Dubious. Very, very dubious.
Noting that a new movie version of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men is preparing to launch, I feel compelled to warn everyone to please - please - read the book before you go watch the movie. It’s 650 pages long, and they’re the kind of 650 pages that you read in three days, turning them feverishly on buses, subways, in cars, while walking from place to place, over fast food lunches, and while smoking way too many cigarettes at three in the morning.
Then, after you read All the King’s Men, go find a good biography on Huey P. Long, the real-life Louisiana governor on which Warren’s book is based, and read that. It’s almost better than a novel. Long was the closest thing any of the 50 states ever had to a populist, totalitarian leader. One example: After he was elected to the US Senate, he still ran Louisiana through a puppet governor. If he hadn’t been assassinated, who knows where he might have ended up.
After doing both these things, you’ll probably harbor no desire to see this epic story chopped into a 2-hour film, especially one staring Shawn Penn sporting a shit-eating pencil mustache. Maybe he can play a corn-fed Louisiana good-ol-boy with a pug nose and a seer-sucker suit, but I wouldn’t put my money on it. As a parallel, try imagining Hugh Grant playing Indiana Jones.
Yeech.
If it were Johny Depp, I’d be curious to see how he was going to pull it off, but as it is, I think I’ll just save my $12 and buy another used copy of the book.
daniel silliman wrote:
You’re going to need to skip more than one movie if you’re buying that $89.00 biography.
Posted on 10-Sep-06 at 6:29 am | Permalink
pjk wrote:
haha, I know. that’s the one I read when I was in school because they had it in the library.
Posted on 10-Sep-06 at 6:49 am | Permalink
daniel silliman wrote:
I do have All the Kings Men on my list to reread this fall - this has nothing to do with the movie - and remembered that I read it the first time because you told me it was the best book you’d ever read. I was wondering if you’ve read it since then and how you’d read RPW now?
Posted on 10-Sep-06 at 5:26 pm | Permalink
daniel silliman wrote:
Sorry, how you’d rank him, not read him.
Posted on 10-Sep-06 at 5:27 pm | Permalink
pjk wrote:
interesting question. I’d have to read it again to answer you for sure (you know how things change). I definitely still think it’s a stunning book. some people write good books about family drama, some about political hijinks, some about sexual awakenings, some about noir-ish crime scenarios, some about the quirks and inconsistencies of southern culture. few people right a good book about all of those things at once.
Posted on 10-Sep-06 at 8:06 pm | Permalink
gauche wrote:
According to this, the movie isn’t half bad, and remains pretty faithful to the book.
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-king22sep221,0,450440.story?coll=cl-movies-top-right
Your review made me want to read the book, but I want to see the thing now, too.
Posted on 22-Sep-06 at 5:51 am | Permalink
Peter Krupa » Vindicated wrote:
[…] If I could see the movie was miscast without even watching it, one has to wonder what the director was thinking. […]
Posted on 22-Sep-06 at 7:03 am | Permalink