Literary Adaptation

Cronenberg, Winger, Waters at the Provincetown Film Festival (via capecodonline)

Directors David Cronenberg and John Waters incite in me the excitement often reserved for teenage girls at the premiere of The Fault in Our Stars. The pair are the definition of sophisticated no bullshit, two men very much in touch with their obsessions and capable of drawing an audience along. Over the course of their wide-ranging discussion on the Provincetown Town Hall stage, their dialog trended toward Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch.

When I’m asked about successful literary adaptations, Cronenberg’s 1991 hallucinogenic fantasy starring Peter Weller and Judy Davis is high on the list. Here’s a bit of the conversation between icons Cronenberg and Waters:

JOHN WATERS: Remember when we got to say, how did they ever make a movie out of Lolita? Well, I think with Naked Lunch you did a wonderful job, so how was Burroughs with you?

DAVID CRONENBERG:Burroughs was great. His public persona was very intimidating, and he was very sort of plastic and cynical, and kind of mean. But on personal time, he was really quite sweet, and very generous. He loved the concept. He loved the script that I had written. I did submit it to him but said, really, I don’t think I can make this movie just from your book. I don’t know if you’ve read the Naked Lunch, but it’s a difficult one to think of as a movie.

I said, I feel I need to incorporate a lot of stuff from your actual life…I understand if you don’t want me to, and in particular, I was talking to the fact that he shot his wife, which was a crucial moment, of course, in his life, but also as a writer. He said, I don’t separate my life and my art, and you can just go ahead….

JW: Did you do drugs with him?

DC: No. Actually, at that time I think he was just doing methadone.

JW: Oh, methadone. Got it. I smoked pot with him. Did you go to the bunker, or –

JC:: I didn’t, but I did go to Tangier with him.

JW:: Oh, wow.

DC: And met Paul Bowles, whom he hadn’t seen for seventeen years. I sat right down with the two of them, the authors of Naked Lunch and The Sheltering Sky, so there is a connection. [He looks out into the audience and sees Debra Winger, who starred in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film adaptation of Bowles’ classic novel set in North Africa.] Bizarre, but it is there.

Don’t hate me because I have a bad haircut: Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay (Warner Brothers)

We all have those movies that everybody seems to hate but we love — and now that “Winter’s Tale” is out on video, isn’t it worth a second look? Here’s what I had to say when the romantic fantasy came out theatrically:

“Winter’s Tale” will never be confused with “Nymphomania.” There is nothing hip, or shocking, or cutting edge about it. There is not one sex scene where you wonder: how did they film that, much less how did they do that?

Still, for a snow-slammed Valentine’s Day (on the East Coast at least), what could be better than escaping to the theater and falling for Colin Farrell? Or “Downton Abbey” beauty Jessica Brown Findlay, who played the littlest sister that took up with the chauffeur for love.

At the movie’s dynamic opening sequence set in Gilded Age New York, there is a confusing moment (some would and have said it is all confusing) when Colin Farrell’s Peter Lake hops on an enormous white horse. In a single bound, hero and beast escape the brutal Pearly Soames (a snarly, scarf aced Russell Crowe) and his henchmen by flying over an impossibly high iron fence.

The key to enjoying “Winter’s Tale” is making that leap into fantasy with Lake. The love story, directed by Akiva Goldsman, from his adaptation of Mark Helprin’s novel, is a time-bending action romance with production and costume design as rich as Godiva Chocolates.

Lake’s thief carries a Dickensian backstory. Soames plucked the immigrant orphan off the cobble-stoned streets. He mentored the lad until Lake grew into New York’s best burglar. It’s a hard-knock life.

But, now, Lake wants out, inspiring his mentor’s wrathy wrath. In a one-last-job plot twist, Lake burgles a Central Park West mansion on the way out of Dodge. He thinks it’s vacant, but encounters its sole remaining resident, Beverly Penn (Brown Findlay). The pre-Raphaelite beauty has just a touch of a very deadly, wasting fever. Just a touch, but definitely terminal.

Romance ensues (ill-fated, of course), just as surely as Soames’ relentless vengeance.

Farrell rarely gets to be this unabashedly romantic. Even as the drunken father (and title character) in “Saving Mr. Banks,” he sweated charm in an overlooked supporting performance. Not only is he easy on the eyes, but he’s a self-effacing and good-natured romantic hero. He holds the swagger – and leaves all that macho stuff to Crowe.

Crowe, the lead in “A Beautiful Mind,” meets up with “I, Robot” star Will Smith for a Goldsman reunion where they both break bad. There’s a trippy interplay between Soames — he’s not just bad, he’s demonic — and his supervisor, Judge (Smith), a.k.a. Beelzebub. If you can go with the white horse’s leap, you can cope with the loose-limbed black magical meeting of Smith and Crowe.

Devilishly lush, with jaw-dropping set pieces and a fantastic supporting cast, “Winter’s Tale” mixes action, fantasy and romance for a less cynical time. Remember: Critics didn’t like the similarly PG-13 romantic fantasy “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” either, or have much good to say about all those Nicholas Sparks movies. Follow your heart. Or follow Farrell.

John Waters and David Cronenberg Get Naked – ‘Naked Lunch’ – in Gay Mecca Provincetown

DVD Review: ‘Winter’s Tale’