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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 4, 1990)
Arts & Entertainment ‘White Hunter’ proves Eastwood’s ability by jenrey rrey Staff Reporter In 1951 Peter Viertel accompa nied director John Huston to Africa to work with him on the script of “The African Queen.” Upon his return, Viertel sat down to record the experi mo™ ence that he shared with Huston, fash ioning the screenplay for “White Hunter, Black Heart” — a story that deals little with the making of “The African Queen” and instead lakes an insightful look at one man’s passion, arrogance and ignorance. The setting of “White Hunter, Black Heart” is the early 1950s with script writer Pete Verill (Jeff Fahey) narrat ing the beginning, describing eccen tric fiimmakcr John Wilson (Clint Eastwood) as the two prepare to make a Film on location in Africa: “John Wilson — a violent man, given to violent action. Some ascribed his wild and troubled life to his personal mania for self destruction. These generali zations always seemed inaccurate to me. That’s why I had to write all this about John — a brilliant, screw-you all-type filmmaker who continually violated all the unwritten laws of the motion picture business, yet had the magic, almost divine ability to al ways land on ms reet. Wilson, a man accustomed to having his own way, lives his life with a sense of immediacy for his passions and with his sense of respon sibility focused on those immediate goals. Wilson lives his life on a grand scale. He is a storyteller and practical joker, yet is very much a leader whose exploitative attitude works toward catching the moment and making it last. While on location to shoot the film “The. African Trader,” Wilson’s de sire to hunt and kill a trophy elephant outweighs his desire to work on the film—a film that Wilson desperately needs to straighten out his personal financial difficulties. Only, money is of little interest to Wilson and his role as filmmaker is on a level of obses sion and of need. It is this same atti tude that will impassion Wilson dur ing his African safari. Wilson’s professional life has been an ongoing battle with film studios and the producers who represent them. In the case of “The African Trader,” it’s producer Paul Landers (George Dzundza) and unit manager Ralph Lockhart (Alun Armstrong). Wilson is abrasive toward the two, while shying away from serious discussion con cerning the movie. Yet his abilities are never questioned; he is a creative See WHITE on 10 Courtesy of Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood, as director John Wilson, prepares to shoot a bull elephant on an African safari in “White Hunter, Black Heart.” Thriller‘Misery’stays faithful to King’s work I By John Payne I Senior Reporter Most people acknowledge Stephen King as the master of modem horror. i Movie adaptations of his novels, I though, have had a disappointing track I record, lliat could be because a lot of 1 King’s works — like “Maximum B Qvcrdnve or “Pet Semetary” — re B ally weren’t strong enough to be made B into good movies.“Misery” is the lat Best King novel to be turned into a ■ screenplay, and the result, surpris B ingly, is one of the best psychological ■ thrillers to come along since “The ■ Shining.” What’s strange about its success as a film is that the book it is derived from would appear to be the most difficult to transfer to the screen. After all, much of “Misery,” the book, deals solely with what’s going inside the head of the main character, a fictitious romance novelist named Paul Sheldon. King spends entire chapters tagging along with Sheldon through his drug-induced delirium following a terrible car wreck that leaves him crippled. The story is clari fied very slowly, and readers are left to deduce a great deal on their own. The always reliable James Cann plays Sheldon, a writer who produces books of two kinds: “good ones and best sellers.” The best sellers have been a series of romance epics re volving around his most famous liter ary heroine, Misery Chastain. -- •• For years, Sheldon has traveled from his New York home to a tiny Colorado town to finish his novels. This year though, Sheldon has used the time to finish a “serious” novel about ghetto kids. His latest Misery novel, still in print, spelled an end to the title character. A bad business move to be sure, but Sheldon is intent on being taken seriously. _ With his finished manuscript in hand, Sheldon leaves his tavern feel ing like a writer for the first time since he started doing romance novels. His exuberance, though, is short-lived. A fast-approaching snowstorm and winding mountain roads force his car off a cliff. His legs shattered and near death, Sheldon is found and nursed back to health by a homely farm woman named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). Annie, we find out, is Paul’s “number one fan.” She knows every sentence to every one of his books by heart. She is a former nurse with an endless supply of pain killers. More importantly for Sheldon, she’s also dangerously psychotic, and she’s just picked up a copy of his new Misery novel. “Misery” makes a few necessary changes in the storyline. Sheldon’s addiction to the fictitious pain killer “novril” has been down-played con siderably, and a few extra characters have been added. For the most part, though, it remains faithful to the book, and as was the case with “The Shin ing,” this was a movie worth making. “Misery” is play ing at the Plaza 4 Theaters, 201 N 12th St. | Mi j ‘Grave’ unearths writing insights !By Bryan Peterson Staff Reporter “Grumbles From the Grave” Robert A. Heinlein Del Rey Books “The two major things which 1 am attacking are the two biggest, fattest I sacred cows of all, the two that every writer is supposed to give at least lip service to: the implicit assumptions \ of our Western culture concerning religion and sex. ” -Robert A. Heinlein, in a letter to || his agent Robert A. Heinlein, the dean of American science fiction, died in 1988 at the age of 81. His wife Virginia has edited his letters and released them as a posthumous book, something in which Heinlein expressed interest years prior to his death. The bulk of “Grumbles From the J Grave” comes from selected corre spondence between Heinlein and his ^ agent, Lurton Blassingame. Other letters are included, as are editorial comments by Virginia and portions that were cut from two of I Heinlein’s early books. The book traces the writing career of Heinlein as he began in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, 2 moved into the “slick” magazine -g market in the 1950s and began a string >> of juvenile books before writing some | of the best-known adult science fic 2 tion novels. '3 Hemlcin’s career gathered four Hugo awards for science fiction, all awarded for later works. More than anything, orumbles reveals the process, joys and turmoils of writing sci-fi. It will be of great interest to cur rent Heinlein fans, but may be tedious for those unfamiliar with his work. Extensive reference is made to all his works, making this a poor choice for an introduction to Heinlein’s work. Even Heinlein fans may be pressed to wade through sections describing the Heinlcins’ extensive travels and the building of two of their houses. The book’s other sections are much more interesting and give much in sight into Heinlein while tracing the development of his books. “Stranger in a Strange Land” justi fiably receives more attention than any of Heinlein’s books. The idea of an orphaned “Man From Mars” origi nated with work on a 1949 short story. Not until 1961 was the novel completed and finished, a task that brought Heinlein legions of new fans from within and without the sci-fi field, as well as one of his Hugo awards. The struggles over the book’s ideas and characters are chronicled in detail in “Grumbles.” Heinlein comes across as a staunchly conservative or libertarian character with more than a few sur prises. At one point, he wrote about “this pacifisl-inlcmationalisi-cum-clandcs tine-Communistdrivc to have us treat atomics and disarmament in exactly the fashion the Kremlin has tried to get us to ao. The same Heinlein, in referring to “Stranger,” wrote that he had “under taken to criticize and examine disre spectfully the two untouchables: monotheism and monogamy.” For someone who organized fund raisers for Barry Goldwater, Heinlein did some surprising tangling with die morals of the day. The included tales of Heinlein’s wrangling with editors and publish ers in his early years (including one “amateur Freudian” who sought phal lic symbols in his juvenile books) reveal him to be a writer determined to present his ideas in his own way. Heinlein was no struggling artist; he wrote sci-fi to make money (quite successfully) and says as much in “Grumbles.” He made frequent mi nor changes in his drafts to satisfy editors but would not budge on the basic substance of his books. “Grumbles” should be read as a blend of posthumous autobiography or a writer’s tracing of the develop ment of his own work through hun dreds of letters. Heinlein, who battled sickness for decades after contracting tuberculo sis in the Navy, emerges as one of science fiction’s strongest and most challenging writers. "/ was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers.” -Heinlein, referring to "Stranger in a Strange Land”