In an interview with Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog, Carl Hiassen, author most recently of Star Island, talked about two of his favorite book-to-film adaptations.
"The first one wasn't a movie, it was a miniseries, but I think Lonesome Dove was a tremendously faithful adaptation of Larry [McMurtry]'s novel," said Hiassen. "For fans of that novel, and God knows there are millions, I think they were immensely satisfied with what was done with that cinematically. The other one was a novel by John Gregory Dunne, but you have to help me out with this. It was a novel he did that was made into a movie with Robert Duvall, and I want to say True Confessions. I read that book and I was knocked out by it and I went to the movie with the usual trepidations, that it couldn't possibly live up to the novel, but it was pretty darn close. And I believe that John worked on that script, which would account for the quality of it. I remember seeing that, thinking, they can make a good movie out of a novel. It can be done."