My Movie Business: A Memoir [Hardcover]

John Irving (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1999

John Irving's memoir begins with his account of the distinguished career and medical writings of the novelist's grandfather Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a renowned obstetrician and gynecologist, and includes Mr. Irving's incisive history of abortion politics in the United States. But My Movie Business focuses primarily on the thirteen years John Irving spent adapting his novel The Cider House Rules for the screen--for four different directors.
        
Mr. Irving also writes about the failed effort to make his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, into a movie; about two of the films that were made from his novels (but not from his screenplays), The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire; about his slow progress at shepherding his screenplay of A Son of the Circus into production.
        
Not least, and in addition to its qualities as a memoir--anecdotal, comic, affectionate, and candid--My Movie Business is an insightful essay on the essential differences between writing a novel and writing a screenplay.

The photographs in My Movie Business were taken by Stephen Vaughan, the still photographer on the set of The Cider House Rules--a Miramax production directed by Lasse Hallström, with Michael Caine in the role of Dr. Larch. Concurrently with the November 1999 release of the film, Talk Miramax Books will publish John Irving's screenplay.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Irving's novels pose tantalizing challenges to filmmakers: at his best, Irving has proven both popular and ambitious, crafting rich, picaresque fiction that juggles Big Themes and antic comedy, braiding his central narratives with intriguing subplots and discursive back stories driven by vivid characters. Irving's accessibility teases the would-be director or producer with the prospect of commercial acceptance even as the scope and intricacy of his work raises crucial risks for the scriptwriter. With two early novels that made it to the screen, The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, Irving's box office impact thus far evenly translates to hit and miss.

This slender memoir offers a perceptive, if hardly objective, critique of the inherent differences between novels and screenplays, with the writer sharing his own experiences creating both. Irving focuses principally on his crusade to bring The Cider House Rules to the screen, tracing its gestation through four successive directors; with Irving himself attached as scriptwriter, we see the novelist struggling to reconcile the demands of concision against his paternal instincts toward the original book. Written before the final cut of The Cider House Rules, My Movie Business often verges on self-justification. Irving's respect for the movie's ultimate caretaker, Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom, is evident, as is his hopeful enthusiasm for the project's casting (which includes Michael Caine, Tobey McGuire, Jane Alexander, and Charlize Theron). Yet Irving can't repress the wariness prompted by his earlier disappointments with both this and other novels.

Ultimately, such candor doesn't diminish the account's value as a post mortem of the creative process behind serious filmmaking, nor does it overpower the reliable grace of Irving's prose. Fans will also find My Movie Business revealing in its exploration of the inspiration behind The Cider House Rules and its eloquent stance against the antiabortion movement--Irving's own grandfather, a leading doctor, administrator, and Harvard professor of obstetrics and gynecology. But moviegoers, as well as those who haven't read Irving's original novel, should be forewarned that this memoir does reveal key plot elements of both. --Sam Sutherland

From Publishers Weekly

After three of his novels became motion pictures scripted by other writers (The World According to Garp, Hotel New Hampshire and A Prayer for Owen Meany, which was rechristened on screen as Simon Birch), and two of his own screenplays languished unproduced, Irving finally got his chance to adapt one of his novels to film. The focus of this slim, eloquent memoir is Irving's 13-year struggle to bring The Cider House Rules to the big screen, and its passage through the hands of various producers, four different directors and numerous rewrites. Backtracking to illuminate the origin of the novel's pro-abortion stance, Irving introduces readers to his grandfather, an obstetrician and gynecologist, and to the history of abortion. (Abortions didn't become illegal throughout the U.S. until 1846, when physicians sought to take the procedureAand financial rewardsAout of the hands of midwives, Irving reveals.) He also offers a fascinating and detailed look at how he trimmed his huge novel into a workable screenplay. Although he professes to love the final product, Irving details each scene and line that was cut as the film was edited down to two hours. While he claims to be pleased with the screen treatments of his previous novels, he is disappointingly silent on the subject of Simon Birch (he refused the filmmakers the use of the protagonist's name and also insisted that the screen credit state that the film was "Suggested by the novel"). 32 pages of photographs. (Nov.) FYI: The Cider House Rules, starring Tobey McGuire, Michael Caine and Erykah Badu, opens Nov. 24.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (November 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375503684
• ISBN-13: 978-0375503689
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,565,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times-winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story "Interior Space." In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules-a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Last Night in Twisted River is John Irving's twelfth novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Book, But Will Appeal to a Select Audience, November 23, 1999

By 

Donald Beale - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Movie Business: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Not everyone will be interested to read this book. If you are a fan of John Irving, however, or interested in the process of adapting a film from a novel, you'll find this a quick, fun read, and informative to some extent. What I found most interesting was Mr. Irving's views on adaptation and the glimpses on how those views changed over the years. Most authors and readers presume that the only good adaptation is one literal to the book. Mr. Irving shows why that isn't the case, and he does so by relating his own experiences as author and screenwriter. Most of the book is about the upcoming Cider House Rules; I would have liked to have read more about the previous films adapted from other novels. Nevertheless, as a novelist's honest assessment of adaptation, it is an unusual and valuable document.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "a hair-raising revelation...", November 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: My Movie Business: A Memoir (Hardcover)

It only took John Irving ("A Widow For One Year," "A Son of the Circus") thirty years to break into the movie business. His first attempt cam in 1968, when he was hired to draft a screenplay for his first novel, "Setting Free the Bears." Since that time, Irving has seen three of his novels turned into films, written one original (but, as of yet, unproduced screenplay) and spent thirteen years shepherding his screenplay of "The Cider House Rules" onto the Silver Screen. "My Movie Business" is a record of all that, and more. Because "The Cider House Rules" (screenplay and novel) relies on the subject of abortion as a central issue, Irving starts his memoir by telling us about his grandfather, Dr. Frederick C. Irving. Not only was Dr. Irving chief of staff at Boston Lying-In (one of the world's leading obstetrical hospitals in the early 1900's), he was a writer who cobbled up numerous limericks (many of which live on through medical students) and published three books. Irving's quotes from his grandfather's reveal a "Victorian prose" style that (along with the novels of Charles Dickens) belie an early influence. In writing about grandfather, Irving succinctly sums up his own creed as a novelist: "Grandfather was a man of extreme erudition and unaccountable, even inspired, bad taste; as such, he would have been a terrific novelist, for a good novel is at once sophisticated in its understanding of human behavior and utterly rebellious in its response to the conventions of good taste." Irving uses most of the first nine chapters to educate the reader on the history of abortions in America, detailing his grandfather's personal involvement as well. The author even goes so far as to take a stand on the Right-to-Life movement: "Let doctors practice medicine. Let religious zealots practice their religion, but let them keep their religion to themselves." From there, the author delves into the business of drafting screenplays for Hollywood. It is, Irving realizes, a business of compromise. During the course of developing the film and writing the screenplay, Irving works with no less than four directors (the last one, Lasse Halstrom, saw the film to completion). And in order to make more room for the relationship between Dr. Larch and Homer Wells, Irving has to excise at least one major character and lose all of Homer's history as an orphan. Forced to cut more portions of the film (to make it more stream-lined), he finds that all attempts at humor are excised. As Irving writes, "...these scenes were a comic interlude that would have...reminded my readers of the tone of my novels." In typical Irving fashion, there are digressions, albeit interesting ones. Such as the story about his relationship with Irving Kirshner, who was to direct "Setting Free the Bears"; or that Paul Newman was approached to play Dr. Larch, but was uncomfortable with scenes involving an incinerator; and Irving includes his feelings about the films of his novels "The World According to Garp" and "The Hotel New Hampshire." (The only noticeable exclusion is any mention of "Simon Birch," the Disney version of "A Prayer for Owen Meany," from which Irving disassociated himself). Insightful and informative, "My Movie Business" is a candid glimpse into the film-making process and a hair-raising revelation of how art must always battle commerce in the bottom-line land of Hollywood. (Nov. 1999, San Antonio Express-News).

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Fun, January 9, 2000

By 

Supadlicious (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Movie Business: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I loved this book. I am, admittedly, an avid John Irving fan, and to finally have a book not only by, but about him was thrilling. It is so nice to finally get a glimpse of the man behind the novels. What an interesting person! He is witty, intelligent, and engaging. The only thing I regret is that he included only two stanzas of his grandfather's infamous poem. I am very eager to read it in it's entirety. Hopefully, Mr. Irving will include it in a future book. This memoir, while short, was very informative, and even persuaded me to consider seeing the movie. In general I refuse to see movies that are based on novels, especially if they are novels I enjoyed. However, since Irving explains his motives for cutting out certain characters, as well as the other changes he made to the plot, I am prepared for an equally beautiful, if different, story. Overall, I enjoyed every aspect of this book, from the history of abortion in the United States to the digressions about other novels of his. A fine book, and a fascinating person! Highly recommended.