Okay, now that some plans we had for the October long weekend will not eventuate, I am now going to be around to partake in events at the Scone Literary Long Weekend. I am going to read from 'Silver Studs and Sabre Teeth', and attend a panel discussion being chaired by my friend Leonie Rogers (she writes speculative teenage fiction with giant felines called Star Cats, so Google her if you're interested), the topic of which is the book is better than the film.
Now, I think this is a no-brainer. The book is pretty much ALWAYS better than the film. One of my pet peeves is a fantastic book being made into a movie that just reeks of mediocrity, or worse: stupidity. My top two favourite books have both been made into cinematic waste. And it infuriates me no end. I shall now proceed to rant hereunder about these great travesties:
1. 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' by Tom Wolfe. I first chanced upon this novel whilst elephant riding in Thailand. How many people can say that? When I was a much younger thing of twenty-three, my bestie and I were trekking through, and we were in an organised group that included a late afternoon elephant ride. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. One of the group, a French-Canadian backpacker named Louis, had this paperback. When it was his turn to climb into the saddle on the elephant, I glanced at the book and asked could I have a browse whilst he was riding the great pachyderm. He said I could. I picked it up, and my friend nattered with some of the other travellers. I started to read. The glorious and poetic use of language, cynically tongue-in-cheek tone, and the obvious piss-take on corporate Eighties greed captivated me immediately. Although I was only in my early twenties, and it was still the Eighties, I knew I would like this - all through the Eighties I hated the decade and couldn't wait for New Year's Eve to ring in the Nineties. 'What unlikeable, yet totally realistically shallow characters,' I thought, as I read about Sherman McCoy and his mistress finding themselves in the wrong area of New York. It was with regret I handed back the novel when Louis disembarked from the elephant.
Eventually, I read the book in its entirety. Then I read it again straight away. Every character an unlikeable, shallow, cringe-worthy, self-absorbed jerk that manages to make the reader look in the mirror and cringe and their own failings. The only remotely likeable character is Tom Kilian, the criminal lawyer retained by Sherman after he his charged in relation to a hit and run. And I loved it all. I loved Wolfe's description of the hangover suffered by the British journalist, Peter Fallow. I loved the social awkwardness of trying to impress arseholes in society.
So what the fuck were the producers, and director Brian de Palma thinking when they turned this book into a movie? I have read some reviews on the Internet Movie Database, and they were all very favourable. I can only imagine the posters haven't read the book. Guess who was cast to play the petty, somewhat venal, and duplicitously adulterous Sherman McCoy? Tom Hanks. No, I did not type that wrong. Do you know why they cast Tom Hanks? Because he has an affable public persona and 'they' wanted to dilute the less attractive aspects of McCoy! Hello! Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining! If a character is obnoxious, then by God, film the character as obnoxious! Tom Hanks did nothing to capture the lack of depth Sherman McCoy has. It was Miscasting 101. You might as well cast Pamela Anderson or Lindsay Lohan to play Lady MacBeth. Memo to movie makers: how about you stop worrying whether a character is not generally likeable, if the author of the source material from which you are working obviously intended for him to be unlikeable???
Also, what was with presenting the movie from the journalist's point of view, and even worse, making him American? Bruce Willis plays the journalist, and apparently regrets this role big time. So he should. I believe Wolfe made the journalist British so he could observe the foibles and quirks of American society at that time, and comment objectively as an outsider. But oh no, let's just stuff it up, shall we? Seriously, is that how they pitch their movie ideas? 'Hey, guys! We've got a great idea for a movie. We'll take a brilliant novel and metaphorically bend it over the desk and roger it stupid, and render the final product completely unrecognisable and offensive to the aficionados of the book! We will completely miss the point! Is that a great idea, or what?'
No, peeps, it is not a great idea. Anyway, my other all time favourite novel is:
2. 'A Prayer for Owen Meany' by John Irving. Look, I could rhapsodise about this for days. I first read this book twenty-five years ago, and have probably read it just as many times since then. Irving has created the most amazing character I have ever read, in an allegorical tale about an under-sized boy who grows into a man deigned to be 'God's instrument'. The language, the imagery, the themes - I actually GOT what my English teachers had tried to drill into me as a student. I felt like I was falling in love. And although there were parts where I cried as I read (and still do), Irving managed to avoid mawkishness and needless sappy sentimentality. So anyway, someone decided to make a saccharine movie drawn from this source material, only the movie was called 'Simon Birch'. Tiny kid, but the similarity ends there. He doesn't grow up, join the army, and save some Vietnamese orphans when they are expatriated to the US. The movie does keep the circumstances under which Owen erroneously causes the death of his best friend's mother (Johnny), which was sad yet deliciously noir. Johnny has a great relationship with his stepfather, like in the book, and like in the book Owen mysteriously helps him learn the identity of his biological father. But the movie is just so much sap. It's cinematic emetics. It full on fellates festered camel dicks. It pissed me off big time. Not long after I saw it, I was having a drink at the pub where the legal fraternity used to drink, and one of the barristers, a fellow Irving buff, asked me had I yet seen it. I said I had, called for another drink to fortify myself, and advised him to avoid the film like a rabid Doberman.
It is probably just as well I am not speaking on this panel.
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