RARA-AVIS: Re: The Long Goodbye

From: jimdohertyjr ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 09 Feb 2007


Terrill,

Re your comments below:

> That's just not true. In the real world of books and film, the only
thing a filmmaker owes a novelist is a contract and a check. If the movie made breaks with the spirit of the contract, the author (or his estate) is free to sue the filmmakers afterwards - as is happening right now with Clive Cussler. But few, if any, producers would have given any novelist the kind of control Cussler had over SAHARA. I'm sure there was nothing in the Long Goodbye contracts that promised absolute (or any, for that matter) fidelity to the source material. The cost of the rights for a book are miniscule compared to the cost of making and marketing a motion picture.

Was it not clear that, when I mentioned what a filmmaker "owes" the shource material, I was talking morality, not legality? I know that the notion that even the denizens of a place like Hollywood should behave honorably may be ridiculously niaive, but there you are.

But morality aside, there's frugalisty and thrift. Why even buy the material if you don't LIKE the material in the first place? Why make a movie based on material you have nothing but contempt for?
 
> It is a "seller beware" situation. Anybody out there who wants to
protect their books from the shame of "misadaption" should just turn down that filthy money when the producers come calling. And they should leave instructions with their executors that they never want Hollywood ruining their good name after they are dead as well.

Yeah, you're right. Why should the executors of a literary estate assume that the author would prefer any dramatic adaptations to be faithful? Certainly nothing in Chandler's past dealings with Hollywood moguls or broadcast execs, nothing in his letters on the subject, nothing in the articles he wrote, nothing anywhere in the written record, would give them any clue about Chandler's feelings in the matter.

> Maybe he has something to say about all of that as well. Who said
all art must be generated out of respect?

Fine. If he wants to say it, let him commission an original script, or write his own script. I'm not talking about legality here. I know he had the legal right to do with the book whatever he wanted. But it was dirty pool to make a movie purporting to be based on Chandler's novel, when he clearly had so little respect for it.
 
> (And for the record, I believe you are putting a lot of words in
Altman's mouth.)

Altman put them into his own mouth. And even if he hadn't, the film he made makes his attitude manifestly evident.

> I beg to differ. That IS the point exactly.

It's not the point when the issue isn't artistic worth, but morality. And I'm talking about morality. What he did by adapting the book the way he did offends me to the point that whatever artistic merit the film had (and, frankly, there didn't strike me as being much) was lost on me.

> As does your opinion to anyone sitting on the other side of the
aisle, Jim.

Since I'm always right, and not just right, but obviously and manifestly right (at least whenever I'm speaking EX CATHEDRA), I must regard any and all who disagree with me with mystification and puzzlement.
  JIM DOHERTY



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