The novel that burned too bright
Scott Spencer published Endless Love in 1979 to immediate, uncomfortable recognition. The book follows David Axelrod, a Chicago teenager so consumed by love for Jade Butterfield that he sets fire to her family's house just to play the hero and prolong his time with her. Spencer wrote obsession from the inside, with a prose style that refuses to let the reader stand at a safe distance. The novel was a critical success and a commercial one, landing on the New York Times bestseller list and staying there long enough that Hollywood came calling almost immediately.
The story traveled oddly across media. Director Franco Zeffirelli adapted it in 1981 with Brooke Shields at the peak of her teen-celebrity moment, and while the film softened the novel's more disturbing edges, it produced something arguably more durable than itself: the title-song duet by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie, which spent nine weeks at number one and became one of the best-selling singles of the decade. The song outlived every version of the story it was written for. A 2014 remake tried to recapture the original film's glossy romanticism, stripping away even more of Spencer's darkness in favor of a straightforward teen love story. The novel remains the truest and most unsettling version.
Endless Love across the decades
- 1979Scott Spencer publishes the novel Endless Love
- 1981Franco Zeffirelli's film, starring Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt Endless Love
- 1981Diana Ross and Lionel Richie release the title duet, reaching number one
- 2014Shana Feste directs the remake with Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde Endless Love
If you love Endless Love: obsessive first loves
Stories about the kind of love that destroys as much as it creates
If you love Endless Love: forbidden and star-crossed lovers
Love stories where the world, or one family, says no
If you love Endless Love: dangerous obsession
When love tips into something that cannot be contained
If you love Endless Love: iconic soundtracks from love stories
Albums that took on a life beyond the films they were written for
The definitive version is the novel
Scott Spencer's Endless Love (1979) is the real thing. The films use the premise but lose the texture: the way David narrates his own destruction with total sincerity, the way Spencer makes obsession feel rational from the inside. Neither film adaptation trusts the audience to stay with a protagonist this compromised for this long. The novel does, and that is why it has stayed in print for nearly fifty years.
The underrated one: Zeffirelli's 1981 film
The 1981 film gets written off as a Brooke Shields vehicle and a missed opportunity, but Zeffirelli shoots adolescent yearning with genuine visual poetry. Martin Hewitt's performance is often dismissed alongside the film, but his blankness has its own unsettling quality. The bigger problem is the script, which never commits to Spencer's darkness. Watch it for the cinematography and for the extraordinary Diana Ross and Lionel Richie song that closes it.
The one to skip: the 2014 remake
Shana Feste's 2014 Endless Love with Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde is competently made and completely inert. It removes the arson, the obsession, and the moral weight, leaving a generic rich-girl-poor-boy romance that could have been adapted from any of a hundred YA novels. Spencer's story is about love as a force that overrides conscience. This version has nothing to say about that. The original song plays over the credits, which is the kindest thing you can say about it.