The Catch-22 of Translating a Hit Novel to the Screen

At the end of the Sixties the book that everyone was reading was Joseph Heller’s darkly satiric World War II novel, Catch-22.  And the movie that everyone was watching was The Graduate, the outrageous romantic comedy directed by Mike Nichols. So there was little surprise, when word spread that Nichols would be directing a screen version of Catch-22, that audiences couldn’t wait to see the results.

 Nichols’ film, released in June 1970, unfortunately pleased almost no one. This despite the fact that it was a serious effort to translate a complex, almost hallucinatory, novel to the screen.  The Writers Guild of America did nominate Buck Henry’s script as the best screen drama adapted from another medium, but it didn’t win. That same year, M*A*S*H, a much more popular depiction of the truism that “war is hell,” took home a WGA Award for comic adaptation. Perhaps it was the success of M*A*S*H, featuring a lively rendering by Robert Altman of a behind-the-lines Korean War story, that undercut Catch-22’s box-office chances. Or  perhaps the brilliant, bitter Catch-22 just couldn’t work without Heller’s sparklingly ironic prose.

 Still, it was a worthy attempt. Nichols, who’d shown such visual flair in The Graduate, had fun depicting the almost operatic lift-off of WWII era bomber jets. Having used the songs of Simon and Garfunkel to great effect in The Graduate, he mostly avoided music in the far more serious Catch-22, but at one key point tried an outlandish reference to the opening strains of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” familiar to anyone who’d seen 2001: A Space Odyssey. (And, in that era, who hadn’t?)  

 The large cast is a remarkable gathering of Hollywood talents. Nichols was known for his casting savvy, and we can fully believe Martin Balsam as a gruffly maniacal Col. Cathcart, Richard Benjamin as a smarmy Major Danby, Anthony Perkins as a vulnerable Chaplain Tappman, Bob Newhart as an anxious Major Major, and Orson Welles as a bloated General Dreedle. The leading role, Yosarian, is that of a neurotic cipher, and Alan Arkin is particularly good at conveying his anxiety about war, the U.S. Army, and life in general.

 Given the worldwide success of The Graduate, it’s not surprising that Nichols again turned to several performers from that 1967 film. Elizabeth Wilson (Benjamin’s anxious mom in The Graduate) has a tiny but memorable role as the mother of a dying soldier. Norman Fell (the cranky landlord of Ben’s Berkeley rooming house) is seen here as a blunt sergeant. Buck Henry, who had brilliantly adapted Charles Webb’s The Graduate for the screen while also playing a skeptical desk clerk, again performs double duty, donning  a creepy little mustache to portray Balsam’s toadying sidekick, Colonel Korn.

 Nichols also cast Art Garfunkel, a novice actor and one-half of the musical duo whose songs dominate the score of The Graduate, as the naïve young Nately. (The following year “Arthur” Garfunkel was a central figure in Nichols’ corrosive Carnal Knowledge.) Charles Grodin, who to the end of his life insisted that he’d been cast by Nichols as Benjamin Braddock but had turned the role down, plays the oblivious bombardier on Yosarian’s plane. But what of the screen’s actual Benjamin Braddock? I’ve learned that Dustin Hoffman, whose Hollywood career burst into life with The Graduate, badly wanted to play the shifty Milo in Catch-22. Perhaps Nichols was truly offended that Hoffman took on, immediately following The Graduate, the scruffy role of Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. In any case Nichols gave the role of Milo not to Hoffman but to his Midnight Cowboy co-star, Jon Voigt.

 

 

Fake News: "To Die For"

 To Die For was released back in 1995, so why does it seem so up-to-the-minute? Partly this is due to the sad fact that it was consistently mentioned in obituaries for the late Buck Henry, who left us (alas!) on January 8 of this year, at the age of 89. Henry wrote the tart and brilliant screenplay, based on a novel by Joyce Maynard (who as a college co-ed had a secret sexual relationship with the fifty-three-year-old J.D. Salinger -- a spicy tidbit that has nothing to do with this story). Maynard's inspiration for her novel was an actual New Hampshire criminal case involving Pamela Smart, a cute young thing who seduced a naive high school kid, then persuaded him to murder her husband.

In the film, the role of the adorable but conniving Suzanne Stone is played by a bubbly and blonde Nicole Kidman, in what I consider one of her very best roles. What resonates with me in the current day and age is Suzanne's ambition. Although not especially talented, she will do whatever it takes (including murder) to succeed as a television personality. Her mantra, repeated several times in the film, makes it quite clear what she wants out of life: "You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person."

That's why, after nabbing a Girl Friday job at a tiny local cable-access station, Suzanne sets off on a campaign to turn herself into an on-camera personality.  Like some of today's TV superstars I could mention, she seems far less interested in delivering the news than in burnishing her own reputation as a sexy commentator on public affairs. Her obsessive quest for celebrity of course shakes up her marriage to an adoring local guy (Matt Dillon) who simply wants  a loving wife and a baby.

The cast is filled with effective supporting players, including Dan Hedaya as Suzanne's Italian father-in-law, Wayne Knight as her bemused boss, and Buck Henry himself (complete with dorky mustache and bowtie) as a prim high school teacher. Illeana Douglas has a vivid role as Dillon's cynical ice-skating sister, someone smart enough to mistrust Suzanne from the start. Among the trio of high school misfits Suzanne pulls into her lethal orbit are two future Oscar winners, Casey Affleck as the spaced-out Russell and Joaquin Phoenix as the love-besotted James. The third partner-in-crime, a self-loathing young girl played by Alison Folland, notes at the end of the film that -- thanks to her small part in the murder plot and the subsequent media attention surrounding it -- she herself has enjoyed some of the fame that Suzanne had promised would come from appearing on-screen in the living-rooms of a nation.  Such irony! Folland's Lydia fully intends to live out the fact that "if people are watching, it makes you a better person."

As we've all seen recently, there's no end to the good that  can come to you if you make a splash on television. It's not fake news to say that TV celebrity can lead to much bigger things in much wider circles of power. "On TV," as Suzanne has insisted, "is where we learn about who we really are." It's also where a nation discovers what kind of person tickles our collective fancy. In an election year, it's especially worth pondering what makes someone telegenic, and what gives him or her a public reputation to die for.

 

 

 

 

And Here’s to You, Buck Henry: Weird and Funny—with a Stroke

Buck as a hotel desk clerk in "The Graduate"

“Ben and Elaine are married still. . . . . Mrs. Robinson, her aging mother, lives with them. She’s had a stroke. And they’ve got a daughter in college—Julia Roberts, maybe. It’ll be dark and weird and funny—with a stroke.”  

This pitch for a sequel to The Graduate was the invention of the film’s screenwriter, Buck Henry. He had been invited to the set of Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire, The Player, which focuses on the increasingly fraught life of a studio development exec, played by Tim Robbins. Altman had told him to be creative. So as part of a bravura opening sequence, Henry pitched to Robbins’ character his idea for The Graduate, Part II, a follow-up to the hit 1967 comedy he’d written (and appeared in) back in 1967.His trademark deadpan delivery made the moment a delicious lampoon of Hollywood’s eternal search for the next big idea, even one that envisions the glamorous Mrs. Robinson as a stroke victim.

How sadly ironic that circa 2016, when I tried to contact Buck Henry for my Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How The Graduate Became the Touchstone of a Generation, I learned he was too ill to connect with me. The reason: he’d been severely weakened by a stroke. From what I was told, it was no laughing matter. This man of great verbal inventiveness, a two-time Oscar nominee and frequent guest-host on Saturday Night Live, was not up to being interviewed for a book on one of his most memorable film creations.

Happily for me, I got to meet Buck Henry, though it was six months after my book’s 2017 publication. Larry Mantle, the popular host of KPCC-FM’s AirTalk, had launched a film series highlighting movies set in Southern California. The series kicked off at a vintage DTLA movie palace with a screening of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. I’d like to think it was an on-air interview I did with Larry on KPCC that inspired him to choose The Graduate as his series follow-up. I was invited to be part of the post-screening panel, which also featured the film’s producer, Lawrence Turman, and film critic Peter Rainer. To my delight, Buck too agreed to appear. No question that the stroke had taken a toll: he showed up in a wheelchair, fussed over by attendants, and the seating was arranged on-stage so that he could favor the side of his body that still pretty much worked.

I was so awed and thrilled to meet Buck backstage that I didn’t get to ask many questions. He did affirm, though, that his birth name was Henry Zuckerman. “Buck,” he explained, was his birth nickname, borrowed from his grandfather. And he made clear that, despite the gag sequence in The Player, he had never actually considered doing a follow-up to the story of Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson. Like Larry Turman, he could not account for why there had been a stag event on the Graduate set that featured topless young ladies cozying up to the male cast and crew members. (I had brought along copies of archival photos proving this happened, but both Buck and Larry swore they didn’t remember a thing about this obviously lively event.)

One question I didn’t have the heart to ask Buck: why he held in his lap a whimsical teddy bear, upon which his withered arm rested. Stuffed animals and Buck Henry did not seem to go together. Still, when he took the stage, I was glad to see his wit was in no way impaired.

Rest in peace, Buck – you’ve earned it! 

Here’s a link to the broadcast that was aired after our live event, along with a picture of Buck in his wheelchair.

And here's that scene from The Player.