8/4/23
Newsletter #417
The Crack of Dawn
In regard to having one’s books made into movies, I think the luckiest writer was Larry McMurtry. His first book, Horseman, Pass By (written when he was 26) was made into the movie, Hud (1963), with Paul Newman, which was nominated for six Oscars and won three. His next book-to-film adaption was The Last Picture Show (1971), which was also nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, and won two. The film version of Larry McMurtry’s book, Terms of Endearment, in 1983 won five Oscars, including Best Picture. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove, was made into one of the biggest and best TV mini-series in 1989. Then he won an Oscar for adapting Brokeback Mountain in 2005.
Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t quite as lucky with the movies made from his books, but he was still pretty damn lucky. I love this story that Vonnegut told in his book of essays, Palm Sunday. He was at a swanky, high-class, New York literary party, and felt extremely uncomfortable and out of place. He felt like he was an imposter pretending to be a literate guy but was really just the author of silly science fiction books. So, Kurt Vonnegut stood alone, no doubt gulping alcohol and puffing away on Pall Malls, when he spotted Susan Sontag across the room. Ms. Sontag was one of the most world’s most influential writers, critics and intellects. She glanced up, saw Vonnegut looking at her, then beelined across the party straight toward him. He said that he completely panicked. What on earth was he going to talk to her about? She was so smart, and he was so stupid (not). She stepped up asked, “What do you think of the movie of your book, Slaughterhouse-Five?” Internally, Vonnegut deeply sighed, thinking, I can answer that question. He said, “I like it very much.” Susan Sontag said, “I do too.”
Well, I do too. I would go so far as to venture that it’s one of the very best book-to-film adaptions (screenplay by Stephen Geller, whose daughter, Sarah Michelle, was Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I’d read the book several times when the movie came out in 1972 and I was skeptical that it could be adapted for the screen. Well, it could, but Stephen Geller had to find his own way to do it, and he did. The film follows the book, but in its own way. It’s a brilliant adaption. Everything about the movie works perfectly. I frequently listen to a classical compilation disk – which I’m listening to right now – and every time Bach’s Concerto for Piano in F Minor, a lonely little piano piece, comes on, I’m in Slaughterhouse-Five – a blustery, snowy hill with one lost WWII soldier coming over it.
Anyway, Kurt Vonnegut really scored big with the movie of Slaughterhouse-Five. However, everything else of his that’s been filmed has either struggled, failed, failed miserably, or fail monumentally.
The next best Vonnegut book-to-movie, I think, is Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971), which is a weird, but good, movie, based on Vonnegut’s play. It’s got a great cast: Rod Steiger, Susannah York, Don Murray, and William Hickey (who finally achieved fame later in John Huston’s film, Prizzi’s Honor). But the movie got caught halfway between being a movie and a stage production, which is odd, but you get used to it. Though funky, the movie absolutely gets across Vonnegut’s wonderfully black humor, which has proven elusive to everyone else.
Happy Birthday, Wanda June is about a party celebrating the official declaration of the death of Susannah’s York’s husband (Rod Steiger), who went on a hunting expedition and has been missing for seven years. Upon this declaration, she will now be able to marry, and she has two suitors – Don Murray (in possibly his last good role) and George Grizzard. On his way to the party Don Murray stops at a bakery to buy a cake. They only have one cake left. It was made for a young girl’s birthday party, but was never picked up because the little girl, Wanda June, was run over by an ice cream truck. Since it’s the last cake, Don Murray takes it. At the party people keep seeing the cake and asking, “Who’s Wanda June?” Finally, it cuts to a twelve-year-old girl who explains that she’s Wanda June and she’s in heaven. She was mean, nasty, awful little girl, but since the driver of the ice cream truck that killed her was drunk, and an even more awful person than her, she got to go to heaven. It’s a loophole.
Anyway, right at the moment that they’re going to declare her Ernest Hemingway-like husband dead, who should show up but him, in the guise of Rod Steiger. He is accompanied by his weaselly companion, Colonel Looseleaf Harper (William Hickey), who was a member of the flight crew of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Happy Birthday, Wanda June is a truly oddball movie, and the fact that it was directed by Mark Robson, of all people, makes it that much weirder. Robson was the assistant editor on Citizen Kane, then directed several of the coolest, 1940s, Val Lewton horror movies – Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946), both with Boris Karloff. Mark Robson had a big Hollywood directing career, from The Bridges of Toko-Ri (1954) to Earthquake (1974). Happy Birthday, Wanda June just doesn’t fit into his ouvre in any way, although he did a perfectly fine job.
Those are the two Kurt Vonnegut adaptions that managed to convey his sense of humor. I’m pleased to say that I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss the bad films, although I will name them. I loved the book Mother Night and really looked forward to the film. The movie, Mother Night (1996), which Leonard Maltin liked and gave three stars, I thought sucked really bad. Nick Nolte never did have much of a range, but with his growling, nearly inaudible voice, the last job he would ever have would be a radio announcer.
Slapstick (Of Another Kind) (1984), with Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn as twins conjoined at the head, sat on a shelf for two years before it was released to unanimously hateful derision. For those of us unlucky souls who actually read Vonnegut’s book, which was good, the movie was even worse. Though I’m not a fan of such things, this film goes into my 100 worst films of all-time.
But wait, there’s another one that’s honestly every bit as bad, which is really saying something – Breakfast of Champions (1999), starring Bruce Willis, who personally financed the movie as a “labor of love.” This too goes on my 100 worst shit-heap.
Still, Slaughterhouse-Five is great. It’s not just good, it’s great, and that’s a lot, even if it’s just one book.
I have just beaten the dawn with this one.