OT: The Graduate writer, Charles Webb, dies at 81.
The Graduate for me is linked with Psycho as the *other* 'small' film of the 1960s that was made with superlative craft and became a truly massive, culture-changing hit. The movie was based on a first novel by Charles Webb about whom I knew nothing until reading his NYTimes obit. today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/books/charles-webb-dead.html
Far. Out. Highlights:
Mr. Webb’s novel, written shortly after college and based largely on his relationship with his wife, Eve Rudd, was made into an era-defining film, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, that gave voice to a generation’s youthful rejection of materialism. Mr. Webb and his wife, both born into privilege, carried that rejection well beyond youth, choosing to live in poverty and giving away whatever money came their way, even as the movie’s acclaim continued to follow them.....
He gave away homes, paintings, his inheritance, even his royalties from “The Graduate,” which became a million-seller after the movie’s success, to the benefit of the Anti-Defamation League. He awarded his 10,000-pound payout from “Hope Springs” as a prize to a performance artist named Dan Shelton, who had mailed himself to the Tate Modern in a cardboard box.
At his second wedding to Ms. Rudd — they married in 1962, then divorced in 1981 to protest the institution of marriage, then remarried around 2001 for immigration purposes — he did not give his bride a ring, because he disapproved of jewelry. Ms. Dawnay, the only witness save two strangers pulled in off the street, recalled that the couple walked nine miles to the registry office for the ceremony, wearing the only clothes they owned....
Shedding their possessions became a full-time mission. They gave away a California bungalow, the first of three houses they would jettison, saying that owning things oppressed them.
Mr. Webb declined his inheritance from his father’s family but was unable to decline the money from his mother’s; so they gave that away, along with artwork by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg....
Eve... later adopted the single name Fred, in solidarity with a self-help group for men with low self-esteem. Despite her parents’ intervention the couple married [the first time], then later sold their wedding gifts back to the guests and donated the money to charity.
As the 1960s bloomed, the couple underwent gestalt therapy. Fred, a painter, hosted a one-woman show in the nude as a feminist statement. She shaved her head — in order, she said, to shed the oppressive demands of feminine adornment....
[Charles] once told The Boston Globe, “The public’s praise of creative people is a mask — a mask for jealousy or hatred.” By the couple’s various renunciations, he said, “We hope to make the point that the creative process is really a defense mechanism on the part of artists — that creativity is not a romantic notion.”