Gatsby on Film

Posted on May 6, 2013 at 3:53 pm

In honor of this week’s release of the lastest movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age novel, The Great Gatsby, revisit the book and take a look at four earlier versions:

The Great Gatsby (1949) Alan Ladd and Betty Field star in the earliest surviving version of the story, heavy-handed and missing the lyricism of the book. (A 1926 film with Warner Baxter has been lost.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2jh6XkjrHU

The Great Gatsby (1974) Robert Redford and Mia Farrow star in this sumptuous version that is rather static but better than its reputation.

The Great Gatsby (2000) A TV version starred Mira Sorvino, Paul Rudd, and Toby Stephens and preserves more of the narration from the novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgDQ_aN19NU

G. Audacious, ambitious, and provocative but uneven and ultimately unsatisfying, this film adapts and updates the story. Instead of Jay Gatsby, the Prohibition-era gangster who can’t forget the girl he lost, we have Summer G, the gangsta, the head of a successful hip-hop recording label.

You might also want to take a look at the only movie credited to Fitzgerald during his brief, unhappy stint in Hollywood:

Three Comrades A tragic love set story in post-WWI Germany starring Robert Young and Margaret Sullavan.

Or watch one of the movie portrayals of Fitzgerald:

Beloved Infidel Gregory Peck plays Fitzgerald in this movie based on the memoir of gossip columnist Sheilah Graham about their years together.

Midnight in Paris Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill play Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s romantic comedy about a contemporary writer who goes back in time to meet his literary heroes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzoOA473wq0

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle Malcolm Gets plays Fitzgerald in this movie about the New York writers who gathered at the Algonquin hotel for cocktails and repartee.

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Free This Weekend! 50 Must-See Movies: Mothers

Posted on May 4, 2013 at 6:00 am

In honor of Mother’s Day next Sunday, I’m making my ebook, 50 Must-See Movies: Mothers free all weekend! Post a review on Amazon and you can get any other Miniver Press ebook free as well. The book is dedicated to my own wonderful wise, witty, and always-on-our-side mother, who made all three of her daughters the stars of her story. Here’s the book’s introduction:

No relationship is more primal, more fraught, more influential, more worried over, more nourishing when good and more devastating when bad that our connection to our mothers. The first eyes to look at us with love, the first arms to hold us, Mom is the one who first keeps us fed and warm, who applauds our first steps and kisses our scrapes and takes our temperature by kissing our forehead. She’s also the one who keeps people in endless years of psychoanalysis for failing to make her children feel loved and safe. Mom inspires a lot of movies in every possible category, from comedy to romance to drama to crime to animation to horror, from the lowest-budget indie to the biggest-budget prestige film. A lot of women have been nominated for Oscars for playing mothers and just about every actress over age 20 has appeared as a mother in at least one movie.

There are innumerable ways of mothering and all of them show up in the movies. There are cookie-baking, apron-wearing mothers who always know just the right comforting thing to say. There are stylish, sophisticated, wealthy mothers and mothers who do not have enough money to feed their children. There are mothers with PhDs and mothers who cannot read. There are mothers of every race and religion and many species on earth and in outer space (remember “Alien”).

There are terrifying mothers who abuse or abandon their children or coldly deploy them like weapons of mass destruction. There are mothers who give good advice and endless support and mothers who try to push their children to take the wrong jobs and marry the wrong people. There are super-strict mothers and super-lax mothers, mothers who want to know every detail of their children’s lives even when they are grown up and mothers who barely remember that they have any children at all even when they are young. There are mothers of children with special needs who fight fiercely to make sure they have the fullest and most independent lives they can. There are children who love and support their mothers and children who break their mothers’ hearts with their selfishness and cruelty.

And there are those very special souls who remind us that motherhood does not require a biological connection. Stepmothers and adoptive mothers are as vitally important on screen as they are in the lives of those lucky enough to be mothered by them.

“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” says a character whose mother is central to the story even though she never appears in the film. (Spoiler alert: the quote comes from Norman Bates in “Psycho.”) In “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot,” tough guy Sylvester Stallone plays a cop who mother comes along on his investigation whether he wants her to or not. In “Oedipus Wrecks,” one of three short films that make up the compilation “New York Stories,” Woody Allen plays a lawyer whose mother finds the ultimate way to embarrass him. And don’t get me started on Jason’s mother in the “Friday the 13th” movies.

I have selected 50 of my favorite movie mothers, including classic films like “The Sound of Music” and “Little Women” along with forgotten or overlooked films like “Stella Dallas,” “Claudia and David,” and “Dear Frankie.” Actresses like Anne Revere and Spring Byington made careers out of wonderful performances as mothers and I have included some of their best. I have a special affection for those based on real-life mothers, especially those based on the mothers of the writers who told their stories, like Sally Field’s Oscar-winning performance in “Places in the Heart.” But it is clear that in some way each of the mothers in these movies is inspired by the unique joys and frustrations of the woman we love first.

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Tribute: E.L. Konigsburg

Posted on April 23, 2013 at 3:59 pm

We mourn the passing of one of the greats of 20th century children’s literature, E.L. Konigsburg. Her books included two that were made into movies. In fact, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the story of a brother and sister who run away from home and hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was filmed twice, one starring Lauren Bacall and and one known as “The Hideaways” starring Ingrid Bergman. Stephanie Zimbalest starred in Caroline?, an underrated TV movie based on Konigsburg’s book, Father’s Arcane Daughter, about a mysterious young woman who says she is the long-missing daughter of a troubled wealthy family. She won two Newbery Awards, one for Mixed-Up Files and one for The View from Saturday, the story of a team of middle-schoolers who compete in an academic bowl and their charismatic teacher.

I love them all, but my favorite is Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, about a lonely girl who makes exactly the friend I wished I had had when I was that age. Konigsburg’s books are narratively daring. She never wrote down to kids because she knew how smart they are and how hungry they are for stories that challenge them. Her characters are complex and vivid and her themes are rich and profound. May her memory be a blessing, and may new generations keep rediscovering her work.

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Happy Poetry Month!

Posted on April 21, 2013 at 10:48 am

Happy Poetry Month!

The wonderful “pÕÎ-trÉ” blog has a terrific selection of poems about movies. And there have been great movies about poets like “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” (about the courtship of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning), An Angel at My Table (about Janet Frame) and the documentaries about Rumi, Billy Collins, and Charles Bukowski. And the movie Deliverance was based on a novel by the poet James Dickey.

I love “Alice in Wonderland’s” version of “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4imoPRSClkE

And this beautiful e.e. cummings poem recited by Cameron Diaz to Toni Collette in “In Her Shoes.”

Many movies take their titles from poems, like A Raisin in the Sun, which comes from a poem by Langston Hughes, Splendor in the Grass (from Wordsworth), and Invictus.

Characters in movies often recite poetry. Movies are written by writers, after all, and writers love words. Katherine Hepburn quotes T.S. Eliot in “Without Love,” “April is the cruellest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.” “Blade Runner” has a quote from Blake’s “Tyger.” In “Awakenings,” “The Panther” by Rilke illustrates the isolation and bleakness of a patient’s inner life:

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

One of the most memorable scenes in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is the heart-breaking funeral service with W.H. Auden’s Funeral Blues:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

(more…)

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Interview: Jay Sullivan of Raising Gentle Men

Posted on March 15, 2013 at 8:00 am

Jay Sullivan‘s new book, Raising Gentle Men: Lives at the Orphanage Edge, is the story of his experience as the only man living in a Kingston, Jamaica convent, helping to care for 250 orphan boys. It is a beautifully written and inspiring story. Sullivan generously took time to answer my questions about his experiences.

How did you first come to the orphanage in Jamaica?

I got there one step at a time. My first year in Kingston, I walked by the orphanage grounds each day on my way to St. George’s College, the Jesuit high school where I taught English. When I was asked to help run the school’s ministry program, I needed a place to take my students where they could work with less-privileged people. What better than the orphanage around the corner? From that initial interaction, my involvement with the place grew, and I eventually moved in.

What kind of training did you have in religion or education before your arrival?

I majored in English at Boston College, but hadn’t had any formal training as a teacher. In fact, only one of the dozen BC teachers sent to Kingston in 1984 came from the School of Education. The week before we landed in Kingston we went on a retreat to talk about our faith and our role at our schools. Two nuns, veteran teachers themselves, spent a day giving us pointers on lesson plans and maintaining discipline. The only line that stuck with me was, “Don’t smile until Christmas.” It’s a classic line for teachers. It means if you are strict for the first few months, you can loosen up after that. But if the kids think you are a pushover at the start, they will walk all over you. I wish I had heeded the nuns’ advice. My first year I was a disaster when it came to discipline. But I learned my lesson by the second year.

What was the biggest surprise of your time there?

Like everyone my age, I had just finished 16 years in a classroom, but had experienced that room from only one perspective. Becoming a teacher, looking at the class from the front instead of the back of the room, changed my perspective on what had been going on for the last 16 years. That alone was a huge learning curve.

How were the nuns different from what outsiders might expect?

I think most people assume nuns are serious and austere. My Aunt Dolores was a Sister of Charity. I grew up knowing her and some of her nun friends, who were the friendliest, happiest, most jovial people, always laughing and teasing each other. The nuns at Alpha were of the same ilk. There were certainly one or two that wore a dour face, and clearly, they all knew how to keep order, but their cheerfulness might have surprised people.

What did the boys want to know about you?

The boys were used to people coming and going at the orphanage, so their questions were simple. My freckles and red hair piqued their interest more than anything else.

Were the boys supportive of each other?

I was always amazed at their generosity with each other. If one of them got a special treat of some sort, he always wound up sharing it among whatever boy put out a hand. I don’t know if that’s because they each knew hunger all too well, or because they were relatively well fed at Alpha and didn’t need to worry about their next meal. They also supported each other emotionally. When one scored a goal on the field, won at a game of cards, or was praised by a staff member for a good deed, the others would cheer him on. Of course, they also teased each other, just like any other group of boys.

Do you have a favorite Bible passage or prayer?

I love the Prayer of St. Francis. Its call to action is a theme throughout the book.

What was the best advice you got while you were in Jamaica?

Sister Magdalen talked a lot, but she wasn’t into dispensing advice. Everything I learned from her and the other sisters was from watching their actions. The way Magdalen took each day as it came, controlled only what she could, and let God handle the rest was the biggest lesson I learned.

What made you decide it was time to write the book?

I thought that 20 years was enough time to “think about” writing a book. My wife and kids also let me know it was time to either write it or stop talking about it. I’m sure many men accomplish their goals in life simply because their wives tell them, “Enough talk already. Get it done.”

How does the understanding you gained in Jamaica influence your life today?

In Jamaica, I talked with the boys each evening about their lives. I gained an appreciation for how diverse the human experience can be, and yet how similar we all are in seeking the essential human needs of camaraderie, companionship and knowing that we are part of something larger than ourselves. That experience has helped me challenge my assumptions about others, and stay focused on the basics about human nature when I deal with people. Both have helped me a great deal in my role as a communication skills coach. I still have a lot more to learn in this area.

What advice would you give someone who is about to begin the kind of work you describe in the book?

Stay open to the ideas you see and hear in others with more experience. Approach the work knowing you can accomplish a great deal, but step carefully, and with great humility.

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