What adaptation altered your opinion of its source material?

This week’s question comes from reader Joe DeCarolis:
Have any adaptations significantly altered your opinion of the source material?
Alex McCown
Madeleine Peyroux’s 2004 album Careless Love was one of my favorite records of that year, her almost supernaturally good voice turning a collection of covers into wholly different beasts than their original forms. In particular, her version of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” has always caused me to freeze whatever I’m doing and listen. (I distinctly recall pulling over to the side of the road in Minneapolis one day, worried I was going to burst into tears and subsequently plunge into oncoming traffic, just because the song came on the radio.) It made me revisit Dylan’s song, one that had been among my least favorite tunes from Blood On The Tracks, and appreciate its profound emotional depth with fresh ears. I love covers that revitalize the source material by revealing musical elements previously unnoticed, and Peyroux’s jazzy arrangements are a note-perfect example. Thanks, Madeleine.
Erik Adams
When I revisited Chris and Paul Weitz’s screen version of About A Boy for a Hear This piece this past December, it had been several years since I’d seen the film—and even longer since I’d read the novel by Nick Hornby. Fresher in my mind were the first few episodes of NBC’s short-lived take on the material, an Americanized spin that glances off the surface of Hornby’s book and distills the major events of the movie into its pilot episode. In doing so, the sitcom sacrifices the device that made its inspirations novel: The dueling first-person perspectives of laddish bachelor Will Freeman and the precocious schoolyard outcast he unwittingly takes under his wing, Marcus Brewer. The twin POVs give the book an intriguing edge of unreliable narration, while their cinematic counterparts actually manage to add to (rather than detract from) the onscreen action. Closing the window to Will and Marcus’ minds makes the first two About A Boys look all the more impressive for what they do and don’t let through that window.