At least I never bought a plastic lightsaber

I'm flying to Florida tomorrow and will have ample reading time, so I went to the bookstore to buy “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. At the checkout counter, the clerk asked if I was buying the book because I saw the movie. He wasn’t being a jerk about it; it was just bookstore small talk.

“Well,” I said, without thinking about it, “I had heard good things for a while, but the movie finally spurred me on.”

...which is a total lie. I hadn’t even heard of the book or its author until the movie came out -- and yes, I do think that’s kind of pathetic, especially considering my profession. The guy behind the counter doesn’t know what I do for a living, though, so why that answer? It just popped out. Clearly, somewhere inside of me, I consider it shameful to buy a book after seeing a movie -- even such an excellent, well-crafted movie such as “Capote.”

Is this rational? In a very high-falutin’, snobby bourgeois way, I suppose. Movies create herds of mindless followers -- people buying toys or books, children flushing fish down the toilet, pinot noir flying off the shelves -- and who wants to think of themselves as a follower? It's embarassing to admit a movie caused me to do something -- even though, come to think of it, the very presence of the movie caused me to buy a ticket to the movie, and the herd of people who went to see the movie is surely larger than the herd of people who then bought the book. And hey, what’s the harm if a movie can reach a wide audience and uses its leverage to revive interest in a book such as “In Cold Blood”? Maybe I'm being too uppity. But I guarantee, if someone on the plane asks me if I got the book because I saw the movie, I'll probably say no. Go figure.

Posted by Jason Feifer at November 21, 2005 12:48 PM