Better In Your Head?--MISERY

 

Spoiler Alert: it's wasted on the miserable.

THE BOOK-Written by Stephen King, released 1987

THE MOVIE-Directed by Rob Reiner, written by William Goldman, released 1990

THE STORY-Best-selling author Paul Sheldon meets his "number one fan."

MIND THE GAP-A writer writing about writing? Hot damn, hope ya like yams! 

King's never concocted a more ferociously repulsive character than prudish psycho Annie Wilkes. She's a thunderclap of a tormentor, every convalescent's nightmare. And no one besides Kathy Bates could have done the dowdily-dressed, dumpy-bodied villain truest justice. Her perma-glaze gaze is the stuff of nightmarish dead ends. Her performance alone makes Misery a must-watch.

At one point, Paulie baby must peck out a manuscript on a typewriter missing the following keys: n, t, and e. For the past two months, I've been tapping away on a MacBook with a loose t and the following non-responsive letters: i, o, u, y. *

Evil woman, man whose greater artistic ambitions are stifled by the wildly-popular series of novels he rushes out for a frenzied female fanbase, weirdo rape fantasy...yeah, I can see how Misery could be misconstrued. I also see beyond that. When Stephen King released the fantastical The Eyes Of The Dragon in 1984, fans rebelled. "Where's our horror? Wherefore art the blood-soaked this-and-that, the wrested intestines, the botched homemade facelifts, the unexplainable unstoppable?" Throw in the icy-hot grip of hard drug addiction, and along came Misery. Annie Wilkes is King's exacting fanbase crammed into one unseemly, ungainly body; Paul Sheldon, the wronged, hobbled creator, is King himself. 

Say what you will about King, he puts the "care" in "character."

Choosing notorious red-ass James Caan as a wheelchair-bound author literally writing for his life was genius. He nails every line, every beat, and at no point did I ever think, "Hey, it's Sonny Corleone!"

Two other novels featured in the "Better In Your Head?" series are mentioned in Misery.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-King sold the film rights under the condition that Rob Reiner would produce and direct. The becapped former "Meathead" understood the dark humor in the script (another William Goldman winner) and kept the proceedings palatable for those folks who wouldn't be upset that Annie running over a cop with a lawnmower didn't make the script.

And the film's great. But whatever Hitchcockian heights Reiner reaches are undercut by his constant awareness of a hypothetical audience. The book is a tornado bearing down on a nursery. Yes, it's a self-insert piece, plenty masturbatory, excellence over coherence in spots, but it is beautifully repulsive as well--a feedback loop of fear, respect and loathing that lingers long after the last page.

*True at the time, as most of my blog posts are first written out in longhand. One month after scribbling out this lamentation, I received a new MacBook.

Better In Your Head?--INDECENT PROPOSAL

 

Spoiler Alert: for two million, sure.

THE BOOK-Written by Jack Engelhard, released 1988

THE MOVIE-Directed by Adrian Lyne, written by Amy Holden Jones, released 1993

THE STORY-During a decompression session in Atlantic City, recalcitrant corporate lackey Joshua Kane meets an Arab sultan, whose outrageous offer--one million dollars for one night with Mrs. Kane--inspires a spiral of spite and denial.

MIND THE GAP-The film took the novel's premise and ran off without so much as a weakly rueful chuckle. Divorce vets Josh and Joan Kane became former high-school sweeties David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore, each dreaming of a bank lobby). Josh is a speechwriter, the defiant son of Holocaust survivors; David is a dippy architect, the sheepish spawn of helicopters. The Murphys are approached in Vegas by debonair billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford). The couple are in dire need of dough, lest they lose the land upon which they plan to build their dream house. The Kanes are resolutely middle-class. They share the world's vilest vice, one which kills slower than kuru and surer than mad cow: greed.

The book is written in first-person, Josh's POV. His anxieties have anxieties, and your response to that tidbit determines if you'll finish, much less enjoy, Indecent Proposal. Persecution--first- and second-hand--drives his moves. He is not secure enough, not respected enough--because he is not rich enough. He'd do anything for more money. Or would he?

The Kanes are subjectively less likable than the Murphys, but objectively more interesting. They talk, oh Lord do the Kanes talk, spearmint bursts of convo so authentic I yearned to scrape the words off their pages with my tongue. The pair's repartee is hotter than the bland, passion-free sex scenes that Adrian Lyne of all motherfuckers foisted upon my brittle blues. (When the Kanes do strip and search, they do so "like people in danger." I'd be their third for free.)

"(A) hard, blood-filled penis" is the latest guest at the Literary Redundancy Party, and whatever dish they brought, it can stay covered. 

The misogyny of Indecent Proposal is monumental. Indeed, the very premise gives it away. Men are more harshly judged for shortcomings as fathers, not as husbands. Women catch hell for slip-ups in either role. A good wife is pretty and dutiful, always ready to fuck and be fucked, clean and conceal, forgive and forget. Occasionally, a good wife is a prize to be fought over by would-be conquerors. Her wishes are irrelevant. 

Robert Redford is the only fuckable person in the whole movie.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Early '90s mainstream "provocative media" came no more blatant than the film Indecent Proposal. Sex, money, money, sex. (No rock & roll, since John Barry's clueless on how to do either.) The movie smashed at the box office despite critical excoriation, and the central question--well, would you?--dominated public discourse and inspired countless parodies.

The movie also sucks with a vengeance. Cinematic cordwood. Intellectually bereft, emotionally monochromatic, gross as a soft pretzel brushed with vinegar. Without the cultural friction, religious intrigue, or meditations on materialism, this is just a severely boring story. 

Don't ever approach me with any proposal that involves watching this rancid nonsense. I'd pay to sit through a double feature of Monster A-Go-Go and The Giant Gila Monster in a theater run by a junk-jockey and his untrained, unleashed pit bull before watching Indecent Proposal for free.

Better In Your Head?--THE PRICE OF SALT/CAROL

 

Spoiler Alert: no matter how good you push it, someone else will push it better.

THE BOOK-Written by Patricia Highsmith, released in 1952 (under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan")

THE MOVIE (as "Carol")-Directed by Todd Haynes, written by Phyllis Nagy, released 2015

THE STORY-Therese is 19. She sells toys and designs stage sets. She is in love with Carol Aird, an elegant aspiring divorcèe. The ladies travel cross-country, the best method of determining the legitimacy of a romantic connection. As usual, men and children threaten to screw it all up.

MIND THE GAP-For her second novel, Patricia Highsmith dipped into the fruit basket of her own life and snatched an apple, the traditional edible symbol of immoral love. A lesbian romance in a repressive era not only meant potential social condemnation, it carried the threat of career suicide for a promising author (as Highsmith's own agent did not hesitate to inform her). Considering that the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published the year before, declared homosexuality a "sociopathic personality disease," Highsmith's decision to use a pseudonym was wise. (The first pressing featuring her real name appeared in 1984.)

Beyond coming very close to the pictures in my head, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara each deliver faultless performances. Blanchett, especially, is pure golden age enchantress. Every time she speaks, I feel like I've dipped a Twix bar in brandy. 

Therese and Carol are not ideologies given faces. Therese's feelings transcend mere schoolgirl crush, and Carol isn't weathering a mid-life meltdown. (30 was "midlife" in the 1950s, right?) They are emeralds in the manure, and they deserve happiness. They do not deserve iniquitous investigators harshing their shared mellow, nor do they deserve lifetimes spent humoring men named "Harge." These women are both damaged, and thus cause damage, and thus receive damage, and 'round again. Sprinkle the spice, pay the price. For the privilege of love--a good-maybe-great thing at its very best--there's no cost too high.

"Age gap" ain't nothin' but a statistic.

The lady lovers meet the acquaintance of Mrs. French, an older woman with "a Maryland accent." Given the only MD accents are Baltimore, Dundalk, and Appalachian, I was disappointed the author didn't drop any indicative words or phrases. No "I'm going downey ocean, hon," no "I always warsh my hair before bed," no "Y'all like crabs?" C'mon, Pat.

Aw ish, Carrie Brownstein cameo! (The Therese to Corin Tucker's Carol, of course I'm right.)

Although the actresses earned Oscar nods, the movie itself missed out on top prize despite overwhelmingly positive reviews. But when you've bestowed upon the world magnificent red-and-gold-streaked femme-on-femme action, you don't need man-made accolades for validation.

In a courageous display of emotional honesty, Carol chooses her young lover over her young child. Why not; men do it all the time.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-The Price of Salt is a great love story, and a banger road trip, a near-masterpiece of recollection and recreation ("near" since Highsmith is still resisting her editor's best efforts at tightening up proceedings with the same obnoxious obstinance my stomach resists my attempts to flatten it).

The best adaptation is a zestful addendum. Compromises (and there are always compromises) may not accentuate the story, but they should not incapacitate the story. In Carol, Therese isn't pockmarked by her obsession, Carol is more sugar cookie than macaron, and Trapper Jenn is forgiving. Director Haynes utilizes space well, and silence even better, giving a crackling incandescence to the emotional distance between common tales and the ways they are told and re-told.

Gladly, I'll pay.

Better In Your Head?--LEAVING LAS VEGAS

 

Spoiler Alert: SoCo or GTFO!

THE BOOK-Written by John O'Brien, released 1990

THE MOVIE-Directed & written by Mike Figgis, released 1995

THE STORY-Ben Sanderson has gone from "yes-man" to "no-hoper." He lacks a future...but not a purpose. He is going to drink himself into the Great Who-Knows.

MIND THE GAP-John O'Brien died in April 1994 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, mere weeks after signing away the film rights of Leaving Las Vegas. He'd struggled with alcohol throughout adulthood, "a tireless architect of his undoing"--and a sensitive chronicler of it also. While the events of LLV should not be misunderstood as strictly autobiographical, the mood is a dire reflection of a broken man. (Members of O'Brien's family described the novel as his "suicide note.")

Nicolas Cage weaved and wobbled his way to a Best Actor Oscar, but I regard his portrayal of a fatalistic boozer as quite overrated. Book Ben engaged the senses: I saw the pallor, smelled the poisonous potables, tasted the plaster, heard the pushes/pulls/pings/pops. Film Ben couldn't die fast enough for my satisfaction. Elisabeth Shue is fine as Sera, the whore with the iron heart. Again, not a sniff on O'Brien's version.

Sympathy for the devil relies heavily on a person's stance vis-à-vis free will. If alcoholism is a disease, and if women are taught (however covertly) that their greatest value is as a sexual object, how aren't Ben and Sera worthy of compassion, forgiveness, and love?

By putting her worst moment in the first act, O'Brien shows Sera's formidable inner strength. For her to endure such a horror and still love a self-loathing man is just barely more than touching than exasperating. The movie puts this scene near the end, and Sera comes off as a ungrateful slut receiving due punishment. 

I guess Ben and Sera consummating their relationship was meant to evoke bittersweet feelings. Necrophilia, more like.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Whatever the novel's flaws (mainly, punchy sentences when just a slap would've sufficed) it is a brilliant presentation of brutal people who desire despite distrust, no apologies given or taken. O'Brien's world is bleak, authentic, and never stale. 

Wisely, action alternates between Ben's and Sera's perspectives, and it is Sera who sees us out. "She can, and will, do this forever," the text claims, and her resilience has stuck with me more than Ben's sour-breathed submissiveness. 

Okay, so...most interesting character diminished, overwrought primary performance, 90s jazz soundtrack baffling slo-mo shots and superfluous freeze frames. One of the easiest decisions yet!

Better In Your Head?--STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

 

Spoiler Alert: a warm jump off a cold pier awaits.

THE BOOK-Written by Patricia Highsmith, released 1950

THE MOVIE-Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook & Crenzi Ormonde, released 1951

THE STORY-An impromptu meeting between love-tossed architect Guy Haines and unmoored castle-chaser Charles Anthony Bruno leads to a fraught exchange of anxieties, and an idea so distinctly diabolical it cannot be taken seriously: trade murders like young boys of the era traded ballcards. 

MIND THE GAP-What a set-up! What, then, of the take-down?

The murders themselves are unsettling and unimpressive. What lingers is how each homicide is justified inside a mind determined to free itself of exhausting expectations. Taking a stranger's life can be viewed as a kindness through a fractured lens.

Patricia Highsmith's debut novel features the flaws typical of a rookie scribe: too long, too infatuated with its best idea. Still, her descriptions of the writhing compulsions that frazzle the soul are top-notch, and the thrill of immersion too potent for confusion.

Film rights sold for $7500, thanks to Hitchcock deliberately keeping his name out of negotiations. The master, somehow, thought even less of writers than he did of actors.

Hitchcock cast actors whose physical vibes told the character's story. Robert Walker's Bruno is a charm-belt of questionable elasticity. Farley Granger is similarly softened as Guy, a handsome husk. The homosexual subtext is unmissable in the novel, although it's hard to fathom Bruno loving a man besides himself. He presents himself to Guy as a partner, a teammate. He is, in truth, an avaricious ham hungry for an audience. Intriguing as the baser lusts are, the text massages muscles far knottier than sexual identity--good and evil, obsession bred from depression, and peculiar concepts of justice. Perhaps Hitch felt he'd blown his bubble with Rope three years prior....

Raymond Chandler's name appears in the final credits at the behest of Warner Bros., mindful of crucial cachet. None of the mystery maven's work made the final screenplay, however, thanks to repeated conflicts with Hitchcock. Part of Chandler's beef concerned the big man's insistence on the amazing shot at the expense of the story. But the visuals, Ray, the visuals! My oh my, The Master had an eye. There is legitimately no way greater the death of Guy's wife Miriam could have been filmed. 

Viewers who wonder why there's no safety lever on the merry-go-round would do better to wonder why Guy just didn't call Bruno's bluff and call the cops.

I could argue any black-and-white adaptation is down a strike when the novel contains descriptions like "offensively orange."

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Alfred Hitchcock had forty films on his resume by the time he began shooting Strangers On A Train; Patricia Highsmith, again, was just starting out as a writer. So it stands to reason the old boy held the book in no higher regard than absolutely necessary. Given that he told Crenzi Ormonde to forget about the book when she first came onto the project, perhaps it's more accurate to say he held it in no regard whatsoever. Telling a tale of man's unerring knack for self-destruction interested the maestro little. As such, he makes a huge change--Guy does not honor his end of the bargain.

That single alteration tips the scales. Never mind career changes or name changes, the film changed the man into a Nice Guy, literally. Book Guy Haines is a murderer, a slave to his writhing compulsions, and even if the novel is overlong by 80-ish pages, Highsmith's psychological insights indicate an incipient titan. Ultimately I prefer her version, although Hitch's ending is superior, since it relies not on coincidence but on the threat of catastrophe. Had it adhered closer to the original story structure and character, I may have preferred the film.

Better In Your Head?--THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

 

Spoiler Alert: Shout! Shout! Or not. Oh, and the dog dies.

THE BOOK-Written by Milan Kundera, released 1984

THE MOVIE-Directed by Philip Kaufman, written by Philip Kaufman & Jean-Claude Carriere, released 1988

THE STORY-Tomas is a brilliant surgeon. He is also a married playboy who separates sex from love as skillfully as he separates vessels. He seeks the light life, a burden-free existence. His wife Tereza absorbs blows, snaps photos and spoils their dog Karenin (the only member of their household who doesn't take pride in qualities they've no control over). And this is all very fine. Then political upheaval leads to personal upheaval. Surrounded by people who've made peace with their shames, the couple conform to new demands. But can they truly escape the agony of emotions severely felt?

MIND THE GAP-Milan, you a fool for this one, boy!

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is where yellow highlighters go to die. The wealth of breathtaking insights contained within make it far more enjoyable to read than a beguiling refutation of Nietzschean philosophy costumed as a novel should be. So much emphasis is placed on weight. Carrying too much, or too little, results in catastrophe. Love is not biology; love is geography. Chew on infinity before the finite swallows you whole. The quest for the ideal elevates art and demeans reality. Oh yes, 'tis that kind of book. Prepare for wet-eyed meditations and dry-mouthed excavations. 

A naked woman wearing a bowler hat isn't sexy. It's the sexiest.

Daniel Day-Lewis appears on countless "Best Actors Ever" lists. But is he anyone's favorite actor? His Tomas is a smug, supercilious sleaze hardly worth the affection of wife (doll-faced sweetheart Juliette Binoche) or mistress (Lena Olin, whose name I just typed out). None of the those actors hail from the former Czechoslovakia. I don't care. You might.

I'd never be friends with Tomas or Tereza in real life, but damn if I wasn't fully invested in their story. The revelation of their shared fate midway through the novel imbues the remainder with profound, profuse melancholy. As the film's penultimate scene, it renders the moment not even slightly poignant.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-An active consultant on the film, Milan Kundera nevertheless lambasted the finished product and never again permitted an adaptation of his written work. Can't blame him; Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a three-hour slog devoid of the bite marks that make life rewarding. The sex scenes are plentiful and pointless, like U.S. pennies or Lincoln biographies.

What makes the book memorable is what makes it unfilmable. Financial gains for the author aside, there is no good reason for this movie to exist. And no good reason for it ever to be watched.

Better In Your Head?--JURASSIC PARK

 

Spoiler Alert: the children may be the future, but they're also the present, and there's the problem.

THE BOOK-Written by Michael Crichton, released 1990

THE MOVIE-Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Michael Crichton & David Koepp, released 1993

THE STORY-When it comes to brilliant ideas, a billionaire's reaches fruition faster than most. Dinosaur theme park featuring creatures born of cloning and recombinant DNA technology is a go!  

Money + Desire - Common Sense = PROFIT!

MIND THE GAP-Dino lovers aren't the only audience for Jurassic Park, but even if they are--that's no small audience, friends.

Crichton's novel is a feat of awe-inspiring imagination, pulling off the neat trick of "entertaining while educating" with the deftness of a disillusioned academic. Spielberg's film is a feat of effects--practical and special alike. Amazing how well they've aged nearly thirty years on.

Smart move, aging Ellie and expanding her role for the film. ("Laura Dern" and "lustrous delight" begin with the same two letters, it's not an accident.) Making her and Grant a couple, though, gets the Mr. Yuk sticker. Soooo fucking Hollywood.

Best John Williams score. Argue with a rocket launcher. 

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Crichton's book is hard sci-fi, titanium tier. Average of two nerdgasms per page. Snarly and bleak, it lacks an overwhelming pull of adventure. Like Peter Benchley, his work is strongest in the details. His characters are road signs along a road covered in the brittle debris of humanity's hubris. The pages redden in due time, although the patient reader won't mind riding out the pink.

Spielberg understands that showing just a hint of muscle leaves audiences eager to solve the mystery. He serves the servants, and never comes up short. The movie Jaws made its source novel seem like a children's book, and while I won't got that far here, it's impossible to shake his vision even if you read the novel first. 

Cherry time: the movie's just fun. The book ain't. How do you make dinosaurs not fun? Come on, Mike.