The Medium

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion eloquently and elegantly describes the time following the sudden death of her husband (writer John Dunne). When you read the book (or listen to it, in my case . . . I have a long commute), which is nothing short of unflinchingly honest and beautifully lyrical, you’re surprised by her admission that she didn’t think she could write about what she was feeling in those post-death days - those days after life changed "in the instant." Rather, she recalls thinking if only she had film and editing equipment, she could organize her thoughts and memories properly; that her particular kind of grief required image and sound—moving snapshots of a lifetime together. Of course, she did eventually write about it and the result is a type of written photo album capturing her very soul, with events and places meticulously described and feelings framed, labeled and on display. It is nothing short of gorgeous.
So on my drive to work today (on a “highway” that, I kid you not, I’ve had to stop on more than once to let chickens cross . . . we’re quite rural here in Northern California, a point Ms. Didion would no doubt appreciate, having grown up Sacramento when it was still farmland) I thought about storytelling and the various mediums through which it is achieved. And I came to a conclusion . . . the medium can make or break the story. I still have my doubts about Revolutionary Road as a movie. The book is replete with self-observation and inner dialogue. How will this translate? Will the movie have voice-over narration? Will it be Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice? If so, can he manage to remove the slight twang that accompanies so many of his spoken words (even, unfortunately, when he’s attempting a decidedly un-twang-y accent. See, Blood Diamond). As for The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion’s story is so intensely personal I can't imagine it would resonate in film quite as much as it does in print. In fact, Ms. Didion turned the book into a stage play, which is the perfect complementary medium to an intimate, one-narrator, first-person, personal tale of emotion.
But you already know that I have some concerns about turning books into movies. Here’s my epiphany for the day. Technically, it’s my second epiphany, the first being that it’s pointless to iron a linen shift and then sit in the car for an hour. In any event, here’s my on-topic epiphany. Some movies would make better books. When discussing books and movies, usually people are concerned with whether the film adaptation has been faithful to the book. But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone say a movie, which was not a book first, should be translated into print. But I’m saying it. And I’m giving you a stellar example. M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. This movie showed up in our mailbox the other night (yes, we’re a bit slow on the movie front, two small kids and all that) and I was actually fairly excited. My husband has notoriously bad taste in movies. Let me just give you one example: Dog Soldiers. Dog Soldiers, with the tagline: "Six soldiers. Full moon. No chance." Dog Soldiers, which features a scene of a man morphing into a dog, but the budget must've already been spent on that tagline, so the camera stays focused on the table while a man falls behind the table and rises back up clearly wearing not much more than a plastic dog mask you could pick up at Walgreens. After weathering Dog Soldiers, you can imagine my excitement when I opened the DVD sleeve and saw The Happening. I wouldn't say I'm a die-hard M. Night Shyamalan fan, but I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, loved Signs, and was one of few who couldn’t stop talking about the larger social message in The Village (nature or nurture in the extreme). Lady in the Water was terrible, but not Dog Soldiers terrible, so I figured the odds were on my side with The Happening. So, we watched, and I found the idea fascinating. People suddenly become confused and take their own lives in what is first considered a terrorist attack but is soon understood to be something environmental and unexplainable. In the midst of this crisis, a young married couple (an adequate Marky Mark and flat-as-pancake Zooey Deschanel), facing an unidentified marital calamity of their own, must save their lives while making sense of both their external and internal worlds. The personal parallels the world at large. The almost imperceptible change in their relationship is but a microcosm of the larger environmental change. Like I said, great idea. But I didn’t buy it. It’s as if M. had this brilliant idea and then just started shooting without working out the backstory. I know I was supposed to understand the couple’s angst and disconnect, but I had a hard time caring because the characters weren't developed. And the big secret regarding what was causing the suicides was resolved too quickly. Everything was a bit too tidy and shallow. But imagine if, instead of creating a storyboard, M. had opened a Word document and written a short story - a story exploring the impact we have on our environment, both personal and at large. A story that could, through the written word, navigate both the nuances of the protagonists’ relationship and the history of our impact on the planet. The movie wasn’t much of anything. But the story was brilliant. I think it just needed the right medium.

Dig Out Your Library Card

My friends tell me I’m optimistic to a fault sometimes. Silver linings? Shoot, the clouds above my head have platinum linings. With bling. When life hands me lemons, I’m likely to make homemade lemon tarts and distribute them to my neighbors. So, in the midst of this financial train-wreck, this market-equivalent-of-the-movie-Glitter, it should come as no surprise that I’ve found something positive. I’ve rediscovered a forgotten treasure. The local library. I’d become so accustomed to ordering books online or grabbing a couple of titles at Target or running to the big-box-book-store (say that five times fast) at lunch, that I’d been neglecting the library. Now, though, with Suze Orman and her fantastically white teeth yelling at me every other day from the TV, and food prices going up faster than Hilary Clinton's blood pressure after a Palin rally, I’m trying to tighten my belt and get what I can for free. Hence, my visit to the library this week. The library is a bit like the local outdoor market. You never know what’s going to be available. You might plan on making plum sauce for dinner, but end up serving chilled melon soup, instead. That’s what happened at the library. I wanted to check out The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Not only were all copies checked out already, there were also over 70 hold requests in line before me. Looks like I’ll be buying the book (don’t tell Suze) if I want to read it sometime before 2010. After my initial disappointment, I remembered Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates – the 1961 book made into a film coming out this fall, starring Leo and Kate. And it was available! I have to shout out a huge thank you to the man or woman who decided to make this book into a movie. If not for your interest, I don’t know that I would have ever heard of this book, or this author. The book is a masterpiece. No wonder Yates, who never achieved huge commercial success, was known as a writer’s writer. Revolutionary Road is so….real. And it’s heartbreaking. Frank and April Wheeler’s sense of suburban suffocation and loss of self is palpable (NPR has a brilliant discussion of the book’s theme). It permeates every page. And it’s entirely relevant (and rather depressing in a “what has become of my life” sort of way). If not for the 9:00 dinners, constant drinking and smoking, and absence of cell phones, the Wheelers could be living in any number of subdivisions in any number of cities in America today. They could be your neighbors. They could be you. Yates has incredible insight – putting words to feelings that most Americans have felt, but don’t know how to articulate – like the revulsion a man sometimes feels at the sight of his children, even though he loves them; like the immense hopelessness one feels when faced with the same mundane, unimportant job every day; like the awkward tension seeping into a room when friends realize they have nothing to talk about anymore. Each character is meticulously described. And I don’t mean simply hair color and shirt style, etc. I mean I know these characters. I could tell you how they would react in any number of situations. And, more importantly, I know why they act the way they do. I have no doubt Yates created intricate biographies for each of his characters before putting pen to paper, and we, the readers, now reap the benefits of his diligence. For the movie to do the book justice, it will have to be detailed. Each word and set piece and thread of cloth must live and breathe the story (I’m thinking of The Ice Storm). If it does, I think the movie just might work. Sam Mendes is at the helm, and if past movies are any indication, he pays attention to the details - almost in a hyper-stylized way (see American Beauty; Road to Perdition). Kate Winslet could tell an entire epic with one look, so she’s a natural choice. I’m more apprehensive about Leo. Frank Wheeler is the cornerstone of the book – he must be perfect for Yates’s vision of American disillusionment to come across. My fingers are crossed that he pulls it off. In any event, though, I’m thankful the movie was made, because it will introduce an entirely new generation to this book. And we have much to gain. As do our therapists.

All Hail The Magical Tights

It's 65 degrees and raining! Clearly, my tights have magical powers.

Wake Up Mother Nature!

I’m wearing tights today for the first time in, oh, nearly half a year. Sure, it’s supposed to hit 93 degrees today in Northern California, but that’s not stopping my homage (or at least my legs’ homage) to Fall. I think maybe Mother Nature’s still reeling from the summer of fires, storms, earthquakes, and hurricanes (and let’s not forget the biggest natural disaster, Madonna dating A-Rod) and has forgotten to usher in Autumn (either that or she drank too many beers at Father Time’s Labor Day party and hasn’t yet recovered). Even the campaign signs in my neighborhood (popping up at such a rate that I wonder if, like Gremlins, they multiply when doused by the lawn sprinklers) and pumpkin-shaped peeps on the grocery store shelves haven’t prompted her to cool things down, so I figured I’d break out the tights and do my part. Fall is my favorite season. The kids are back in school, my lawn turns green again, my cat starts growing back his fur, and I can begin forgetting the magnitude of the SF Giants’ failure. What’s more, I can look forward to the Fall Movie Season. This Fall, theatres will show no fewer than 11 movies based on books. Here’s a quick list of the movies and my initial thoughts (warning: approaching stream of conscious, river of uninformed first impressions, and rapids of unrelated opinions):

Appaloosa – Entertainment Weekly describes the two main characters as “laconic.” I had to look it up. It means “using few words.” So the two main characters are men of few words. In a Western? Shocking. When was the last time you saw a Western with a couple of chatty Cathys? The movie could prove a lesson in subtlety, though, given the two fabulous, understated actors playing the leads – Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris. But wait…scratch that…Renee Zellweger is in it, too. So much for subtlety.

The Duchess – Thankfully, it’s not a Fergie documentary, but a movie based on the book Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman and starring Keira Knightley. I haven’t decided if I think Keira Knightley is a great actress, a good actress, or just adept at choosing the right scripts, but I have a feeling I’m going to love this movie. Corsets + Ralph Fiennes (or any member of the Fiennes family, for that matter) – my husband grumbling in the seat next to me + smuggled Junior Mints = an enjoyable movie experience. I haven’t read the true-life tale, but Knightley’s last turn in a page to screen story (Atonement) was riveting.

Blindness – The ads made me think of Children of Men, but that’s probably due to Julianne Moore’s presence and the post-apocalyptic look of the sets. I’m interested in the fact that the characters in the book don’t have proper names, just descriptions (i.e. Girl With the Dark Glasses). In fact (get ready for a shameless plug), my friend and I recently wrote a novel using the same device…and if you’d like to read more about our characters (The Pecker, Babies Don’t Spit Up, Sweat Rings and Man Slippers), head on over to http://www.fictionlimbo.blogspot.com/. I feel a tad dirty now . . .

What Just Happened – I know nothing about this film except that it’s a Hollywood satire, adapted from a book, starring a mess of people (Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Bruce Willis, Catherine Keener, Robin Wright Penn). Never heard of the book, barely heard of the movie, but De Niro as a producer doesn’t seem like terrible casting.

The Secret Life of Bees - Can I just tell you how irritated I am that I used my “internet buzz” metaphor already . . . I should have planned better. In any event, I LOVE this book. I LOVE this book so much that I read all the book club questions at the end and had a little schizophrenic conversation with myself about plot and character development alone in my bed around 2 a.m. (Sue Monk Kidd’s second book, The Mermaid Chair, however, was a colossal disappointment. Truly a book to cast away.) I think Dakota Fanning is great casting, as is Paul Bettany as the abusive father, and Queen Latifah as the leader of the bee farm sisters. I’m on the fence about Jennifer Hudson as the nanny, though. I don’t think she’s old enough, but, then again, I don’t remember how old the character was supposed to be in the book. I guess she always seemed tired so I pictured her older. And, I’m not sure J. Hud can pull it off. Sure, she was fantastic and deep and moving in Dreamgirls, but she was singing 90% of the time. Would her “I’m Not Going” Oscar moment have been as emotional if she’d had to deliver it as a monologue? Does she have what it takes? Her superfluous role in Sex and the City sheds no light on the question. I’m a huge Hudson fan – I have been since the American Idol days, agreeing with Quentin Tarantino when he called her Un-Bleepin’-Believable (or was it Fan-Bleepin’-Tastic?)—so I’d like to see her shine. I will definitely go see this movie (again, without my husband).

High School Musical 3: Senior Year – Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name, this much-anticipated third installment of the never-stale franchise . . . just checking to see if you’re paying attention.

Quantum of Solace – Technically, I don’t think this, the latest Bond flick, was adapted directly from a book. Of course, the 007 character was Ian Fleming’s literary creation so, in a sense, all Bond films are adapted from a book. Quantum of Solace is the name of an Ian Fleming short story, but I don’t believe the movie is based on the story—I think the title was just hijacked. (It’s entirely possible I could be wrong, but I’m too tired to look it up right now…) A couple of thoughts run through my head when I think about this movie. First, Daniel Craig looks like the adult version of my seven-year-old nephew, which is a bit disturbing because I find Daniel Craig delectable in a rather inappropriate way. Second, I used to see the Bond movies for free when I was in law school because one of my fellow students was the daughter of the producer . . . I miss law school . . . I miss school . . . I wish I didn’t have to work . . .

The Road – The Road comes out the day before my husband’s birthday. We both loved the book (and you know how I feel about the casting) so I expect we’ll see it opening night. And then we’ll mainline some Prozac and hold our children tight until the nightmares cease.

Marley & Me – Blech. It’s a Dooooooggggggggggg Movie. Based on a Dooooooooggggggggg Book (I’m not a fan, generally). Starring Rachel Green--I mean Jennifer Aniston--Owen Wilson, and a Dooooooooogggggggg. And the trailer shows all three running on a beach. In slow motion. I have nothing else to say.

Twilight – I haven’t read the books so I’m scared to say anything, for fear a bunch of tweens will come and put a stake through my heart. But I am nervous for the filmmakers - vampire movies are hard to cast – remember the uproar surrounding Tom Cruise as Lestat in Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – This movie, based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, sounds terribly interesting. It’s about a man aging in reverse. And I wager even Brad Pitt cannot ruin the movie, because it also casts the celestial Cate Blanchett and riveting Tilda Swinton (although The Talented Mr. Ripley was all sorts of awful and it had a stellar cast). Ooh, I can’t wait to see the two of them at all the premieres, interviews, and awards shows. Cate with her fickle sense of style and Tilda with her, well, how would you describe these ensembles? I love these women!

Revolutionary Road – The first pairing of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio since . . .since . . . what was that movie? Kate Winslet betters every film she’s in. I sat next to Leonardo DiCaprio at Fixx in Vegas. He’s quite tall and manly in person. And Fixx has the most delicious fried macaroni and cheese and crusted mashed potatoes. This has nothing to do with the movie, just thought I’d share. I’m going to pick up this 1961 book by Richard Yates, described as a “cautionary tale . . . full of big ideas that question the viability of the American dream.” Quite a pertinent topic 47 years later. Let’s hope it translates to the big screen.

Happy reading and/or viewing!