The Chicken or the Egg?

Are you the type of person who will read a book, then see the movie?  Or, do you just read the book, knowing that the big screen version would never measure up?  Or, do you prefer watching the film and forgetting about the existence of the book, assuming you knew there was an associated tome to this magic you experience on the silver screen?  To answer this honestly is as pertinent as the significance of the quintessential, life-long, probing question of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

These are the tough questions in life and the most difficult to be honest with yourself about.  Your retort enables others to honestly evaluate, appraise and assess your whole reason for being and could effect the long-term existence of your friendships, and in some cases the conjugal bliss and harmony you are currently experiencing.  Nothing is worse on a relationship than one person reading the book and their cohort preferring to go straight to the movies or to video.

As long as there has been sliced bread, folks have been arguing that if you read the book prior to viewing the movie, there will be large, significant sequences left out and characters don’t have the depth, the look nor the charm and appeal your mind vividly fantasized them having when interpreting the written word.  If you haven’t read the book and see the movie you won’t know any better and will probably enjoy the show at face value.  Watching the movie first, craving more and devouring the book is a risk.  You have a preconceived notion of what should be (if they show it on the screen, it must be real) and then as you take the journey through the pages and the story doesn’t unfold as neatly as Hollywood sees it, you could become disturbed, distraught and downright despondent with the unfulfillment that swells in your bosom and wildly beats within your heart (I am contemplating becoming a lurid romance writer).

Although book sales are still a bustling business, the instant gratification of a motion picture, a soda and popcorn (free refills if you buy the large) – and maybe one of the curiously expensive boxes of candy – lures even the strongest-willed individual.  Once in its clutches, the movie house patron sits alone in the dark, yet strangely connected to the others.  A stifled laugh, a nervous titter, a panicked breath brought on by a bigger-than-life expose unites the patrons unlike any other event.  Other than the occasional latecomer or kid that whacks your legs when they rush out in need of the facilities, the cocoon that envelops the moviegoer is a warm, sacred place.

Yet, a book will allow its reader access to their own imagination – a rare commodity today.  The freedom to wander across the pages is irrepressible and can grab onto a person, not let them go and deposit them on the other side.  A book becomes a constant companion – you fall asleep next to them, you travel with them and they go where no man has ever been permitted to go before.  Books are faithful friends and will stay with you for a long time.  How is it that reading funny little typed words can evoke such powerful emotions and feelings?

So, we are back to the chicken and egg again.  It is a bigger question than we have time to answer here.  There may not be a right or wrong answer, just a preference of interpretation and wonderment.  Me?  Well, I just am nosey enough to speculate how a hunka-hunka burning love Hollywood superstar portrays that particular character in the book that I can’t seem to get a handle on.  I call it research, my love muffin calls it something else (obsession perhaps?) and it is all for the good of entertainment.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-