Our BetterMost Community > Creative Writer's Corner
Taking Chances, by E. L. Van Hine and L.H. Nicoll
MaineWriter:
Calendar girl, checking in. Any word on the reconstruction efforts from Louise?
L
Helen:
I wasn't saying I didn't like Story!Jack because he told white lies. I didn't like him for numerous reasons.
Yeah, I know loads of people who tell white lies, male and female, myself included. And loads of people who do stupid, spontaneous things, too.
I can certainly sympathise with both characters in the movie. Just not in the story.
As for fictional characters having flaws, I never said they shouldn't have.
louisev:
--- Quote from: MaineWriter on July 15, 2006, 07:01:38 am ---Calendar girl, checking in. Any word on the reconstruction efforts from Louise?
L
--- End quote ---
okay okay I'm awake now. Left with the wreckage of the weekend here.... not my weekend, but the boys' weekend. I have the first part of Saturday written and working on... YES! The SEX SCENE.
For those who are up and about at last (it's afternoon in Europe) I will be hanging in chat while I separate those Shelayan weekend days outta ours!
louisev:
--- Quote from: Helen on July 15, 2006, 07:23:51 am ---I wasn't saying I didn't like Story!Jack because he told white lies. I didn't like him for numerous reasons.
Yeah, I know loads of people who tell white lies, male and female, myself included. And loads of people who do stupid, spontaneous things, too.
I can certainly sympathise with both characters in the movie. Just not in the story.
As for fictional characters having flaws, I never said they shouldn't have.
--- End quote ---
I think I know what Helen is getting at here. Jake G. did a yeoman's duty in making Jack a lot more romantic than he was portrayed in the short story, and taking the short story purely on its own merits (hard to do if you've seen the film twenty times and fell in love with Jake's Jack, I'm sure!!!), I have only seen the film four times and read the story innumerable times... it is clearly Ennis that is completely in love, and it is Ennis for whom there is one man and one man only. Ennis was Jack's first choice, but he had runner-ups. The other element of Story!Jack that comes through much clearer is that Jack moved out of Wyoming and went rodeo chasing in Texas, not contacting Ennis until long after Ennis had given up on him. And it led me to believe he had rodeo thrill seeking, picking up rodeo clowns, and finding a meal ticket on his mind before he had Ennis on his mind. He didnt get in touch with Ennis again until he had had a few years of pounding the rodeo trail, while Ennis wondered what happened to him.
MaineWriter:
One of the things I find particularly interesting about the whole BBM experience is that I totally separate the movie and the story.
Every other book I have read that has been made into a movie, I think of it that way--> book-->movie. I compare the movie against the book the vast majority of the time, the movie falls short. I always like the book better.
But BBM...there is the story, which I read and enjoyed. I only read it a few weeks before I saw the movie, actually. I don't have a subscription the the New Yorker so I missed it in 1997. But in the first few weeks of the BBM hubbub, the story was still online at the New Yorker and I read it there.
I really liked the story. I thought it was really really good.
Then I went and saw the movie, which as everyone here knows, was one of those events that knocked my socks off.
For the first few weeks afterwards, I went through that phase of comparing Movie!Ennis with Story!Ennis, Movie!Jack with Story!Jack but then...I realized that was not helpful to me. I came to the conclusion that there is BBM the story, and BBM the movie. Then there is the aftermath of BBM (which we are living here). That is why I refer to it as "the experience" of BBM--it is the totality of all of it, which includes making new friends, for me, beginning writing, and so on. For me, BBM has become much more than a story or a movie.
I liked the comment that someone made that the screenplay was the first fanfic.
Leslie
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version