The Casting


This qustion is for fans of the book mostly. Or at least those who have both read the book and seen the film.

In terms of casting, which characters in the film did you think captured the essence of Heller's writing? Which did you think were woefully miscast?

Personally, I though Anthony Perkins was absolutely perfect as Chaplain Tappman. Martin Balsam and Buck Henry were excellent as Col. Cathcart and Lt Col Korn...although I pictured their looks as reversed. Also, Alan Arkin as Yossarian, Jon Voight as Milo Minderbinder, Charles Grodin as Aarfy, Richard Benjamin as Maj Danby and Jack Gilford as Doc Daneeka all did decent jobs and were mostly as I pictured them in the novel, both in terms of looks and personality.

However....

I thought Bob Newhart was painfully miscast as Major Major. Terrible. almost ruined the movie for me even though I like Newhart.

Also, Art Garfunkle as Nately and Peter Bonerz as McWatt were way off from how I pictured them. Same goes for Bob Balaban as Orr and Martin Sheen as Dobbs....although that is mostly not Sheen's fault since his character was a composite of Dobbs, Clevinger and Dunbar so really couldn't have been done right.

Anyone else have an opinion on the casting work?

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i thought alan arkin and art garfunkel were the closest to what i pictured in the book. aarfy (charles grodin) wasn't what i had pictured at all, but he did a good job. bob newhart just butchered major major. but that could be the directing also. i felt he was too jumpy. i always pictured him as sort of reserved and resigned to his fate. dunno, maybe it's just me.

bob balaban was good as orr, just not what i pictured physically. i thought of him as a little plumper, i guess. but as a character, he was good. also doc daneeka was way, way off. i had him pegged as a little younger. doesn't it say in the book how his practice was just getting good when he was drafted? i had him for about late thirties, early fourties, but this guy was old.


He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!

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Catch-22 is my favorite book of all time, and when I saw the movie I was pretty disappointed. Not a bad movie by any means, but I think it'd be impossible to turn the novel into a film that seems complete without it being 8 hours long. It did the best it could.

Anyway, I thought the best thing about the film was the casting. I agree with just about everything Beatnick said, actually! Major Major's character was butchered more by the script than anything else, but Bob Newhart I felt was really NOT a good choice at all. Didn't particularly like Gilford as Doc Daneeka either. I love Martin Sheen and I thought he did as good a job as he could with Dobbs, even though, like you said, it was more the script's version of the character that was flawed than Sheen himself.

Onto the strengths. I agree completely that Perkins was perfect as the Chaplain. Both he and Jon Voight were - without me realizing it at the time - EXACTLY who I pictured while reading the book! It was strange to see my vision of them right there on screen. Charles Grodin was just fine as Aarfy, Orson Welles as Dreedle and Balsam as Colonel Cathcart and, much to my surprise, Art Garfunkel I thought was quite good as Nately. Just as fresh-faced and naive as I imagined, expecially in the scene with the old Italian man.

When I started reading the book, I knew there was a film version but waited until I finished to watch it, and the whole time I was dying to know who played Yossarian. I just couldn't picture anyone. When I finally watched it and saw Alan Arkin, I thought he was absolutlely perfect. He did a wonderful job with those quiet moments (the Snowden scene, his delivery of when people ask him why he's not wearing clothes, etc.), and was superb when he was freaking out (Milo's bombing of their camp, when he begs the Chaplain to get him off any more missions).

The movie sure was flawed, but still pretty good, and I thought the casting was really well done. Just my opinion of course.

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First of all, I don’t know how anyone could be a fan of the movie without ever reading the book. I don’t even see how anyone can not read the book. I read it yearly. Anyway, I liked the movie, but not nearly as much as the book. I imagine it must be hard to follow the movie if you haven’t read the book.

I actually didn’t like the movie at first because I thought the main casting was off. But I warmed up to it after I decided that what these people look like wasn’t too important. It’s such a good story, you’d really have to screw it up big time for it not to be good.

My main problem was Alan Arkin as Yossarian. I like Alan Arkin, but Yossarian is supposed to be a big, somewhat swarthy man. But the movie was made in 1970, when it was in vogue to cast a leading man who was kind of mousy – thanks to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Incidentally, the book that that movie was based had a strapping blond lad as its main character. I believe Robert Redford was originally cast.

Although Alan Arkin’s physical presence wasn’t how I pictured Yossarian, everything else was done rather well. I also didn’t think Jon Voigt was a good fit for Milo. I pictured Milo to be less intimidating and unassuming – despite the fact that he ran the war. Someone like Bob Balaban, who played Orr, was more of what I had in mind for Milo. Someone unassuming, yet calculating and deadpan. Which, come to think of it, sounds like Orr as well.

It seems like we disagree on quite of few of these, which I find rather interesting. Because I actually thought Art Garfunkle as Nately was a good match. I pictured him to be a dainty, waspy, sensitive wuss. However, I think it was a colossally bad idea for the man to end his run with Paul Simon in order to chase his dreams of becoming a movie star. That has to be one of the worst career moves of the 20th century.

As for Major Major, I can’t even recall anything Bob Newhart did at all. Which can’t be good. Of course the obvious person to play that role was Henry Fonda. That would have been hilarious.

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I liked the people who played Aarfy and Caplain Tappman. They both looked like what I thought they would, and they both played their characters well. Aarfy had that perfect oafish "am I in the way?" feel to him, and the chaplain was very troubled and shy.

As for Arkin as Yossarian, That's a pretty odd situation. How do you try to cast one of the greatest characters in all of literature? I pictured Yossarian completly different from how he was portrayed in the movie. Arkin doesn't really look like what I pictured, but he wasn't bad. My main problem was with how certain scenes and jokes were delivered. The scene where Yossarian is first asking Doc Daneeka to be grounded, Arkin treated it like it was a Laurel and Hardy skit, talking quickly, and getting comically frustrated. I know that He should be frustrated, but What made these parts in the book so funny, was that the characters were completly serious, and accepted their situations as fact.

The other thing I didn't get was why they included the death of Kid Sampson. It's an important scene because it also has the death of McWatt and the "death" of Doc Daneeka, but they forgot to introduce Kid Sampson before it happened.

I didn't like the way Milo was depicted, but I dont feel like explaining why, so I'll just say that in the book, Milo had a moustache.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie.

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Peter Fonda would have been about the right age for Major Major.

"This is not the time or the place to perform some kind of half arse autopsy on a fish"

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Truly, Peter Fonda would have been great for this role. He was the right age, tall like Major Major, instead of stumpy like Newhart. I can also really picture him playing a very uninteresting person, struggling with an undeserved and unwanted position of authority. The largest problem with his character in the film is, of course, the lack of the author's description. That has always been the largest problem with converting great literature into film, and will most likely remain so for a long, long time.
I would like to refute someone's assessment that no one could like this movie without having read the book, as I most certainly did. The movie, in fact, really made me want to read the book, just as the movie version of Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" made me want to read that book (now my favorite book).

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It says in the book that Major Major looks just like Henry Fonda.....hence the casting of Peter Fonda.

"This is not the time or the place to perform some kind of half arse autopsy on a fish"

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It's good that this thread was created because I've always marvelled at the casting. If there is one film where the casting is going to be compared with the book this is it. The casting was the most important aspect of this film and whoever was in overall charge of that must have thought long and deep. The result is close to perfection, most of the characters are strangely how I pictured them. This is impossible but it is almost as if the book was written with the actors in mind.


Put it on the tripod!

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I had a couple of reservations the first time I saw the movie. Yossarian is described in the book as being tall and muscular-- a sort of all-American fair-haired boy. Alan Arkin is most decidedly not that, but I still think he did a good job in the role, and the combination of frustration and dismay that he projected was just right. Bob Newhart was sort of problematic as Major Major simply because Major Major was described as looking exactly like Henry Fonda. However, once again, I think that Bob Newhart did a fine job of playing the character.

Anthony Perkins was absolutely perfect as Chaplain Tappman, as were Richard Benjamin as Major Danby, Norman Fell as Sgt. Towser and Charles Grodin as Aarfy. Jon Voight took a bit of getting used to as Milo, simply because he's a fairly imposing person, and Milo was described as relatively mousy with that sparse mustache. However, I think that Voight conveyed the wide-eyed naivete of Milo quite well, especially in the scene in the tree at the cemetary. Buck Henry was properly scheming and manipulative as Colonel Korn and Martin Balsam was properly blustery and ineffectual as Colonel Cathcart. As has been pointed out, Jack Gilford was probably a bit old for Doc Daneeka, but I thought he caught the weak, watery-eyed and fearful character of Doc perfectly. Bob Balaban as Orr didn't quite look like I had pictured him, but he talked and acted exactly right, even down to the monotone and the annoying giggle, and there was a nice elfin quality to him. Art Garfunkel also wasn't physically what I envisioned Nately as, but he caught the character very well, and the same could be said for Peter Bonerz as McWatt.

The true test of the casting, to me, is that ever since I first saw the movie, when I reread the book (as I do every couple of years or so), I mostly see the characters as they were cast in the movie. I visualize Anthony Perkins and Buck Henry and Martin Balsam and Norman Fell and they fit perfectly. Even with the characters that I don't visualize as they appear in the movie (Yossarian and Major Major primarily) I still hear, respectively, Alan Arkin's and Bob Newhart's voices coming out of them.

I can't think of any other book to movie translation that has actually added to my enjoyment of the book.



"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." --David Hume

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Best casting: Arkin, Balaban, Voight, Perkins, Prentiss, Benjamin, Garfunkle
Worst casting: Newhart

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I though they were all well-cast except for Bob Newhart as Major Major.

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perfectly cast - Arkin, Perkins, Balaban, Sheen, Gilford

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