Hey folks, Harry here... It isn't often that ya have screenings of movies that apparently aren't working too well, where the author of the source material and the screenwriter are there to tell ya where the director bungled it all, much less an event with Stephen "Horror" King and William "I Rule" Goldman!!! Well Chachi's review is fine, but read what King and Goldman have to say...
Harry --
I've been reading your site for years (sent you a check for $100 to help keep the thing up back on July 27, 1997!) but have never sent any info, despite living in Manhattan and occasionally seeing some interesting goings on. But last night I went to a screening of HEARTS IN ATLANTIS with Stephen King and Bill Goldman, and some of what they had to say addresses some of the questions that have come up on AICN.
First, about the movie: it doesn't work. This is painful to say because a) it tries very hard to work -- this isn't a film where the people working on it didn't care or just phoned it in -- and b) Steve and Bill clearly think it does work. But they're wrong. The story contains too many extraenous elements and too many that fall flat. In the first category the worst cuplrit is the insertion of a football story which inspires the main character to an act of heroism. The narration of the story by Hopkins is beautiful, though it stops the movie dead for 5 minutes when he does it; the problem is that it feels absolutely phony and contrived when later the kid remembers it and mutters lines from it while carrying his girlfriend to safety on his back. Last night, Goldman said he'd been fascinated with the football story for years and has been trying for years to find a film he could use it in, and he's tickled to death that he got to do it here. He shouldn't have done it. It's self indulgent and it doesn't work.
In the second category, things that fall flat, you've got two big problems: weak line delivery by every actor in the film except Hopkins (everyone is saying how great the kid is, and it's just not true -- maybe 15% of his lines are delivered well and the rest sound like a young actor standing awkwardly in front of the camera and reciting lines), and weak resolution of story elements. As someone else has already pointed out, the explanation of Hopkins' powers and plight is just dropped in our laps out of nowhere: he's a mystery for the first half of the film and then, out of the blue, there's a scene where the kid is reading an article about how the FBI is recruiting psychics to fight the Commies, and he turns to Hopkins and says something like "That's what this is all about, isn't it?" and Hopkins basically says "Yes" and goes on shaving. Flat, and utterly disappointing. There are also lots of lines of dialogue that sound like they might have looked reasonable on the printed page but don't sound like real people talking, and the final reconciliation between the son and his awful mother is completely unearned.
But the worst part of the whole thing (for me) was Goldman's shameless and incessant rhyming: any time a character says or does something early in the film, you can bet the same words or action will be repeated later in the film. It's supposed to have a certain resonance the second time around, and if Goldman only did this once or twice it might have, but by the end of the film he's working overtime to cram in rhyme after rhyme after rhyme, and it becomes a joke. In the last 10 minutes, I don't think there was one thing a character said that wasn't a verbatim quote of something that had been said earlier in the movie. To be fair, you need to know that I am one of those people who think that "Here's looking at you, kid" gets repeated too often in CASABLANCA...but here it's really over the top.
So, the movie isn't good. What do the authors have to say about it? First, regarding changes from the book version, King stands behind the elimination of the Dark Tower fantasy elements -- he says that too much exposition and backstory would have been required to make them work, and he is very happy with the FBI-recruiting-psychics solution. (Meanwhile, for Dark Tower fans, he confirmed that he is currently working on volume 5 of the series, which he says is inspired by THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/THE SEVEN SAMURAI and tells the story of an innocent community that is having its children stolen by malevolent forces and goes to the Gunslingers to learn how to protect itself. The women of the community end up protecting themselves by learning how to throw dishes with sharpened edges as weapons. Sounds a little Xena-like to me, but Steven seemed very happy about how the book is coming, so maybe it works in context.)
Regarding why Carol dies in the movie even though she lives in the book, Goldman says that Scott Hicks had seen BILLY ELLIOT and had thought that film's ending, which introduces us at the very end to an adult version of the child protagonist, didn't work at all. Hicks was extremely concerned that bringing back the adult Carol at this film's ending would have made the same impossible demand on the audience, to start caring instantly about a character/actor you've never seen before, and he didn't want to do it. I tend to agree that it wouldn't have worked -- not that the movie could have been greatly harmed, since it doesn't work as it is, but I don't think reintroducing Carol would have been an improvement.
Asked about favorite scenes, Goldman cited the 3-card monty scene (kid uses psychic powers to beat the dealer), the ferris wheel scene (kid shares first kiss with pre-pubescent girlfriend), and the money scene (kid throws Ted's money at his mother after she betrays him to the FBI). The monty scene is good; the ferris wheel scene is too self-conscious, although the girl really is stunning and sweet; and the throwing-the-money scene is stagy and too explicit. "You didn't only betray Ted," the kid shouts, "you betrayed me. I finally found an adult friend of my own. I LOVED him." Yeah, yeah. We get it.
Goldman mentioned that there was originally a scene toward the end where the mother lies to the cops to protect the son, which is an act of atonement that helps explain the reconciliation between the two at the very end, but it was taken out because it slowed down the final act. Maybe it did -- King seemed to agree. But without it the reconciliation doesn't work at all.
King and Goldman both had great words of praise for Castle Rock, saying that they are by far the best studio in business today in terms of how they treat writers. (Of course, you have to assume they treat King and Goldman better than they treat the average writer.) King also talked lovingly about the mini-series format he's worked with over the past few years (he called writing mini-series 'a hobby') and said he's delivering 15 hours of scripts for a series called THE KINGDOM, about a haunted hospital.
For anyone wondering about how Steven is doing with his recovery from his accident, he's thin, but in good spirits and (apparently) good health. Yesterday was his 54th birthday, and aside from complaining about his leg hurting, he seemed well.
To close, here's one final irony about the film: speaking about Scott Hicks, the director, King and Goldman both sounded astonished and disappointed with his first cut -- they said that he took the reviews of his last film, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, to heart, and since every reviewer criticized that picture for being slow/plodding/boring, he made his first cut of ATLANTIS so abbreviated, quick, and punchy that it felt like a "Reader's Digest condensed version." King and Goldman have been working with the studio to put things back in, they said, and they're very happy with the final result. I hate to tell them, but one of the problems with the final version is that it's a little slow and plodding. And, of course, when the reviews come out, Hicks will get blamed for it. Probably the only example in Hollywood history of the director taking a bum rap for changes the writers made to his film...
And keep up the good work.
Chachi Arcola
