Movies based on books can be very problematic.
This should not surprise anyone who’s ever been in the vicinity of the Heck Piazza Dodecaplex, its recently opened Keg Shack Rest-O-Dine, or its 1920’s Khmer Deco predecessor that was rehabbed into a prosperity gospel church during the second Bush Administration. For every good, relatively faithful adaptation of a popular novel like The Caine Mutiny or Cluny Brown, there are a dozen horrors like Run Silent, Run Deep, the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or Brian DePalma’s ridiculous take on The Bonfire of the Vanities.
I mean, seriously — in what universe is MelanieGriffith sexier than Uma Thurman? How could anyone think an aging Clark Cable would be allowed anywhere near a submarine, let alone captain one? Why was it necessary to add a subplot about Willie Wonka being the son of an abusive dentist? What were the directors and scriptwriters thinking?
The sad thing is that as awful and obvious as these creative misfires are, they were far from inevitable. Films and books aren’t the same thing, obviously, and it’s common for films adapted from books to do things like combine characters, eliminate subplots, streamline the timeframe, and so on. Those are to be expected, and sometimes the results are better than the original (did anyone really miss the house elves in the film of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?).
Ditto casting; Alan Rickman was twenty years too old to play Severus Snape, but he made the part his own in ways that JK Rowling’s own choice, Tim Roth, simply could not. Fans of the original property know this going in, and unless the creative choices are very bad indeed (Johnny Depp as Tonto? Taylor Kitsch as John Carter? The rumored attempt by Tom Cruise to play Tony Stark?) most accept the film as just another interpretation, watch it, and move on.
It’s also possible to take a beloved book, change most of it, and still make an entertaining film, as the surprisingly large list below makes clear:
- The Dick Van Dyke musical of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is about as much like Ian Fleming’s kiddie spy novel as a Roman candle is like a Saturn V, but that hasn’t prevented generations of children from laughing themselves sick over Baron Bombast and his wife trying to murder each other in ”You’re My Little Chu Chi Face” or hiding behind their parents as Robert Helpmann’s Child Catcher slinks about the village square.
- Adaptation basically deconstructs the entire concept of translating a book to film with wit and style, as anyone who’s read The Orchid Thief knew from the opening frames.
- Speaking of Ian Fleming, almost all of the James Bond films differ from the novels, sometimes pretty drastically (Moonraker, The Man with the Golden Gun), while The Living Daylights took a short story and expanded it into one of most of entertaining of the entire series.
- Peter Jackson’s version of The Lord of the Rings diverted quite a bit from JRR Tolkien’s masterpiece, but the film trilogy is never less than entertaining and sometimes verges on brilliance.
- Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V incorporates a couple of scenes from Henry IV, Parts I & II and makes numerous cuts to the original play, but it’s one of the finest Shakespeare adaptations of our time. Ditto his Much Ado About Nothing, even if Keanu Reeves looks about as much as Denzel Washington as he does like Uma Thurman.
Alas for literature (and film), these Reworkings So Extensive They’re Good are very much the exception. For every Adaptation that makes changes but avoids ruining the essence of the source material, there are a dozen films like The Book Thief or Never Let Me Go or The Bonfire of the Vanities that missed the mark in ways that range from “respectable but dull” to “annoying but endurable” to “it’s a miracle anyone involved ever worked again.”
And then there’s Myra Breckinridge.
Myra Breckinridge (1970, directed by Michael Sarne, starring Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, a very young Farrah Fawcett, a very old Mae West, John Huston, and a very embarrassed Tom Selleck) — On paper, Myra Breckinridge should have been a smash hit instead of simply smashed flat by reviewers, the public, and almost everyone involved. Based on a controversial best selling novel by an experienced scriptwriter, its blend of sex, satire, and juicy Hollywood secrets promised to be exactly what America wanted and needed in the late 1960’s.
And despite the original book deftly skewering the movie industry, no one was particularly surprised when a major studio decided that hey, it was the 60’s, man! sex satires were In, man, in! and lavished money on the production itself. A glittering cast, an Oscar-nominated costumer designing the clothes, a Top 40 songwriter composing the music, and a hot young actor/director...oh, Myra Breckinridge should have been one for the ages.
Which, as it turns out, it was, only not in a good way.
That bringing Myra Breckinridge to the silver screen might be somewhat problematic should have been apparent from the start. Gore Vidal’s 1968 novel about a transwoman who goes to Hollywood, pretends to be the widow of her former self to swindle money from a relative, and goes to orgies, teaches “female dominance” at an acting school, rapes a naive young acting student with a strap-on and seduces his girlfriend, and ends up a male(ish) eunuch when she runs out of hormones, would seem an unlikely candidate for an HBO series today, let alone a big budget film fifty years ago. And though the book sold well (and is still in print), it came along at the tail end of the fashion for big, bold, sexy bestsellers that had marked the decade. By the time the film was released two years later, tastes had changed, and the once-trendy plot seemed dated and dull.
Worse, those two years had been some of the most agonizing in American history. Assassinations, race riots, anti-war demonstrations, the 1968 election riots in Chicago and the election of Richard Nixon, the beginnings of the war on drugs, the Manson killings in 1969 and the copycat MacDonald murders less than a year later...what Harlan Ellison called “the days of blood and sorrow” had irreparably changed popular culture. Even if sex satires had still been fashionable in 1970, America was a grimmer, darker place than it had been barely two years earlier.
Not that 20th Century Fox had had any way of knowing that when it shelled out $750,000 for the film rights to Myra Breckinridge in the spring of 1968, of course. One would think that the studio might have taken a hint from the less than wonderful reception accorded Candy, the adaptation of Terry Southern’s sexy update of Voltaire’s Candide (a “relentless, crawling, bloody lack of talent" according to critic Renata Adler), but hindsight is golden, as they say.
One might also think that the studio brass might have been unnerved by what seeme to be an unending series of production delays. Gore Vidal’s original script was tossed, and even though Vidal reportedly liked David Giler’s rewrite quite a bit, studio head Richard Zanuck didn’t. Neither did producer Jim Cresson, who was nervous that director Bud Yorkin would “play it too safe” with the controversial subject mater. And then there was the problem of casting someone who would be credible both as Myra and Myron, which dragged on for over a year while the script was revised, and revised, and revised….
At least part of the problem was solved when Raquel Welch, the smoldering sex bomb who’d starred in hits like Fantastic Voyage, Bandolero!, One Million Years B.C., Fathom, Lady in Cement, and Bedazzled, was case as Myra. She’d beaten out a bevy of actresses and at least one trans actor for the role, and her star quality and good looks seemed perfect for the adventurous and unquenchable Myra.
Even better was the supporting cast. Oscar winning director and actor John Huston agreed to play Buck Loner, owner of the scam acting school where Myra ends teaching more more than acting. Promising newcomer Farah Fawcett would be Mary Anne, the women Myra seduces who eventually ends up with Myron, and among the hot, built young studs who swan about the production was the handsome, hunky Tom Selleck.
And then there was the real coup: Mae West, only 77 years young and still wowing them with her nightclub act, would play salacious casting agent Leticia Van Allen. Not only that, West, who’d just recorded a rock album, would write her own dialogue and sing a couple of musical numbers. Who could ask for more?
Zanuck even found a director he liked: Michael Sarne.
Sarne, a sometime recording artist and television actor/presenter in his native Britain, was best known (if at all) for directing the 1968 Georgy Girl knockoff Joanna. This film, which concerned a bed hopping Carnaby Street girl who ends up pregnant and alone after her black boyfriend is convicted of murder, was a modest hit, and Sarne himself was so energetic and so full of what sounded like good ideas that Zanuck not only hired him to write yet another script (the tenth), but eventually was given the director’s job after Bud Yorkin was unceremoniously dumped.
Zanuck also gave Sarne all but complete creative control, even though he had just turned 29 and had directed only one feature film. And though Joanna was a decent first effort, it was still merely a first effort. Giving someone only a couple of years removed from hosting a kiddie game show and guest roles on Man in a Suitcase and The Avengers in charge of a generous budget and a cast of temperamental stars (one of whom had directed classics like The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, another of whom had upstaged W.C. Fields and Cary Grant) was the dictionary definition of “big risk, big reward,” and given the youth movement surging through Hollywood, Zanuck thought it was worth a shot.
Just when he reconsidered this decision is not clear. It might have been when Sarne began spending six or seven hours at a time locked in his trailer allegedly thinking/meditating/whatever while the highly paid cast and crew rattled around the set. It might have the second (or third) time producer Robert Fryer quit in disgust. Possibly Sarne’s utter inability to prevent Welch and West from getting into frequent arguments on set gave Zanuck pause, especially after West stole one of Welch’s dresses and the two women all but stopped speaking to each other. There’s no way to tell at this point.
But surely some of Sarne’s decisions made Zanuck regret his life choices:
Worst of all was the inexplicable choice to cast not an actual transwoman as Myra/Myron (dicey in 1969), nor even an experienced cisgender actor who might have welcomed the chance to pull a Dustin Hoffman thirteen years before Tootsie (Oscar bait!). No, Michael Sarne, boy genius, found his Myron not in a casting call, nor in an Off-Broadway play, nor even on British television. He found him in the review column of a great metropolitan newspaper, where his acid-tinged columns about current films allegedly made him the perfect choice to play a pre-op version of Raquel Welch.
I refer, of course, to this fine gentlemen, Mr. Rex Taylor Reed:
That’s right. In Michael Sarne’s little corner of the multiverse, Rex Reed, doughy Anglo boy from Texas, was the perfect match for gorgeous Bolivian-American sex symbol Raquel Welch. That Reed had zero acting experience and danced like a sulky little boy forced to learn the foxtrot by his doting mother was not important. He was Myron, at least in Michael Sarne’s eyes, and since it was Michael Sarne’s film, that settled that.
Now. It is perfectly possible for a non-actor to deliver a good performance; Babe Ruth appeared as himself in Pride of the Yankees and all but stole several scenes from Gary Cooper, and he’s far from alone. Haing S. Ngor, Harold Russell, Dolly Parton, even Sean Combs...none of the above had any theatrical training when they made their film debuts, all turned in excellent work, and two actually won Oscars. So maybe, just maybe, Michael Sarne had a point…
Except that Rex Reed not only has all the acting talent as a flower pot, he’s saddled Michael Sarne’s appalling script, Michael Sarne’s cutesy-poo misuse of classic film, and Michael Sarne’s decision to have the makeup artist smear what appears to be ultra-glossy lip balm on his mouth in several scenes.
And then there’s the ending of the film, which calls for Myron to wake up in the hospital after a car accident and learn that not only is the entire preceding film was a fever dream, he never actually underwent gender reassignment surgery in the first place. It’s hard to imagine that any actor could have done much with Myron’s reaction — gingerly lifting the blankets, staring down at himself, and crying “Where are my tits?” — but Reed’s line delivery is far more appropriate to a diner politely asking for an extra napkin than an accident victim coming to and finding that his dearest wish was a fantasy.
Needless to say, this is not the stuff of which movie magic is made.
Eventually even Richard Zanuck gave up on his new boy wonder. 20th Century Fox was hemorrhaging money, Mae West and Raquel Welch hated each other so much they refused to be on set at the same time, and it was becoming increasingly clear that whatever else Myra Breckinridge was, “good” it was not. Zanuck shut down the production and ordered Sarne to deliver a final cut based on whatever he’d shot.
Whether this is why the resulting ninety-four minutes of film turned out the way it is not clear — the script, performances, and desecration of some of Hollywood’s best films did a fine job of that on their own — but it certainly did not help. The movie only grossed $3 million against a final budget of $5 million, thanks at least in part to reviews that called it “as funny as a child molester” (Time), claimed it “plunges straight downhill under the weight of artless direction" (Variety), or said “nothing can touch it for tastelessness and boredom” (Miami News). Worse, despite efforts by a handful of later critics to rehabilitate the film as a lost camp classic, Myra Breckinridge is firmly ensconced on virtually every list of “worst films of all time,” right down there with the 1970’s King Kong and Exorcist II: The Heretic.
Oddly enough, of all the people involved in the debacle that was Myra Breckinridge, only Michael Sarne seemed to have suffered any permanent damage to his career, and that only as a director. He’s worked steadily as an actor in both feature films and television, most notably as the voice of John Le Carre’s villainous “Karla” in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The rest of the cast continued to work without missing a beat, with John Huston going on to yet more critical acclaim, Raquel Welch to yet more hits, Farah Fawcett and Tom Selleck to television stardom, and Rex Reed to several decades of film reviews.
Then there was Mae West, who basically shrugged off the failure of Myra Breckinridge and went straight back to packing ‘em in every night with her nightclub act. She even made a final film, 1978’s Sextette, which paired West with romantic partners such as Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, and Timothy Dalton, and never mind that she was old enough to be their grandmother, or that she was so deaf she had to wear an earpiece to hear any of the dialogue. She was much loved as a last symbol of Old Hollywood, and her death in 1980 after a fall was mourned worldwide.
As for Gore Vidal, he merely shrugged, continued to write, and cranked out masterpieces like Burr, Lincoln, and 1876. He even wrote a sequel to Myra Breckinridge, 1973’s Myron, which not only tells the story of how Myron time-travels to the 1940’s and ends up sharing a body with B-movie actress Maria Montez, but satirizes Supreme Court rulings on pornography by substituting the names of several justices for what Monty Python called “naughty bits.”
The result is one of the most astonishing sentences in America letters, and in all seriousness, I can’t imagine anyone other than Gore Vidal coming up with this:
"He thrust his enormous Rehnquist deep within her Whizzer White”
at least not in the 1970’s.
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Did you ever manage to sit through Myra Breckinridge? Did you read Myron? Any of Gore Vidal’s other books? Any films by Raquel Welch? Is a copy of Joanna shoved into the fiberglass insulation in your knotty pine rumpus room? Stopping thinking about Whizzer White’s enormous Rehnquist and share….
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