horrible
I thought this was a horrible adaptation.
sharewhy was it horrible?
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MovieChat Forums > Harrison Bergeron (1995) Discussion > horrible
You want to, I don't know... explain your comment?
She was the type of girl who knew how to wave at you from third base.
I think this is a wonderful movie. The original short story is too short to explore much of the content in the movie. Kurt Vonegut wrote the screenplay (or at least helped write it) so it is true to his ideas and desires. I think the short story is horrible in comparison to the movie.
shareDid he? According to this page he is only credited for the "story".
shareThe short story was much better. I wish the movie had stayed more true to the text, it was completely different except for the two lines said by the parents at the end.
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, thousands of thousands!"
"They call them 'millions'."
I don't think you can compare the film and the story. The story for a start had a completely hopeless ending - not as in pathetic - but just disheartening.The film was upsetting but the final scene was a little more optimistic, with a little more closure to it. I think the irony is that normally a film leaves you wondering more than a book does, but in this case the short story was far less detailed than the film. The film answered the 'why' and 'what if' quetions somebody would have had about the book, and really humanised the issues rather than making them seem statistical (which to be fair, I believe was probably the intention of the writer, to adopt a non emotive narrative but rather present upsetting facts than cloudy sentiment). As usual though, the film thought for everyone, and the book made you decide for yourself.
sharemy goal as a filmamker is to do the short story as a film. word for word, true to text. show vonnegut for vonnegut. harrison was 7 feet tall. sean astin played a hobbit. i need a tall actor who can leap high into the air and stay there. this film wasn't that good. too long for harrison bergeron.
any seven feet tall 14 year olds.
I don't know, let's ask him. Oh, wait... he's dead.
Shinypate the lesser
He was not involved with this production in any way.
It's funny, as I watched it, the dialogue felt stilted and hokey, but I went and re-read the story afterwards, and it fits Vonnegut's style to a T. Only he uses is as a kind of ironic interjection into the written word ("This is a story being told you") versus the movie, which doesn't really attempt that sort of metaphysics. So that makes it seem .. just plain stilted and hokey.
All in all, the adaptation itself wasn't horrible, but god, soft jazz as the thing we're missing in the new Equal America? I'd put my band back on, too.
Vonnegut did not write the screenplay, Jon Glascoe did. Jon was credited as "Arthur Crimm" for reasons that I can't go into here. But, Vonnegut also attended the premiere screening of the film in NYC and wrote the following letter to Jon: "Dear John -- I was terrifically impressed last Thursday by what you did with the premise of my short story "Harrison Bergeron." You have made a satirical film as important as the best work of the sorely missed Paddy Chayevsky. I wish to goodness you could get into theaters with it. It looks so majestic on the great big screen. It looks so expensive! I hope you will find more of my work inspiring. I know I can trust you to be simultaneously intelligent and exciting. I can't think of anyone else I could say that to. Cheers, Kurt Vonnegut."
i didn't know there was a movie...
shareThe movie did not answer the why, all the explinations provided made no sense whatsoever. There were many many impossibilities in the plot. To simply dislike the movie for this would be asanine, but you cannot say that that makes an improvement.
The depressing ending in the book is essential. It makes you realize that perhaps we are in that world, and we have seen the person trying to free us, but are simply too stupid to notice that.
So yeah, it was a bad adaptation.
On a sidenote anyone else dissapointed by the lack of a "Handicapper General"?
"No man is just a number"
Re. some of the comments above: for Vonnegut's view of the film version, and his (lack of) contribution, see
http://www.cypressfilms.com/filmography.html#6
where you can access a letter he wrote to the writer in very positive terms.
Personally I much prefer the film version - as Harrison's personality is so arrogant in the short story, not to mention the greater breadth and depth of the film: a more mature take on Vonnegut's original inspiration.
Certainly the end of the film does not have the slightly simplistic depressing end of the story. Here, while the majority of people may are conforming to the dumbing down stated by the state, there is nevertheless an underground of resistance to this tendency.
As Master_X_3_1_1 says:"It makes you realize that perhaps we are in that world"; though I don't agree with his conclusion that the film is a bad adaptation. I see Jon Glascoe's adaptation as achieving more than Vonnegut looked for in his original story: from Vonnegut's letter, it looks as if he sees it that way too.
If you really wanna see a horrible adaptation of a book, watch 1984 (1984).
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