I think we all know what I mean when I say “airport novels.” These are the books you buy not at the legitimate airport bookshops, but the ones you find down at your feet at the newsstand, just past the Jalapeño Bugles and the titillating bikini mags. These books are legitimate modern day pulp fiction, the shallow and wonderfully trashy bastions of disposable pop literature that feature twisted crime plots, grizzled detectives, swooning romance, and sometimes even straightforward smut. They are the junk food of the literary world. Quick, easy, not at all nutritionally sound, but capable of deeply satisfying the consumer. And, if you have the right constitution, they can actually sustain you for many years without too much bodily harm.
CraveOnline recently reviewed Denis Villeneuve’s new thriller Prisoners, likening it to an airport novel. Many films over the years have taken a similar approach to airport novel material. Take something pulpy and potboiler-ish, and gussy it up with a strong mood, good acting, and a modicum cinematic style. Some airport novels have actually been transformed into some rather great films. In this week’s edition of Top This, we’ll take a gander at the ten greatest Airport Novel Movies.
Put down the SkyMall, open that bag of Corn Nuts, and crack that binding.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
Top 10 Airport Novel Movies
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10. Patriot Games (1992)
Tom Clancy's CIA spook Jack Ryan has been a go-to pulp hero for filmmakers ever since 1990's The Hunt for Red October. Ben Affleck has also played Ryan, and Chris Pine will play him in the upcoming Shadow One. In Phillip Noyce's 1992 thriller Patriot Games, still probably the best Jack Ryan film, Harrison Ford brings a fatherly authority to Ryan, lending a political and dramatic weight to a story that is more-or-less thrill bait. Irish Nationals are out to kill Ryan's family. Plenty of shootouts and cover-ups abound.
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9. Double Jeopardy (1999)
The 1990s were a golden time for hardboiled crime stories featuring wrongfully accused citizens, and just as frequently, serial killers. Thanks to a few key films of the era, it almost seems like most of them starred Ashley Judd. Although not based on a novel, 1999's Double Jeopardy is probably the best of the Pulp Judd genre. Judd plays a housewife who is framed for the murder of her husband (Bruce Greenwood) and who must escape prison to exonerate herself. Tommy Lee Jones practically reprises his role from The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals, playing the cop on her tail.
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8. The Deep (1977)
Peter Benchley had a huge hit with his novel Jaws, and tried to repeat the formula in his book The Deep, about deep-sea treasure hunters. Peter Yates' film version of The Deep is pure pulp entertainment. Criminals, exotic locations, a low budget, and a story no one can remember. The most notable thing about The Deep is famously Jacqueline Bisset's see-through underwater white t-shirt. The Deep is the trashier distant cousin of Jaws.
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7. Flowers in the Attic (1987)
V.C. Andrews (or, as she's known these days “V.C. Andrews®”), wrote a long string of utterly lurid incest-laced familial torture dramas all about the Dollanganger siblings, starting in 1979. The books were not at all guarded about their incest fetish, glorifying the sexual tension between brother and sister to a notorious degree. The 1987 movie version starred a young Kristy Swanson as the pubescent Cathy and Louise Fletcher as the cruel warden-like grandmother who locked her in the attic. Ostensibly, the book is about longing for freedom. But we read it for the sex.
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6. The Notebook (2004)
Sometimes it's not thrills, intrigue, or sex, but romance that makes a good airport novel. Notoriously the film that every boyfriend in the world was dragged to, Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook (based on the novel by airport titan Nicholas Sparks) has become something of a romance legend, largely thanks to its shirtless Ryan Gosling, but also for its unapologetically melodramatic story. The film tells the tale of two parallel romances: One between the aged James Garner and Gena Rowlands, and a flashback romance with Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Dreamy, teary, weepy, sappy. It is all of those things and more.
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5. The Bourne Identity (2002)
Doug Liman's unexpected hit The Bourne Identity not only adapted pulp material to the big screen in a thrilling and effective way, but practically changed the landscape of action films for several years thereafter. Indeed, the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale looks more like Robert Ludlum's famed amnesiac hero than it does a James Bond film. Matt Damon plays a spy who wakes up in the ocean with no memory. From then on it's go-go-go trying to find what his identity is, and what he was doing when he lost it. Three sequels followed. It's such a simple airport scenario, I'm certain it's been used dozens of times before.
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4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Swedish pulp author Stieg Larsson became a household name in America when his book Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (re-titled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) became an unexpected hit. Although suffused with feminist commentary, Larsson's book was a potboiler through-and-through, with familial intrigue, infidelity, rape, revenge, and, yes, even a serial killer for good measure. The 2009 Swedish film version (not the crappier 2011 American remake) managed to capture every last bit of the novel's pulp thrills while still being a pretty darn good movie. Noomi Rapace played the titular Girl, and stole the show as a dejected bisexual Goth computer hacker with a violent streak.
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3. Get Shorty (1995)
Just a few short weeks ago, one of the titans of pulp fiction, Elmore Leonard, passed away, leaving a wondrous legacy of short stories and airport novels to contend with. Leonard wrote the stories of airport sleaze, but often went one step beyond, making the characters witty and funny. The best film to be adapted from his work is handily the 1995 showbiz drama Get Shorty, about a Miami loan shark who moves to Hollywood, and all too easily acclimates to L.A.'s film world. Witty, wry, funny, and a great movie about movies.
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2. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Jonathan Demme's truly excellent serial killer drama is just so damned good, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that it was based on what was essentially an airport novel by Thomas Harris. Serial killer? There are two. Crime? All over the place. Twisted sex? How does a severed-skin-based sex change strike you? Cannibalism? It's directly alluded to. A serial killer and a rookie Fed teaming up to catch another serial killer? Doesn't this sound like something that should be on TV? The Silence of the Lambs took all this lurid trash and pushed it into classic cinema territory, making for one of the best crime movies ever made.
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1. Anything Attached to John Grisham (1993 - 2003)
Ah John Grisham. How you once stood mightily astride popular culture like the great Colossus of Rhodes. There was a time when you couldn't go outside without hearing about the new Grisham novel, or the film based on it. Starting in 1993 with The Firm, and lasting strongly for a full decade and eight hit films, Grisham's lawyer-based entertainments were at the forefront of everything. All of his stories were the same: Young lawyer discovers conspiracy/injustice, people are assassinated, young lawyer out-clevers the bad guys with legalese, the end. Individually, the films (including The Pelican Brief, A Time To Kill, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Gingerbread Man, and Runaway Jury) are a hit-or-miss affair. When taken as a whole, though, we can see how the airport novel ruled our minds for many years.
