My Foolish Heart
Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Tue, 28 Oct 1997 12:29:05 -0600
> 12:15pm MY FOOLISH HEART
>
> no mention of salinger?
When they played it on AMC, there was also no connection made to JD. I
wonder if maybe his squadron of lawyers has asked everyone in TV-land to
underplay his involvement in the film. His name still appears in the
credits, of course.
> has anyone else seen this before? i remember someone mentioning that it
> was on AMC ... is it any good?
I would recommend it to any Salinger fan with a sense of humor/irony
(which, I assume, is all of us). Only avoid it if you view his writing
as sacred and are prone to fly into a murderous rage at any profanation
of it. It's profane as hell, buddy, but also, I think, a fascinating
study of how the Hollywood machine loves to grind a story into
melodramatic pablum. To see it is, as someone suggested, to understand
the depths of Holden's hatred for the movies.
Basically, the film retains the basic premise of the story -- a working
woman visits her bored, married college roommate in the suburbs -- but
the theme of retrospection is used to launch a schlocky extended
flashback about Eloise's tragic love and subsequent slide into deception
and alcoholism. The romance part is, of course, a complete fabrication
involving a slick-talking would-be-playboy-with-a-heart-of-gold
character called "Walt," who I found very cynically amusing to imagine
as a member of the Glass family. Every subtlety of the original story
is replaced with something crass intended to inflame the sympathy or
indignation of the post-war American audience.
So by all means, see it -- once, at least. I laughed, I cried, I threw
food at the TV. And I think you will too.
Jon