20160120

THE SUN ALSO RISES

Ernest Hemingway's first novel, 'The Sun Also Rises', first published in 1926, talked about a group of American expatriates (Gertrude Stein called them "the lost generation") living in Paris after World War I. In the 1992 book, 'Hadley', Gioia Diliberto argued, "When he wrote about the passions of Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes; of Catherine Barkley and Lieutenant Henry; of Maria and Robert Jordan, he was celebrating the power of true love."

As reported, Hadley Richardson met Ernest Hemingway in Chicago in October 1920. They married in September 1921 and divorced in 1927. However "despite the image 'the Paris years' might project, Hadley and Ernest's life in France was not luxurious. They lived in modest quarters existing mostly off the interest from some mutual funds Hadley owned."

Mariel Hemingway told the 'Los Angeles Times – Washington Post News Service' in 1982, "I don't have memories, but I do have an impression (of 'Papa' Hemingway). I see him as strong, powerful, but self-destructive, too. I get an eerie feeling. He's somebody I respect immensely and whose work I enjoy so much – and whom I'm related to. I hope in my work I can be as simple and direct."

The 'Toledo Blade' editorial noted in 1999, "No American writer has more dominated the 20th century than Ernest Hemingway – partly on the power of his writing, partly on the strength of his self-constructed macho image of big-game hunting, fishing, running with the bulls, and hard drinking. To many, his life rose above his written works as he rode the currents of the times. He was an ambulance driver in World War I, an expatriate American in Paris in the 1920s, a foe of facism in the 1930s, and a war correspondent in World War II. A generation of writers were influenced by Hemingway's prose. The crass imitators are now long forgotten, but thoughtful authors understand that the spare, noun-and-verb writing style that Hemingway employed are at the heart of good writing."

'The Sun Also Rises' was made into a motion picture in 1957 budgeted at $5 million. The film was shot on location in Pamplona, Paris, Biarritz and Mexico. "One generation passes away and another generation comes but the Earth abides forever. The sun also rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where he arose," the narrator told the audience.

In 1984, 'The Sun Also Rises' was made into a television mini-series. However the mini-series departed from the 1926 novel by trying to "fill in the gaps and eliminated the ambiguities from a novel that works precisely because it leaves things unsaid." Marc Gunther of 'Hartford Courant' pointed out, "The novel captures the spirit of the Jazz Age and the desperate lives of the veterans and expatriates who found themselves cast astray after the war."

Screenwriter Robert L. Joseph told the Associated Press, "When Hemingway wrote the book, the streets of Europe were littered with those wounded in World War I, and he felt he did not have to call attention to that in any graphic sense. The anti-war feeling in the book is tacit. I felt it had to be expanded. You can't approach it as changing the book, rather as adapting it to another medium. When you take something like 'The Sun Also Rises' really an impressionistic novella, you can't simply photograph a work like that."

Jane Seymour observed, "They (in 1957) didn't film the movie in Spain. The book gave you a taste of Spain like no other. I didn't know the character when I started. I was frightened. I found the character in Paris. Paris has that romantic, living-life-to-the-fullest feeling. It has style and atmosphere. I couldn't have gotten that same feeling if we'd done it in Los Angeles. I was dancing on the tables in Paris in a real Chanel dress."

On reflection, Robert Joseph remarked, "The film is the most literal thing there is. In a book you can go back and fondle it and re-read and surmise. When the film passes through that projector or cassette, it's over. Everything I did was an attempt to dig deeper into the heart of the book. Sometimes the worst thing you can do to a novelist is to reproduce the novel literally. Faithfulness is a pulpit word."

The Associated Press explained in 1984, "Trial and error has shown that audiences are most likely to be drawn by stories with a broad, historical sweep or those with a generous portion of sex, intrigue and action. But no matter what the story, the most compelling requirement is strong characters the audience will either love or hate (or love and hate at the same time)."

Ken Newton of the 'Bulletin Journal' spoke to Jerry McNeely of 20th Century Fox discovered, "Television movies are not dreamed up one week and put on the screen the next. Because of the money and high stakes involved, the time it takes between the formulation of an idea and the actual presentation is sometimes years. It involves selling a story concept to network executives, writing and usually re-writing the script, keeping the production on time and on budget, promoting the eventual product – and it still sometimes takes luck. Long periods of waiting for decisions to be made are intertwined with intense periods of creative effort."

Jerry McNeely maintained, "The rating system is the only criteria used in deciding whether a production is made . . . It doesn't make any sense to do just one thing (one pilot) at a time. No network executive said, 'The American people need a re-work of a Hemingway classic'. That conversation, I guarantee, never took place." Joan Hanauer of 'United Press International' clarified in 1985, "What comprises a mini-series is a matter of definition – some run as 2-part movies, some are as long as a full season series – but the simplest definition is a finite dramatic presentation that runs more than one night. Most of them are based on books."

Susan Baerwald of NBC lamented, "Would I be reluctant to do another literary adaptation? At the moment (back in December 1984), you bet. I'm in the business to make audiences. I don't think anything we did could have made a difference. The audience didn't come in and then leave. They didn't say, 'Gee, I wanted to see this and isn't it awful.' It's a clear sign there isn't an audience for this kind of program in our commercial television viewership . . . We tried to do some contemporary things, like casting Jane Seymour, but the audience didn't come. Now, ask me why the audience didn't come. They came to 'A Streetcar Named Desire' with Ann-Margret. I can't answer that.''

Part One of 'The Sun Also Rises' attracted a 20% share and a rating of 13.2% of the 84.9 million television viewing households. Susan contributed the lackluster ratings of 'The Sun Also Rises' to being "a classic, it has an episodic nature, it is more a portrait of an era than a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Even though its era has a relation to ours, it is heavy stuff.'' 

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