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Ford's 'Sportswriter' to HBO

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by ifilus, May 4, 2007.

  1. ifilus

    ifilus Well-Known Member

    HBO Films will turn a Pulitzer Prize-winning book trilogy by Richard Ford into "The Sportswriter," a six-hour miniseries to be directed by James Mangold.

    Mark Bomback will write all six hourlong episodes and use all three titles in the trilogy: "The Sportswriter," the Pulitzer-winning "Independence Day" and "The Lay of the Land."

    http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117964247.html?categoryid=14&cs=1
     
  2. Dedo

    Dedo Member

    Wow. Not sure how I feel about this. Can the mind of Frank Bascombe translate to the small screen? The only reason I'm optimistic is that it's HBO...
     
  3. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    I didn't like the book. Ford's dialogue is fucking painful to read. Dull, dull story, too. Feh.
     
  4. ballscribe

    ballscribe Active Member

    I didn't like it either, and I'm a readoholic.
    Bought it because of the title, obviously, and after 20 pages, I flat gave up, something I rarely ever do.
     
  5. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    I read only The Sportswriter out of the trilogy. It was a well-drawn portrayal of a dissolute dude. Didn't particularly made it a pleasure to read.
     
  6. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    I gave up quickly, too. But I do that a lot. If the book doesn't grab me, I've got other things to do.
     
  7. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Maybe part of the episode will explain what it means to be a D_B
    http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/41070/
     
  8. ifilus

    ifilus Well-Known Member

    Ouch! (But should this really be a 'Journalism topics only' thread? I think not.)
     
  9. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Ehhh, perhaps.. but it was also posted six hours earlier...
     
  10. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    Seems like "Anything Goes" material to me.

    One of the things about the way I read novels is utterly subjective and personal and has nothing to do with the Standards of Art. I have to like at least one character in a novel in order to be interested. The novelists I like best- Garcia Marquez, Algren, Allende, Dostoevsky, McCullers, Henry Miller- might have very different types of work but they all present characters that capture my attention and make me care.

    Ford's protagonist is a douche, and so are most of the people with whom he interacts. He's a semi-amoral bourgeois douche in a world of semi-amoral bourgeois douches. I can't begin to care about any of them. Maybe if I were a 9-to-5, suit-wearing type from the Northeast, I'd "get it" as far as Ford goes. But as a working-class Southerner, I find his characters alien and unappealing...and their stories hopelessly uninteresting.
     
  11. John

    John Well-Known Member

    Which is rather interesting because Ford, I believe, is from Mississippi -- or at least spent a lot of time there.
     
  12. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    That's true about Ford's Mississippi ties. I've only read The Sportswriter...I know nothing of Ford the man or his other works.

    I don't mean to sidetrack the discussion onto my own personal preferences, which aren't relevant. But for the record, there are types of bourgeois Northeastern stuff that I do like. Hell, I think Woody Allen films are great fun. I do like the tweedy, intellectual side of the Northeastern upper-middle class culture. But the dissolute, suburban, Country Club-nihilist schtick is what I find both repulsive and dull.
     
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