My Movie Business: A Memoir: Amazon.de: John Irving: Englische Bücher

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John Irving's novels pose tantalizing challenges to filmmakers: at his best, Irving has proven both popular and ambitious, crafting rich, picaresque fiction that juggles Big Themes and antic comedy, braiding his central narratives with intriguing subplots and discursive back stories driven by vivid characters. Irving's accessibility teases the would-be director or producer with the prospect of commercial acceptance even as the scope and intricacy of his work raises crucial risks for the scriptwriter. With two early novels that made it to the screen, The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, Irving's box office impact thus far evenly translates to hit and miss.

This slender memoir offers a perceptive, if hardly objective, critique of the inherent differences between novels and screenplays, with the writer sharing his own experiences creating both. Irving focuses principally on his crusade to bring The Cider House Rules to the screen, tracing its gestation through four successive directors; with Irving himself attached as scriptwriter, we see the novelist struggling to reconcile the demands of concision against his paternal instincts toward the original book. Written before the final cut of The Cider House Rules, My Movie Business often verges on self-justification. Irving's respect for the movie's ultimate caretaker, Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom, is evident, as is his hopeful enthusiasm for the project's casting (which includes Michael Caine, Tobey McGuire, Jane Alexander, and Charlize Theron). Yet Irving can't repress the wariness prompted by his earlier disappointments with both this and other novels.

Ultimately, such candor doesn't diminish the account's value as a post mortem of the creative process behind serious filmmaking, nor does it overpower the reliable grace of Irving's prose. Fans will also find My Movie Business revealing in its exploration of the inspiration behind The Cider House Rules and its eloquent stance against the antiabortion movement--Irving's own grandfather, a leading doctor, administrator, and Harvard professor of obstetrics and gynecology. But moviegoers, as well as those who haven't read Irving's original novel, should be forewarned that this memoir does reveal key plot elements of both. --Sam Sutherland -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Booklist

The particular business at hand is the new movie based on Irving's novel The Cider House Rules, for which the novelist wrote the screenplay, composing the first version 13 years ago. Two producers and four directors were involved in getting it filmed, and when the film editing was done, it was some 50 scenes shorter than when shooting commenced. Irving begins his account of that long process much earlier, with his interest in medicine, physicians, and the issue at the center of the novel and the film, abortion. His grandfather was an innovative obstetrician who, Irving believes, saw enough of the consequences of untimely pregnancies to be sympathetic to the sober proabortion argument that informs the drama of The Cider House Rules. That drama is the story of how, in Depression-era Maine, an institutionalized orphan, personally trained by the orphanage's doctor-director to perform abortions as well as licit obstetrics, rebels against the procedure and leaves the place but, forced to perform an abortion in a crisis, understands his mentor's position and returns to replace him at the orphanage. Irving also recalls his involvement with attempts to film four of his other novels, but he homes in on the Cider House experience. His is very much a writer's perspective; he speaks of character, dramatic development, casting, and acting to the virtual exclusion of the details of visualization, sound production, and montage that are additional paramount concerns for a film director. Cineasts as well as Irving's fans ought to find this book enthralling whether they see the movie or not; those who see and like the movie shouldn't miss reading it. Ray Olson -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Only for the insiders. 25. Mai 2000

Von Adriana Villanueva

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

John Irving might be one of America's favorite writers thanks to books as "A Prayer for Owen Meany", "The world acording to Garp" and "The Cider house rules" but he is not Stephen King whose work is easily identified by almost all modern mortals; so when John Irving writes a memoir about his relationship with the movie bussines, the story of the book is only interesting to those who know Irving's work by heart. The first chapters are a kind of apology to why he choosed the pro-choice theme as the center of his novel The Cider House Rules. He evokes his paternal grandfather who was an obstetrician and a big influence in his pro-choice attitude and those first chapters could be easily read by anyone, but when he beggins to recall his different relationships with directors and movie people in the making into pictures of each of his books you have to be a real Irving expert to keep reading it, because he takes for granted that you know all his works and saw all the movies that were made based on them. I'm a big Irving fan so I had no problem reading it, but when my mother asked me if she would like it I didn't recomend it because she only has read "A widow for one year". The last part of the book, the filming of The Cider house is particullary interesting after almost 6 months since the movie was in the theaters, and won an Oscar for the screenplay of Irving, because he wrote that he will considered the movie a failure if in the poster didn't appear Dr. Larch but the two young lovers: the love story wasn't what this story was about. Well, this book isn't what John Irving is about.

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Painful and Embarassing Letdown 28. M�rz 2000

Von .

John Irving needs a reality check. The writing of this book is embarassing, arrogant, shallow and, worst of all, highly self-important. OK, so he's now making some big screenwriter bucks, unfortunately it has turned him into (or revealed him as) a highly unlikable person.

I can only imagine what a tiresome dinner guest he would be if he spewed this garbage in person. So sad given the talent he has shown in the past.

John, please get over yourself already. It really is embarassing for us to see you this way.

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Slim in content as well as size... 8. M�rz 2000

Von Ein Kunde

There are reasons I should have liked this book: 1) I'm a huge John Irving fan; 2) I'm in show business and have always enjoyed books that deconstruct the creative process; 3) I'm a writer, and am interested in how other writers write. That said, I was sorely disappointed in this insignificant volume. From beginning to end it reads like nothing more than Irving's rushed effort to fulfill an obligation to his publishers. The diatribes about abortion are jarring and the insights into Irving's process not all that insightful. Curiously, the final screenplay is quite marvelous, as a visit to the film will prove. Go see it, or read the original book, which is a gem.