Imagine walking into Spago, the L.A. Morton’s or some other Hollywood power pit and hearing movie moguls toss around names like Holden Caulfield, Beowulf and Dante — perhaps in the same breath with Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts and John Grisham.
Nowadays, it wouldn’t be surprising at all. It’s not that movie moguls have taken up heavy reading; they still rely on the fabled 20-second pitch. But films based on classic literature have become bankable at the box office.
The Nicole Kidman/John Malkovich film version of Henry James’ “The Portrait of a Lady” may have tanked, but Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Emma,” the latest version of the Jane Austen novel, has grossed a respectable $53.8 million counting domestic and foreign revenues and video rentals.
And works like J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” or even Dante’s “Divine Comedy” are hot because, unlike the works of James or Austen, they haven’t yet been made into movies.
Literature has become a Hollywood “in” again. The “eastern” is as big as the western, or even the teenage mall movie. And, however unlettered they themselves may be, producers are looking for a piece of this literary action.
But what’s left that hasn’t already been “green lighted” or “pitched?”
Paltrow’s is the third “Emma” movie, not counting the loosely adapted “Clueless.” Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” has gotten the movie treatment five times, and Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” three.
James’ “Daisy Miller,” “Washington Square” and “The Bostonians” have been made into flicks, as have Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” and “Ethan Fromme.”
There have been four films of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” (if you want to count Demi Moore’s exploding-farm-cart, happy-ending version), and a movie has even been made of “Silas Marner,” starring Ben Kingsley.
Not only has virtually every book written by Ernest Hemingway been made into a movie, there’s been three made about him, including the recent “In Love and War.”
Even the endlessly wordy, whiskey-drenched William Faulkner has had his cinematic day, with two “Long Hot Summer” films made from his “The Hamlet.”
So where’s a movie mogul to turn?
To the experts, as did we: Carl Smith, professor of English and American Studies at Northwestern University and fellow at the Newberry Library; Kenneth Seeskin, chairman of the philosophy department and director of Northwestern’s Center for the Writing Arts; “Emma” screenwriter and director Douglas McGrath, and Stuart Robinson, literary guru at the Hollywood and New York based Paradigm Agency.
Their report: There’s a lot more literature left than you might think.
“My first choice may seem odd to you,” said Seeskin, “but I’m serious. What about (the old Norse saga) `Beowulf’? You’ve got a monster! Given the propensity of Hollywood to do monsters and blood and gore, it would be perfectly suited.”
Another Seeskin suggestion is Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
“They’ve done the Bible, the Odyssey, the Iliad, almost all of Shakespeare, some of Tolstoy,” he said. “Why not `The Divine Comedy’? All of that purgatory stuff is kind of interesting.”
“I’m a great admirer of Anthony Trollope,” said McGrath. “I think his novels are delightful and would make wonderful movies. I don’t know why more haven’t been done.”
19th Century social satirist Trollope produced some titles that might be a bit unwieldy for the screen–“Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite” was one–but several of his Plantagenet Palliser novels, including “Can You Forgive Her?,” were successfully translated into public television fare as “The Pallisers.
Like Austen’s, Trollope’s wit and language remain as amusing now as then, McGrath said, but the trick in converting such works is in a natural delivery of the lines.
Smith would like Hollywood to improve upon some of its earlier adaptations of classics, as director Michael Mann did in his remake of “The Last of the Mohicans,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Earlier Hollywood adaptations of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” and Mike Nichols’ ludicrous “Catch-22” were failures if not disasters, and deserve another effort, he said.
But he also finds a lot of writing that’s never hit the screen, including half of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels.
“There’s been a Robert Redford `Great Gatsby,’ which was a pretty good movie, and a television one, starring Robert Montgomery, which was good, too,” said Smith, “and Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones did `Tender is the Night.’ But `The Beautiful and the Damned’ (about a beautiful young couple who become embittered and jaded after establishing themselves in high society) and `This Side of Paradise’ (Fitzgerald’s young-man-discovers-life-in-Manhattan book) haven’t.”
What is the property Hollywood most yearns to film? One book title came to the tongue of all concerned: “The Catcher in the Rye,” by Salinger.
What college freshman has not devoted at least a part of a date to talking into the wee hours about this generational coming-of-age cult classic tale? In it, the teenager Holden Caulfield goes AWOL from prep school to find himself and the verities of life and death in the very adult Manhattan of the 1940s.
A large part of its appeal to Hollywood, however, is that of forbidden fruit.
“You know why everyone wants `Catcher in the Rye’? ” asked McGrath. “Because he won’t sell it to them.”
The reclusive author, as famous for his mania for privacy as he is for his distinctive literary creations, probably would sooner agree to sign autographs at Spago–on Oscar night.
“It’s a great property,” said agent Robinson. “Everyone’s dying to do it, though I’m not sure what kind of a movie would result. But the big demand comes from Salinger’s not wanting it to be done.”
Seeskin says he thinks the novel could make one of those rare films that would appeal to age groups from PG up — teens and geezers alike.
“I don’t know if I’d call it a masterpiece, but it’s certainly a novel people of my generation grew up with and everyone had to read it, if not several times.”
Hollywood is likely to be kept waiting a long time on this one. Even after Salinger’s death, the rights to his books would belong to his estate. “Catcher in the Rye” would not come into the public domain — meaning that it could not be adapted freely — for at least 50 years.”
One difficulty with “Catcher” is that much of the book consists of internal monologue and introspection. But McGrath recalled how one of the greats of movie making, Italian director Luchino Visconti, overcame that obstacle in filming another literary classic, Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice.”
In that story, a proper, upper-middle-class gentleman ultimately succumbs to a deadly plague in Venice because of his uncontrollable attraction to a beautiful young boy. Instead of rambling on to himself as a voice over on the soundtrack, Visconti and star Dirk Bogarde impart the man’s languor simply with looks and silences.
“It’s a reduction of the book to long looks and gazes, and it works,” McGrath said. “The danger with these adaptations, particularly English novels, is that, as the screenwriter, if you love the language, you want to keep as much of it as possible.”
Another problem would be casting. Michael J. Fox and Chris O’Donnell are too old to play Caulfield. And Seeskin, if not the entire world, was quick to veto another name.
“Not Macaulay Culkin,” he said.
