Please leave our literature alone, Hollywood.

Dear Hollywood,

You've never been my favorite person. You wear too much makeup, you talk too much about irrelevant or profane things, you glorify sin, and as often as not your output is inane, maudlin, and just plain boring.

There have been some good moments. Most of the movies I like to watch don't belong to you, but you were responsible for some of my favorites: Beau Geste, Sgt. York, El Cid, Lonely Are the Brave. Things were different back then, though. The pall of censorship (the bad kind, not the good kind that sorts out the awful stuff) and humanism were there from the beginning, but in the old days filmmakers still had some latitude to say what they wanted and make the films they chose.

Not anymore. All your movies are the same, Hollywood, and they're all bad. Kids' cartoons are often the worst with their uniform "do what you want because that's the only path to happiness" propaganda, but maybe that's just because they're the most blatant. It's also kind of sad how your adult movies are more juvenile and your kids' films are more "mature," but that's the least of your worries.

If that's what you want to do, Hollywood, so be it. If you're comfortable producing complete rubbish and bilking millions of unthinking audience members out of billions of dollars, at least I can take refuge in the fact that I don't have to watch your garbage.

But keep your hands off good books.

Particularly Christian books. If you want to ruin The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Watchmen, I won't like it but I won't really care. But when you turn The Lord of the Rings into a humanist manifesto, The Chronicles of Narnia into postmodern gruel, and King Arthur into heresy-peddling pulp trash, you've gone too far.

I don't even like The Chronicles of Narnia that much; there are far better books. They are Christian, however, and what you did to them is unforgivable, Hollywood. If you'll bear with me, you modern Babylon, I'll tell you exactly why I'm so aghast at your "adaptations." And it's not just because they're poorly made.

Sincerely,

C. Hollis Crossman