My Movie Business: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Unprintable - Not worth it !
Review: Amazon was in stock then out of stock on paperback edition, after advising book would be shipped and arrive in 2 days.( Then I check and its due to ship in 2 weeks.) I needed it to review for college assignment,so had no choice but to buy download version.I missed the " can't print " notation on description. Would not allow cut and paste for quotes from book and had to type all quotes referred to. Reading a book on a monitor was also annoying. Never again will I download a book.
First time ever screwed by Amazon, so I will forgive them for now.

Rating:
Summary: A wish come true
Review: How many times have I wished I could call an author and ask: "Why did you write that?" How many times have i read a book and loved it, only to hate the movie based on it? I lose count.

Well, John Irving answered my prayers, and in one short book replied to all of my questions and to a few more I didn't even know I had.

I am a huge fan of Irving. He writes like nobody can; he also takes himself very unseriously. I have enjoyed all of his books immensely. This one was a joy from beginning to end. For starters, it gives a fascinating insight into The Cider House Rules. He explains his characters, goes through the thought process that made him write the book this or that way.

This memoir explains very well why it is almost always impossible to transform a book into a movie script verbatim. Irving goes through the painful steps that he took to make The Cider House Rules into a successful movie. It was wonderful to read about the back and forth that Irving had with the director of the film, Lasse Hallstrom. It makes me think that making a movie based on a book is more than anything a labor of negotiation. For me, one of the most poignant moments of this memoir is when Irving tells why he chose the role of the stationmaster. "I just wanted to be there, in the stationmaster's wretched persona, to see Homer get off that train." As an author, this was probably a brilliant moment in his life, seeing his characters in the flesh.

Irving not only reminisces about the trials and tribulations he had to endure to see this book into a movie. He also writes about writing some of his other novels, and bringing them to film, and as always, about his sons. He also offers an unusual insider's account of what it is to be immersed in the movie world. So much of what we know is based on glossy magazines and celebrity TV programs, when the reality is far more crude and plain. Well, no one better than this man to do a bit of reporting, straight from the trenches.

This is a book you must read only after reading AND watching The Cider House Rules. Only then could you do it justice.

Rating:
Summary: A great memoir
Review: If at first you don't succeed...

It took Irving a great amount of time and work to have one of his greatest novels turned into one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of the year. THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, perhaps the best known of Irving's novels, was finally made into a movie starring Michael Caine. MY MOVIE BUSINESS follows the variious difficulties he encounters, while also letting the reader in on his personal history with and opinions on the touchy subject of abortion. In true Irving style, he speaks seriously of the subject but relieves the viewer of its politics by telling some very funny anecdotes.

I highly suggest this book for any Irving fan. If you haven't really read anything of his before, I don't suggest this as a first book--read THE CIDER HOUSE RULES first.

Rating:
Summary: "Candid, humorous, insightful and informative..."
Review: Most readers are aware that John Irving ("A Widow For One Year," "A Son of the Circus") is a best-selling writer of novels. What they may not know is that Irving has been involved with the "movie business" since his first novel, "Setting Free the Bears," was published in 1968. "My Movie Business" details Irving's interactions with Hollywood since then, but focuses mainly on his thirteen year attempt to bring his screenplay of "The Cider House Rules" to the Silver Screen. The result is an insightful look into the difficulties an artist endures while reshaping one medium (the novel) to fit another (films). Because "The Cider House Rules" (screenplay and novel) relies on the subject of abortion as a central issue, Irving starts his memoir by telling us about his grandfather, Dr. Frederick C. Irving. Not only was Dr. Irving chief of staff at Boston Lying-In (one of the world's leading obstetrical hospitals in the early 1900's), he was a writer who cobbled up numerous limericks (many of which live on through medical students) and published three books. Irving's quotes from his grandfather's reveal a "Victorian prose" style that (along with the novels of Charles Dickens) belie an early influence. In writing about grandfather, Irving succinctly sums up his own creed as a novelist: "Grandfather was a man of extreme erudition and unaccountable, even inspired, bad taste; as such, he would have been a terrific novelist, for a good novel is at once sophisticated in its understanding of human behavior and utterly rebellious in its response to the conventions of good taste." Irving uses most of the first nine chapters to educate the reader on the history of abortions in America, detailing his grandfather's personal involvement as well. The author even goes so far as to take a stand on the Right-to-Life movement: "Let doctors practice medicine. Let religious zealots practice their religion, but let them keep their religion to themselves." From there, the author delves into the business of drafting screenplays for Hollywood. It is, Irving realizes, a business of compromise. During the course of developing the film and writing the screenplay, Irving works with no less than four directors (the last one, Lasse Halstrom, saw the film to completion). And in order to make more room for the relationship between Dr. Larch and Homer Wells, Irving has to excise at least one major character and lose all of Homer's history as an orphan. Forced to cut more portions of the film (to make it more stream-lined), he finds that all attempts at humor are lost. As Irving writes, "...these scenes were a comic interlude that would have...reminded my readers of the tone of my novels." In typical Irving fashion, there are digressions, albeit interesting ones. Such as the story about his relationship with Irving Kirshner, who was to direct "Setting Free the Bears"; or that Paul Newman was approached to play Dr. Larch, but was uncomfortable with scenes involving an incinerator; and Irving includes his feelings about the films of his novels "The World According to Garp" and "The Hotel New Hampshire." (The only noticeable exclusion is any mention of "Simon Birch," the Disney version of "A Prayer for Owen Meaney," from which Irving disassociated himself). Candid, humorous, insightful and informative, "My Movie Business" is a rare peek inside the creative mind of one of America's most inventive novelists - and Hollywood's newest screenwriter (Nov. 1999, Kansas City Star).

Rating:
Summary: A Good Book, But Will Appeal to a Select Audience
Review: Not everyone will be interested to read this book. If you are a fan of John Irving, however, or interested in the process of adapting a film from a novel, you'll find this a quick, fun read, and informative to some extent. What I found most interesting was Mr. Irving's views on adaptation and the glimpses on how those views changed over the years. Most authors and readers presume that the only good adaptation is one literal to the book. Mr. Irving shows why that isn't the case, and he does so by relating his own experiences as author and screenwriter. Most of the book is about the upcoming Cider House Rules; I would have liked to have read more about the previous films adapted from other novels. Nevertheless, as a novelist's honest assessment of adaptation, it is an unusual and valuable document.