ST ch 19 French 75s, Greasy Thumb Guzik

[Robin Landseadel]

Laura Kelber: I'm not at all sure that GR should be adapted. Some things are better left as they are. There was a short film, Impolex (2009), which I haven't seen. The late, great Dave Monroe saw it and thought it was reasonable. The one thing on my wish list for any Pynchon adaptation is that the adapter has a clear understanding of the book's meaning (to them) and has a Kubrick-like intensity about mapping it all out in detail ahead of time, and conveying that meaning on the screen (ah, if only Kubrick could have taken it on!). Anything less is just riffing (inspired by). That's how we ended up with Emerald Fennell's *"Wuthering Heights."* I can't think of any great adaptations of any of my favorite novels. The best adaptations (okay, just guessing here) take an underwhelming novel and make it better: Kubrick and *The Shining*, for example. David Lean's *Bridge On the River Kwai*. . . . "
 
My vote for a fully successful film version of a classic novel is "The Maltese Falcon", John Houston's 1941 version. Very little taken out. I happen to think that Raymond Chandler's novels are great, have a sneaking suspicion Pynchon does as well. The two best adaptions of Chandler I'm aware of play havoc with the source material, that would be the 1946 Howard Hawks "The Big Sleep" and Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" from 1973. The Long Goodbye is practically an essay about the source material, much as One Battle After Another is. I found myself really liking Inherent Vice after a couple-two/three viewings. I realized that stuff had to be cut in order to make a movie of reasonable length.

Speaking of adaptation of classic material to the screen:

“ . . . Some kind of classical music coming from the TV room. Mozart. In these desperate stretches of early-morning programming, she finds Ernie tubeside, his face transfigured in the ancient Trinitron glow, watching an obscure, in fact never-distributed Marx Brothers version of Don Giovanni, with Groucho in the title role. She tiptoes in barefoot and sits next to her father on the couch. There’s a big plastic bowl of popcorn, too big even for two people, too big for even two people, which Ernie after a while nudges in her direction. During a recitative he fills her in. “They cut the Commendatore so there’s no Donna Anna, no Don Ottavio, this way, without the murder, it’s a comedy.” Leoporello is being played by both Chico and Harpo, one for lines and one for sight gags, Chico fast-talking his way through the Catalog Aria for example while Harpo runs around after Donna Elvira (Margaret Dumont, in the role she was born for), pinching, groping, and honking his bicycle horn, as well as later picking harp accompaniment for “Deh vieni all finestra.” Masetto is a studio baritone who is not Nelson Eddy, Zerlina is very young, lip-synced and more-than-presentable Beatrice Pearson, later to portray another ingenue with a fatality for scoundrels opposite John Garfield in Force of Evil, (1948) . . . “
 
Bleeding Edge pgs. 417/418

There's that massive load 'o' popcorn again, or I suppose before, as that thread gets picked up in Shadow Ticket.