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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.
From Library Journal
This memoir, timed to coincide with the release of the film The Cider House Rules, is an insightful essay on the 13 years Irving has spent writing and revising the screenplay for his best-selling novel. Irving also describes his failed attempts at making his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, into a film; the successful productions of The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, which were produced from someone else's screenplays; and his current attempts to get The Son of the Circus into production. Humorously exploring the differences between writing novels and screenplays, Irving contemplates the movie world from the perspective of a fiction author. In addition, he writes candidly of his family, friendships in the movie business, and opinions on a woman's right to abortion as a theme of The Cider House Rules. Recommended for Irving fans and for public and academic libraries with his works.-ALisa N. Johnston, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, William Boyd
Irving has been through the movie mill, has paid his dues, and his observations and comments are sagacious and shrewd about the film world in general.
From Booklist
The particular business at hand is the new movie based on Irving's novel The Cider House Rules, for which the novelist wrote the screenplay, composing the first version 13 years ago. Two producers and four directors were involved in getting it filmed, and when the film editing was done, it was some 50 scenes shorter than when shooting commenced. Irving begins his account of that long process much earlier, with his interest in medicine, physicians, and the issue at the center of the novel and the film, abortion. His grandfather was an innovative obstetrician who, Irving believes, saw enough of the consequences of untimely pregnancies to be sympathetic to the sober proabortion argument that informs the drama of The Cider House Rules. That drama is the story of how, in Depression-era Maine, an institutionalized orphan, personally trained by the orphanage's doctor-director to perform abortions as well as licit obstetrics, rebels against the procedure and leaves the place but, forced to perform an abortion in a crisis, understands his mentor's position and returns to replace him at the orphanage. Irving also recalls his involvement with attempts to film four of his other novels, but he homes in on the Cider House experience. His is very much a writer's perspective; he speaks of character, dramatic development, casting, and acting to the virtual exclusion of the details of visualization, sound production, and montage that are additional paramount concerns for a film director. Cineasts as well as Irving's fans ought to find this book enthralling whether they see the movie or not; those who see and like the movie shouldn't miss reading it. Ray Olson
From Kirkus Reviews
From the master of the absurdist novel, an ordinary tale of moviemaking. Many of John Irving's novels have been made into motion picture features over the years, including The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, and A Prayer for Owen Meany (which Hollywood retitled Simon Birch). He wrote screenplays for two of his works, Setting Free the Bears and A Son of the Circus, but never got them as far as the screen. Now he focuses on the making of The Cider House Rules in exhaustive and excruciating detail. The film, starring Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire, will be released in conjunction with the bookor rather, the book will be released in conjunction with the film, since the film is likely the bigger money-making prospect. And so, on the evidence here, it should be. Irving mentions in passing that he was once told that a novel should be largermore complex and more interestingthan a newspaper story about real life. So too, he might have reasoned, should a memoir move beyond a mere recounting of what happened to a particular person at a particular time. But Irving gets so lost in telling stories of every change he made in every draft, of characters lost, of scenes deleted, of motivations corrupted, that he never gets around to telling a story of his own. It is as if he had made a deal when The Cider House Rules went into production that if he were upset about any compromises, he could write a book of his own detailing everything that was left out. The obvious problem here is that he already did so: Anyone who wants to know his original intentions can read his novel. A secondary problem is that the catalogue of details will make little sense to those who have not both read the book and seen the film. If Irving had treated this subject as fiction, it would have been a much more grippingly incredible story. (32 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath. . . . This short, amiable book is John Irving's personal history of seeing--or not seeing--his novels made into movies. . . . The book digresses charmingly and effortlessly into related subjects. There is a beguiling memoir of his grandfather, an eminent surgeon; a brilliant and passionate argument for the freedom of women to choose abortion . . . observations on the origins of his novels, and so on. . . . Irving remains cooly objective, and it is clear why: he is a novelist, first and foremost, and his attitude toward the movie business is informed by this security and certainty. . . . Irving has done us [writers] proud."
--The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath. . . . This short, amiable book is John Irving's personal history of seeing--or not seeing--his novels made into movies. . . . The book digresses charmingly and effortlessly into related subjects. There is a beguiling memoir of his grandfather, an eminent surgeon; a brilliant and passionate argument for the freedom of women to choose abortion . . . observations on the origins of his novels, and so on. . . . Irving remains cooly objective, and it is clear why: he is a novelist, first and foremost, and his attitude toward the movie business is informed by this security and certainty. . . . Irving has done us [writers] proud."
--The New York Times Book Review
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