tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post7386728279400007546..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Huston's Under the Volcano - Incompatibility on a Grand ScaleCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-80738266338333041372009-09-30T08:40:29.484-07:002009-09-30T08:40:29.484-07:00I suspect Lowry was drunk most all the time--even ...I suspect Lowry was drunk most all the time--even while writing. <br /><br />Alcohol doesn't equal incoherence, though that trope is one that is utilized frequently in the story. <br /><br />There's the story about Huston and Capote sitting up each night in a tent in Italy, writing the next day's dialogue (for Beat the Devil). The result is obvious. <br /><br />You don't need to be drunk to make bad movies, though.<br /><br />Huston seems to have a clear grasp on plot and character, even when he's not completely coherent. <br /><br />It's best (as always) to treat the movie as a separate entity, and forget it was a complex novel first.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-36410637121249969422009-09-29T22:27:53.062-07:002009-09-29T22:27:53.062-07:00Well, Curtis, you make me want to see the movie. I...Well, Curtis, you make me want to see the movie. I'd always heard — from people whose thoughts I respected — that it was a failure, largely because Huston was drunk too much of the time while making it. I don't know if Lowry was drunk a lot of the time while writing the novel.<br /><br />I was brought to the novel by the sculptor Alvin Light — come to think of it, he was the guy put down the movie — who thought it A, if not The, Great American Novel. I couldn't read it for years, but then when I was working on a biographical sketch of Alvin I did finally read it, in one go, and met my father again.<br /><br />(Alvin also swore by <i>The Lives of the Cell</i>, but that's another story.)Charles Sherehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10480432901356490235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-53133486977446832742009-09-23T06:16:33.000-07:002009-09-23T06:16:33.000-07:00pee est..
how abou:t
the horse signifying a &q...pee est..<br /><br /><br />how abou:t<br /><br />the horse signifying a "run for the roses" like... a run to/towards death... the ultimate finish line?<br /><br />like a galloping omen!?<br /><br />trite, but effective... especially in Lowry's contextEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-37736363731086370002009-09-23T06:09:11.672-07:002009-09-23T06:09:11.672-07:00"What do you think the horse--and her death--..."What do you think the horse--and her death--represented?"<br /><br />well not much!<br /><br />however<br />I will go to my first edition of<br /><br />The Fama Sutra for Idiots<br /><br /><br />to come up with a definitive answer...<br /><br /><br />last time I went to a movie theatre I had to crouch down to get under the tape on the ticket window!<br /><br />going to meet carlo Parcelli for lunch today last time I saw him was in 1971!<br /><br />Carlo is:<br /><br />http://www.alphavillebooks.com/Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-87251027881156054292009-09-22T17:27:22.025-07:002009-09-22T17:27:22.025-07:00Ed:
The movie's not that bad.
I thought it w...Ed:<br /><br />The movie's not that bad.<br /><br />I thought it was a decent effort at representing what would in most directors' hands be pure mush. <br /><br />The symbolic representations in the film may have been "too" obvious, really. Resonance is so hard to set up visually. <br /><br />The bar scene at the end I thought quite powerful--the drunken hero so plastered that he could only half-heartedly defend his dignity, the cut-throat small-timers moving inexorably to dispose of him. Then Yvonne's death by the rearing horse. <br /><br />What do you think the horse--and her death--represented?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-73474575790856944932009-09-22T17:13:53.656-07:002009-09-22T17:13:53.656-07:00that was a good book. hard to read.
not interested...that was a good book. hard to read.<br />not interested in the movie.<br /><br />actors run the risk of becoming what they<br />pretend to be!<br /><br />Stallone lives up the road from me...<br /><br />one day at the Celebrity Deli<br /><br />he said "everybody wants to beat the crap out of me.. I ain't Rambo."<br /><br />he picked up my check a bagel and coffee<br /><br />then Chuck Rossler the owner of the deli threw away both checks.<br /><br />next morning<br /><br />Sugar Ray came in for breakfast. he also lives in Potomac.<br /><br />what was the question?<br /><br />gonna meet Carlo Parcelli for lunch tomorrow.<br /><br />Mike Rothenberg and David Meltzer will be here next week.... <br /><br />y'all come!<br /><br />Busboys and Poets and<br />a day or so before that<br />The Writer's Center in Bethesda...<br /><br />Rockpile... for those who dig it!Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-55432763138631841422009-09-22T04:10:55.953-07:002009-09-22T04:10:55.953-07:00Green Shadows, White Whale is Ray Bradbury's a...Green Shadows, White Whale is Ray Bradbury's account of writing the screenplay of Moby Dick for Huston while shooting the film on location in Ireland. I read it while living in Tonga and loaned it to an Irishman who was raised in a Dublin orphanage, retired from the Royal Navy and married to a Tongan, the sister of the Tongan who ran the school where I taught stories from a book called The Dubliners. I had to take over the class from another Irishman, a Waugh scholar from Trinity College whose blackouts from drinking made him a danger to himself and others. I drove him to the airport when he was told to leave the country.Craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05061304265345986242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-11265475136847868622009-09-22T02:37:46.766-07:002009-09-22T02:37:46.766-07:00Curtis,
Seeing this film again when it was rerele...Curtis,<br /><br />Seeing this film again when it was rereleased in the DVD set last year I was mesmerized by the seeming verismilitude of Finney's portrait of terminal wreckage--the cantina scene with no socks, etc.<br /><br />Couldn't keep it out of my mind when coincidentally around the same time viewing Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. <br /><br />Finney Wreckage Part II.<br /><br />Could it be these two great "actor's directors" were diving from different decks for the same life-tarnished lost doubloons in that heavyweight sunken galleon?TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com