The Lost Boys of Sudan

Last year, I read What is the What by Dave Eggers, which tells the story of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Eggers tells the amazing story of Valentino Achak Deng who traveled from Sudan to Ethiopia to Kenya and finally to the U.S. (Georgia) to escape the civil war in his homeland. The Eggers' version of the story is technically fiction, but it is based on fact and provides a pretty good picture of the struggles of Deng and the other Lost Boys. (To learn more about the Lost Boys who are known for walking thousands of miles to leave Sudan click here.)

Several months ago, I added a documentary about the Lost Boys to my netflix queue--inspired by Deng's story, and yesterday, I watched God Grew Tired of Us. Like What is the What, the film told the story of the Lost Boys through the experience of a few individuals. Like Deng, the subjects of the film fled Sudan for Ethiopia, then Kenya and finally the U.S. (Pittsburgh and Syracuse). The film brought to life the struggles and inspiration I had read about in What is the What. It is also fascinating to learn how John, Daniel and Panther, who are followed on their journey from Kenya to the U.S., adapt (rather quickly) to their new lives.

By the way, I also learned that there is another documentary out now about the Lost Boys--appropriately called Lost Boys of Sudan.

Book to Film Adaptation

I’m a fan of the novelist Salman Rushdie, who wrote the wonderfully mystical Midnight’s Children. Last month, he wrote an essay for the British newspaper, the Guardian, about the difficulty of adapting novels for the big screen.

Mr. Rushdie analyzes a few of this year’s Oscar nominated films, focusing particularly on Slumdog Millionaire. He disliked that movie and most of the others and argues why it is often so hard to make good films from books. I found the article interesting and thought I’d share. Think it’d be great to have a book-to -film round for our book club at some point. I envision it’d foster a lot of great discussion.

Here’s the beginning of the essay. Click the link below to read the rest.

Adaptation, the process by which one thing develops into another thing, by which one shape or form changes into a different form, is a commonplace artistic activity. Books are turned into plays and films all the time, plays are turned into movies and also sometimes into musicals, movies are turned into Broadway shows and even, by the ugly method known as "novelisation", into books as well. We live in a world of such transformations and metamorphoses. Good movies - Lolita, The Pink Panther - are remade as bad movies; bad movies - The Incredible Hulk, Deep Throat - are remade as even worse movies; British TV comedy series are turned into American TV comedy series, so that The Office becomes a different The Office, and Ricky Gervais turns into Steve Carell, just as, long ago, the British working-class racist Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part turned into the American blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker in All In the Family. British reality programmes are adapted to suit American audiences as well; Pop Idol becomes American Idol when it crosses the Atlantic, Strictly Come Dancing becomes Dancing With the Stars - a programme which, it may interest you to know, invited me to appear on it last season, an invitation I declined.

Songs by great artists are covered by lesser artists; on inauguration day this year, Beyoncé performed her version of Etta James's classic "At Last" to the considerable irritation of Etta James herself (but then, James seemed even more irritated by the election of Barack Obama, so perhaps she was just in a bad mood). All of these are examples of the myriad variations of adaptation, an insatiable process which can sometimes seem voracious, world-swallowing, as if we now live in a culture that endlessly cannibalises itself, so that, eventually, it will have eaten itself up completely. Anyone can make a list of the many catastrophic adaptations they have seen - my personal favourites being David Lean's ridiculous film of A Passage to India, in which Alec Guinness as a Hindu wise man dangles his feet blasphemously in the waters of a sacred water tank; and the Merchant Ivory emasculation of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, in which Ishiguro's guilty-as-hell British Nazi aristocrat is portrayed as a lovable, misguided, deceived old bugger more deserving of our sympathy than our scorn.

But adaptation can be a creative as well as a destructive force. Rod Stewart singing "Downtown Train" is almost the equal of Tom Waits, and Joe Cocker singing "With a Little Help from My Friends" achieves the rare feat of singing a Beatles song better than the Beatles did, which is less impressive when you remember that the original singer was Ringo Starr. I'm currently teaching a course that highlights some of the instances in which fine books have been adapted into fine films - Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence mutated into Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence; Giuseppe di Lampedusa's portrait of Sicily in 1860, The Leopard, turned into Luchino Visconti's greatest film; Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood became a wonderful John Huston movie; and, in his film of Great Expectations, Lean produced a classic that can stand alongside the Dickens novel without any sense of inferiority, a film that allows this film-goer, at least, to forgive him for the later blunders of A Passage to India. Read the rest.

The Film Club

At our last meeting, we discussed "The Film Club," a memoir by David Gilmour.  One the surface, the book can be seen as just a story about a father's unusual tactics to get his son to go back to school.  But there is so much more going on here.  The book is as much about the son as it is about the father.  Gilmour's struggle to steer his son in a more positive direction forces him to recognize his own short-comings and ultimately, I think he grows and learns as much as, if not more than, his son.  

One of the things that we discussed and all thought was a unique and admirable thing was Gilmour's relationship with his wife and ex-wife.  He's able to do what most people only wish they could which is to put aside any grievances they may have after a relationship is over and work to build a new kind of relationship.  This is especially crucial when dealing with relationships that involve children.  Even Gilmour's new wife is able to join in the fold and not feel intimidated by the obvious strong bond that Gilmour continues to have with his ex-wife.

Another topic that came up was whether or not we believed that Gilmour  allowing his son to quit high school was a good thing.  There were view points on both sides of the spectrum.  

For the purposes of the blog, here are a few questions:

How did Gilmour's plan to get his son to go back to school ultimately work?  

How did Gilmour's plan affect his relationship with his son?

Knightley Cloned For New Movie

Here's a post I read on JoBlo.com this morning:

Just other day I was talking with a friend and lamenting the loss of Mark Romanek on THE WOLFMAN. I'm sure the movie will be great and all but I know Romanek would've brought something special to the material. Hopefully it won't be too long in before we get to see Romanek's first feature since 2002 as he's signed on to direct the sci-fi thriller NEVER LET ME GO for Fox Searchlight. Keira Knightley has signed on to star in the film that follows three English students who realize their boarding school is actually a farm for clones waiting to have their organs harvested. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and while it sounds like THE ISLAND, isn't quite the same as that Michae Bay action flick. The script was written by Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER) and made the list of the 10 Best Unproduced Scripts for 2008. Production on the film is set to begin this April in London.

Extra Tidbit: Time Magazine named "Never Let Me Go" the best fiction novel of 2005.