MovieChat Forums > Ask the Dust (2006) Discussion > Hayek's Name (GREAT BIG SPOILER)

Hayek's Name (GREAT BIG SPOILER)

posted 18 years ago by ecarle
18 replies | jump to latest

Hey, stay away and don't read below if you haven't seen this film and don't want to know the end:

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It's set in 30's Los Angeles like Towne's "Chinatown," but I didn't think it was as complex or surprising a story as that classic by a long shot.

And as the movie went on, I found something rather funny:

About half way through, Selma starts coughing...a lot. Uh oh, I thought. The topic of TB had been raised earlier in the film.

Awhile later, she's coughing again...blood, into her white hankie.

Uh oh, I thought: this is starting to look like Nicole Kidman in "Moulin Rouge." Coughing blood into a white hankie, without telling her beau? (and while looking absolutely GORGEOUS even if dying?)

Awhile later -- in a rather brilliant bit -- Selma and Colin make love naked (as everyone evidently wants to see)...and Selma starts coughing some more, but, a real trooper, keeps keeping Colin happy.

Selma's heading for the Big Adios, of course, and it was only then that I realized:

Her name!

"Camilla."

Rather like "Camille." If you know the plot of "Camille," well...talk about your "homage."

[–] mechanicalanimal 18 years ago

SALMA, not Selma pls

[–] ecarle 18 years ago

Whoooops! I must have been thinking of Selma Diamond. Sorry.

[–] et-tu-brute 18 years ago

I thought of La Dame aux Camelias by Alexander Dumas when I saw the white flower in her hair midway through the trailer, and my suspicions were confirmed when he yelled her name (Camilla). It's a nice modern version of a great love story from the past. I hope they do a good job with it

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Lady_Targaryen 18 years ago

It also remembered me Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge.
I wrote this in my review about this movie, by the way!

[–] lancers356 18 years ago

god, how can you review anything with writing like that and without doing any research at all?

[–] gregory_arkadin-1 18 years ago

If you read the book, Ask the Dust, then you would know this was not a reference by Towne to any other film, but actually part of the book. Camilla is the name of the character in the novel, and she does get a form of sickness, not necessarily TB, due to her use of marijuana. Therefore, your hyperactive film buff paranoia homage detector was wrong.

[–] lancers356 18 years ago

"If you read the book, Ask the Dust, then you would know this was not a reference by Towne to any other film, but actually part of the book. Camilla is the name of the character in the novel, and she does get a form of sickness, not necessarily TB, due to her use of marijuana. Therefore, your hyperactive film buff paranoia homage detector was wrong."

BURN!

[–] gregory_arkadin-1 18 years ago

Good one.

[–] klimanja 17 years ago

You obviously know nothing about drugs. Please explain to me what sickness she got from her use of marijuana.

[–] frankstallone1 9 years ago

Ask the author who wrote the book in 1939 what the sickness was. You do realize they had a lot less information, and a lot more paranoia about marijuana back then, right?
If not, I recommend Google.
From someone claiming another person doesn't know anything about drugs, maybe you should try learning something about history.

[–] archie-goodwin 18 years ago

That spoiler was neither great nor big.

[–] thatsnumberwang 18 years ago

To the original poster I had the same EXACT train of thought. She's named Camilla and dies of TB...BRILLIANT! According to IMDB there are 16 movies either entitled Camille or some variant of la Dame aux camélias....was this story really worth telling again for the umpteenth time?

I read part of the book a year or two ago, but did not finish it...to be honest I got only maybe 50-75 pages into it. I liked it and intended to finish, but had to return it to the library...and just never got around to it. I refuse to believe the book that took ahold of Bukowski all that long ago in an LA area library was actually just a Camille retread!

Ergo, we go from Chinatown to phoning it in?

saucybetty.blogspot.com

[–] vandino1 18 years ago

Robert Towne admits in the DVD commentary that the third act of his film departs a great deal from the novel. He felt that the sado-masochistic relationship between Bandini and Camilla that continues to the end of the novel would be tiresome to moviegoers, so he softened it up. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to recognize how laughably conventional his third act is. But the novel, as I recall, ends with Camilla taking off in a car and leaving Bandini to wonder what happened to her. He walks down the road searching for her and finds a spot where it's possible that a car ran off a cliff and he assumes the worst. He throws the manuscript he was writing over the cliff and walks back to town broken-hearted. I may be off on some of this, but I know (and Towne admits) that none of that is featured in the film (although we do see Ferrell toss the manuscript on the burial site). Lastly, Fante's Bandini character is VERY hard to take in the novels. He is full of himself, spineless at times, bigoted, snotty and altogether unlikeable. Aside from the naturalism of Fante's writing, I'm sure a harsh jerk of a character like Bandini had a great appeal to Charles Bukowski. As for filmgoers, Towne HAD to also soften Bandini up. A direct transcription of that character to film would have been intolerable.

[–] lampworkingartist 18 years ago

I just finished the book (again for the third time I think, last time was over 10 years ago; it's a quick read), and at the end, she ends up going back to Sammy's place, he kicks her out, and when Bandini asks Sammy which way she went, he points to "over the ridge." Bandini walks out about a quarter of a mile, and contemplates that "the sandy earth revealed no footstep, no sign that it had ever been trod." He keeps going on about 2 miles and then remembered that there were "no roads, no towns, no human life between here and the other side of the desert, nothing but wasteland for almost a hundred miles." He walked back in the dawn, "sadly in the dawn," and then come the last 3 paragraphs of the book.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie.

[–] nopushingme 18 years ago

I first read this book about five years ago. Since then I have read many of John Fante's other writings. He is still today one of my favorite authors. You are very entitled to your opinion to John Fante and the character's that he wrote about. However, if a director has to soften a book to make a movie, maybe he should have left it alone. I feel that it takes a lot of integrity to respect the writings of an author instead of rearranging the ending to the story to sell a movie. If the book was written well enough to inspire a movie, then it was written well enough to be left alone. By changing the end of this story, these filmakers ruined the whole chemistry between the characters.

[–] xredgarnetx 18 years ago

For those in the know, and who would like a little chuckle, I will remind you that the Arturo character was named Armando in Dumas' CAMILLE. Once I realized I was watching a rehash of LA TRAVIATA and LA BOHEME, mixed with a little DAY OF THE LOCUST, the movie lost its charm and I had to force myself to watch the second half. Too bad. The TB thing was a bad joke.

[–] gregory_arkadin-1 18 years ago

Very well put.