Great Book, Bad MovieHow Hollywood ruins novels.

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Lest the reader think I'm comparing apples to oranges—an art house auteur's work to a big time Oscar-baiter—note that Mishima was produced by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. It was released in 1985, and the great run of 1970s American film culture was just coming to an end. Ironically, it was partly Lucas' Star Wars franchise that proved how lucrative giving the people what they want, repeatedly, could be. The mainstream art movie became a duty, useful mostly for picking up golden statuary. Regretting the lost golden age of movies won't bring it back. But I hope that the directors and producers who aspire to some more-elevated renown will do the culturally appropriate thing: put down that Penguin Classic and pick up a movie.

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