Re: RARA-AVIS: Dog Soldiers/Who'll Stop the Rain

From: Mark Sullivan ( AnonymeInc@WEBTV.NET)
Date: 07 Jan 2000


I'm another fan of Dog Soldiers. I've always thought of it as pretty hardboiled. As a matter of fact, I first read it as an HB novel. Reading it led me back to literature, though, after having fallen into a pretty steady diet of hardboiled for a year or so. Now my reading is again more balanced and eclectic, but still as much as half HB.

Dog Soldiers is also interesting for its Beat connections. The Ray Hicks character is based on Neal Cassady (down to the walking along the train tracks scene), whom Stone knew while "on the bus" with Ken Kesey.

Besides being a good movie, the film adaptation is interesting in pointing out differences between the forms of novels and films. I read that Stone worked on the initial screenplay, but was unable to let anything go from the original novel. The script was cluttered with numerous subplots (which work great in the book). Finally, Judith Rascoe was brought it to doctor it. Stone thought she was ruthless, but right in streamlining the script down to a makeable and very tight film, but admitted he was way too close to the material to do that.

Mark

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