Alan Rudolph should get "a hammer and the inclination" and live out George Lucas' reported fantasy of what he'd like to do to any copies of the "Star Wars Christmas Special" with this film. It is a point by point rape of the source material. Despite being peopled by actors that I am simply happy to see getting paid (among them Owen Wilson and Chip Zien in small parts, in the larger there are Glenne Headley and Barbara Hershey), not to mention Albert Finney who has the potential to fulfill everything one could hope for in a Kilgore Trout, this film calls to mind Kubrick's film of "The Shining" in making me ask: "If you didn't want to make a film of this book why didn't you just write your own script?" The only example I'll give is that in the book, Dwayne Hoover's son is a lounge pianist and "notorious homosexual" who calls himself "Bunny." In the movie he is a "sound stylist" whose name is due to the bunnies on everything he owns. This and other incredibly pointless and deleterious changes call to mind the little things like Kubrick changing the number of the hotel room with the lady in the bath in "Shining." Why? No idea. Alan Rudolph, a sort of Altman protege, has been good before. I greatly admire "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle," particularly because of its sometime aimless and anecdotal quality (it is another of those "who's who" films of people I'm glad are being paid, among them Wallace Shawn, Martha Plimpton and Campbell Scott). Reading the book, one might wonder to oneself: "My, race is such a prevalent issue in this book and addressed in such a way that is might cause offence or controversy in a widely viewed film version; I wonder how an astute and sensitive director like Mr. Rudolph would handle it?" If you have asked yourself that very question, though perhaps not in those words, the solution is that he ignores it entirely. And for good measure he turns the novel's main black character, Wayne Hoobler (played by Omar Epps), into a psychotic, mugging cartoon.
Nick Nolte's involvement is a puzzle. He starred for Rudolph before in "Afterglow," but he was also in one of the two faithful film adaptations of Vonnegut, Keith Gordon's excellent "Mother Night." I don't know. But file this one next to the Jerry Lewis "Slapstick of Another Kind." I can only think that Vonnegut was simply too benevolent to consider himself as having been screwed on this film (he's even in it, for the blink of an eye, and during one of the terrible invented scenes). I hope to god that when they finally get around to making a movie of "Cat's Cradle" that this isn't what becomes of it. Just shoot the book and be creative in the adaptation of text into dialogue in setting without getting all "creative" with it, unless your film is more of a response to the material than an adaptation of it like Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch." It's not that hard.
Nick Nolte's involvement is a puzzle. He starred for Rudolph before in "Afterglow," but he was also in one of the two faithful film adaptations of Vonnegut, Keith Gordon's excellent "Mother Night." I don't know. But file this one next to the Jerry Lewis "Slapstick of Another Kind." I can only think that Vonnegut was simply too benevolent to consider himself as having been screwed on this film (he's even in it, for the blink of an eye, and during one of the terrible invented scenes). I hope to god that when they finally get around to making a movie of "Cat's Cradle" that this isn't what becomes of it. Just shoot the book and be creative in the adaptation of text into dialogue in setting without getting all "creative" with it, unless your film is more of a response to the material than an adaptation of it like Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch." It's not that hard.