61 novels turned into 70 movies. So what's the verdict? By my estimation, 15 1/2. Hmm? Ah, see, while the first adaptation of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three surpassed the original, the second adaptation surpassed not even my lowest expectations.
That's a frankly surprising 25.4%--over ten percent higher than the titles featured in Series One.
It's still better in your head...but maybe not as often as you think.
Spoiler Alert: Special Dark is the best in the bag.
THE BOOK-Written by Judith Roessner, released 1975
THE MOVIE-Directed & written by Richard Brooks, released 1977
THE STORY- Terry Dunn lives a double life--teacher by day, cruiser by night. She insists on a carefree existence unimaginable for women even a decade prior. Loved ones long to ground her spirit, but the air up there is hot with sex, drugs, death...the stuff life is made of.
MIND THE GAP-Based on the real-life-and-death story of Roseann Quinn, Looking For Mr. Goodbar is so emotionally devastating that two decades after first experiencing book and film (in that order), fragments of the ending still pop into my head on occasion.
The truths Goodbar coaxes forth are simplistic and shattering. Every time you walk outside into the world, you take a risk. Human interaction is rife with possibility. One-night stands can result in furtive visits from unwanted guests. Death, although unlikely, cannot be ruled out, for anyone, anywhere. This sad reality is, we are told incessantly, the fault of the victim. In every man lurks a beast, and the others around them must act accordingly and keep the beast at bay.
Terry's case of "ugly duckling syndrome" is surpassed in meanness only by her Catholic guilt. The film overdoses on the latter whilst paying the former dust. Diane Keaton is pretty, outgoing, bratty even--accusations I can't level too boldly against the Terry in Judith Rossner's novel. Book Terry is driven by a self-destructive mindset undetectable onscreen. Keaton's performance is primarily faultless; her supple rhythms are so infectious, their absence acts as a portent.
Richard Gere is magnetic as hyperactive lunkhead Tony, and Tom Berenger makes the most of his time as Gary, a man shrouded in discordant shames. William Atherton and Alan Feinstein, in sharp contrast, each shit the bed before the lights go out. Ahterton apparently prepared by carving a wooden lizard, and Feinstein's professor is so far from the matter-of-fact manipulator I imagined, I can safely assume he prepared for the role by not reading the book.
Looking For Mr. Goodbar is up there with Schindler's List and Marriage Story as great films I've no desire to watch again. Judith Rossner detested the thing, citing Terry's makeover into a "happy" seductress, and the script's decision to turn the relationship between Terry and her father from one of solemn misgivings into one of clamorous animosity. Rossner deliberately avoided "pop sociology" in her work, and her work is all the stronger.
Then and now, Terry Dunn stands a fair distance from society's ideal woman. She enjoys sex, but bristles at emotional commitment. She enjoys teaching children, but bristles at motherhood. Women are typically celebrated not for their ambition and carnality, but for their passivity and compliance. So much has changed. So much resists change.
Looking For Mr. Goodbar and Annie Hall in the same year, damn Diane Keaton had the range.
I mean, Christ, can't a broad go for a walk? Can't a chick down some drinks? Can't a girl pass out? Must every situation be a perilous one? If Terry's fate--Roseann's fate--was inevitable, isn't that a more devastating indictment of men? Why villainize the prey and protect the predator?
BETTER IN YOUR HEAD- Stroke. Scream. Snarl. Snap. Stab. Shit.
Movie over book? It's happened a bit this series. So is that how we see it out? Well, the execution of the ending alone almost tipped the scales for me here. I couldn't tear my eyes away; I wanted to tear my eyes out of my head. The novel, though it ends essentially the same, didn't leave me so physically affected. What it did give me that those visceral visuals did not, was a picture of a woman. Diane Keaton plays a woman whose present is paramount. The past happened, doesn't matter; the future hasn't yet happened, might not matter. It is now or never, literally. Day after day, class after class. Night after night, man after man. She survives on a diet of wine and praise (and for a bit, white powder). The film shows us a woman alive.
The book, meanwhile, shows us a woman living. If Rossner's prose comes off exhausted by the last few pages, that's understandable. The film shows us the woman Terry's become; the book shows us the becoming, wonderfully, without a smidgen of showiness. We see the mind games and power plays that harden her heart, culminating in a break-up so bad it leaves her bed-bound. We see the dreams and nightmares that make a more convincing case for monogamy than the sternest lecture ever could. I don't wonder the author was tired by the end. So was I.
All hail the slow burn.
Spoiler Alert: bisexuals are magic.
THE BOOK-Written by Philip Roth, released 2009
THE MOVIE-Directed by Barry Levinson, written by Buck Henry & Michal Zebede (& Levinson, unc.)
THE STORY-What fate rates worst? Abrupt defeat or protracted decline? Whatever your answer, don't bother telling Simon Axler. The legendary stage actor has lost his gift for artifice, and found in its usual place a crisis of confidence.
MIND THE GAP-Depressed old guy, of course he'll be seeking validation via virility.
Roth's penultimate book was his fourth death-fixated volume in as many years. The start heaves with narrative promise: "He'd lost his magic." 140 pages later, hyper-indulgent old-man meandering heaves all over said promise, a bubbly, stinky sheet of sick that sometimes looks worse than it smells, the scrambled dregs of a slow and broken life.
Little wonder The Humbling spoke so fiercely to the artistic soul of Alfredo Pacino. Veteran of the planks, effusively praised, seldom doubted--until he can no longer cut the butter. No longer a supple exemplar of the art of pretend, and unable to quit the production, Simon Axler holes up in the green room, waiting for a restorative jolt. An extended stay in a psychiatric hospital provides a twitch, but the surprise arrival of a woman from the past is a six-pack of lightning best enjoyed over multiple sittings. Her name is Pegeen (ugh) and she's the daughter of Simon's old theatre friends. For the last sixteen years, she's slept exclusively with women, but her last girlfriend transitioned into a heterosexual male, so why can't Pegeen try being a heterosexual woman?
Great casting is dishonored by a script equal parts inventive and indecisive. Pacino digs hardily into the ribs of the role, working every wrinkle and disheveled hair masterfully as he shuffles scene to scene. He is most compelling when at his most confounded. And if anyone can monologue on lost mojo more stirringly than Al Pacino...no, they can't.
From the moment of her sudden appearance to the moment of her drawn-out departure, Greta Gerwig is a prickly refugee from a wildly popular Nineties film of tenuous influence. She's both the great redeemer and humbled recipient of absolution. Physically, both she and Pacino are wrong for their parts--he's too short, too lank; she's a decade too young, and remains recognizably feminine whatever her fashion--but an alternative universe where an adaptation of The Humbling was made without them seems impossible. Although that might be because I don't want to imagine another realm of existence where this movie was made at all.
The love affair falls apart after a threesome. The mathematics of love dictate: two plus one is not addition, it is division.
"I don't think you fucked the lesbian outta me yet." Sometimes I question my commitment to Sparkle Motion, y'all.
BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-A strange specimen, The Humbling. The story (creative guy wracked by self-doubt and betrayed by his own instincts, meets another professionally vain creature, pair travel entwined down the last slime trail towards death's toothless maw) is well-told..if not always told well. Consider the author. When She Was Good, Portnoy's Complaint. Consider the director. Diner, Rain Man. Consider the cast. Dog Day Afternoon, Frances Ha, Hannah and Her Sisters, Kinky Boots. Whatever the medium, there is little worth recalling here, little worth revisiting, little to endorse or condemn. The film eases up on the bleakness and smut, to no benefit. There's a couple laugh-out-loud moments in the movie, one of them intentionally so, and that convinced me Levinson messed up by not making The Humbling a full-on comedy.
Stating a preference feels like faking an orgasm.
Roth's concern--obsession?--is the intimacy of death and dying. The book's length prevents too deep a probe. A curse in 1989, a blessing in 2009. The screenplay is bloated in comparison. For the mercy of brevity, I proclaim the book less painful, and thus, "better."
