Better In Your Head?--THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE

 

Spoiler Alert: weight counts.

THE BOOK-Written by John Godey, released 1973

THE MOVIE(S)-Directed by Joseph Sargent, written by Peter Stone, released 1974

(as "The Taking Of Pelham 123") Directed by Tony Scott, written by Brian Helgeland, released 2009

THE STORY-A nutbars notion: four acquaintances hijack a subway car and demand a million dollars. If said demand is disrespected, the shooting will start. Crumblier still, doing so in cash-strapped, crime-choked New York City. Hardly a sure shot caper. And that's just the way these guys want it. Legends are made by hands keen on sifting through the debris of hubris.

MIND THE GAP-Oh how rapidly a seed, once watered, can grow. One man's harebrained scheme becomes another man's ultimate challenge becomes an entire city's wide-awake nightmare. 

While the heart of the plot is too banger to change, both films applied unique modifications. Instead of nylon stockings, Stone's script calls for the hijackers to conceal their mugs with fake facial fuzz. Furthermore, each man responds to a color-coded alias. Helgeland's script dispenses with the caution of disguise altogether. Understandably, the 21st-century Pelham integrates contemporary technology and ups the ransom (sometimes I think I'm the only person alive who'd still be hog-happy with a million-dollar payday). It also alters the main characters in unnecessary ways, and frankly the whole thing reeks of a petulant need to be different from its predecessors. 

Sargent's film just rules. The script's adherence to essence is key. Ryder/"Mr. Blue" is a phlegmatic, pragmatic former mercenary, a fatalist whose emotional shortcomings permit him access onto miry roads closed off to most other men. Dude's pure C.C.C.--cool, collected, calm--and Robert Shaw embodies him superbly. In contrast, John Travolta's Ryder is a tattooed loose cannon weighed down by a vendetta against the crooked government. He dresses like a C-tier comic book villain and speaks like a callow Tarantino acolyte. (Shaw serenely informing command center he's taken over the train is immeasurably cooler, infinitely more bad-ass, than fitting "fuck" into every sentence.)

The disparity in casts is hilarious. Besides Shaw outshining Travolta....

*Luis Guzman suffering in comparison to Martin Balsam, who was born to play Longman/Mr. Green, the disgruntled former motorman who dreamed up the whole dang shebang. (He's renamed "Ramos" in the 2009 version, 'cause ethnicity.)

*Brutish, mute-ish Steever/Mr. Brown becomes "Enri"; failed mobster Joey Welcome/Mr. Gray becomes "Bashkin." Both men are played by indistinguishable meat slabs, whereas the 1974 film had the good fortune of men with personalities, specifically Hector Elizondo and Earl Hindman.

*Denzel as Lt. Garber was a win, but no shit, it's Denzel. Ah yes, what great actor doesn't have a filmography easily split into "For All Time," "For A Good Time," and "For The Love Of God, Why?!" And that includes Walter Matthau, who originated Garber as a grouchy negotiator fighting the good fight with merely a microphone and a working man's wit in his arsenal. (There's a reason Denzel's character is named Walter Garber, and it's not because the screenwriter was a huge Steely Dan fan.)

Apple doesn't want movie baddies using iPhones, but Breitling understands the Golden Rule of Exposure.

The fates of Ryder and Longman are changed across all three tellings. The book gives the most realistic conclusions. Sargent's film provides the most memorable. Scott's film, the most contrived.

It'd be funny to say The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three did for subways what Psycho did for showers, but how in hell else are New Yorkers gonna get around?

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Forget 2009, take me back to 1999, when Tony Scott's penultimate film would've blown my mind. When the empty calories--quick edits, guitar stabs, sterile lighting--would've sent a dopamine surge through my brain powerful enough to hallucinate a new galaxy. Take me back to 1974, and let me sully my shoes on Manhattan sidewalks, smear my face with grease from a Brooklyn slice, flee the Bronx seconds from suffocation, completely avoid Queens, spew on the ferry to and from Staten Island. 

For the first time in the BIYH? series, multiple adaptations split the difference. Pelham 1974 improves on the book by comprehending what works, what doesn't work, and what will work. Without a chaotic glut of POVs, the suspense is unbroken and thus heightened. The passengers are no longer caricatures--they act, and react, as a singular freaked-out organism. Beyond what is excised, what is added also distinguishes the film as a lean, mean, real-time good time. Oh, and it features one of cinema's greatest-ever final shots. And that soundtrack! Sweet funky Jesus.

The 2009 Pelham is better than two hours spent playing hide and seek at a dumpster during mid-August, sure.

Better In Your Head?--RAPE: A LOVE STORY

 

Spoiler Alert: love wins.

THE BOOK-Written by Joyce Carol Oates, released 2003

THE MOVIE (as "Vengeance: A Love Story")-Directed by Johnny Martin, written by John Mankiewicz, released 2017

THE STORY-Take the long way home, get the short end of the stick. Take the shore most strolled, feel reason recede under ceaseless waves of rage. If you dance too close, drink too much, flirt too long, well that's too bad. 

MIND THE GAP-Begins with brutality and doesn't let up. The POV switches between third and second person, the latter of which puts the reader in the position of a pre-teen girl forced to hear her mother's dehumanization. 

One bad decision subjects Teena Maguire to scornful eyes, disdainful ears and spiteful tongues, turning a fun-loving single mom into a self-loathing recluse. She is forced to process her trauma amid rancid gossip and perverted legal gamesmanship.

Fearlessness makes the difference. Joyce Carol Oates, for all her rampaging flaws, is a fearless scribe. Rape: A Love Story shines harsh light into corners others might cut. Vengeance: A Love Story is a formulaic excuse to pay Nic Cage so he could pay whoever he owed. I know "Nic Cage as a vigilante cop" may sound awesome, and I'm sure in some other movie it is, but this ain't the one. Don Johnson gives the movie's stand-out performance as a defense attorney who deserves to drown in his own gravy--and that fact is depressing.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-One of the most baffling adaptations ever. A painfully human, compellingly ugly work from an author of mind-blowing prolificacy, 150 pages of zero filler/hero killer, became a TV movie masquerading as a theatrical release. The book swept me along on a lava wave. The movie, conversely, is as engrossing as a dying lava lamp.

Look, I get the title change. But the change in focus is maddening. Vengeance is not Teena's. She's the victim, barely holding on in the wake of a vicious gang-rape that left her on death's welcome mat, in a town that's ostracized her and her young daughter for the sins of every woman. Vengeance is Officer John Dromoor's, the one-man army whose love can only be expressed through control.

Whatever you say about Rape: A Love Story, you cannot say it is shameless sensationalism. You cannot say it is a jaw-droppingly insipid, nose-to-toes failure. But when it comes to Vengeance: A Love Story, that's all you can say.

Better In Your Head?--THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP

 

Spoiler Alert: life is a battlefield.

THE BOOK-Written by John Irving, released 1978

THE MOVIE-Directed by George Roy Hill, written by Steve Tesich, released 1982

THE STORY-The world according to TS Garp is a world of omnipresent perversity. Mutilation, dismemberment, assassination, rape, dead children. In this world, consequences matter--explanations do not. 

MIND THE GAP-When not obsessing over his libido or stressing over his kids, Garp is tackling the classic writer's dilemma: pure imagination or impure memory, which lamp best lights the path? John Irving inserts selections of Garp's atrociously-titled prose, and in doing so not only proves the fallibility of the "show, don't tell" argument as it pertains to fiction, but also allows readers a glimpse of even more explicit, gratuitous tales written by a dude working through daddy issues.

Despite Irving's most strident efforts (incessant digressions, the implication that sexless=worthless) I wound up quite moved by the end. Characters not only survive a bombardment of shitballs, they evolve. Garp, especially, overcomes his self-destructive impulses and reassesses the channels through which he receives and bestows valuation.

Obsessing over a sex life not your own blows my mind. Are you? Who? When? Where? How frequently? Is it good? Is it your business, shithead?

Another book wasted on a circumspect American filmmaker. The cast does its best, so whenever the script does its worst (that fucking ending gahhhugughhhaahgua), legacies emerge unscathed. In a rare straight performance, Robin Williams shows why he's best remembered for his comedic roles. He's fine, but he doesn't come close to matching my vision of TS Garp. Too short, no beard. Mary Beth Hurt misses the mark even more aggressively. Again, the actress herself is competent, but movie Helen is a bookish pushover, softer all over than her book counterpart--barely a suitable Garp wife. 

Making her feature film debut, as Garp mom/feminist icon Jenny Fields, is the one the only the Glenn Close. Beloved butler-face John Lithgow earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Roberta Muldoon, a transsexual former NFL star who becomes Garp's best friend. Lithgow not only plays the part with heart, soul and humor, he also looks passable in drag (a feat Robin Williams never pulled off).

There's lots to like 'bout Jenny Fields. Diligent nurse, supportive mother, loyal friend. Rapist, also. Huh, what? Indeed, Garp's mom became a feminist fave after the publication of a caustically candid autobiography wherein she confessed to rape. Desirous of a baby but not of a husband, Nurse Fields used a brain-damaged ball turret gunner as a sperm donor. A reprehensible act reframed and hung alongside other activist sketches, overlooked amid countless charitable gestures. Part of me couldn't help but feel Jenny deserved every bit of her premature end. 

Did Garp deserve his? He certainly deserved better than to entangle himself with "The Ellen Jamesians," a radical feminist group whose members excise their tongues in misguided solidarity with a young, similarly disfigured rape victim. They self-diagnose the emptiness between their ears and in the center of their chests, then self-medicate with misinformation, selective reasoning, and bottles of rage. Such unreasonables are best scorned in private, and shunned in public. Garp, among other functions, exists as an example of how failure to exercise restraint can result in tragedy.

Women should never report sexual assault. Is that too extreme? Okay, how's this: women should never report sexual assault with any expectation of justice. 

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The happy tone of the film throws me. For all the book's tedium, Irving's picaresque is superior for its bold scope, bizarre situations and brazen storytelling. Garp grows, from insufferable philanderer to empathetic father and friend who understands that not only is the dynamic between men and women changing, the dynamic must change. The film, though not bad, is de-wrinkled to its detriment. It serves best as a preview for the novel which despite its defects (three paragraphs of drivel re: condoms) is unforgettable.

Better In Your Head?--PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

 

Spoiler Alert: you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

THE BOOK-Written by Jane Austen, released 1813

THE MOVIE(S)-Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, written by Aldous Huxley* & Jane Murfin, released 1940

Directed by Joe Wright, written by Deborah Moggach, released 2005

THE STORY-Happiness is born in the head, but lives in the heart. 

MIND THE GAP-Without fear of reprisal, I declare: I'm just here for Elizabeth Bennet. Mary's too relatable for safe sustained exposure, Jane's too rosy and cozy, Catherine goes by "Kitty" (if that don't say all) and Lydia is her mother's favorite, and thus too non-relatable for safe sustained exposure.

But Elizabeth! Line-toer extraordinaire, call-out queen supreme. None of her positive qualities (wit, intelligence, vivacity) define her personality, and none of her negative qualities (pride, youthful assumption of omniscience, haste to treat rumor as fact) signal a terminal condition. The cake is well and truly hers. One chapter she's striking feminist blows, next chapter she's swooning over a man for whom she'd previously felt an unprecedented amount of distaste. And she's a daddy's girl. A sucker I am for such stuff. 

A film of Pride and Prejudice can only be as successful as its Elizabeth. The 1940 try is, in virtually every aspect, a failure. The actors are too old, the script too fluffy, and the direction too stiff. A classic example of Hollywood pillaging bookshelves for a popular story it can snatch up and water down. Laurence Olivier thought Greer Garson a poor choice for Elizabeth, and he was right, she's as exciting as a pine cone, but he was wrong for letting his frustrations spill over into his performance. No better actor has ever played Mr. Darcy, but no actor has so underwhelmed in the role. 

Oh hey, Heather Angel is in the 1940 film, blah blah, Sonic Youth reference.

The studio behind such moon-faced punter pleasers as Love, Actually and Bridget Jones's Diary presented their version of P&P ten years after a celebrated BBC miniseries gave the world wet, shirtless Colin Firth. These Bennets are bumpkins, basically. Jane isn't especially handsome, Elizabeth isn't preternaturally mature, and the parents appear fond of one another. Younger audiences responded enthusiastically, even if literary critics and Austen stans weren't so warm. Kiera Knightley became an overnight star, and her chemistry with Matthew MacFadyen excuses some iffy dialogue choices. 

Let's get back to calling women "handsome."

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The novel's most outstanding aspect--Austen's use of "free indirect speech," wherein the voices of narrator and character essentially blend--is irrelevant in the visual medium. Both screenplays endeavored to capture the slice and shine of the original text while selling palatable product. The 2005 film does the better job, but so far as feats go, that's a fairly flat one. Perhaps no movie can offer up such grandiloquence as is found in Austen's gem and realistically expect viewers to stick around. Definitely, no movie has done justice to Mr. Darcy's ravishing synthesis of gall and gallantry, or Mr. Collins's odious obsequiousness. Safer to shoot the works on costumes.

*Yes, the author of Brave New World. Times wuz tight.

Better In Your Head?--OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS

 

Spoiler Alert: what in the illegitimate fuck?

THE BOOK-Written by Truman Capote, released 1948

THE MOVIE-Directed by David Rocksavage, written by Rocksavage & Sara Flanigan, released 1997

THE STORY-A dirty dry summer. A lonely boy. A link in a chain that must break. A ball of yarn that must be caught. By seeking a man, he becomes a man.

MIND THE GAP-Capote's first novel is a semi-autobiographical Southern Gothic magic trick. Fringe dwellers, fueled by repression and the aggression which springs forth like delirious bullfrogs at the scantiest stimulus. Golden.

The debut flick of director Rocksavage is as dismaying as his last name is awesome. I was unfamiliar with the entirety of the cast, and I yearn to return to that paradisaical time. David Speck plays pretty boy Joel Knox as well as I play ice hockey. Aubrey Dollar plays rough-hewn tomboy Idabel, a role which might've registered were it not dreadfully underdeveloped. The most pivotal character, Rudolph, is an unmitigated disaster thanks to Lothaire Blueteau, a man whose name casts everything he does and says in a dubious light. Per Capote: "Randolph speaks without any accent...his weary voice was free of regional dialects...." Bluteau, problem is, speaks in several accents here, sometimes within a single sentence. (I heard French-Canadian, Irish and Creole, a combination as palatable to the ear as a bowl of corned beef, crawfish and cheese curds is to the tongue.)

"Swamp honey" was the name of the first lesbian porno I ever watched. Hah, nah, just kidding. It wasn't the first. 

Capote's ending isn't easily absorbed. It may defy evaluation, at trail's end. Can a thirteen-year-old boy truly make such a critical decision of his own volition? Shouldn't Randolph--an adult--discourage him? Or is reaching out to a lonely soul so plainly desperate for connection the most moral move?

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Dud backwards is dud. Watching Other Voices, Other Rooms backwards is preferable, probably. What a drastic waste of my time! A movie made to collect a bet, or settle a debt. Why adapt an essentially plotless book that's 98% atmosphere created by the author's evocative gifts, anyway? And why cast actors who appear unable to comprehend the words they say and/or why they're saying those words? Why alter the ending? Wait, lemme reword: Why betray Capote's story? 

If not for obligation, I woulda shut this sophomoric claptrap off ten minutes in. Meanwhile, it took me an hour longer to read OV,OR than it shoulda 'cause I re-read particular paragraphs just to marvel over Capote's brilliance--and to hammer home the hard fact I will never, ever write so well.

Better In Your Head?--FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFE

 

Spoiler Alert: never have tried. Too scared. And I've eaten raw habanero peppers.

THE BOOK-Written by Fannie Flagg, released 1987

THE MOVIE (as "Fried Green Tomatoes")-Directed by Jon Avnet, written by Fannie Flagg & Carol Sobieski, released 1991

THE STORY-Bored with her husband, scared of her children, and deprived of anyone or anything that might point her in a healthier direction, Evelyn Couch is about to go crazy. Then she meets an old lady whose memories and philosophies are every bit as edifying as they are endless.

MIND THE GAP-When in doubt...listen. Evelyn was on a one-way sugar-coated trip to the boneyard when she met Ninny Threadgoode. A motormouth nostalgia factory, Ninny longs for the old days. She waxes ecstatic about a wild-hearted, wind-spirited tomboy called "Idgie," and a clock-stopper named Ruth, who owned and operated the best damn chow joint in Alabama. And that's all it takes for Evelyn's life to change.

Entrusted with dazzling moviegoers were a first-time director and a cast headed by two recent Academy Award winners. Jessica Tandy, winding down the sterling silver phase of her life/career, is charm personified as Ninny, a sweet old lady whose refusal to relinquish the past actually bettered her present. Kathy Bates plays Evelyn, the portly pushover led out of the doldrums and into the daydreams by someone else's memories. Save for Gary Basaraba (who was born to play a cop, just not a southern one), the cast is damn flawless. Mary Stuart Masterson's Idgie is one of the few blondes (fictional or otherwise) I've ever given an "F" grade. Another Mary, -Louise Parker, hits the static target as Ruth, sugar-free tea accent aside. (I'll drink it, but I'm cracking jokes on it the whole time.) Coulda done with an entire movie of just Idgie and Ruth, livin' and lovin' in a world where cancer doesn't exist, hoppin' on trains, tossin' hams, bakin' pies and chuckin' rocks at sheet-covered cretins.

The script turns Evelyn's husband Ed from a misogynist sleaze into an oblivious, loving lump. What a great change. Bates and Gailard Sartain together are biscuits and gravy. 

Calling Fried Green Tomatoes "women's fiction" or a "chick flick" is foolishly reductive. Does a story where an abusive husband gets brained, barbecued and served up to the cop investigating his disappearance sound girly to you?

The comings, goings, and doings of a time and region where women ask for death before divorce, and men answer to "Smokey," "Inky" and "Chattanooga Red," hold limited appeal. Furthermore, stories set in the Jim Crow South are a tricky sell to modern audiences, whose distance from said bygone era, combined with a hyper-focus on identity politics, potentially mars their impartiality. Fannie Flagg is still better known for her work as an actress than as an author, and her most famous written work is uninterested in probes and ponders of society's problems. FGT is a celebration of resilience and repasts. There are no overt reckonings for the numerous racists we meet throughout...so, reader, be aware.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-I can't beat the drum too loudly for either book or movie. The script is a wisely-condensed document. Time constraints aside, the discarded vignettes weren't terribly interesting anyway. Although I prefer the book's ending by a country mile, the film more adeptly plays cat's cradle with the heartstrings. 

Evelyn Cook is easy to root for on the page; on screen, however, she becomes someone I'd die for. Enough cannot be said about Kathy Bates. By itself, the scene where Evelyn outlines her game plan as feminist crusader "Towanda" to a non-plussed Ninny as they walk down the nursing home hallway catapults the adaptation over the original.

Better In Your Head?--THE BEST OF EVERYTHING

 

Spoiler Alert: women die from illegal abortions. Don't whisper it.

THE BOOK-Written by Rona Jaffe, released 1958

THE MOVIE-Directed by Jean Negulesco, written by Edith Sommer & Mann Rubin, released 1959

THE STORY-Toughing it out in the secretary pool of Fabian Publishing Company are five ladies young and restless: Caroline, fresh off a broken engagement; country girl/city chameleon April; aspiring actress Gregg, whose tumble cries out for a dryer sheet; single mom Barbara; and painfully prim wife-to-be Mary Agnes. Don't worry about a one of them, though. See, this story takes place in the 1950s, and women in the 1950s had it easy--just bide time till Mr. Right (a gent in a gray flannel suit, most likely) saved them from a lifetime of unfulfilled ambitions and unpleasant surprises.

MIND THE GAP-In The Best of Everything, respectability is paramount. The men think too highly of themselves; the women, too lowly. Assumptions combine and create mutant misunderstandings. Now there's some social science! 

The movie rights sold before Jaffe's work hit shelves, allowing 20th-Century Fox to participate in the novel's marketing. And what of the movie? Competent cast, if not bursting with star power. Hope Lange is a winning Caroline; Martha Hyer and Diane Baker occupy opposite ends of the seesaw as Barbara and April, respectively; Suzy Parker does the most as Gregg, but that character herself does the most, so it's all well and good.*

The men fare the same--lotsa slam, no dunk. The sole outlier is Louis Jourdan, elevating the farcically-named David Wilder Savage with the charm and panache his ink-and-paper counterpart lacked. 

Oh, Joan Crawford's in this too. Bette Davis would ne--no, actually she probably would've.

No coincidence the novel experienced a rediscovery in the 2000s after Don Draper was shown flipping through a copy in an early episode of Mad Men. From slavish secretary to dynamic editor, Caroline Bender is the proto-Peggy Olsen.

Rona Jaffe wrote without an agenda. The Best Of Everything isn't about women in New York during a particular time period, it's about a few women in New York during a particular time period. Nor is it explicitly a cautionary tale, but damned if I read it as anything else. The happiest women are validated by a man's love. "Career for crib" is the shrewdest exchange. The single ladies are horny, hostile and hopeless. The holy trifecta of connection-affection-protection eludes them as a chipmunk eludes a giraffe.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The Best Of Everything is a by-the-numbers adaptation, a soap opera with a budget. Nothing feels spontaneous, or vital. Rona Jaffe's no virtuoso, but her story vibrates with the mania of shrouded torment. Funny, how a writer on book number one outdid a director on movie number thirty-two. The sole improvement on the source--demoting average-ass Mary Agnes--is counteracted by the botching of two key storylines and the ending. The book's conclusion surprised me, yet made total sense. The movie's last frames are non-committal and dull. 

The novel holds artifact appeal. The film holds a purse in both hands and waits for a rickshaw.

 

*Everything about Gregg suggests a woman who mixes Scotch in her oatmeal and coordinates her footwear with her underwear. Who wears high heels to stalk somebody? Yeesh.

Better In Your Head?--BEING THERE

 

Spoiler Alert: ignorance never loses relevance.

THE BOOK-Written by Jerzy Kosinski*, released 1970

THE MOVIE-Directed by Hal Ashby, written by Jerzy Kosinski** released 1979

THE STORY-This is a story of Chance. Chance the gardener, AKA Chauncey Gardiner--storyteller depending. Guy's a dolt with a solid-gold heart who becomes an accidental political darling. No one knows him, yet everyone loves him, and it's clear that the man without a past will soon become the man shaping the future.

MIND THE GAP-A great satirical work is like a traffic light with all but the top bulb busted. The first strike is a fantastic premise. Being There boasts one of the best.*** Misnamed and misunderstood, Chance/Chauncey the boob-tube baby literally stumbles upward in infantile wonder as VIPs scurry to piece together his background. 

Next, you need prose that is urgent and unyielding, driven by wit, irony and exaggeration. Oops.

Luckily for the film, Peter Sellers said "yes." With no offense toward Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, or Shirley MacLaine, Being There is The Peter Sellers Show. He's remarkable as the man-child bestowed savior status (although the actor's own insistence he was Chauncey in real-life might suggest less of a feat). 

Chauncey Gardiner is a Capitol Critter's dream. He is not a pre-packaged deal. He does not give pat answers or ask circuitous questions. He is not a beneficiary of nepotism--in fact, his family tree was seemingly drawn out in invisible ink. This guileless, succinct, able-bodied white guy is absolutely Presidential material.

Amazing how so many viewers take the film's ending at face value, ergo making themselves the equivalent of those high-society dopes they doubtless deride. Chance is obviously walking on either a submerged pier or a sandbar. (Note that he dips the umbrella into the water at his right side, rather than behind or in front of him.)

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Being There is a short book. A short, dry, disappointing book, virtually devoid of the screenplay's lacerating wit and palpitating humanity. 

Kosinski describes gardening well, is all I'll give him.

 

 

*Rather, plagiarized The Career Of Nikodemus Dyzma by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz.

**Rather, rewritten by an uncredited Robert C. Jones

***Rather, The Career Of Nikodemus Dyzma boasts one of the best premises.

Better In Your Head?--LAURA

 

Spoiler Alert: the guy you instantly think did it, did it.

THE BOOK-Written by Vera Caspary, released 1943

THE MOVIE-Directed by Otto Preminger, written by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt, Ring Lardner, Jr. (uncredited)

THE STORY-What a woman, Laura Hunt. Smart as a whip, sweet as a Singapore Sling. Dead as a dodo. Isn't she?

MIND THE GAP-Laura is a marvelous mystery, sick with suspense. The story is told through the eyes of each major player, a super way to puzzle readers as to the culprit's identity as well as the true essence of Laura Hunt. Is she sugar and spice, or snakes and stains? Masculine pride clashes with feminine chagrin in the battle for answers. 

Future legend Otto Preminger oversaw one hell of a production. As the girl who just wants to give of herself without losing herself, Gene Tierney is pure allure. Working the murder case is Detective Mark McPherson, portrayed with proper gruff restlessness by Dana Andrews. The suspects are fiancé Shelby Carpenter (a never-better Vincent Price) and mentor Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb, award-worthy). The former is a self-righteous Southern gentleman in a super-sized suit. The latter is a columnist whose glassware collection and reputation as a wit made me wonder if he wanted to be Laura, rather than be with her. 

The idea that Waldo and Laura's relationship could exist in any realm besides platonic is, to me, hilarious. Like, second season of 30 Rock-level hilarious. Nothing about Waldo Lydecker--either version--suggests a sexual interest in women. In the book, he's a dastardly doughboy, so vain, so shallow, so handicapped by jealousy and the compulsion to romanticize every aspect of his life (Laura included, for if she was a wonderful, generous soul, the people with whom she kept closest company must share those same qualities) that to show him onscreen burdened with a hundred or so extra pounds would just insult the audience's intelligence. So casting the slim Webb was an inspired choice indeed.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Otto Preminger told Vera Caspary that her Laura was a "a non-entity" and while that statement is not entirely true, nor is it laughably false. The screenplay added layers to the lady herself, allowing a glimpse into what made her the object of such affection. Not every change works so well, though. The voice-over narrative is pointless, and switching the murder weapon just baffling.

Laura, novel, is a mystery superbly told. Laura, film, is a mystery superbly shown. Simplification enriches the story, and so the adaptation surpasses the source. 

(Helping the film's case are the following lines, exclusive to it, spoken by Clifton Webb: "I cannot stand these morons any longer. If you don't come with me this instant, I shall run amok."

Better In Your Head?--THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT

 

Spoiler Alert: once you stop running, you begin learning.

THE BOOK-Written by Sloan Wilson, released 1955

THE MOVIE-Directed & written by Nunnally Johnson, released 1956

THE STORY-Behold the overextended man! He wishes to connect and disconnect at will; if only life would allow him the pleasure! Hard to play when the world runs on work. So many responsibilities to fulfill, so many obligations to honor. Maybe more money will help. Which means more work. How, after all, can a man receive more without first giving more?

MIND THE GAP-Sloan Wilson's novel penetrated pop culture basically instantly. The title became shorthand for the discontented American businessman struggling to balance the personal with the professional. Protagonist Tom Rath stood in for thousands of young, middle-class husbands and fathers who'd traded in the foxhole for the cubicle...the helmet for the fedora...the journey for the destination. Men who walked miles on the treadmill to keep flab at bay, ignorant of the views they'd lose in the process.

Beyond dropping tidy insight into still-pertinent topics (PTSD, a woman's role in a man's world, the immediate threat of war versus the gradual threat of capitalism) the novel is also highly entertaining. For the first half, anyway. For the second half, it converts to "admirable." That's not exactly going from honey to haggis, but it is disappointing Wilson couldn't sustain the momentum.

Third book in the BIYH series featuring an ink-related mishap. 

Movie followed book quickly, and audiences ate up Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones as the little couple that could (even if they shouldn't). Peck didn't fucking miss, did he? No, he didn't, and is rightly regarded as a legend in the industry. Jones, one of Hollywood's most inaccurately-ranked actresses, handles the role of "wife whose devotion does not preclude a desire for bigger, brighter and better" with endearing gumption. Frederic March does squat for me as the beleaguered boss.

Nice seeing Keenan Wynn here, two years away from beginning his mission to appear on every TV show aired between 1958 and 1994.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Sixteen years after writing one of the most famous adaptations I've no interest in covering for this series, Nunnally Johnson tackled a timely bestseller and earned enough commercial goodwill to helm four more flicks before planting himself permanently at the writing desk. Wisely, he cast established names and kept the story uncomplicated. Unwisely, he didn't challenge the novel's greatest flaw--the ending. An intended lesson in domestic compassion, the conclusion of TMITGFS shrivels under the glare of most modern lights. Worse, it undercuts the mature and fascinating material which preceded it, and left me feeling my head rested on rotten vegetables stuffed into a silk pillowcase.

Book wins, and it's not particularly close. The film's well-written, well-shot, well-scored, and well, I was bored by frame fourteen. Oddly, Peck's magnetic performance is a big part of the underwhelming feeling. Tom Rath's search for purpose is heightened or hindered by his anger and cynicism. And Peck could pull off anger...see The Gunfighter. Peck could pull off cynicism...see Old Gringo. But sometimes Peck pulled off neither...see The Man In the Gray Flannel Suit. Perhaps more a fault of the director in this case?

Better In Your Head?--FOXFIRE: CONFESSIONS OF A GIRL GANG

 

Spoiler Alert: FOXFIRE means never having to say you're sorry.

THE BOOK-Written by Joyce Carol Oates, released 1993

THE MOVIE(S)-Directed by Annette Haywood-Carter, written by Elizabeth White, released 1996

Directed & written by Laurent Cantet, released 2012

THE STORY-The "revolution" is coming! So sez Margaret Sandovksy, better known as "Legs," leader of FOXFIRE. FOXFIRE is not a girl gang, it is the girl gang. The war is over, but the battles burn on.

MIND THE GAP-FOXFIRE--yes, all caps throughout--is a patience-tester of a book. The run-on sentences and erratic punctuation have repelled multiple readers over the years. FOXFIRE is a rampaging fable of smokes, shots, stabs, subjection, and speed. FOXFIRE is an ode to motion.

The first FF film nails the motion, at least. The kinetics are relocated and updated. Instead of a tiny industrial town in upstate NY during the Nifty Fifties, the action takes place in suburban Portland during the Naughty Nineties--just in time for riot grrrl!

The core of misogyny is discomfort with proudly sexual women. And if she doesn't match the established standard of beauty, uh oh....

The FOXFIRE girls are hard to love, and harder to hate. They're teenagers, and thus still in the phase of life where the truth about truth (that it's malleability varies from person to person, from place to place) eludes them. 

Queer people are the best dancers.

Both films are sincere and well-made. One stands too close, the other wanders too far. One a touch too loud, one a smidge too soft. One amateurish to a fault, one mannered to a fault. One has no outstanding performances, while one boasts two--then-unknown Angelina Jolie as firestarter Legs and Jenny Shimizu as butch wonder Goldie. One prominently features a Candlebox song, one does not prominently feature a Candlebox song. 

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Nothing featuring Candlebox can ever hope to be better in any circumstance. But that's not the only fault with '96 FOXFIRE. In its quest to flaunt these bad news babes in the alternative age, the script dampens the very blaze in they were forged. Legs isn't some rando, she's a lieutenant, training a besotted squad in the indelicate art of dissent, nudging and biting and kicking all the way. More than a lark foisted upon schoolmates by a tough sexy drifter, FOXFIRE meant the world to these rejects. It heated their blood, chilled their sweat. The 2012 version understood this, admired it, and devoted itself to the devotion. If only it were in more adventurous hands! The book is a heavy resistance band, but if you stick with the workout, you'll definitely notice a difference.

Better In Your Head?--THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST

 

Spoiler Alert: "BYOB" means "Bring Your Old Bay."

THE BOOK-Written by Anne Tyler, released 1985

THE MOVIE-Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, written by Kasdan & Frank Galati, released 1988

THE STORY-Meet Macon Leary, the incredible shrinking man. He writes his guidebooks, tolerates his siblings, and waits to die. Then the damn dog screws everything up. 

MIND THE GAP-Of Anne Tyler's twenty-three novels, two have received the big-screen treatment. The Accidental Tourist came first and best, although in this case "best" stands for "basically entertaining, suitably tolerable." The First Lady of Baltimore Literature favors character-driven tales, heavy on family and light on story. Line for line, she's been one of America's outstanding writers for over fifty years.

The appeals lies in how easily, how artfully she puts readers into whatever world she's whipped up--even if said world isn't terribly interesting on the surface. The Accidental Tourist is, in truth, groan-worthy. Man struck by unthinkable tragedy is rejuvenated by a romance with an off-kilter woman. Oh, and he has three eccentric siblings. How'd I make it through fifty pages? The writing, of course, which is far smarter, far funnier than such a tired premise deserves. 

Director Lawrence Kasdan (justifiably more famous as a screenwriter) recruited a cat burglar's row of actors. William Hurt is Macon, the timid hero of travelers nationwide who yearn for the familiar whenever in foreign land. There's a reason this movie broke Hurt's streak of Oscar nominations. His performance is restricted to a fault, borderline narcotized, and forbids the slightest glimpse of Macon's inner life. When he smiles at the end, I slammed my Mac shut and slapped a hand over my mouth.

Kathleen Turner is sadly de-fanged as Sarah, Macon's ex-wife-to-be. The aforementioned sibs are ably acted out by Amy Wright, David Ogden Stiers and Ed Begley, Jr. Likable as lemonade, goofy as an Arnold Palmer. Apparently the film belongs to Geena Davis, who actually won an Oscar for her turn as Muriel, a dog trainer tasked with taming Macon's recalcitrant Welsh Corgi (who steals the show, incidentally). Muriel is everything Macon is not: talkative, spontaneous, brash, a woman. Further, she's a sartorial shambles, a cosmetic cacophony. She and Macon are such a mismatch that their eventual coupling comes as a surprise only if you've literally never ready any story involving adults beforehand. Opposite Hurt's non-stop monotony, of course Geena's performance stands out. On rewatch, though, it's nothing special. Not to mention, "leggy six-footer" isn't quite how I envisioned Muriel.

No, Virginia, there is not a Taco Bell in Mexico City.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The finest movies are filling meals. (Think scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuit and coffee.) The direst features are defective snacks. (Think an under-stuffed Combo, an eye-less Peep.) A mediocre film is a chicken salad sandwich: easily digestible, utterly forgettable. I've eaten many a chicken salad sandwich, but never without daydreaming of all the other, better ways chicken can be prepared and consumed. The Accidental Tourist is chicken salad on white bread. The book, at least, is on toasted wheat.

Better In Your Head?--ALL FALL DOWN

 

Spoiler Alert: I will not be reviewing Midnight Cowboy.

THE BOOK-Written by James Leo Herlihy, released 1960

THE MOVIE-Directed by John Frankenheimer, written by William Inge, released 1962

THE STORY-Fathoming adolescent angst through a personal journal is hardly an original technique, but Clinton Williams isn't worried about prototypes and patents. He's worried about his older brother, Berry-berry, a vice-ridden, violence-prone vagabond whose misdeeds render aimless his adoring family.

MIND THE GAP-What the shit kinda name is "Berry-berry"? Oh, beri-beri is a disease? Subtle!

So much of All Fall Down is a first novel. The blatant author avatar. Riding commas like rolling waves. Flirtations with all three POVs. Shouldn't work. Does. A sorely-overlooked gem. 

Second book in the BIYH series featuring a young man who smashes a storefront window in a fit of rancid petulance.

John Frankenheimer's 1962 is a classic case of "One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other." That year, three of his films hit movie theaters: Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, and All Fall Down. What a range of subject matter! Prison, politics, problematic Midwestern American family. 

Why'd All Fall Down break the streak? Why's it nearly as forgotten as the book is these days? The cast is...good. No one does their best, since the script doesn't demand anyone's best be done. Karl Malden and Angela Lansbury are commendable as the baffled parents (save for some dramatic overkill in Act Three concocted solely for the purpose of pummeling less-perceptive viewers with the movie's messages--negligence expedites ruin! A lack of boundaries means a lack of morals!). Warren Beatty, five years away from Bonnie and Clyde, is a physical no-brainer for Berry-beri, the half-ass asshole with a killer smile. Brandon DeWilde plays sensitive, reverent little brother Clinton, and it is in his performance the script's shortcomings shine dullest. Yeah, Clinton in the book is long-winded and short-sighted but he's also sixteen. I remember that age, and no matter the differences in experiences, one desire shared by teenage boys and girls is the desire for control, illusory though it may be. As Clinton documents, Clinton discovers. Some revelations hit harder than others, such as the fact our world's packed sick with liars--his idol among them. In the movie, Clinton's journal-keeping comes off as idiosyncratic, no more meaningful than cutting the crust off of one's sandwiches. 

Also didn't help that I had flashbacks to The Final Sacrifice every time Clinton said his brother's name.

Oh what a waste, Eva Marie Saint as sweet-hearted enchantress Echo. A restorative influence for a family in dire need, she's a heart waiting to break. I never envisioned her as airy or stylized--a movie star. And yet! What a gaffe.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The book is alive. I could feel its pulse underneath my fingertips, smell its chlorinated breath tickling my cheek. The film merely lives, a prosy little thing. Watch Midnight Cowboy instead.

Better In Your Head?--M*A*S*H

 

Spoiler Alert: Laughter is the best medicine. Unless you have an infection, in which case antibiotics are best.

THE BOOK (as "M*A*S*H-A Novel About Three Army Doctors")-Written by Richard Hooker (pseudonym of H. Richard Hornberger & W.C. Heinz), released 1968

THE MOVIE (as "M*A*S*H")-Directed by Robert Altman, written by Ring Lardner, Jr., released 1970

THE STORY-Displeased, distrustful and dis damn close to snapping, the wisecracking caregivers of the 4077th U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital spend their days in between Hell and Purgatory. The stakes are high and the laughs are lowbrow.

MIND THE GAP-One outstanding difference between M*A*S*H and Catch-22--this ribald war comedy made noise in three mediums. Why?

   1. The average doctor is more interesting than the average soldier.

2. Cynical humor holds greater appeal than humorous cynicism.

For all its flaws (laugh track, Mike Farrell), the TV show ended an eleven-season run with the most-watched episode of a scripted series.

Donald Sutherland and Tom Skerritt are varying levels of tolerable as the new cutters at camp, Captains Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest, the Yankee and the Georgia Peach. Robert Duvall, the second-best actor from the state of Maryland, is utterly wasted alongside Sally Kellerman. Elliott Gould pops up rocking a look that suggests a luckier Jim Croce.

Poor taste runs rampant. One characters refers to himself as "a victim of homosexuality" which is right up there for me with Big L's verse in "Platinum Plus" as instances of homophobia so ridiculous I can't possibly get mad/offended. 

If nothing else, M*A*S*H gave the world a great blog name.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-M*A*S*H the film and M*A*S*H the TV show are much more fondly recalled than M*A*S*H the novel. (Contrast this with the continued classic status of Heller's Catch-22, while the film is widely viewed as an inessential entry in a great director's filmography, and the 2019 miniseries so blandly handsome of course George Clooney is heavily involved.) Shame. It's for sure worth a visit, a funny flyweight of a book, a better way to pass the time than the surprisingly average film. Nichols wanted so badly to craft a Keaton-esque triumph and wound up with cheap, cloddish drivel. The only difference between M*A*S*H and Porky's is the pesky ongoing war in the background.

Better In Your Head?--ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

 

Spoiler Alert: it's a mean, mad world.

THE BOOK-Written by Ken Kesey, released 1962

THE MOVIE-Directed by Miloš Forman, written by Laurence Hauben & Bo Goldman, released 1975

THE STORY-Nuthouse, loony bin, funny farm, laughing academy. Where society's mentally iffy go to stew. Inside an unnamed Oregon psych ward, patients languish under a despotic caregiver. Then along comes a man named McMurphy, full of hell and questions. 

MIND THE GAP-I take umbrage with the idea of Randle McMurphy as a redemptive figure who drags his fellow cuckoos kicking and cooing along the road of self-discovery. McMurphy wasn't interested in the other guys being themselves; he wanted them to match his idea of what a man should be. 

This is more obvious in the book. Kesey's McMurphy is a big ol', brash ol' fella, crass and calloused, red curls trapped under a motorcycle cap, all man all the time. Onscreen, Jack Nicholson plays the sacrificial lion as a naturalistic spectacle. His McMurphy is not a swaggering urban legend pushed into purgatory. He is a victim of stunted society, someone of whom much is expected despite a wealth of evidence, and someone condemned despite a dearth of evidence. 

The supporting cast is super-solid. Brad Dourif, especially, is nicely bugged-out as Billy Bibbit. Unfortunately for William Redfield, he went all-in against the devil's hand. His character, Dale Harding, is a stand-out in the novel, a self-loathing pretty boy queer given to fits of grandiloquence. Film Dale is a weak-eyed, saggy-faced wimp, ruthlessly needled by other patients in scenes that overstay their welcome without fail.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest urges us to gather up our courage and fight the better fight. The question of who precisely constitutes "us" is a healthy one to ask. Ken Kesey stood with one foot in the Beat swamp, and the other foot in the hippie pool, and for all the hype about freedom and acceptance, lots of the guys in those movements weren't exemplars of sensitivity and inclusion. 

Women in Nest are assigned value based on their distinguishing feature. Whether a pair of welcoming breasts or an vindictive open mouth, women are intent on the dispensation of debilitating blows against masculinity in their quest to replace men atop the pyramid. Dale Harding flat out states: "We are victims of a matriarchy." Specifically, they are victims of Nurse Ratched.

What a name! A sincerely wretched person, Nurse Ratched puts the "bitch" in "habitual torture." A model representative for the maddening bureaucratic machine, her self-control is even more breathtaking than her skill sewing seeds of suspicion. Thus, villainous. Louise Fletcher's performance as the silver screen's most supreme Queen of Demean is undeniable. 

Before anything, Cuckoo's Nest is immensely valuable as a chronicle of a time in American history when we mistreated our unwell so horrifically that it's no far fling to declare mental institutions robbed certain unfortunates of their very personhood in the name of "betterment." Several years before my birth, the man partially responsible for said event underwent electroshock therapy to "jolt" his brain free of the bottle it'd been trapped inside for almost twenty years. I never knew the man he was before, and the differences apparently weren't insignificant. I knew a man who moved slower than most people, spoke slower than most people. His eyes never betrayed the world behind them. I feel duped, still.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-A field goal that shoulda been a touchdown.

The book belongs to "Chief" Bromden, an imposing "Indian" patient allowed unprecedented access in the ward thanks to a feigned handicap. Through his eyes, Cuckoo's Nest is a more unique, thoughtful tale. His own hardships (tumultuous childhood, hallucinations) lead Chief to develop a dark view of society, a fascistic nightmare-scape he calls "The Combine." Disturbing, beautiful stuff. 

The movie belongs to McMurphy--Nicholson--to its ultimate detriment. While the shift in focus makes for a less unsettling, more digestible experience, the greater message was lost, and Ken Kesey avoided the film for that reason. "They took out the morality. They took out...the conspiracy that is America."

There is nothing moral, or intellectual, about Forman's Nest. Men are such beasts, women are such burdens, who's truly crazy in a world gone mad, yeah yeah go bleed all over a marble floor.

Better In Your Head?--THE GRADUATE

 

Spoiler Alert: disillusioned and tired.

THE BOOK-Written by Charles Webb, released 1963

THE MOVIE-Directed by Mike Nichols, written by Buck Henry & Calder Willingham, released 1967

THE STORY-While everyone around him is busy drowning, Benjamin Braddock floats. Fresh out of college--and, apparently, ideas--Benny is a boxer without an opponent, a guitar with no strings, a Garfunkel with no Simon. His parents wait impatiently for him to get smart, but Ben's still got some dumb stuff to do. 

MIND THE GAP-Charles Webb's first novel, and does it show. Enter the notorious washed-out world of Benjamin Braddock if you dare, a world of hot air and cold feet! The Graduate is the rare film-from-book that notably improves on the original story by adding heart and humanity. The wit-sick script lifts generously from the book, so the real magicians are director Nichols and a brilliant cast co-captained by Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, each splendidly inappropriate in their own special, sensational ways. 

This is how Webb describes the first coital clash between Ben and Mrs. Robinson: "He let her unbuckle his belt and push his pants down around his legs, then climbed on top her and started the affair." It takes all kinds in this world...one man's bed is another man's beanbag...but that is just goddamn terrible.

Now, whether Ben's unscrupulous self-indulgence is an early indicator of terminal asshole, or just the indiscretions of an indistinct youth buckling under the wretched weight of expectation, is anyone's guess. He's no hero. Nor is Mrs. Robinson, who abandoned her dreams to raise a child alongside a man she never loved. The hero is...anyone who gets through the book.

What, precisely, vexes young Ben so? Why does he fall in love in Elaine, and why does she fall in love with him? Who knows. Let the audience imagine the answers. Generation gap follies will forever entertain.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Hard not to top what's basically a published first draft. The filmmakers did what the author could not--exploit the comedy inherent in a horny older woman seducing a course-confused college grad, and create an enthralling story, intriguingly populated.

Better In Your Head?--SHIP OF FOOLS

 

Spoiler Alert: we all ship it.

THE BOOK-Written by Katherine Anne Porter, released 1962

THE MOVIE-Directed by Stanley Kramer, written by Abby Mann, released 1965

THE STORY-Come along and ride on a kaleidoscopic voyage with the civilized world's most pressed people! Thoughts of "the glorious future" dominate the collective present. Little do they know, stability is a thing of the past.

MIND THE GAP-Short story specialist Porter started work on her first and only novel in 1940. Twenty-two years later, her whip-smart masterpiece was released to massive fanfare. Inevitably, the movie rights sold for an absurd sum--$4.5 million in today's American dollar. 

Allegory ahoy! The story of a German passenger ship sailing from Mexico to Europe in the summer of 1931, carrying fifty well-offs meandering around the upper deck and nine-hundred deported workers crammed into steerage practically adjures sociological analysis. Power and privilege boil above; poverty and pain simmer below. Whether German, Spaniard, American, Cuban or Mexican, the passengers are united in woeful ignorance. The enemy is the other, ever-present, ever-growing and ever-ready to conquer and consume. The other would steal a meal from a starving child, would deny medicine to a dying mother. The other must be fought by doing what is demanded. Desires must make way for duties. To refuse responsibility, to resist tradition, is to dishonor one's very bloodline.

It is in such conditions that fascism rises and flourishes. Porter's text offers no answers, only reflections. In so doing, she shows an immaculate comprehension of the artistic imperative.

Lovely language only goes so far in film. Characters must be established quicker, cheaper. The sizable cast is headlined by Vivian Leigh's depressingly believable turn as fragile, love-tossed Mrs. Treadwell. Only Lee Marvin (as a bitter, washed-up ex-ballplayer) and Michael Dunn (as the charming fourth-wall breaker of uncommon height) distinguish themselves otherwise. Jose Ferrer fumbled his chance to make Herr Rieber one of cinema's classic assholes, and I've yet to come across a compelling argument for Oskar Werner's Oscar nomination.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Ship Of Fools is a book to read through once, then sporadically thereafter. A marvel of thematic unity, but also dense and debilitating. Adapting one of the century's most ambitious bestsellers is not a task for the faint of heart or feeble of mind. The decision to film in black-and-white staved off potential sensory overload and laid bare the message, but without Porter's magnificent prose ("the divine narcotic of hope," mwahhh) the movie descends into a grueling placidity. 

The book is a diamond, clean and stunning in its complexity. The film is mature and forgettable--soapstone. 

Better In Your Head?--THE END OF THE ROAD

 

Spoiler Alert: I'm not simply a writer, I'm also a writer.

THE BOOK-Written by John Barth, released 1958

THE MOVIE-Directed by Aram Avakian, written by Avakian, Danny McGuire & Terry Southern, released 1970

THE STORY-Life is so strange, when you don't know your motivation. Merrily, wearily, life is but a scheme. Jake Horner suffers from "cosmopsis"--the inability to change a course of action from all available options. Verging on non-entity status, he makes the acquaintance of a philosophical pretzel-hawker who pushes Jake to the limits of self-examination.

MIND THE GAP-First-person narrative allows Jake to act as his own psychiatrist. He is, admittedly, a tight twist of a familiar rope: occasionally moodless, frequently immobile, reluctantly interactive white guy. He self-identifies as a "placid-depressive," but truthfully, he's a hyper-conscious young man in need of emotional connection. Enter the (virtually) conjoined form of fellow teacher Joe Morgan and Joe's wife Rennie. Joe's mega-rational approach to life tests the limits of Jake's tolerance, but Rennie is his most passionate acolyte, having long ago discarded her values system for her husband's. One becomes three, three becomes two, two becomes one again.

The screenwriters (including noted comic absurdist Terry Southern) brought Barth's babe into a new decade without bothering to calculate the costs. The tumult of the 1960s is evident from the first frame--the political subsumes the personal, annihilation supersedes meditation. Nonsense for it's own putrid sake ensues, a cheap trick meant to reflect the mood of the day. Out there daddy-o, like wow man. Worse, they blew the ending, erasing emotion and scribbling out a crude, cruel doodle. This shit puts the "art" in "inarticulate mess."

The cast is game and god-awfully wasted. Harris Yulin is a gradually convincing choice as Joe, the happy haranguer. Stacey Keach, on the verge of a deceptively manly mustache, neatly acts out sophist supreme Jake, an impressively impersonal man for whom freedom is a prison, a gauze pad of a human being who soaks up the world's endless reserves of pus and blood. Dorothy Tristan rocks the soft flow glow and it's easy to overlook her Rennie...until the moment you'll never forget her.

Based in Maryland's Eastern Shore. Anyone with a spare bag or six of Old Bay Goldfish, hit up my comments. (Remember--I am a reasonable woman.) 

The book contains: "I left school with my head full of the Janusian ambivalence of the universe." But the book also contains: "I'd be a fool if I expected the world to excuse my actions simply because I can explain them clearly" and "I think all our trouble comes from thinking too much and talking too much." That last line is Barth's most brilliant. It can shoot off in countless directions and keep its center intact. And it comes courtesy of Rennie the Good Wife, the Punching Bag, the Victim Via a Sad Concatenation Set In Motion By Two Self-Absorbed Dunderninnies.

Oh, Rennie. Faced with an unwanted pregnancy, she lays down the law: abortion or suicide. As the story takes place twenty years before Roe v. Wade, locating a willing and able physician is difficult. Considerably more difficult, it should be noted, than obtaining the gun with which she plans to end her own life if the procedure is a no-go. Her remarkably grisly end is a brutal reminder of the hardships American women once faced. Sorry, I meant, a brutal reminder of the hardships American women now face all over again.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Horseshit. Frivolous, aggressively pretentious horseshit.

Do I mean the book or the movie? Do I mean both?

Post-modern nihilist porn is either done well, or done poorly. We're talking sugar pageant or shit show. But it cannot, as a rule, be entertaining. It can enlighten, it can demoralize, but it cannot entertain. Books like The End of the Road are literary manure. Eternally useful and vital and goddamn does it stink. Build up tolerance through prolonged exposure.

Movies like The End of the Road are literary rice grains. Easy to consume, hard to care about. The heavy wit and dark humor of the book were chased off by misguided stabs at social commentary. Scarf down a bowl of pasta instead.

Better In Your Head?--FIRST BLOOD

 

Spoiler Alert: first blood, best blood.

THE BOOK-Written by David Morrell, released 1979

THE MOVIE-Directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Michael Kozoll, Sylvester Stallone & William Sackheim, released 1982

THE STORY-A drifter and a cop. A father and a son. The sin of pride and the virtue of resourcefulness. Connections once made, broken only by death. War is hell and heaven only knows.

MIND THE GAP-Whether you read the book before watching the film...or you watch the film before reading the book...let a few days elapse. Lest you run a risk of debilitating whiplash.

Sylvester Stallone used his superstar status to change 90% of the source material. Rambo on film is still a decorated Vietnam vet--a Green friggin' Beret--experiencing significant difficulty re-assimilating into civilian life. He still snaps after incessant torment from small-town cops. But he's no killing machine; his body-tally is just one, and that one a case of manslaughter. Otherwise, Rambo disarms and subdues pursuers with phlegmatic expertise. He is given a first name, the quintessential American first name--John. He's a super-buff scruff victimized by circumstances. He wields an iconic weapon. He survives at the end.

Smart changes, commercially speaking. Stallone knew what crowds of the era craved, and he filled their plate accordingly. Whether boxing ring or battlefield, a Stallone character gives audiences reasons to cheer. He's at his arguable best in First Blood, a muscular marvel who can still pull off a highly emotional moment. (Just the one, though.) His chief antagonist is a sheriff, name of Teasle (the dependably fantastic Brian Dennehy). Just like in the book, Teasle is driven by vindictiveness towards a homeless guy who just won't leave town. Unlike in the book, however, he's vengeful and frothing, like Joe Don Baker with rabies. "I'm gonna pin that Congressional Medal Of Honor to his liver." Why? Just let him be Walla Walla's problem, dude! (Oh right, locale changed from small-town Kentucky to small-town Washington. 'Cause the South can't have all the controversial statues.)

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The novel's greatest feat is a layered, sensitive portrayal of hunter and hunted. Two men, just-Rambo and Chief Teasle, brothers-in-shame racing towards the same clearly-marked minefield. Neither is reduced to a symbol, and that's why the book shines. Because the movie proudly reduces both men to symbols. Further to its detriment, the screenplay also dials down the violence (a "wrong" righted in the slew of sequels). The carnage in Morrell's gripping articulation of machismo run amok adds another shade of whatever color comes to mind when you hear the words "warrior in isolation." 

I've never read another book quite like Rambo and I'm unsure if I could.

Better In Your Head?--SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING

 

Spoiler Alert: whatever y'all say I am, is who I'm not.

THE BOOK-Written by Alan Sillitoe, released 1958

THE MOVIE-Directed by Karel Reisz, written by Alan Sillitoe, released 1960

THE STORY-A lather's life isn't much, but it's steady work, and it clears room for the choicest spices--plentiful pints, casual violence, dangerous sex. No, it isn't much, which means you can go back for more.

MIND THE GAP-Arthur Seaton, y'all. Factory drone by day, puss-poacher by night, stuck with the sort of face that cannot ever fully be trusted nor ignored. In the midst of chaos he is whole. Nice bloke to visit, but I'd not want to live with him. Those 200+ pages fairly flew by, but 90 minutes might be a test. Well, I rose to the challenge like truth from a drunken mouth, and it's down to Albert Finney. In just his second film, Finney announced himself as a major talent. He's a magnetic sleaze, too human to hate.

Alan Sillitoe's debut novel threw open the floodgates for a frothing mob of "angry young men" in fiction, physically and spiritually defiant souls disgusted by the establishment, wounded warriors repulsed by their inherited arsenal, resentful of battlefields whose locations and dimensions were decided-upon generations before. As with most things, a little goes a lotta.

Makes sense everyone calls each other "duck." They sustain on any bits tossed in their general direction.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning broke the ground Trainspotting salted thirty-five years later. 

Left newly vulnerable after a well-deserved ass-beating, the cynical rotter decides to change his mendacious ways. High time Arthur plays an active role in his own life! Embrace the monotony of monogamy! Will it last till bits of sky splish-splash in the ocean? Are Mr. and Mrs. Seaton dunzo once the first brat's out? Maybe and maybe. Arthur knows that; he's stubborn, not stupid, and that's my favorite thing about the guy. Life goes from "bless you" to "screw you" in half a snap. We are owed no better. If you're going to craft a castle from the sands of time, better brace your back to bear the frigid waves. And never, ever lose track of the seagulls.

"(A)s though somebody slung a bottle of ink at her." Seriously?

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The movie's really good. Really pointless, also. Don't misunderstand, I recommend the watch. (Apparently it ushered in the "New Wave of British Cinema.") Finney's marvelous and the accents on display transform conversations into knife fights. But Sillitoe puts readers proper in the pudding; anything else is skin.