I recently watched The Last Picture Show for the first (and only) time. Guess what? Yeah, like I said above. The star-gazing was great, with Florence Henderson, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid, etc. It's just that McMurtry describes details, minute details on the page that give the story form. The film was very flat compared to the book.
I may have told ya'll this before, I'm notorious for repeating myself, but when I can't find anything to read at the library, one of my old stand-by sets is The Last Picture Show trilogy, which includes the aforementioned book, also Texasville and Duane's Depressed. Sometimes they make me laugh and sometimes they bring me down, but I know I can depend on them to be engaging.
My other favorite stand-bys are John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, and The Cider House Rules; Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool and Straight Man; and Annie Proulx's The Shipping News.
I think McMurtry, Irving and Russo have similar writing styles, because they can give every detail of a scene without boring you to death. Have you ever read Jane Eyre? It's a good story, but after a page and a half of going on and on about some feeling Jane is having, I'm like "Hey, Charlotte Bronte, enough, already, I get it!"
Proulx's book is just plain good. I have not seen the movies of any of these books (except the one), but I understand that the people in The Shipping News were attractive. The characters in the book are not, it's integral to the story that they are not.
I think the only movie that has been true to the book is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. When Mayella, played by Collin Wilcox Paxton, bats her eyes maniacally while being questioned in the courtroom, it's utter magic.
See, I do love the movies as well as books. I am mystified and in awe when they seem to do just the right thing on film, or have just the right actor to portray a certain character.
I've always wanted to work on a movie set, just doing something like handing out water or putting donuts on trays. I really want to see the working part of the movies. It seems like that would be a story in itself.
On a trip to the Abilene mall yesterday, I realized that Alice in Wonderland is in vogue. Lewis Carroll's two books, to include Through the Looking Glass as well as Wonderland, have always been my most favorite. No one has ever described the dream world as well as Carroll. I'm a purist though, and don't appreciate the super sharp teeth they have put on the Cheshire cat. They have incorporated some of John Tenniel's style in the new illustrations, but I cannot tolerate any other drawings but his own.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the portrayal of Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, as a chesty, handsome man. In the book he is depicted as a loathsome, ugly, vile and brutish fellow. At no point was he described as bursting out of his white, frilly shirt in a Fabio-esque fashion.
ReplyDelete