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CanLit Not Just For Reading Anymore

By Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

2006_10_31jpod.jpgHmm, maybe the CBC finally came to its senses and realized that reality shows like the Dragon’s Den and the One are about as good an idea as “Nuts and Gum”. Well, the Ceeb has agreed to develop tv movies and mini-series based on works of Canadian literature.
Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, Mordecai Richler’s St. Urbain’s Horseman and Barney’s Version and Douglas Coupland’s jPod are some of the books on deck for adaptation.
Chances are these films won’t be the runaway successes of the Anne of Green Gables and Avonlea series but if they pick the right books (and there are a lot of them out there) the CBC might just do ok.
Thanks Bookninja for the link.

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  • http://www.mathewkumar.com mathew

    jPod is so bad I’d like to kick Douglas Coupland in the dick.

  • http://www.imaginingtoronto.com Amy Lavender Harris

    Sigh. The CBC must really be in the doldrums to dredge up this idea again. Every decade or so the CBC ‘discovers’ the cinematic possibilities of Canadian literature and commissions and/or shows some tepid rendering of one novel or another. Think Atwood’s rather good novel Surfacing, made into a marginally passable film in 1981.
    I’m not sure whether the aim is to boost the CBC, or Canadian literature, or both. The problem is that such efforts rarely benefit either readers or watchers.
    I’d guess that the CBC has been told by its funding overlords to do this — the Canadian version of media convergence.
    Don’t get me wrong: I love good Canadian writing, of which there is plenty. I enjoy good films, too. But I do not think a network that so reliably misgauges the Canadian public’s interests and needs is likely to do anything other than, once again, turn boring but ‘important’ novels into painful cinematic marathons. Pretty soon we’ll be screaming for them to bring ‘The One’ back.
    [Having said that, I'd love to see a number of Toronto novels, particularly Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town or Darren O'Donnell's Your Secrets Sleep with Me, made into films.]

  • Little Boy Blue

    Douglas Copeland’s “work” is drivel, and would struggle to intellectually stimulate a child. It’s the literary equivalent of a “Thoughts of Edward Monkton” greeting card; quirky, but nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is.
    My big question is – how come no one has turned Michael Ondaatjie’s “In The Skin of a Lion” into a film? They turned The English Patient into a multi-award winner, and then overlook this gem, which personally I prefer (although I may be biased to its Toronto setting). If the CBC is looking to turn Canadian literature into films/mini-series, I can’t think of a book I’d rather see adapted.

  • Sidd Pitt

    I hope they adapt Graham Taylor’s ‘A Really Super Book About Squirrels’.

  • Karen

    Okay, I thought I was the only one who threw up all over myself after reading Douglas Coupland.

  • http://www.torontoist.com Boy Reporter

    Graham Taylor’s book is better suited to an NFB animated short don’t you think….

  • rek

    Coupland has signed on to write a scifi”>http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/007872.html>scifi series to premiere sometime next fall.
    In the same vein, I’d love to see Oryx & Crake on the small screen. Even a bad Earth: Final Conflict-quality adaptation.