John Irving Movies

My brother had written a blog entry about John Irving’s The Cider House Rules a while back and I had intended to comment on it. I didn’t get around to it and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should give this topic its deserved amount of attention. There are those who would rather see a movie based on a book than read the book itself. There are those who would rather read the book than see the movie. To each their own, I say.

To my knowledge, these are the JI books that were adapted to the big screen. Let me know if I’ve missed any:

The World According to Garp (1982)
The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (as Simon Birch (1998))
The Cider House Rules (1999)
A Widow for One Year (at least the first half – as The Door in the Floor (2004))

I’ve seen them all and read all of the related books. I think I actually own all of them (the books) but Garp…

The World According to Garp
This is perhaps not the best JI book or movie to start with because it’s perhaps the most bizarre. That’s not saying much though, as most of his books are kind of out there. Big screen wise, Robin Williams plays the title character, Garp, with Glenn Close as his mother. Overall the movie was very well done. I’m not sure what else to say about this one. I’ve only read the book once and although it has one of my favorite completely messed up scenes ever (the one in the car in the rain…when she bites off his…you know…) I never really got into it too much.

The Hotel New Hampshire
I actually just finished reading this one for the third or fourth time last week. The movie has a lot of relatively well-known actors (Rob Lowe, Jodie Foster) but it is really just poorly made. It sticks to the general plot points of the book but it just doesn’t give it the pizzazz I think it could have had. Maybe it’s because it was made in the 80’s, but it just has that low budget look. The book itself is one of the stranger ones. There are several themes that keep finding themselves in JI’s books: prostitution, weight-lifting, wrestling, strange sexual situations, strained relationships, death in weird ways. Someone always seems to end up in Amsterdam or somewhere else in a German-speaking European country. This book has it all.

A Prayer for Owen Meany
This is actually the first JI book I got. It was a gift from Evan (although I believe he told me that Jodi is actually the one who picked it out.) It was interesting enough, but it’s really not one of my favorites. Too much overtly political commentary I guess. The movie kind of altered the story a bit and kept Owen (aka Simon) as a child throughout the entire film rather than have him grow up as he does in the book. The overall theme therefore changed quite a bit, but the ultimate “Owen/Simon as a hero” plot point remained. But a lot less politically motivated, with no mention of Vietnam. I found the movie (starring Ashley Judd, who I’m not too fond of) to be a little dippy. A feel-good movie of sorts I suppose, but just not my cup of tea. They had to take out all of the good parts because they altered the story so much from the original.

The Cider House Rules
I read the book before I rented the movie. Therefore I didn’t have that preconceived idea of what the characters should look and act like that my brother mentions. Charlize Theron is a beautiful woman, but I didn’t really like her as Candy. I don’t know. Something about her bothered me. My favorite character in the movie version was the man who played Mr. Rose. While I must say that The Cider House Rules is perhaps the best adaptation of one of JI’s books, I’m afraid there are some problems with it. Most noticeably, the character of Melony doesn’t exist in the movie. She is a rather important person in Homer’s life in the book. I just couldn’t understand why she had been eliminated in the movie version. I saw or read an interview with JI somewhere discussing this point. Apparently he believed that her character was too strong and would ultimately overpower the other more important plot points. I guess he has a valid point – and it’s kind of hard to get a 500+ page novel into a reasonable length movie. There are other changes that were made from the book and, while I thought the movie was pretty good, the book is definitely better.

A Widow for One Year
I must say that I was the most disappointed with this movie adaptation. What I think is most disturbing is that in the extras on the DVD there is an interview with JI and he appears to have been satisfied with the whole thing. *sigh* How can you be satisfied when someone turns your awesome book into some boring hour and a half long melodramatic snore-fest? I was really looking forward to this movie as this book is one of my favorites. Granted, they only tell half of the story in the movie. The cast was decent (Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger) but it just never gathered any momentum. The book is full of great scenes and lots of heartbreak and emotion that the movie never seems to capture. Not to mention that the second half of the book is probably the better half… Eh, I was highly unimpressed with the movie. The book definitely wins in this case.

I guess it must be mentioned that in order to get a decent rating from those parents over at the MPAA, each of the books that has been made into a movie had to lose some of its JI charm. He definitely has a messed up sense of humor and is, at times, quite crude. I mean, the subject matter alone is enough to put some people off: abortion (The Cider House Rules), incest/rape (The Hotel New Hampshire), swinging – the partner-swapping kind (The 158-pound Marriage).

Anyway, I guess my point is some authors write in such a way that it’s difficult to get a decent movie out of the original publication. Most of JI’s books are near or over the 500 page mark. They’re full of wonderful description and dialogue, but it’s just not practical to try and cram all of that into a movie. Of the attempts that have been made, I’d say that CHR was the most successful. He even got an Oscar for that. (Funny about that…in his most recent book, Until I Find You, the main character is a screenwriter of sorts and JI has him fictionally win that Oscar since he didn’t want to take the award away from someone else.)

Wow, I’ve almost written an essay here. Sorry about that. :) That’s just my two cents (or perhaps a dollar or so in this case.)