Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau. About ten years ago, there was a made for TV remake of the movie starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Edward James Olmos. This summer, Sony Pictures releases a new re-make of the film adaptation starring John Travolta and Denzel Washington. How does the book compare with either of the theatrical release movies? Good question . . .
(Regrettably, I haven't been able to track down a copy of the Olmos/D'Onofrio version, which is probably just as well. If I'd done so, this would've turned into a Book vs. Movie vs. Movie vs. Movie column . . . which would just be silly . . . )
The Book
Freedgood/Godey's story is a dark and gritty 1973 crime novel. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is not nearly as polished as the work of towering legends of crime fiction like Dashell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon.) What Freedgood/Godey's novel lacks in polish, it more than makes up for in sheer, darkly realistic brutality. Its darkness doesn't come from the surreal landscapes of human imagination fueled by inhuman need (as in Burroughs Naked Lunch from 1959) or in the darkness of a single person losing his compassion to society's inhuman superficiality (as in Ellis' American Psycho from 1991) but is every bit as dark and disturbing as either of these books. The novel relates the tale of a simple hijacking of a New York metro train in the interest of getting $1 million in cash (this was 1973, remember?) from the city of New York.
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