I watched the series on DVD not too long after BBM came out. I remember L.M. talking about how he had wished he's written BBM and questioning himself as to why he didn't think of it 1st and he mentioned Gus and Woodrow. SO, I watched it, and like it too. One of the DVD extras was an interview with L.M. circa 1989 when the series was made. He talked about how in literature a story involving a pair of friends is almost invariably patterned after "Don Quixote". I posted on IMDB ages ago about this. His point was the pair exchange qualities or character traits by the end. Frequently one character is a "dreamer" and the other a "realist", but in the end the realist adopts the dream of his friend as his own. That interview really made me think of Jack and Ennis and what L.M and D.O. were thinking when writing the screenplay. Did Jack and Ennis exchange character traits? Did Jack become the realist at the lake scene and finally give up on his dream of the sweet life with Ennis? Did Ennis after the lake scene, after the scene with Cassie "girls don't fall in love with fun". become open to following that dream?
You, retropian, are a dream. Thank you for that. This theory applies, I think, to Kiss of the Spider Woman, where the two main characters complement each other, and, somehow, become each other.
I would totally love to echo Paul's sentiment here. Retropian!!! What a wonderful observation about switching places by the end (at least to a certain extent)!!
This idea certainly fits in beautifully with the yin and yang metaphor that so frequently comes up with Ennis and Jack. I like the idea that Jack and Ennis each have a touch of the other's personality traits within themselves all along. But, I do truly like the idea that they both push each other to points where they may largely switch positions.
It does seem that Jack's loss of his dream-like optimism ("I did once") causes Ennis to panic enough to want to change and possibly to do something to fix the unbearable conditions of their relationship ("I can't stand this anymore..." combined with our knowledge that Ennis sends the last postcard). Of course, Jack's death itself seems to be a major catalyst for change for Ennis above and beyond any change that might have been happening as a result of the argument with Jack and Ennis's own realizations. In either case, the tragedy is that the impetus to change came too late. The Ennis that we see in the final scenes does seem quite different from the Ennis earlier in the film. We talk about ways that Jack taught Ennis to express love or affection (the caress of the cheek... that Ennis later re-enacts with Jenny by caressing her cheek at Thanksgiving)... and Ennis's caution and more pragmatic outlook certainly had impacts on Jack as well. So the activity of exchange can be seen occuring, perhaps, bit by bit throughout the film.
You know, I just thought of a non-literary BBM/LD connection. Linda Cardellini (Cassie in BBM) played Clara in the Comanche Moon mini-series. Comanche Moon is part of the LD series, and is the direct pre-quel to Lonesome Dove and the sequel to Dean Man's Walk, the book where Call and Gus first meet.
Marie
Heya Marie! Could you explain more about the series of books? Should readers read these in a particular order? How big is the full series?
Hi A and everybody! I can't join the book club right now, unfortunately, because I have too much work-related Required Reading at the moment. But I wanted to tell A what a good idea this is. I saw the miniseries when it was on. I tried reading the book afterward, but experienced that unfortunate "saw it before I read it" syndrome and just wanted to skip ahead to the good parts, so I gave up (same thing happened to me with Sophie's Choice). Anyway, so I can't participate much, but I'd love to drop in now and then to see the discussion. Have fun!
Thanks K! I don't really think this will end up being a systematic book club. Somehow I don't think we'll all start at page 1 together and discuss it in such a disciplined way. Since I'm already half way through, I intend to just keep going. And, I certainly hope others start reading it and join in. But, I'd think this thread could be a place for people to come to make observations about LD and BBM whenever they feel like. Since you've seen it and read part of it, I'm sure you can jump in here too if you feel like it.
Going forward we should probably mark posts as
**Spoilers** when we discuss plot elements of LD that other folks might not have encountered yet. This seems like a good idea since people will be reading at different paces.
