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August 19, 2014:

PRAY FOR ROSEMARY’S BABY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, once upon a time a writer named Ira Levin wrote a book entitled Rosemary’s Baby.  Mr. Levin was a brilliant idea man and through whatever alchemy was at work, his brilliant idea for a book about the devil turned out not only brilliantly, but was a modern 20th century masterpiece.  Every chapter, every word was perfection.  The book was a sensation – it was the book to read.  The movies, of course, came calling, and Paramount made the film.  Producer William Castle was going to direct, but thank goodness saner heads prevailed and the director’s chair went to Roman Polanski, the up-and-coming Polish director who’d made Knife in the Water and Repulsion.  Polanski adapted the book, his first American screenplay.  And somehow, his adaptation WAS the book.  The resulting film WAS the book.  All the dialogue in the film was straight out of the book because Polanski thought he couldn’t change it.  With the exception of two or three minor things, everything in the book is in the film, and the two or three minor things that aren’t were actually shot and cut.  The casting could not have been better – every actor turned in a perfect performance – Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer and Maurice Evans were all brilliant.  And every smaller role was also cast to perfection.  The movie came out and was every bit the sensation that the book had been.  It was, for me, the most perfect adaptation of a classic book ever done for the screen.  It has never been topped.  I have watched the film over and over and over again – it never ceases to capture and captivate and unnerve me.  William Fraker’s photography is fantastic as is the art direction of Richard Sylbert.  And the off-center score of Krystof Komeda is also perfection.  It’s just one of those movies where everything works as it should.  Polanski would have one more of those – Chinatown.

I’ve told the story of how I came to meet and be friends with Mr. Levin, so I shan’t recount it here.  He blurbed Benjamin Kritzer for me, which gave incredible validation to my first novel.  He sent me one of the very first copies of his critically lambasted sequel to Rosemary’s Baby, Son of Rosemary.  Critically lambasted or not, I enjoyed it just because I love his writing.  He got jokingly irritated with me when I told him I’d figured out where the book was going because of a movie reference he used early on.  It was a movie not a lot of people would know so it wouldn’t mean anything to them, but it just happened to be one of my favorite movies which has a very specific kind of ending and I thought, “Out of all the movies he could say Rosemary was watching, why would he choose that one?”  And that immediately led me to how he’d end the book.

All that by way of saying, that some incredibly chutzpah-ridden, hubris-ridden Hollywood types felt the need to remake Rosemary’s Baby as a TV miniseries of four hours duration.  Only not really four hours – by the time the commercials were removed it was under three hours.  And sadly my curiosity got the better of me, even thought it had been drubbed by the critics.  I could go on for pages and pages about this miniseries.  But let me cut to the chase – this is one of the lowest, most disgustingly awful travesties ever made.  Shame on the screenwriters who obviously thought they were better than Mr. Levin.  Note to screenwriters: Dream on – you are not fit to wipe Mr. Levin’s shoes.  The changes that they make, the things they add are just mind-bogglingly awful.  That starts in minute one and a prologue – oh, yes, let’s have Screenwriting 101 rear its ugly little head in minute one and give them something to GRAB them.  No.  Then we have some unnecessary backstory that has nothing to do with Mr. Levin or Rosemary’s Baby – she loses a child some months into a pregnancy.  No.  Bad.  Stupid.  Note to screenwriters: You are not better than Mr. Levin.  Then the arbitrarily have the rest of the movie take place in France.  I suppose that all concerned wanted the free trip because it simply makes no sense on any level.  In fact, the entire first hour of this dreck has nothing to do with Mr. Levin or his book (actually the credits have the temerity to say this is adapted from the book AND the sequel).  Gone is Hutch (Maurice Evans in the movie), Minnie (now Margaux) and Roman Castevet are now a good-looking French couple of no quirkiness whatsoever, and Guy Woodhouse is a writer rather than an actor.  No.  Bad.  Stupid.  Note to screenwriters: You are not better than Mr. Levin.

Zoe Saldana is Rosemary.  No.  I don’t know her all that well, but, just, no.  She and what seems like her entire family are also listed as executive producers and someone on the imdb or Wikipedia said she signed on because she thought it would be great to film in France for a month.  No.  The fellow who plays Guy is just another bland young actor with no colors and no interest.  The director, who once had a semi-promising motion picture career with The Secret Garden, has no affinity at all for Rosemary’s Baby and it’s sloppy and uninteresting with none of the dread or atmosphere of the Polanski film.  No, it’s trying to be all today and hip and mish-mash a bunch of really noxious violence where there was only a glimpse in the original book and film.  I mean VIOLENCE – slit throats, stabbings, gushers of blood – all of which are the invention of the screenwriters.  Note to screenwriters: You are not better than Mr. Levin.  The droning music is horrible.  And yet there are kiddies out there who haven’t seen or read Rosemary’s Baby who think this piece of utter horse dung IS Rosemary’s Baby.  Note to kiddies: It’s not all about you and your generation – go read a book and see the original.  This is NOT Rosemary’s Baby this is Rosemary’s Abomination.  This is, of course, highly NOT recommended by the likes of me.  But if curiosity gets the better of you as it did me, you are in for a horror show and not the kind the filmmakers had in mind.  Blechhh.  End of rant.  Ira must be turning in his grave.  To him I say, They know not what they’ve done.

Yesterday was a blur of weariness.  I fell asleep around one and awoke at two-thirty with a slightly upset tummy.  I could not fall back asleep, so I just finally got out of bed at five and got ready to announce our new CD, which I did at six.  I was back in bed by six-thirty and fell asleep pretty quickly but had to be up at ten.  I under five hours of sleep and I felt pretty wrecked all day.  At some point I had a meatless Cobb salad and a bagel, picked up a couple of packages, printed out some orders, and I got a lovely foot rub here at the home environment – one hour of pure unadulterated bliss.  I pulled some more DVDs to sell, maybe another fifty or sixty and today I will pull even more.  There are simply things out there that I will never EVER watch again, so off they will go.  I had several long telephonic conversations, an important e-mail letter was sent off, and finally I sat on my couch like so much fish and watched the horrid Rosemary’s Baby miniseries.

After that, I did some work on the computer, and then got the great news that this project for next summer has been green-lit.  I am very excited about it and will share details soon, but I can tell you it involves kids and musical theatre.

Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep, and then I have to write some liner notes, hopefully pick up some packages, eat, jog and do some errands and whatnot.  The rest of the week is more of the same sprinkled with some meetings and meals along the way, and probably seeing a show or two.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, hopefully pick up packages, eat, jog and relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: What is the single worst book to film adaptation you’ve ever seen – where the cretin writers totally mangle a book beyond recognition?  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I would suggest we pray for Rosemary’s Baby never to be remade again.

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