re: What is the best movie that has also done its source book the most justice?

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The Deliverance movie was about 95 percent accurate to the book. The only significant parts cut out are the introductions and the very final portions after they make it back home. Besides that, you see the scenes of the movie through the pages of the book.

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I actually had James Dickey (and Wlliam Price Fox) as creative writing professors at Carolina .... he thought they did a good job with the movie mainly because they allowed him to write the screenplay (plus he played the sheriff in the movie). He often ate at our family restaurant up until his death. Coach Jim Carlen and he would meet there once or twice a month.

He was good friends with Kurt Vonnegut. Their books jockied for #1 on the NYTs best seller list at the time and they became friends and pen pals because of it. Dickey has Vonnegut come in and lecture to one of the classes I attended (Peterson was the professor's name) and Vonnegut was not nearly as pleased with the making of Slaughterhouse-Five as Dickey was with Deliverance I can tell you that.

Both books came out at roughly the same time as did both movies.

I was honored to have a short story of mine, chosen and read by Vonnegut that day in Peterson's class with Dickey in attendance. It was a story about some SpecOps buddies reunited in a different realm and Vonnegut and Peterson seemed to really like it.

A year or two later I found myself serving at Bragg.

Odd how life works sometimes.