{"id":2702,"date":"2016-04-25T07:41:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T06:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.com\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2016-04-25T07:41:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T06:41:38","slug":"when-hollywood-goes-to-waugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/when-hollywood-goes-to-waugh\/","title":{"rendered":"When Hollywood goes to Waugh"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the run up to this year\u2019s \u2018From Page to Screen\u2019 Film Festival Ines Cavill<\/strong> has been speaking to Alexander Waugh about his grandfather Evelyn\u2019s relationship with film.<\/p>\n

\u2018His strongest tastes were negative.\u00a0 He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz\u2014anything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime.\u2019 \u2018The Ordeals of Gilbert Pinfold\u2019 by Evelyn Waugh 1957.<\/p>\n

Might film have also been added to that list of hates by Waugh? Not according to his grandson, Alexander, who says cinema was more adored than abhorred by his grandfather. Alexander has inherited the writing gene passed from Evelyn to his \u2018Papa\u2019 Auberon. When his father died Alex wrote a family autobiography Fathers and Sons (2004) and he has since edited the 42 volume Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (Oxford University Press) that include diaries detailing this lifelong love of the cinema. Alexander says \u201cProbably his most remarkable outing was to see the Third Man with Graham Greene in Stroud in 1949. The 1920s were the peak of his film obsession when he had a twice daily habit,\u00a0 he was cross when the talkies came in\u2014he felt the art form was diminished with the end of silent movies\u2014but he still went to the cinema every week till his dying day.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his later years Evelyn Waugh would cultivate a public persona as an old-fashioned and snobbish fogey that belies this love of film and his own early creative innovativeness. As Alexander describes it \u201cin the 1930s he was a figurehead of the younger generation. He stood for all that was fast, brash, witty and loud, but after the war he transformed himself into an old-fashioned clown not unlike his father. He wore outmoded and outlandish suits and hats, insisted on changing for dinner, surrounded himself with Victorian furniture and bric-a-brac and, like his father, appeared to the world as an arcane eccentric from a Victorian novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vile Bodies (1930) was Waugh\u2019s second and most modern novel. Heavily influenced by cinema it features fragmented speech, rapid scene changes and most of the dialogue takes place on the telephone (its modernist credentials would even continue to be cemented by David Bowie when he gave it credit for influencing the composition of the song \u2018Aladdin Sane\u2019). In turn Waugh\u2019s sharp dialogue and gripping storytelling have always attracted filmmakers\u2014in 2003 Stephen Fry would adapt Vile Bodies into a film using the book\u2019s original title of \u2018Bright Young Things\u2019.<\/p>\n

Alexander says his grandfather wrote with a filmic sensibility, with that critical intention to \u201cshow, not tell\u201d.<\/p>\n

Evelyn Waugh would also be drawn in return to the film world, but most often he was frustrated by the results, as Alexander understands it \u201cthere was a financial adavantage to film but he wanted control, he didn\u2019t want the dialogue to be replaced or invented\u201d. In 1947 Waugh went to Hollywood\u2019s \u201cCalifornian savages\u201d to look over MGM\u2019s proposal to adapt his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited. He wrote at the time \u201cI should not think six Americans will understand it\u201d though he enjoyed meeting Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney (\u201cthe two artists of the place\u201d).<\/p>\n

Memos released from that period reveal his engagement with film structure \u201c..there must be an impediment to the marriage of Julia and Charles (in order to avoid) a banal Hollywood ending. I regard it as essential that after having led a life of sin Julia should not be immediately rewarded with conventional happiness. She has a great debt to pay and we are left with her paying it\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the project collapsed with MGM daunted by directions such as \u201cThe themes are theological..it is the first time that an attempt will have been made to introduce them to the screen, and they are antithetical to much of the current philosophy of Hollywood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Brideshead would wait till 1981 for its first screen incarnation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY\u201d (author\u2019s note from Decline and Fall 1928).<\/p>\n

Waugh\u2019s descendants wholly approved of that 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited partly because it had the scope to reflect the comic elements of the original book.\u00a0 \u201cWe all liked the Granada series because it managed to retain the humour of the book, its essence of fun and laughter\u201d says Alexander. A multi-part series could do this and the epic story was extended from six parts to eleven by up-and-coming director Charles Sturbridge (notably juggling his star Jeremy Irons\u2019 simultaneous shoot in Lyme Regis for The French Lieutenant\u2019s Woman). Brideshead would win best drama series awards from BAFTA, the Emmys, the Golden Globes and is still hailed as one of the greatest television drama series ever made\u2014it was placed second in the Guardian\u2019s recent top 50. Brideshead was a forerunner of the modern era of box sets and highest quality small screen drama\u2014would Waugh have embraced their capacity to retain variety of tone, characters and dialogue? Importantly for Alexander the series overcame what he believes is a central problem for adapting Waugh\u2019s work: \u201cThe prose is beautiful but you are often looking at the world through one person\u2019s eyes which works on the page but not screen\u2014there that character can seem strangely detached. The skill in adaptation is to make all the main characters central not just one\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although no immediate film resulted from that original post-war trip to Hollywood it did enable Waugh to create the novel The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948), inspired by a fascinating tour of a cemetery. \u201cI found a deep mine of literary gold in Forest Lawn and the work of the morticians and intend to get to work immediately on a novelette staged there.\u201d The result was a dark comedy about the Los Angeles funeral business, British expatriate community and film industry that would be adapted for the cinema in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

According to Alexander this would be Evelyn\u2019s last and worst experience of the adaptation of his work for screen. The satirical film was released in 1965 by MGM, its poster screaming: \u2018The Motion Picture with something to offend everyone!\u2019. Waugh refused to see it, more thwarted than offended\u2014\u201che had originally sold the rights to Luis Bunuel who wrote a brilliant script and was going to make it with Alec Guinness\u201d.<\/p>\n

A greater shame then that he did not live to see Charles Sturridge\u2019s big screen adaptation of A Handful of Dust (1988), Alexander holds it up as \u201cthe best Waugh adaptation, an excellent film and beautifully done\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Loved One and A Handful of Dust will be screened at the Bridport Arts Centre at 2pm and 5pm on Sunday April 3, one week before the 50th anniversary of Evelyn Waugh\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Alexander is bringing related archive materials to the event and will be in conversation after the second screening with the festival curator, Charles Sturridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the run up to this year\u2019s \u2018From Page to Screen\u2019 Film Festival Ines Cavill has been speaking to Alexander Waugh about his grandfather Evelyn\u2019s relationship with film. \u2018His strongest tastes were negative.\u00a0 He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz\u2014anything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime.\u2019 \u2018The Ordeals of Gilbert Pinfold\u2019 by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts","tag-ines-cavill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}