From book to film and back again

The disadvantage of showing a film for students starting at 8 p.m. is that I get all keyed up keeping myself awake to drive home in the middle of the night and then I can't calm down enough to fall asleep easily, so good thing I don't have to teach this morning. On the other hand, the great thing about showing a film for students is hearing their spontaneous responses: 

"That's not how it happened in the book!" 

"Why did they change that scene?" 

"They left out the best part!" 

"Too much emphasis on the romance."

And my favorite: "Where's the bear? It's not Cold Mountain without the bear!"

I've been teaching Cold Mountain in my Honors Odysseys class for years but I've never shown the whole film in class for the very reasons mentioned above. This year's group really wanted to see it, though, so I arranged an out-of-class showing, and while they enjoyed the film as a film, they agreed that it leaves out much of what gives the novel depth: the philosophical musings about the problem of pain, the painstakingly slow development of characters over time, the preacher's brief but compelling moment of redemption, and, of course, the bear.

Meanwhile, in my comedy class yesterday we were discussing the small chunk of Don Quixote I'd assigned (and it appeared that most of the students had read at least some of it), so I showed the tilting-at-windmills clip from Man of La Mancha. I was surprised to learn that none of my students had ever seen or heard of the film, although I probably shouldn't be surprised since it hasn't aged particularly well. I took along my Don Quixote and Sancho Panza figurines to serve as our inspiration and started the discussion by pointing out that the pedestals the characters stand on are shaped like books, which led smoothly into a discussion of metafiction that eventually sparked the question, "If reading books can drive people crazy, what are we doing here?"

What I'm doing here today is sitting around in my pajamas long past the time when I'm usually in class and then donning my rusty English Prof armor to do battle with a pile of student papers.(If I ever follow Don Quixote over the edge into insanity, don't blame the books--blame the student papers.)