> I don't agree. Books and movies are completely different mediums,
> and what works well in one may not work well in another. Some books
> translate well to the screen, while others don't. Personally,
> I think faithfulness to source material is irrelevant. I want
> a good movie. Faithful adaptations can be good or bad. Unfaithful
> adaptations can be good or bad. The best adaptations are the
> ones that make ample and artistic use of the cinematic medium --
> whether that turns out to be faithful or not.

I disagree. If you're going to adapt a book unfaithfully, it's time to change the name. Too often, it seems, some poor (and possibly dead) author is ripped off so that something vaguely approximating their story with the guts ripped out is paraded around with their name stamped onto it for the purpose of selling more tickets.

Obviously, there are going to have to be -some- changes... as you said, the media are just too different. And even if they weren't, even a short book ends up being a very long movie - material has to be cut. But that's not necessarily being unfaithful to the story; there are usually a few details that can be changed while keeping the overall story the same. If you're going to go farther than that and put a different story on the screen than the one the author wrote, why aren't you just writing your own story to begin with?