Book vs. Movie

This movie has been a favorite of mine for years, and I've watched it many times. I finally got around to reading the book recently, and was little short of shocked. The credits should say the movie is "inspired by" or "loosely based on" the book, I think "based on" is too strong a term for what they did. I mean, honestly...I expect filmmakers to make changes when converting a story from literature to screenplay, that's the nature of the beast. With this book, however, my mind boggled at the many differences, from the insignifigant or negligible(Cassie and Mazzo's hair color, Nurse Bascam's race and age, Dr. Croft's accent) to the extreme (the nature of Cassie and Barney's relationship, the details of the experiment, the Handyman's entire character, etc).
It left me wondering how Robert Cormier felt about the film, or how the filmmakers made the decision to change so much. Has anyone ever read an interview with either of them that might shed some light on the subject?


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If you were me...you'd be good-looking.