There will be strenuous disagreement

The following is a mostly unedited transcript of a discussion/debate/knock-down-drag-out set-to that I had today w/ my grad school pal Kay Kalinak, film scholar extraordinaire and author of the excellent (yes, I have read enough of it to say so--it has been my lunchtime reading for a couple of weeks, as well as my train reading on the recent M5) study of John Ford's use of music How the West Was Sung. Buy it!

KK: By the way, I read Denby's piece on the Coens. It made me begin to like No Country a bit more (although remember how Denby gushed over There Will Be Blood?).

CB: I loved TWBB! Man, did you like anything from the past year? I suppose Diving Bell was another Lifetime Channel tearjerker? [An allusion to Kay's earlier dismissal of Away from Her.] Hell, you probably didn't even like Daywatch. Persepolis, maybe? Michael Clayton? Elah? Anything?

K: I, too, loved Blood until I read the source novel on which it is "based," Oil by Upton Sinclair. I don't mind a "creative" adaptation--but in a case like this where the screenplay guts the entire novel's raison d'être--the novel is about the birth and development of the labor movement in the California oil industry--I feel a bit differently. The film refocuses on the second of two brothers--the preacher--who becomes Daniel's arch-enemy. In the novel, it is the OTHER brother, who goes to work for Daniel and is the union organizer, who is his nemesis. It is Daniel's son who is caught between the two--and his moral growth away from his father and towards Paul provides the ballast for the story. Oil is a biting critique of capitalism, a thinly disguised roman à clef about oil money in southern California. Why adapt the novel if you are going to ignore Sinclair's reason for writing it? It'll probably win best adapted screenplay since I'm willing to bet that almost no one in the Academy's voting block read the 500-page novel. Argh! /K PS: I Still LOVE Daniel Day Lewis, however, and there are some beautiful moments visually (not to mention some hommages to Ford). I guess you can't take that away from Anderson.

B: Kay, that is just so freakin' silly--do you dislike Life of Brian because it's untrue to its biblical source, or Adaptation, which leaves out most of "The Orchid Thief "? I've never read Oil, never heard anything to suggest that there's any reason to read Sinclair at all, but if I did, I'd read it as a book, not to compare it to something which--hey, news flash here--is an INDEPENDENT WORK OF ART IN A WHOLE 'NOTHER MEDIUM! If you want Sinclair's plot & themes unmediated, why, here's what you do: you do what you did: you read . . . the . . . novel! (This would be so much more fun shouted at the top of our lungs in room 241 [the office we and several other English grad students shared long ago enough that it was the first nonsmoking office in the English Dept. at the University of Illinois!], w/ Mo gasping to get a word in edgewise and Bob Halsband coming across the hall to quiet us. [Mo = Maureen {surname redacted, pending her permission to use it}; Halsband = the leading scholar of the writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, no shit!])

K: I used to think you had a social conscience. It's not the "free" use of the source material that bothers me ("I don't mind a creative adaptation" and I LOVED Adaptation, by the way)--it's WHAT source material got left in and WHAT got left out. And when it is the critique of capitalism and the defense of organized labor that get left out, I get suspicious. Why are Hollywood films so afraid of social critique? Why can't they use all their power and money and seductiveness to question instead of reinforce the status quo? Why choose a novel by a committed Socialist (did you know that Sinclair ran for Congress on the Socialist ticket?) and then eviscerate the Socialism? This film had a failure of nerve, in my opinion. Anderson was attracted to the material but wouldn't or couldn't follow through on, what I'm guessing, is the very aspect of the novel that initially appealed to him. So, Dan, it's a little more complicated than simply not liking adaptations that don't follow their sources accurately. And don't get me started on the score! /K PS: I had completely forgotten about that Halsband episode! Those were the days. Now we're reduced to banging on computer keys instead.

B: yes, I did (know about US's political career, such as it was). And I would have been delighted for the film to be about the labor movement and The Man's relentless effort to keep us poor working stiffs down. But . . . that's . . . not . . . the . . . movie . . . PTA . . . made! I know you've read James's "Art of Fiction," but maybe you need to review the part about granting the artist his (or her!) donnée. That Hollywood in general tends toward squeamishness re social critique and moral ambiguity is a verity you will not hear me dispute (cf. Juno & Knocked Up--both of which I liked, incidentally--vs. 4 Months . . . ). That P. T. Anderson has ever shown the slightest hint of gutlessness is a premise I will go toe to toe with you on. (One word: frogstorm.) That a fine movie might be made of a "faithful" adaptation of Oil is a premise to which I cannot speak, not having read it, but you seem to be strongly impying that such is the case, and I won't dispute it. You want it made, hey, MAKE IT. But it's wrongheaded (a wrongheadedness on which you have no monopoly, clearly) to criticize [can't believe I had the British -ise ending here initially!] a film because the filmmaker's intent is not the intent you'd have had had you made the film. And to suggest that the only reason for reworking material at the expense of a given theme, even the central theme, of the original is lack of courage to confront that theme suggests that you have a lot more confidence in your mindreading powers than I'm comfortable with anyone's having. Jesus! It just occurred to me that we could have been having this argument on my blog! What a waste! Next time you want to tear me a new critical asshole, you should do it there, so that my vast audience (both of it) can enjoy our fisticuffs. By the way, how'd you like the score?

K: I'm a bit miffed that in your last lines you pre-empted my next strike--re: New Critical Asshole. If only films could be made (and novels written) in some culture-free zone, where "artistic" choices are just "artistic" choices and not social, or political, or ideological choices, too. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree (is that the appropriate cliché here?) for the ways in which art always entails ideology. PTA can make whatever damn film he wants and "adapt" his source novel in whatever way he feels like. This is America, after all. But his choices have consequences and those consequences are very real and won't go away by appealing to arguments about artistic freedom.

B: agreed (to dis-); we can take this up again & get Lisa [right: yet another veteran of the nonsmoking office] & Mo involved at the next 241fest. But seriously, any objection to my pasting all the TWBB stuff into a blog post? I'll plug your book, complete w/ Amazon link! [actually, it's a buy.com link, since Amazon's not currently discounting it]

K: Sure. As long as you don't change anything and make me sound stupid! As for the score, you may be surprised to know that I loved it. It's not often these days that you get to hear a big, symphonic, wall-to-wall score and especially not in westerns (witness 3:10 To Yuma and No Country for Old Men). So what a pleasure it was to hear this one. At moments, it sounded to me like early Stravinsky or maybe Penderecki. Clearly Greenwood was working in the Modernist mode, interesting given the timeframe of the film. Not sure what to make of the Brahms quotation at the blessing of the oil well (or under the End Titles)--I'm assuming that he ran out of time and had intended to write some original cues. Anyway, a crime that the score wasn't (and couldn't be) nominated this year. /K PS: Mo is going to agree with me!

[Postscript: I asked why "couldn't be nominated," and heard back next day.]

K: At some point in the Academy's history (I'm not sure exactly what year), the requirements for Best Original Score were changed to require that a certain percentage of music (again I don't have the exact percent here) had to be originally composed for the film in order for a film score to be eligible. Since Greenwood recycled a higher percentage of music from other sources than the Academy allows, his score for Blood was ineligible. Ironically, he stole from himself, recycling material he had composed earlier for other reasons, but it doesn't matter; he couldn't get a nomination. Interestingly, by this regulation, many of the composers of the classical studio period would have to return their Oscars, Korngold in particular. I'm wondering if the change in requirements accompanied the Academy's elimination of the Best Adapted Score category (remember that?) K.

[for the record: nope, I don't]