The Human Stain--movie

Been reading about The Human Stain movie over on Aint it Cool News a wee bit - seems like they're intelligent people with a good handle on the book so - could be a good movie... Have to say though - really think that somebody like Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential dude) should have "done a Peter Jackson" and bit off the whole trilogy. How good to see American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain with a single unifying Nathan Zuckerman . . . Man o man. Roth is the bomb. Greatest living American writer? Could be . . .

I didn't much like "I Married a Communist," though it was amusing reading it everymorning for a few weeks at my breakfast cafe here in Warsaw, Poland. It got a few laughs. I'm reading Zuckerman Bound now, basically four novellas bunched together. I like Roth, but I am more impressed with the fact that he has made an entire career out of writing the same book over and over, all of it based upon his life. I like that. Gives me hope. Bukowski did much the same thing. That seems to be a largely American formula, or at least it is not British. There are some French authors who write that way, such as Houellebecq. The movie of "Goodbye Columbus" was a real classic of a kind. It is one of the great lost classics of the past 40 years. I've seen it on TV once or twice, but they cut out all the dialog and just leave in the party scenes, thereby making the movie nearly incomprehensible.

Yes....several times. Speaking of lost gems, I've always wondered what happened to the film "Morgan." It was one of those dark comedies from the 60s, this one with some guy who thought he was a gorilla or at least was dressing up on a gorilla costume....I think he killed himself at the end of the film. It would be easy to research on the web these days, but I prefer the vagueness of memory. And a real classic: Anthony Newley in "Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercey Humph and Find True Happiness." circa 1969, at least that's when it made it to the US. Another one of those wacky 60s things, very uneven upon a second viewing, but a lot of funny scenes nonetheless. These lost gems are the reason I never bought the hype about Blazing Saddles. By 1974, Mel Brookes had the benefit of a good 10 years of material he could cobble from other people out of underground films, underground comics, and live comedy reps, even some on fim like "The Committee" (Bill Murray was in that one). Blazing Saddles was highly derivative and not even all that well done, in my view. Maybe if I watched it again I wouldn't feel the same way, but in 1974 my reaction was: what's the big deal? Oh, and there's the wonderful film about the British public school boys who take over the school and machine gun the administration: "IF" That was a big hit on American college campuses in 1969-70. They just played it over and over. LOL.

Read lots of bits and pieces about the Venice Film Festival over the weekend and none of them - not a single one of them - had a nice thing to say about The Human Stain movie (Tony Hopkins & Nicole Kidman horrendously miscast, apparently) . . . justyn_thyme wrote: > I just saw a little interview with Anthony Hopkins who will be > playing the lead in the movie Human Stain, based upon the novel > of the same name by Philip Roth. I thought this was a really > magnificent book, one of the best I've ever read. There is a > review in my review folder, if anyone is interested. > > The casting for the film is 'innovative' in my view, but it > could work. I'm looking forward to the film, as Roth's novels > are notoriously difficult to translate into film. I recall > "Goodbye Columbus" from 1969, which was excellent, but > "Portnoy's Complaint" never quite got off the ground. > > it will no doubt take ages for the movie to make it to Warsaw, > so I'll be interested to see what happens meantime.

Having read the book, I 'd have to agree that Nicole Kidman is a bad choice for the female character. Hopkins is an eccentric choice for Silk, but it could work. Part of the problem with Hopkins is that Silk grew up in Newark NJ in the 30s and 40s, so how did he acquire the Hopkins accent? Of course, that could be yet another part of the disguise effort, but still, it's a stretch. Also, Silk is supposed to be tallish, slender, and athletic....which Hopkins clearly is not. Oh well....

I have only read one Roth - operation shylock - and I hated it so much because I loved the first 100 pages so much. To start it was tight, well paced, characters were briliantly developed, and then the book became a dry, humourless discussion of Jewry which is all very well but not when the first hundred pages has gotten fast paced thriller written all over it. Frustrating.