When is the Movie Better Than the Book?

Well, for my 40th birthday last month my wife did not get me a Ferrari (do they even make those in an automatic transmission?) but she did get me something almost as good: a rare, perfect condition, first edition copy of Cameron Crowe's 1981 book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story.  For those of you like me, who didn't know at least until pretty recently, that this was a book before it was a movie, let me tell you that it was a book before it was a movie.  That's right, before Cameron Crowe made the film that launched the careers of not one not two not three but four, yes four academy award best actor/actress nominees (three have won the award), he wrote a book that was based on his experiences as a 22 year old impersonating a high school senior for an entire year at an actual high school in Redondo Beach.  The principal only let him do it because Crowe knew Kris Kristofferson, who apparently the principal was very fond of, and only a few teachers were in on the plot.  Anyway, once I found out the thing had been a book before it was a movie, I knew I had to get it, and my wife, bless her heart, obliged.

The thing is that Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the book, is no Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the movie.  It's fine, and maybe if I had read the book before having seen the movie 14 times and before the movie permanently imprinted itself upon my consciousness, I would have loved reading the book.  But as it is, I find it interesting because of course I'm comparing it with the movie, but not any sort of great piece of even kitschy literature.  This "movie better than the book" thing, of course, is pretty rare.  Anyone who knows anything knows that you're always supposed to say that the book is better than the movie.  And indeed, it's almost always true.  Just looking at my bookshelf here, I realize that even some really good movies that came from books, like Trainspotting for example, were better books.  But from time to time there must be books that became better when they were turned into movies.  I'm thinking off the top of my head of "Election," which I liked as a book but loved as a movie.  So my question for you is: name one or more movies that were better than the books they came from.  Or, if you'd prefer not to do that, then don't.

Now, lest you think that this post has nothing to do with the law, let me just use this whole discussion to pathetically segue into announcing that my book Holy Hullabaloos is now available from Amazon.  I assure you that when this does get turned into a movie starring Steve Buscemi as me and Seth Rogen as the cell-phone-using-cigarette-smoking-motorcycle-accident-recovering-from-hatless Amish guy I talked to in New Glarus (home of the famous Yoder case), it will be much better than the book.  But since that won't be out until 2012 or perhaps sometime later than that, like never, maybe you'd like to purchase the book that Christopher Buckley, author of Supreme Courtship, has called "the sharpest, the most insightful, the most side-splittingly funny book on law since--Supreme Courtship."