Book vs. Movie: Crow Killer vs. Jeremiah Johnson

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Blogs, Book vs. Movie, Crow Killer, Jeremiah Johnson, Liver-Eating Johnson, Robert Redford, Static in the Airwaves, Stefan Gierasch, Sydney Pollack, Tim L O'Brien

“Some say he’s dead…some say he never will be”

Welcome to Come Monday where on my blog where we celebrate the joys of reading.  Today marks the third week of Book vs. Movie.  Today my choice is a little more obscure and off the beaten path.  Far off the beaten path, and high up into the mountains.  A trip back in time to the days of fur trappers, mountain men and the old west.

In the first two weeks of this series, we discussed books and movies by the same name, which were extremely successful and popular during the time of release.  To Kill a Mockingbird and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are works that transformed from book to movie with overwhelming success.  I hope everyone enjoyed last week’s guest blogger Samantha Warren.

Today’s pick was a popular movie in its time, but the book went relatively unknown.

From the moment I saw Jeremiah Johnson in the movie theater as a young boy I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up – a mountain man!  The great outdoors, the mountains, hunting, fur trapping, log cabins and danger behind every mountain pass.  Bear claw necklaces, winter coats made of different animal hides, leather fringed pants and knee-high moccasins.  What was there for a young lad not to like?   If there were a heaven to be found it was somewhere high up in the Rocky Mountains.

The Book

The book Crow Killer The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson by Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker was first published by the Indiana University Press in 1958.  The story is a biography of a relatively unknown Rocky Mountain trapper and Indian fighter in the mid-nineteenth century told and retold by word-of-mouth sources.  It’s part folklore, part mythology.

The story of John Johnson, the eater of Crow Indian livers, begins with the scalping of his Flathead wife by Crow Indians in 1847.  The story follows his revenge and the Crows attempted retaliation in the ensuing decades.  It is the personal history of Liver-Eating Johnson from 1847 until his death in 1900 told to the author from oral legend.  The oral accounts came from “Del” Gue who trapped with Johnson and another mountain man White-Eye Anderson.  I imagine Gue and Anderson had a ‘good time’ with the author, telling tall tales and pulling the writers leg where ever possible.  They claimed Johnson killed close to 300 Crows and ate their livers.  I have no doubt the feud between Johnson and the Crows is historically accurate.  Killing 300 Crows and eating every liver?  Sounds like a tall tale from the old west.  At least, I hope so.

Many years after seeing the movie, and realizing I would never become a mountain man, I read the book.  I enjoyed revisiting the accounts from my childhood hero, fictional or not, did not matter too much to me.  The book is an engaging look back into our history, of the westward movement through the frontier, and of a rugged, individual who took survival of the fittest to the extreme.

The Movie

The movie starring Robert Redford as “Jeremiah” Johnson was released in May, 1972.  The movie was filmed in Utah and directed by Sydney Pollack, who also directed famed movies such as The Way We Were, Absence of Malice, Tootsie and The Firm.

The most immediate and notable difference with the book is the renaming of John “Liver-Eating” Johnson to simply Jeremiah Johnson.  In the movie version Redford is never referred to as John or  Liver-Eating Johnson.  Many of Johnson’s exploits in the movie follow the book closely, whereas many other scenes are sensationalized by Hollywood.  Hard to argue against following a book, based on oral histories.

As “Del” Gue is credited by the author for his part in the oral telling of the story, actor Stefan Gierasch does an excellent and colorful job of playing Gue in the movie.  Will Geer portrays “Bear Claw” an experienced mountain man and ‘grizz’ hunter who occasionally shows up and shares a campfire and his wisdom with Jeremiah.

Pollack does a terrific job of capturing the beauty and ruggedness of the mountains in Utah.  The casting of Redford as Johnson was a wise choice (it was rumored that Clint Eastwood was originally offered the part).  Redford has always listed this movie as one of his favorites and most influential to him.  Parts of the movie were filmed near his ranch in Utah.

Summary

The movie remains an all-time favorite for me.  Whenever the weather takes a turn for the worse, on those cold and snowy days, I find myself popping the dvd in and reliving my dreams to become a mountain man.  For those interested in the history of the frontier, and of more infamous mountain men like Jim Bridger, this is a powerful retelling of that time in our history when the west had yet to be  civilized.

Book vs. Movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Guest Blog by Samantha Warren

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Book vs. Movie, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling, Samantha Waren, Static in the Airwaves, Tim L O'Brien

Welcome to the second installment of Book vs. Movie.  Today I’m thrilled to introduce my first guest blogger, Samantha Warren.

Samantha is a fantasy and science fiction author who spends her days immersed in dragons, spaceships, and vampires. With her pet dragon, Anethesis, she ventured to the ends of the universe, but the cost of space travel cut into her sock fetish fund, so she sold her ship and returned home. When she isn’t writing, she’s milking cows or trying to feed them Pop-Tarts. She spends a lot of time in her weed patch (aka: garden), watching any show featuring Gordon Ramsay, or posting random things on her blog (http://www.samantha-warren.com).

Ladies and gentlemen, faithful readers and followers please welcome Samantha to Static in the Airwaves!

Harry Potter. There’s not a soul on this planet that hasn’t heard the name. Ok, so I’m sure there are a LOT of people who have no idea who Harry Potter is. But I doubt anyone reading this blog is unfamiliar with him. He is an international icon, loved by millions around the globe. Did JK Rowling know when she released Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 1997 that she would have the entire human race in the palm of her hands by 2007? Did she know that the world would cry as one united front when Deathly Hallows was finally published? The woman is a marvel and has given us some of the best books written to date, in my very skewed opinion, of course. I’m sure some of you disagree with me, but we’ll leave that debate for another day.

The novel: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

If you’re anything like me, you were craving this book by the time you finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You spent hours pondering how on Earth Ms. Rowling was going to finish up one of the most iconic series of all time. You stalked the UPS Tracking page as you waited impatiently for your book to arrive on its release date and practically tore it from the delivery person’s grasp. The flimsy cardboard was nothing for your eager hands and you carefully tossed aside the dust jacket so that you could enjoy the story unencumbered.

I think it took me two days to read the book and that was simply because work interfered. If I’d been smart, I would’ve taken the day off, but I planned poorly. I began crying almost immediately and I’m pretty sure I went through a full box of tissues by the time everything was said and done. It was that day that I grew to hate JK Rowling. My hate for her is the kind of hate you develop for someone who has made you love something so deeply, and then they take it from you in one fell swoop, heedless of your feelings. I lost some of my most cherished heroes that day. I shall not spoil it for those who have not read it. I will simply say Why are sitting here and not reading the book????

Unlike some, I feel that Deathly Hallows is an excellent end to the series. It is emotionally captivating and impossible to put down. I long for the day it is on Kindle so that it’s easier to read. I’m convinced that those who said it was a crappy ending either didn’t read the previous books or skipped over chapters to get to the “good stuff.” The very end, the epilogue where Rowling ties up all the loose ends,  does feel a bit rushed and weak compared to the rest of the book, but I can’t fault the author for that. How does one finish such a powerful story and bring it to a satisfactory close when you know fans are going to be asking for more, more than you might be willing or able to give? As attached as I became to some of the characters, I can’t imagine what Ms. Rowling was going through. If I were her, I’d need therapy for years after finishing that novel.

The Movies: Parts I & II

Now let’s discuss the movie(s). The book was so ginormous, it had to be split into two. I think, given the limitations of film, they did an excellent job. The first movie was a little boring, especially for those who hadn’t read the books. There was not a ton of action and a lot of necessary information was missing. To be fair, if they wanted to include all the important stuff, I think they’d need four or five movies to do it.

The first part of Deathly Hallows ended with the death of a character who was extremely important in the books and who everyone who’s read them knows and loves. But in the movies, his role is downplayed quite a bit. Few who watched only the movies and never touched a book really grasped his importance and were left wanting at the end of part one.

Part two was packed full of action and was an excellent movie in and of itself. I went opening night, of course, and though I tend to mock those who cry openly in theaters, I was trying desperately to hide my own sobs. The girls behind me weren’t so lucky. Like the first part, there was so much missing, though, and some pieces didn’t make a ton of sense taken out of context as they were. I ended up explaining parts to non-reading friends who were just plain confused.

My .02

I absolutely love both the books and the movies. I learned early on, probably around the time of Goblet of Fire, that the movies must be treated as separate entities. To compare them to the books is folly. They will never match up, and that’s just because of the limitations of film. There is only so much you can share in such a short time, and who honestly wants to sit through a 10-hour movie?

 

There are a few things about the movies that really bug me, though.

• Colin Creevey was replaced by some kid named Nigel. So not cool. Colin was Harry’s biggest fan and put himself on the line numerous times to deter the bad guys. That kid had some guts. A huge disservice was done to such a heroic little boy.
• There is a distinct lack of enlightenment on the deaths that occur during the big battle at Hogwarts. Some important characters are taken down during that fight and most of them are only given a brief glimpse. Again, I won’t ruin it for you, but if you read the books and watch the movies, you’ll understand who I’m talking about.
• And I don’t think Snape was given the proper treatment near the end. He was shafted and a particular scene involving his most important moment wasn’t done as well as I had hoped. I could care less about the switching location, but the whole scene seemed lacking. But then again, I’m Team Snape all the way.

All in all, the movies are well done and enjoyable. But really, what movie can ever top the book? Now that you know my take on both the movies and the books, I want to hear yours! Do you think the movies hold their own? Are they missing too much? What missing piece (or pieces) was the most noticeable from a reader standpoint?

Book vs Movie: To Kill A Mockingbird

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Atticus Finch, Blogs, Book vs. Movie, Gregory Peck, Harper Lee, In Cold Blood, Static in the Airwaves, Tim L O'Brien, To Kill A Mockingbird, Truman Capote

“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds.  Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”  — Atticus Finch

I was somewhat reluctant to start my new series Book vs Movie with a novel written in 1960.  I debated about starting with something a bit more current, but the choice would be so random, that it didn’t make a sensible place to start the début of the weekly Monday blog.  It made perfect sense to start with an all-time classic, a novel with such personal significance.

Realistically, any debate over which was better, the book or the movie, would be short-lived.  Of course, to avid readers, the book is always better than anything Hollywood could adapt to the big screen.  If anything, the movie just helps to popularize the novel.  So we begin with the understanding that this  blog will not necessarily debate the qualifications of each production, but rather examine each individually.

As a boy, my reading consisted of my local paper’s sports section, and if a book report were required I would read a sport star’s autobiography.  On rare occurrence, I might venture to read and report about Kit Carson or Daniel Boone.  But the summer before entering ninth grade at the all-boys Catholic high school my world was rattled.  Seems the big and intimidating school required us to read To Kill A Mockingbird before the summer was over.

This made no sense at the time.  Why in the world should we read something before school actually started?  I knew right away this school would be different, and not in a good way.  We would later spend a large portion of freshman english examining the novel and testing over it.

Sometimes, blessings come when you least expect it.  To this day, I still count the novel written by Harper Lee as my all-time favorite.  I can’t say I enjoyed much of anything else the next four years at that school, least of all the beatings that came at the hands of the Priests, or at least one Priest in particular.  Four years of high school with no girls was not fun.

However, the joy’s of reading began that summer, and I will always be thankful that my eyes were opened to a world that did not exist in the local sports page.

You know that feeling when you walk outdoors on a cool, crisp autumn afternoon, and the leaves are turning a bright orange and yellow color, and you can smell, somewhere off in the distance, the wood burning in someone’s fireplace?  That’s the feeling I get every time I reread this novel.

The Novel

From the opening words of the first chapter, narrated by Scout, you are taken back in time, to a place that no longer exists, except for our imagination.  The overall tone from the narration settles you and comforts you like the distant smells of fall.  By page three, you have a clear understanding of the setting of the story.  “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it…A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer.  There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb Country.”

The classic can be summarized as a lawyer defending a black man charged with rape of a white woman in the depression-era South.  To accept that is true, but it is about so, so much more.  A more accurate summary would be the end of innocence as a father tries his best to shield his children from the ugliness of evil in the world.  It’s a novel about seeing people for who they truly are,  for both the  good and evil in all of us.  It’s about one man’s struggles to stand up against a force much larger than he – racial inequality – and the consequences of doing so.  We follow a three-year period as Scout struggles to come to terms with the world around her as we witness the evolution of her reactions, from fighting back and against, to a level of acceptance of certain troubling issues.

The Movie

Rarely does a classic or best-selling novel transform into an award-winning movie.  However, the adaptation of this novel did just that.  The black and white movie, released in 1962, was a box office hit and earned three Academy Awards.  The success of the movie began with Horton Foote’s screenplay which had the impossible task of tackling the issues and tone of the novel. “I think it’s one of the best translations of a book to film ever made,” Harper Lee once said.  Foote’s work earned him an Academy Award.

The next element in the movie’s success is the casting.  The choice of Gregory Peck, and not the studio’s choice of Rock Hudson, was perfect and crucial to the film’s success.  Harper Lee went as far to say that the role of Finch was perfect for Peck, for all he had to do was play himself.  Quite a compliment.  Peck even went as far as paying a visit to Lee’s father, the model for Atticus, during his research for the role.  The critics agreed with Lee and honored Peck with the Academy Award for Best Actor.  The rest of the cast was equally superb.

The Winner

Of course, the book is better, but if there ever were a chance for a movie to equal that of the novel it was based upon and a tie be granted, this would be that rarefied opportunity.

Summary

The book was published in 1960 and the next year earned a Pulitzer Prize.  The following year it was brought to the big screen.  Sadly, that is the last we ever read from Harper Lee.  She did travel to Holcomb, Kansas with childhood friend, Truman Capote, to help him with research on a story he was working on, which later became his best-selling novel In Cold Blood in 1966.  Lee never wrote another novel after To Kill A Mockingbird.  Perhaps she knew that it would be impossible to top her début novel.  Maybe the sales of the book and movie were enough to keep her content, retire while on top.  Or, maybe the reasons are much more complicated than that, only Harper Lee knows why she never gave us the pleasure of reading more of her beautifully written words.  Maybe, once you have visited the mountain top, and published a classic, there just isn’t anything else to say (or write).  Harper Lee made her mark in literature, and we are all better for it.  Shame that we don’t have more.

So what do you think?  Is it an insult to even presume that the movie version can compare to the novel?  Or do you agree, in this one rare instance, that we can declare the movie equally as entertaining as the printed words?  Can we agree that both are timeless classics and deserve continued revisits?