Reuben's book does not have a story, and in adapting it, Woody Allen took the unusual tact of not attempting to invent one. Instead, he used Reuben's title as a platform for a raunchy sketch comedy film. Each of Allen's picture's seven chapters "answers" one of the many questions posed in the book -- "Why Do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching Orgasm?" becomes a parody of Italian sex comedies in which Allen's wife (played by Louise Lasser) can only become aroused when having sex in public. It's unclear how Allen picked the specific questions in the film; he may as well have flipped the book to a random page since there's hilarious material on every single one. Can you imagine what he might have done with "Do Peepers and Exhibitionists Ever Get Together?" Or how about "Can a Penis Actually Disappear?"

It's Obvious This is Based on a Non-Narrative Nonfiction When... the first chapter, a medieval comedy called "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?" ends a few minutes into the film and the screen cuts to black and another question appears. This one is "What Is Sodomy?" and, apparently, it has something to with Gene Wilder diddling a sheep.

Based on William Powell's "The Anarchist Cookbook"

This is the only book on this list I wasn't able to get my hands on; after a few web searches, a couple of inquiries at bookstores and libraries, and one less than courteous phone call from the Department of Homeland Security, I gave up the ghost. After watching Jordan Susman's fictional film based on it, I wondered if he had the same problem, since it contains about as much information on William Powell's notorious 1971 guide to homemade weaponry and explosives as the book's cursory Wikipedia page. No bomb-building instructions here; just a lot of white guys in Dead Kennedys t-shirts and dreadlocks. The film follows a commune of mellow anarchic hippies; the book doesn't even appear until the second act, when it's waved around by a nihilist named Johnny Black, who shoves "The Cookbook" in a few of the characters' faces while referring to it as his bible, prompting several members of the commune to dismiss it as "a relic from the past." With its escalation from mild pranks to property damage and anti-government attacks, and a near-endless stream of pithy slogans ("Property is theft! Destruction is creativity!"), the film is really more of an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" than "The Anarchist Cookbook."

It's Obvious This is Based on a Non-Narrative Nonfiction When... the thing is, it never really is in this case. If the movie had been named anything else (like, say, "White Guys With Dreads Do The Darndest Things!"), no one would have even realized the connection. The fact that it looks like every other college-age slacker indie comedy of the 1990s isn't particularly anarchic either.

Based on Rosalind Wiseman's "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence"

Adapting Rosalind Wiseman's "Queen Bees and Wannabes" into the movie that eventually became "Mean Girls" was Tina Fey's idea. But once her producers acquired the material, Fey suddenly realized just what a difficult challenge she'd given herself. As she explains in an interview on the "Mean Girls" DVD, "Queen Bees," "is nonfiction, non-narrative! There's no story in the book! So I'd painted myself into a corner." Wiseman made a sociological study of adolescence that, as the subtitle suggests, is written specifically to answer parents' questions about their hormonal female offspring. Fey could have crafted a screenplay about a mother trying to understand her daughter, but she almost completely discarded the obvious route of an adult perspective; the six main teen characters have a sum total of three onscreen parents. Instead, she created a teenage lead unfamiliar with Wiseman's so-called "Girl World" of power plays and fashion shows in the form of a 15-year-old (Lindsay Lohan) first entering high school after a lifetime of home-schooling with her zoologist parents. It's a canny move that permits Fey to make a teen movie that can appeal to teens and analyzes their psychology at the same time.

It's Obvious This is Based on a Non-Narrative Nonfiction When... Lohan's character is given an overly lengthy tour of the cliquish seating arrangements of her high school's cafeteria. Fey's "Girls Who Eat Their Feelings" and "Sexually Active Band Geeks" recall groups outlined in a map in Wiseman's book, which featured the less snarky divisions like "Sophomore Girls That Judge" and "Football and Easy Girls."

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Looie

I love IFC. But in the article titled "There's no Story in the Book," you've mistakenly listed David Morse instead of Robert Morse as the actor in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." I appreciate seeing the award -winning foreign films on your channel. Thanks for putting something interesting on my television.