>
> Dave,
>
> Re your response to my comments below:
>
> > What I don't get is how someone can
> > make the logical jump from someone not
faithfully adapting a
work, or
> > taking liberties with it, to the
director/screenwriters
disrespecting
> > the author. Seems kind of silly to me--but this
is an argument
we're
> > never going to meet any meeting of the minds
with. Although it
does
> > seem from the responses that far more people
here liked Altman's
> > version of Long Goodbye than despised it, so I
think we do have a
> > RARA AVIS consensus that the Long Goodbye was a
damn good movie ;)
>
> I don't make a startlingly difficult-to-see logical
jump. I look
at
> the movie, in conjunction with Altman's public
comments, and come
to
> the obvious conclusion. But we're beyond that
now.
>
> You may disagree with the position that, morally, an
adapter owes
some
> fidelity to the originator of the source material.
But what Miker
said
> is that artists have no moral obligations, at least
not in the
creation
> of their art.
>
> Ever.
>
Jim,
I agree with you completely about a writers/artists moral
obligation
(something which I obviously wasn't disagreeing with you
about in my earlier post)--but we'll accept that we disagree
on whether an artist owes a responsibility for faithful
adapations. A writer's book is a separate entity however a
movie director/playright/satirist chooses to interpret it,
and those works will remain separate from the book, without
weakening or strengthening the book except where they provide
deeper insight. Let's look at the Coen Brother's Big
Lebowski, which while it has the Marlowe-like character as a
pot smoking dude, it still pays respectful tribute to
Chandler. I also think Anders quotes from Leigh Brackett
about the necessary changes for modernizing The Long Goodbye
are right on target. I haven't seen Altman's comments on
Chandler, except as paraphrased here, and if you have a link
to them, I'd be interested.
--Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Feb 2007 EST