The Great Man's Influence

[Paul Nightingale]

Interesting to think of pynchonian films, or at least the concept.
Certainly, if you like a certain way of storytelling in one form, then
you're likely to go for it in another (always assuming you don't think film
inferior to literature). When I saw Lost Highway, I first thought of Steve
Erickson's novels (certainly Tours of the Black Clock and Arc D'X). But is
there such a beast as a pynchonian film? I suspect not if you mean to argue
that Pynchon has patented a particular way of constructing a narrative, or
an approach to characterisation. If you wish to promote the paranoia
connection, then an obvious candidate might (please note the tense here) be
All The President's Men. But after all, chaps, when all is said and done, is
that a film we'd want to associate with the Great Man?

If Pynchon isn't the Great Man, and GR isn't the Bible, however; if Pynchon
like other artists simply taps into contemporary cultural concerns; then you
could make a case for Robert Altman. Altman's period films (in particular,
McCabe & Mrs Miller, Thieves Like Us) are revisionist, as is Pynchon's
fiction: they challenge the way in which history is produced/written, rather
than allowing the reader to take the period setting for granted (I shall
continue to question the assumption that M&D sets out to be an authentic
reproduction of the C18th and 'real' historical -or 'pastist' - characters).

For each artist, such revisionism is a way of challenging mainstream
accounts that have gone unchallenged too long. GR isn't 'about' Vietnam in
the banal way that has sometimes been suggested; but clearly Pynchon's
critical approach to the mythologising of WWII was designed to impact on the
way the Vietnam (I'd like to say American but I guess too many people would
find that confusing) War was perceived. Such revisionism, in short,
challenges the way in which we read. To my mind, the 'best' Vietnam films
are (i) Godard's Pierrot Le Fou and (ii) a 1990-ish documentary called After
The Fire, about the rebuilding of that country once the bombing (but not the
war) was over. I've recently tried showing the latter to my students as an
antidote to Bush/Blair: too many would rather read The Sun.

I've chosen Altman above because he is an American artist; as Pynchon, he
gleefully plunders popular culture. If you want a European candidate, which
means we can at least talk about Art, how about Andrei Tarkovsky?