PTA on Why He Made IV

Sat Jan 10 06:19:02 CST 2015

I'm not entirely sure JB didn't make the movie for me, though the
friend (who'd reviewed the novel here) was smitten w/ KW (despite the
fact he asked me is she was related to Sam W because she looked like
him).  Meanwhile, that CJ&TF t-shirt may (or, more likely, may not,
but ...) resolve a recent morning-long (+ subsequent 2 week silence)
for me, so ...

Me, I liked the voiceover, not only because it did solve the problem
of compressing Pynchon's novel, but it also preserved @ least some of
Pynchon's prose.  My quibble there is the ending (and NOT necessarily
because of the SPOILER ALERT obvious change).  I read the ending very
differently than PTA did, regardless.  I would have had a SPOILER
ALERT (despite this NOT being in the movie) crane/helicopter shot of
outgoing LA traffic @ twilight or whatever, w/ different text read
over the denouement.

Recall the endings of either adaptations of Ulysses, yr various Great
Gtasbys (Gatsbies?), +, esp., John Huston's excellent feature-length
version of James Joyce's "The Dead."

Besides, I go way back (ca. a couple decades/score of years now) with ...

Silverman, Kaja.  The Acoustic Mirror:
   The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema.
   Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.

http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=21284

http://books.google.com/books?id=AaKvNbCfoTYC

http://home.comcast.net/~ciaranbrennan/books/The_Acoustic_Mirror.pdf

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 5:53 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But I am genuinely interested in any/all reactions/comments/critiques.
>
> To take you at your word: my reaction is "meh." Phoenix is stoned and
> passive throughout, which is appropriate (see caveat below). Brolin made me
> smile often, LOL a few times. Waterson's so Thorazine low-key that I
> couldn't imagine Doc or anyone carrying a torch for her.  Everyone else is
> cameos.
>
> Most problematic for me was  Sortilege as voiceover/sidekick -- not because
> the movie differs from the book, but because this Sortilege is so obviously
> a hack to solve multiple challenges of book-to-screen translation. That
> won't be an issue for most of the movie audience.
>
> Caveat: I thought the book P's least successful by a margin so large that I
> probably came to the movie with a chip on my shoulder. I like being stoned,
> laugh even more than usual in that state, and relish stoned humor of the
> Firesign / Saturday Night Fry strain, but can't recall liking much any
> "stoner comedy" book or movie.
>
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> It ain't so.  Twice, so far.  And again today. But I've read the
>> novel.  But I was also ready to be disappointed, or worse, and I (by
>> and large--my quibbles are @ the beginning and the end) wasn't.
>> Twice. A-and ....
>>
>> ... a-and I'm no PTA fanboy.   Hard Eight (as I vaguely recall) is
>> alrigh (though I may be thinking of another film entirely by now)t,
>> Boogie Nights I've seen and enjoyed several times (even if it is
>> basically Pornfellas lite), Magnolia if anything of his is
>> pretentious/self-indulgent (the singalong was unbearable; I will
>> admit,though, that when I saw it [1st screening opening day here] the
>> film [!] broke just as the crucial [?] climactic {? climatic, at any
>> rate] event hit), Punch-Drunk Love is one of two tolerable Adam
>> Sandler movies, at least (the other being Eight Crazy Nights,
>> essentially the profane Hanukkah Frosty the Snowman, but I grew up on
>> Rankin/Bass, and continue to do so, so ...), There Will Be Blood is
>> his only truly great film (no in the least because of DDL's
>> performance + JG's score), The Master (which I saw once theatrically,
>> caught a bit of again the other day on HBO, but have had the
>> screenplay for since the IV project was 1st rumored + a film friend
>> scored me that one instead when I asked for the next PTA project [he
>> never did deliver on the IV one]), a-and ...
>>
>> .... a-and, again, I liked IV fine, but it is indeed not for everyone
>> (though I've only seen five people walk out of two screenings now, and
>> I sit in the last row, on the aisle, if I can help it), and I did, so
>> ... there are those I would recommend it to (the five friends who've
>> sen it with me, only two of whom have read the novel, another any
>> Pynchon at all {I THINK] have enjoyed it unanimously), those I
>> wouldn't, and this I would say, well, risk it, + let me know (I'm
>> taking one such with me again today).
>>
>> But I am genuinely interested in any/all reactions/comments/critiques.
>> Thanks!
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 4:43 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>> >
>> > On 09.01.2015 23:48, John Bailey wrote:
>> >
>> >> PTA: "It's like Gravity's Rainbow—I've never got through it."
>> >>
>> >> Yikes. Perhaps he isn't our most qualified screen interpreter of
>> >> Pynchon's writing.
>> >>
>> >
>> > That's what went through my mind, too, when I read this. More and more I
>> > get
>> > the impression that watching IV will be hard work and nothing I should
>> > be
>> > looking forward to ...
>> >
>> > Commenting an article from the 'Guardian' (which Dave posted here a
>> > while
>> > ago), a reader, whose view on PTA's work before IV comes very close to
>> > mine,
>> > writes:
>> >
>> >> I loved Magnolia and Boogie Nights, and thought There Will Be Blood was
>> >> incredibly powerful if unsatisfying. Punch Drunk Love I hated: Sandler
>> >> is a
>> >> totally unsympathetic human being and the story was trite. The Master
>> >> had a
>> >> great two acts, then hit its head against the same damn beat for the
>> >> last 40
>> >> minutes, because it didn't know where to go. But nothing yet directed
>> >> by
>> >> Anderson was as pretentious and self-indulgent as Inherent Vice, which
>> >> I
>> >> actually found insulting in its smug self-admiration. So yes, I was one
>> >> of
>> >> those people who walked out in the first 15 minutes. It's a shame,
>> >> because
>> >> he's a true original, but this director is way too far up himself right
>> >> now.
>> >> <
>> >
>> > Say it ain't so!
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 4:00 AM, Dave
>> >> Monroe<against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> "A phenomenally good interview. Bear with it. It's worth the full two
>> >>> hours of your time."
>> >>>
>> >>> --George Toles
>> >>>
>> >>> http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866014/
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/departments/english_film_and_theatre/faculty/toles.html
>> >>>
>> >>> On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 10:20 AM, Dave
>> >>> Monroe<against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> http://www.vice.com/read/inherent-vice-was-the-thomas-pynchon-book-i-could-make-into-a-movie
>> >>>
>> >>> -
>> >>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >>
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l