For me, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most cinematic of all novelists. Ironically, none of his books have ever successfully been transferred into cinema.
The closest to getting it was probably Keith Gordon
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
So it goes.
Besides being a tremendous writer, Vonnegut had a sense of humor about himself, sending up his image in Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School.” When I heard the news this morning, this exchange was one of the first things that popped into my mind.
[after Diane gives Thornton an ‘F’ for his report, which was actually written by Kurt Vonnegut]
Diane: Whoever *did* write this doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!
[cut to Thornton’s dorm suite]
Thornton Melon: [on the phone] … and *another* thing, Vonnegut! I’m gonna stop payment on the check!
[Kurt tells him off]
Thornton Melon: Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips, *fuck you*! Next time I’ll call Robert Ludlum!
[hangs up]
He was a genius and a great human being. The world is a darker place without him.
There is one great filmed adaptation of Vonnegut’s work: Jonathan Demme’s “Who Am I This Time?” starring Christopher Walken, in arguably his best performance on film, and Susan Sarandon. It’s available on DVD.
Ditto what CMB said. It is probably the best adaptation and anyway, it stands on its own.
I loved Roscoe Lee Browne. What a voice! I think the AP got his role in All in the Family wrong. The way I remember it, Browne played a patient sharing a room with Bunker in the hospital.
Browne was in one of my favorite Magnum PI episodes and was ubiqitous on TV during my formative years. His narration on Babe was wonderous.
Vonnegut is one of the very few writers that may have slightly changed how I look at the world. I hate that he’s gone.
Don’t forget George Roy Hill’s adaptation of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE. He did it between BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, and THE STING. If you haven’t seen it, rent it, if you can find it.
I’d put in for HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE, which, being based on a play rather than a novel, is probably truest to its source material, plus it has career-defining performances by Rod Steiger and William Hickey.
I always found inspiration in Harrison Bergeron from the collection Welcome to the Monkey House.
In many ways his stories were somewhat unfilmable, but maybe that is why he stood out so much.
I always liked Galapagos. And Welcome to the Monkey House was a great story collection. Actually, I liked just about everything the man wrote. Even his more recent essays for In These Times magazine were so much more insightful and clever than almost any other American writer.
Harrison Bergeron was a great little introduction tale that, if you laugh a little during a read, then count yourself as a soon-to-be fan.
I loved the story he wrote as Kilgour Trout about an astronaut searching the universe to discover ‘why we are born only to suffer and die’.