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outlier -> RE: From Best Book to Worst Movie! (3/23/2008 9:52:33 AM)
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First, I want to thank everyone for their contributions and say that I look
forward to more. I promised to return with my contribution later so here it is.
I am no movie expert so this is, as many here are, a very personal choice.
A writer named E.K.Gann had several best sellers during the fifties and
early sixties. Probably best known for The High and The Mighty a book
that became a decent John Wayne movie. E.K.Gann actually was a retired
airline pilot. He also wrote Island In The Sky, which made it to the screen
relatively unscathed. But I think his best book was Fate Is The Hunter.
It is a series of autobiographical short stories in cronological order. It specifically
recounts his own list of personal close calls. All told as first person experiences.
He was a pilot from the era of the DC2's and DC3's through the war and then
up until the 4 engine propeller planes. Each chapter is one story, and each gives
time for musing and observations. Even though you know he survived each
episode the quality of his storytelling is such that you are there with him.
The fact that you know he lived them seems to make them more present,
more real, it intensifies the tension it does not negate it. From flying over
frozen wastes to flying over the Amazon, he takes you there.
Flying over the Amazon he gets up, goes behind the cockpit bulkhead to get a chart
and muses about the beauty of the charts and how practical things can also be aesthetic,
and thereby be better at both. I forgot this for years until I went to an exhibit of the
works from the National Living Treasures of Japan. There contemplating the baskets
wolven cloth and other seeming mundane items which were revered for their heritage
and quality I remembered that passage from the book. And then was drawn back to the
book to see it with more experienced eyes. And a renewed awarness of how much
richer life can be if/when you see the value of seeming everyday things very well done.
This musing is interrupted by the oil cap for the motor blowing off of the wing! He
immediately dives forward pushes the copilot aside and kills the motor before the
seized engine tears the wing off plunging them to their death. They turn around and
return to the airport on one motor. If he had not stopped by the window to
contemplate the beauty of this everyday item, he would not be alive.
The original cover was a raptor coming down talons extended.
Under the talons it said:
Run as fast as you will
Escape if you can
You are the quarry
Fate Is The Hunter
The dedication was to a list of "Comrades with wings folded forever" A special book.
Hollywood immediately knew what was wrong with this best seller. No woman for the
pilot. So they kept the title, threw out the meaning and value and turned it into a board room melodrama. Now an airline has had a crash. An airline executive is convienced of his buddy's, the dead pilot's innocence. He risks his career to protect the reputation of the ever faithful Jack Savage (not kidding). He is aided by the only survivor, the love
interest, the stewardess. Enough said.
Thanks again to everyone for your contributions.
I now have some new books to reconsider.
Outlier
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