Movie before book? Or book, before movie?

[temporus]

Books are not movies; movies are not books.  This seems rather simple, almost obvious.  Yet the two forms are intertwined, because we are constantly making books into movies, and often adapting movies into books.  And because one form is different than the other, there are almost always going to be discussions, disagreements, flat out arguments even, over which is better: the book or the movie.  Typically, if the book came out first, there will be cadres of people decrying that the movie wasn't true to the book. 

But I return to my opening thesis: books are not movies are not books.  They aren't apples and oranges, not so different that the points of similarity are superficial.  More like apples and pears.  In many ways similar, yet still different to the palate.  When adapting from one form to the other, there have to be changes.  What you can do in a novel, you don't have the room to do in a movie.   What you can do with one amazing establishing shot can seem impossible to do in a novel.  Pictures aren't simply worth a thousand words, they can be worth an infinite number, or none at all.  I don't think five pages of description in a novel would ever give you the feeling you got the first time, sitting in the theatre, you felt in your gut when that star destroyer flies overhead in the opening to Star Wars: A New Hope.   This isn't to say a good author can't make you feel awe.  Of course they can.  But they have to approach it in different ways.

Which is why I don't mind when movies don't turn out to be perfect transliterations of books.  I don't want them to be mere copies; I expect them to be transformations.  I expect them to gather up the experience that occurs primarily in the mind's eye, a cerebral pursuit, and convert them into an audio visual experience that is representative of the original art, reflective of it, not a shadow of it. 

Which brings me to the question within the title, in a rather round-about way.  I have a quirk, one that has in the past proved a tad annoying to my wife (particularly when the Harry Potter books and movies were first coming out), but which in general I try to stand by.  When I know a movie is coming out, particularly one I intend to see but I have not yet read the work in question, I prefer to see the movie first.

Did I hear you gasp?  Yes, I said it.  I prefer to see the movie before reading the book.  It's a preference I flipped on completely.  I recall being a child, and reading the novel E.T. while in the theatre as the previews were running, even into the opening credits of the movie.  I remember having finished Jurassic Park not long before going out to see that movie in the theater, a veritable race against the clock to see if I could finish reading the book before the movie hit the local theaters.  Over the course of the years, I came to the conclusion that movies, being the shorter experience, worked better when I came to the fresh.  With little or no preconceptions.  When I come into a movie with no expectations, the chances for disappointment are substantially reduced.   With no expectations, I can judge whether the $10 and two hours was worth it solely on the merits of the piece of art in front of me.  The acting, direction, effects, costuming, camerawork, etc, etc.   It stands alone, and works because the people behind it made it work or fails because they didn't manage to pull it all together.  But it isn't being held up to a standard based upon a different experience.   One that I know full well will never be transferable to the silver screen.

Now, there's a price I pay for having this attitude, which is: sometimes the movie will affect me so that when I read, I will hear the voices of the actors, and the characters imagined will look like them too, instead of bringing with me my own "casting".  That can be mitigated with time, of course, if I wait a year or two, I might be able to enter the book a bit closer to tabula rasa.  But it's no guarantee.  And of course, if there's a gimmick, a twist or major surprise, well then I would have it spoiled.  Of course, my personal belief is that no story should only work, or only be enjoyable because of a twist ending or sudden surprise.  My opinion is that the mark of great stories is that even knowing the twists and turns, you feel yourself so drawn in by the work that you still jump, or laugh, or cry at all the right moments.  A second, or third reading, should provide enjoyment.

So, for those of you who bothered to slog through all that, tell me: which do you prefer to experience first?  The book?  Or the movie?