March 23, 2007

Revolutionary Road

They’ve cast Revolutionary Road, favorite novel, the reason I wanted to write, along with Richard Yates' Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Frank and April Wheeler. Neither really makes sense, but then maybe no one would. DiCaprio’s too boyish, Kate Winslet made two very horrible movies last year, The Holiday and Little Children, and she’s not blonde enough. I’d go with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, part of Maugham’s Painted Veil, which was all right. No, I wouldn’t. Impossible to cast. Also fairly unnecessary as a movie. So much is in the prose, not the plot—people building up hope and having that hope unfulfilled, basically the plot behind every Yates story. It’ll still be interesting though, especially considering they were in Titanic together, about people being trapped together. Spoiler: this time she dies.

Weird that this novel that I read privately like a Bible, in that old Vintage paperback, which probably wasn’t read by a lot of people, is now going to be read by a huge number of people. The movie will probably win Oscars, weirder still. 20 years after he died. Yates is poised to become the next Fitzgerald, which is exactly what he wanted.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Di Caprio is an unusual choice, I'd agree, but good for him for trying to
stretch and risk playing such an
unsympathetic character. I'd have
like Matt Damon as Frank, or better yet, Gig Young forty years ago.
Too bad Douglas Sirk dodn't direct.

michigan reader said...

Yates himself wanted Jack Lemmon and Blythe Danner for the Wheelers. Bio has a scene of him seeing Lemmon in a restaurant or on a bus? and cursing himself for not having a copy of the book to give him.

Henry Baum said...

In that case, maybe Edward Norton would make sense--he's closer to a neurotic character like Jack Lemmon played. I always pictured Frank Wheeler as more of a jock, an artist trapped in a frat boy's body.

Anonymous said...

Laura linney and Greg Kinnear would
make a great Frank and April. Any
word on secondary casting? Patricia
Clarkson would be great as Mrs. Givings amd John C. Reilly as John
Givings.

Anonymous said...

Kate's Little Children wasn't horrible. Oh My Goodness.

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