some of us read the novels instead.
Horseman, Pass By, Larry McMurtry's first novel was the basis for the film. And as usual Hollywood never achieved the depths of the characters portrayed in his book. Not that the reviews would acclaim.
"Hud (1963): Paul Newman is the contemporary cowboy in this enormously successful adaptation of McMurtry’s first novel, Horseman, Pass By, set, in the words of Pauline Kael, “in the Texas of Cadillacs and cattle, crickets and transistor radios.” Martin Ritt directed, and the starkly handsome black-and-white photography is by James Wong Howe. Patricia Neal, saying her lines in a sexy Texas drawl, plays the housekeeper of the Bannon ranch, and the knowing looks and sharp exchanges of dialogue between her Alma and Newman’s Hud give the film a constant tension and tingle. (Neal won an Oscar for best actress.)
Newman’s Hud is cold-blooded and unprincipled, representing the new predatory spirit of the West that is meant to contrast vividly with the earthy, 19th-century values embodied by his father Homer, played by Melvin Douglas. (If the film has a fault, it’s that the contrast between cattleman father and son, who wants to turn the land over to oil wildcatters, is constantly pushed in front of us.) Brandon DeWilde, who called to Alan Ladd to come back at the end of Shane, plays Hud’s teenage nephew, Lon. He does not call to Newman to come back at the end of this film.
Writing about Hud in his book, In A Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas, McMurtry wrote, “The screenwriters erred badly in following my novel too closely.” He is surely the first and perhaps the only novelist in history to make that complaint. "
Yet, they did it again with Leaving Cheyenne, his 2nd novel.
"Lovin' Molly
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lovin' Molly
Lovin' Molly is a 1974 drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Anthony Perkins, Beau Bridges, Blythe Danner in the title role, Ed Binns, and Susan Sarandon. The film is based on one of Larry McMurtry's first novels, Leaving Cheyenne. Prior to release, the film was also known as Molly, Gid, and Johnny and The Wild and The Sweet.
In an interview with another of the actors in the film, Paul Partain (better known for his role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) described the origins of the film:
When Sidney
and Stephen got into town, they came with what they hoped would be the perfect formula for success. It had worked on The Last Picture Show, and they knew it would work here. It was this: get a Larry McMurtry novel, hire your three lead actors from Hollywood, get a great director, pick up all the rest of the actors and the crew from the local pool and you were set. Great plan, and it almost worked...
The movie was filmed in Bastrop, Texas; the filming was witnessed by a Texan journalist who later wrote a 1974 Texas Monthly article about the film. The lengthly article (over 4000 words) was published in advance of its release, and noted the following:
* Should you find more than a modicum of true Texas in the film — excluding John Henry Faulk's bit role — why, then, I'll buy you a two-dollar play purty. Lovin' Molly has no sense of Time or Place: a curious development, indeed, when you consider that Larry McMurtry's writing strength derives from evoking Time-and-Place about as well as you will find it done this side of Faulkner.
* Let us fade, now, into the recent past — back to Austin and Bastrop, in November and December, 1972 — to discover how professional film folks could have so botched and perverted McMurtry's Texas.
* a yarn of cattle country and of the last stubborn independent men in it; he well-clued the reader that his people wore coiled hats, boots, jeans, and retained a certain fierce saddleback pride. So director Sid Lumet trots everybody out in clod-hoppers and bib-overalls; they plant and reap as if in the best bottomlands of the rich Mississippi Delta."
Films aren't always the best representations of the characters the creator/author has brought forth for our enjoyment and education.
"Cast a cold eye on life, on death; horseman, pass by!" Wm. Butler Yeats.
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