I was looking over the screenplay of Brokeback Mountain the other day, which was adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from E. Annie Proulx’s shattering short story, and I got to thinking what an overlooked writer McMurtry has been. Oh yes, he’s won the Pulitzer, and made writing about Texas and the modern west […]

 

First of all, for those of you not in the know, Christopher and His Kind was a book written in 1976 by Christopher Isherwood.  Isherwood wrote a number of books, including A Single Man,  Mr. Norris Changes Trains, but his most famous one was Goodbye to Berlin. This became, after several adaptations, the play and […]

One really has to hand it to Rupert Everett. Once touted as the next great British leading man, he came out of the closet and summarily watched a once very promising film career go down, if not in a torrent of flames, then at the very least, in a rank smouldering mess that resembled nothing […]

Young Man to Middle Aged Man: “You had content but no force.” Middle Aged Man to Young Man: “You had force but no content.” – the original epigraph to Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev’s novel of poetic realism is seen today as a recognized masterpiece in its theme of clashing generations. Unlike many masterpieces of […]

This autobiographical novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt was a national bestseller when it was first published back in 1976.  Immediately referred to as a female One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it became instantly popular but, unlike Ken Kesey’s book, it did not become an enduring classic. This is odd to understand, because re-reading it after […]