What’s Your Favorite Book Moment on TV?
Jeff VanderMeer • March 19th, 2009 @ 8:09 am • Uncategorized
Here’s one of mine. What’s yours?
Jeff
Jeff VanderMeer
Ecstatic Days 
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March 19, 2009 at 9:03 am
“This video is not available in your country.”
March 19, 2009 at 9:18 am
Yes, because YOUR country produced Black Books so YOU don’t get to watch it. You Manchester devil, you.
March 19, 2009 at 11:15 am
Hmm, that’s odd, there’s enough UK TV there already. Must be because it’s on DVD here.
March 19, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Not exactly a ‘book’ moment, but this always makes me giggle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLoVF7vcBtY
March 19, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I can’t see it either :(
March 19, 2009 at 2:32 pm
you poor british bastard. that’s what u get for taxing us back in the day. I will re-enact the clip with toe puppets shortly.
March 19, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Easy.
Cheers: I’m Getting My Act Together and Sticking it in Your Face
Frasier reinterprets Charles Dickens for the Cheers audience.
March 19, 2009 at 6:17 pm
We had to tax you back in the day in anticipation for all the crap your banks would get the rest of the world in today :)
Looking forward to the toe puppets but please wash your feet first…
March 20, 2009 at 8:34 am
Quite a few on LOST…constant refererences to ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (the book not the movie); Vonnegut’s books everywhere; Watership Down…I suspect that the show is bankrolled by sinister groups out to make more people read (if for no other reason than to enable greater enjoyment of book-on-show easter egg).
Unrelated: If (?) they ever make a Jeff Vandermeer movie of tv series, would Vincent D’onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) play you? A friend noted that he resembles you (?) after sent said friend to this site. BIGGER QUESTION: Can he play a new weird writer?
March 20, 2009 at 8:47 am
Probably that episode of The Simpsons where Christopher Walken entertains children with a reading of Goodnight Moon.
“Goodnight…room.
GoodNIGHT…MOON.
Goodnight – Cow…jumpingoverthemoon.
Children, please…scooch closer. Don’t make me tell you again,…about the scooching.”
March 20, 2009 at 9:00 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob37KzlUEPA
March 20, 2009 at 11:35 am
D’onofrio can definitely play weird. And I mean that in a good way.
I can’t see any of the videos while I’m at work because our computers have some “safety” block, or filter, whatever you call it. So I hope I’m not repeating anyone when I say that “House” has had at least two references to Sherlock Holmes. Once, in the background, we see an apartment with 221B on the door. Another time, House almost resorts to morphine until a new, exciting case takes his mind off his injury, which is what happened to Holmes in The Sign of the Four.
March 20, 2009 at 11:41 am
Er…uh, I mean, who’s got time to watch TV? I’m too busy working on my synopsis!
March 20, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Vincent D’Onofrio already played a fantasy writer when he portrayed Robert E Howard in The Whole Wide World.
March 20, 2009 at 1:28 pm
John, I didn’t know that. Cool. Of course, he also played the broken-necked revenant in Men In Black.
Hey, I’ve been meaning to tell you, you’re a top notch artist!
March 20, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I loved the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is ostracized for hating the movie adaptation of The English Patient (http://tinyurl.com/englishpatient). Not a book moment per se, but I identified strongly because I hated the Ondaatje book on which the movie was based, much to the consternation of some of my literary friends. I hated it so much I won’t give Ondaatje another chance, though some friends have told me In the Skin of a Lion is much better.
March 20, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Thanks Bill. :)
My favourite book moment on TV was from a long-running UK programme (we don’t call them shows here), Jackanory, which used to feature a different actor each week (many of whom are very famous now) reading an abridged version of a children’s novel direct to camera over five consecutive days. Nothing else aside from some occasional illustrations. Very primitive TV but very compelling and my favourite one of all was some actor whose identity continues to elude me reading The Wizard of Earthsea which was my first introduction to that book. Some guy dressed in black sat in a medieval chair. It knocked me for six and I quickly sought out the book afterwards.
The BBC used to repeat those programmes now and then and I remember seeing that one at least twice. In those days we only had three TV channels and one of those never broadcast anything for kids in the early 1970s. As a consequence whatever was broadcast had a huge audience. The Wizard of Earthsea features a school for wizards; JK Rowling is a couple of years younger than me. Just sayin’….
March 21, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Rowling’s nicked somethin’ from the telly, then?
March 21, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Well…. Plenty of people other than myself have pointed out the similarity between the HP novels and other books, Ursula K LeGuin has noted it herself, as I recall. I wouldn’t say JKR swiped from Earthsea, merely noting that LeGuin’s book was placed before millions of British kids during that period; they didn’t have to be big readers or even read at all to absorb the stories. This is all academic now but I point it out because this small detail is either forgotten or unknown by people looking to trace Rowling’s influences.
March 21, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Er…that should be Le Guin…
March 23, 2009 at 6:51 am
When they are packing up the Bartlet family’s things at the end of The West Wing, the prominence of Society Must be Defended, a volume of Foucault’s lectures from the Collège de France.