GR (the movie)

[Andrew Dinn]

Bradley O'Neill writes:
>
> >>>>I think GR would be too much for any filmmaker
>
> Yes, I have to agree. Why do we all have this desire to express perfectly
> realized creations of one medium through another? It's a strange impulse,
> don't you think? With GR, it must be the occasionally cinematic feel that
> encourages this response, but geez, unless you want to make a 15 hour film,
> don't touch it...and even then...

Why do we all have this desire? Occasionally cinematic?

I don't want to see a film of GR. I would not mind seeing a film which
tries to be as daring, original, eccentric, all-embracing, scolarly,
populist etc. etc. (actually I think I have seen one or two of those
films and they generally have nothing to do with books). But GR is a
book and films just aint the same beast. As for `occasionally
cinematic', that's the main reason it makes no sense to talk of
filming GR, just as it makes no sense to make a TV mini-series of
Vineland. These books deliberately ape film/TV *in words*. That's
another one of TRP's amazing feats, the ability to give text the ring
of another medium. Translating to these other media would necessarily
be self-defeating. So, the idea that GR would make a great film
because of all the film technique and imagery in it (ditto
Vineland/TV) misses the boat entirely.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
Geopolitical truth is like a hedgehog.  It doesn't know much, but it
knows one big thing.  And here is the power of geopolitics properly
applied.  It is robust in perspective, admittedly partial, always
incomplete, schematic even, and at times fanatic.  In the end it
unifies and clarifies, and imposes on complex reality its imperatives,
to plan and to act. -- General Golbery do Couto e Silva, 1957