Last night we were watching the special features on The Princess Bride DVD. (Did you know that André the Giant used to be driven to school by his neighbor, Samuel Beckett?) Deb asked if Chris and Susan Sarandon were related and so off to imdb. (Turns out they used to be married. Bonus trivia question: Chris S. was in another movie with a PB co-star. Name it for a Ishpoint!) Then we were curious as to what else Rob Reiner had directed. His latest project, as it turns out, is a romantic comedy based on a story by Dostoyevsky. "Out of all the Russians, Dostoyevsky is pretty much at the bottom of the barrel for romantic comedy sources" said Deb. But as it turns out, 90 movies have been made from Dostoyevsky's works. Tolstoy? 91. Gogol? 45. Pushkin? 54. Chekhov? A whopping 128.
Suddenly a new game is born! Find the authors with the most screen credits! We all know that the cultural relevance of an author is really measured by how many movies have been made from your books. All the arguments about the canon could be easily resolved by referring to the new Ishbadiddle / IMDB Author Relevance Index.
Can you beat these? More Ishpoints for any authors we've missed.
| Shakespeare | Samuel Beckett | Dickens | Tolstoy | Dostoyevsky | Brothers Grimm | Orwell | James Joyce | Oscar Wilde | Jules Verne | Lewis Carroll | Isaac Asimov | Kurt Vonnegut | Tolkien | Borges | Stephen King | Noel Coward | Ibsen | H.P. Lovecraft | H. Rider Haggard | Charlotte Brontė | Philip K. Dick |
Zane Grey: 111 (I think I get an Ish point for this one)
Emile Zola: 54
Samuel Beckett: 51
Tennessee Williams: 46
Sartre: 29
Euripides: 14
I think another level of analysis is needed: number of movies/years since original, which will certainly raise the ranks of 20th and 21st century writers. Also I notice alot of Baum's entries are straight to video. Puts him in the same catagory as the Olsen twins in my book.
Comment #3 :: link :: April 23, 2003 09:00 AMZane Gray made me think of Bret Harte, who has 43 to his name, and Jack London, with an impressive 89.
Comment #4 :: link :: April 23, 2003 09:00 AMJoseph Conrad 38
James Fenimore Cooper 35
Herman Wouk 11
Samuel Johnson ZERO!!
Some new ones:
Nathaniel Hawthorne: 30
Henry James: 54
Vonnegut: 12 (but also appears with Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School)
And of course, Ian Fleming: 33
Ursula Le Guin: 3
J.K. Rowling: 4
But how can we overlook Danielle Steel? She has 20. Trash on trash. Good fit.
A few others to add to the list...
J.G. Ballard: 9
Kenneth Grahame: 10
John Grisham: 11
Tom Clancy: 14
Maurice Leblanc: 16
Isaac Asimov: 20
A. A. Milne: 25
Wilkie Collins: 25
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: 28
F. Scott Fitzgerald: 31
Graham Greene: 43
Sidney Sheldon: 43
Rudyard Kipling: 44
Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra: 45
L. Ron Hubbard: 51 (um, although most seem to be Dianetics-related instructional videos)
Victor Hugo: 83
Oh, and an oddity I found: Salman Rushdie hasn't yet had a movie made out of any of his books, but he has appeard as himself in 6 films and 3 TV series.
Comment #9 :: link :: April 28, 2003 09:00 AMNice ones, Cebra! I added them in. Except L. Ron, for which the Scientologists may come after me, but instructional videos don't meet the spirit of the game. Plus Tom Clancy -- half of his are video games. Eh.
Comment #10 :: link :: April 28, 2003 09:00 AMPatricia Highsmith: 25
Selma Lagerlƶf: 30
Arthur Miller: 44
Astrid Lindgren: 59
