Pynchon mention in Alan Bates obit

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.tvbarn.com/archives/017684.html>
December 30, 2003
Alan Bates' death leaves substantial void ...
especially on DVD 
posted by Gary Dretzka December 30, 2003 01:44 AM 

" [...] for those of us who came of age amid the
anarchy of campus life in the ‘60s – and used movies
as roadmaps to adulthood – there was one Bates comedy,
in particular, that helped convince us of the insanity
and futility of war. Although Philippe de Broca’s
“King of Hearts” went largely unmentioned in Bates’
obituaries, for untold thousands of students and
would-be flower children it served as an entry point
to the anti-war and human-rights movements.

The film was as much a part of the hippie-dippy fabric
of the times as “Catch-22,” “One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest” and any book by Kurt Vonnegut, Richard
Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon or Jack Kerouac … or, for
that matter, an extended jam by the Grateful Dead.
More importantly, perhaps, it complemented such
decidedly offbeat flicks as “Harold & Maude,”
“Marat/Sade,” “Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment,”
“How I Won the War,” “A Thousand Clowns” and “Where’s
Poppa?” Two years ago, “King of Hearts” served as a
blueprint for Andrei Konchalovsky's "House of Fools."

In “King of Hearts,” which is set in the final days of
World War I, Bates played Private Charles Plumpick, a
Scottish ornithologist chosen by his commander to go
into a deserted French town to uncover the whereabouts
of a huge bomb planted by the German army. Plumpick’s
entry is a bit premature, however, and, along with his
carrier pigeons, he’s forced to take refuge inside the
local insane asylum, where the inmates welcome him as
returned royalty.

The befuddled soldier tries to convince his eccentric
new friends – including a lovely and delicate
tightrope walker/prostitute, played by Genevieve
Bujold – to evacuate the town, but, instead, they warm
to their newfound freedom by letting their fantasies
take wing. When the threat of imminent disaster is
removed, the war returns to the town of Marville and
the inmates flee to the safety – and sanity – of their
asylum.

As such, it was impossible to avoid comparisons
between “King of Hearts” and what was transpiring
simultaneously in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury and
the rice paddies of Vietnam [...]"

...impossible to avoid comparisons between _Gravity's
Rainbow_ and what was transpiring simultaneously in
San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury and the rice paddies of
Vietnam, too, in my humble opinion.



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