by John Irving
should be wearing his operating gown. An acceptable second choice for the poster would be Larch sniffing ether.
Now that I’ve seen the movie (about twenty times), I think that Tobey Maguire’s face has in it both the abandonment and the stubbornness of Homer Wells. Tobey’s face, all by itself, might make appropriate poster material, too. My point to Richard is, not Homer and Candy’s love affair—
anything but that. (And not Candy all by herself, either.)
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Ultimately this is a marketing matter. I had script approval, director approval, cast approval—rights not usually conferred to the novelist and screenwriter. Miramax will market the film.What ends up on the movie poster is advertising; I don’t have advertising approval. I hope that Miramax will confront the abortion issue head-on, meaning that the marketing mavens won’t try to put some
sugar-coated spin on what the principal story is. To see The Cider House Rules advertised as a love story would be disappointing to me, and to anyone who has read the book.
Richard teases me in kind. I didn’t make an appearance on the set when they were shooting the actual Maine locations, the coastal scenes and the lobster pound. Richard told me they got a lot of fabulous poster shots there—“naked embrace with heartfelt longing, raw sex, and related moments,” was how Richard put it. (Virtually the only stuff they were shooting in Maine was the Homer-Candy affair.)
I deliberately avoided seeing any of the love scenes between Homer and Candy. I’d written them; I even liked them. But my nervousness about that relationship being blown out of proportion, in relation to the whole, was extreme. (I should say, is extreme.) The only Homer-Candy scene I watched them shoot was when they are having one of their arguments, when the relationship is breaking up—
that and when Major Winslow gives them both the news about Wally’s having been shot down, and Wally’s subse-
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quent disease and its effects. In short, the end of the love affair, although Homer doesn’t know it at the time.
My notes to Lasse upon seeing his first rough cut of the film are also indicative of how much I didn’t want the Homer-Candy relationship to overshadow Dr. Larch’s and Mr. Rose’s roles in the development of Homer’s character.
While I told Lasse that I mourned the loss of Dorothy’s uterus, for reasons I’ve already delineated, and while I argued for reinstating the information that although Wally is paralyzed from the waist down, he can still have a normal sex life (and produce children), all the rest of my notes to Lasse concerned what could be cut.
Of those notes, only two suggested cuts did not concern the Homer-Candy relationship. I felt that the scene of Mary Agnes at the train station, when Buster asks Homer if he ever thinks about meeting his parents, and the scene when the girls at the orphanage are discussing Hazel’s adoption—the gist of which is that the would-be parents should be forced to take the older children first, which they never do—could both be eliminated. (In his second cut of the film, Lasse shortened the scene at the train station and deleted the girls’ discussion of Hazel’s adoption.) I loved the first cut of the film. It was two hours, seventeen minutes, and forty seconds long. The length was not a problem for me. Virtually all my notes to Lasse, on the first cut, were as follows.
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Reduce Candy’s dialogue while she is getting in the car to leave the orphanage after her abortion. Lose Wally’s lobster joke—to Candy and Homer, when they are leaving
St. Cloud’s. Trim the interplay between Homer and
Candy and Wally on the beach. Trim Candy’s dialogue, and especially her degree of sexual playfulness—she’s just had an abortion!—when she is talking to Homer and
Wally at the apple mart. Shorten the leisurely shot of Homer, Candy, and Wally strolling through the orchard meadow. Soften Candy’s laughter during Homer’s first experience of eating lobster. Trim Homer’s love scene with Candy, and/or the prelude to it on the beach—it goes on too long! Similarly, when Homer and Candy are naked in the cider house—and he says to her, “To look at you, it hurts”—cut away from the scene before Candy
says, “Come here,” and we see her breasts. (At least lose the “Come here.”) Cut Homer and Candy playing pick-up-sticks, because it has the exact same tone as the scene when Homer gets nipped by the lobster and Candy
laughs; we don’t need both of them. In that vein, when Candy and Homer are sitting on the dock, after they’ve heard the news about Wally’s paralysis, lose Candy’s repetition of wanting to do nothing (“I just want to sit here and do nothing”). After Homer performs the abortion on
Rose Rose, lose most of the dialogue between Homer and Candy at the drive-in; we know it’s a good-bye scene just by watching them, but to hear so much of their dialogue
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makes the later scene at the apple mart seem redundant, or it gives us two good-bye scenes. Finally, when Homer gets that one glimpse of Wally coming home from the war in a wheelchair, reduce the eye contact between Homer and Candy—they’ve already said good-bye to each other.
Those were my criticisms of the first cut of the film I saw. They’re small moments—delete the dialogue, omit a look, trim this, reduce that, cut a little—and they are principally moments between Homer and Candy, or
among Homer and Candy and Wally.
In essence, what I said to Lasse was: Lose what you can of the love affair; keep everything else. Don’t lose (I also told him) a single moment with Dr. Larch; don’t lose a moment with Mr. Rose, or with any of the other apple pickers, either. In Lasse’s second pass through the film, only one small scene with Mr. Rose and the pickers was cut—it was an in-troductory scene—and not a moment with Dr. Larch was lost. Lasse acted on many of my suggestions to reduce Candy’s role in the film; he still kept more of her than I would have. But only a little more—a look here, a line there.
Don’t get me wrong. My instinct to lose what we could of Candy doesn’t mean that I disliked Charlize Theron’s performance—Charlize was fine. She was all that she was supposed to be; indeed, to Homer, Candy is overwhelming. But the balance of The Cider House Rules belongs to Dr. Larch
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and Mr. Rose. Homer may fall in love with Candy—who
wouldn’t?—but Dr. Larch and Mr. Rose alter the course of his life. Dr. Larch and Mr. Rose are Homer’s destiny.
To get back to the movie poster . . . Mr. Rose has more reason for being there than Candy does. While I would prefer Larch being on that poster, or simply that orphaned expression on Homer’s face—or Homer with the other
orphans—I could also be happy with Mr. Rose. But, as of this writing, I’ve not seen the movie poster. Candy may end up there. It wouldn’t be a tragedy, and I wouldn’t be surprised.
In the book-publishing business, I submit a novel to my editor. He suggests cuts, additions, line edits—none of which I am forced to accept. The copy editor tells me what’s correct to say by noting where I may have deviated from accepted usage, but I’m permitted to remain incorrect if I want to. Then there’s the catalog copy, and the front-flap and back-flap copy—over all of which I am given the last word.
I have approval of the jacket art, too. Of course there was an apple on the jacket of The Cider House Rules, and an armadillo on what looked like a gravestone on the jacket of A Prayer for Owen Meany.With the artist’s considerable help (the same artist in all these cases)
, I designed the sink with the elephant-tusk faucets on A Son of the Circus and the empty picture hook against a bare wall on A Widow for One Year.
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What I’m saying is, it’s entirely possible that Miramax will get it right; they may well market The Cider House Rules both brilliantly and accurately. But, as a novelist, I am involved in every aspect of the book-publishing process—
better said, I’m as involved as I want to be. I even have approval of the ads. This is not the case with the film of The Cider House Rules, over which—for thirteen, going on fourteen years—I have had almost total creative approval.
Yet how the film will be marketed, which to a large extent means how it is sold to audiences, is out of my hands.
Imagine writing a novel and having someone else, without your approval, design the jacket. But that’s how it is in the movie business. It’s a waste of time to whine about it.
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f, as I’ve said, “what people look like truly matters”—in a movie, I mean—the person whose looks mean the
Imost in TheCiderHouseRules is Mr.Rose.I think it is the most difficult role in the film; beginning with how he looks, Mr. Rose has to be perfect. He controls the picking crew with seeming charm—actually, by the threat of violence. He has sex with his daughter, he gets her pregnant; yet he must remain, throughout, a sympathetic character.
When his daughter stabs him, Mr. Rose allows himself to bleed to death so that she can get away.
American film culture is full of sympathetic villains, but they are not fathers who have sex with their children. Even if, in the end, Mr. Rose is heroic—he sacrifices himself to save his daughter—it is a role that requires great courage and confidence in the actor who accepts it.
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I’d had the advantage of seeing Delroy Lindo read the part of Mr. Rose in that long-ago reading of the script in Paul Newman’s living room; both Phillip Borsos and I thought that Delroy was terrific.The passage of time has only improved his appearance; he is still lean, but he has more history in his face, more sympathy.
Speaking to his suspicious picking crew about the
prospect of Homer sleeping in the cider house with the black migrants, Mr. Rose says: “I guess we makin’
history . . . havin’ him stay with us!” Mr. Rose charms Homer. (For a while, he charms us all.)
“This here sensitive-lookin’ fella is Muddy,” Mr. Rose says to Homer. “The less said about that fella, the better.”
Muddy wasn’t always “sensitive-lookin’”; in earlier drafts of the screenplay, he was huge and menacing. But Richard was so excited by his and Lasse’s attraction to K. Todd Freeman as Muddy that I revised Muddy to suit the actor.
Kenny Freeman is small and slight. This better suited Muddy’s cleverness, because—after Mr. Rose—Muddy is
the cleverest of the pickers, and Kenny Freeman is a mar-velous actor.
Thus I made Peaches, who used to be small, big. He is played by Heavy D, who is big but gentle. Peaches is from Georgia, where Mr. Rose met him picking peaches. “He’s still better with peaches than he is with apples,” Mr. Rose tells Homer.
Lonnie R. Farmer, wise and reserved, is Hero—
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“ ’cause he was a hero of some kind or other once,” is all that Mr. Rose will say. Hero, who does nothing, has to look like he could and would do something . . . if he had to. All of them must have a level of mystery—not the least being Jack (Evan Dexter Parke), who is just plain scary. “Jack here is new,” Mr. Rose warns Homer, implying that we don’t know enough about Jack.
We never will. Jack pulls a knife on Mr. Rose; while this is foolish, we don’t see Mr. Rose hurt him—Mr. Rose just slashes Jack’s clothes. Mr. Rose lets Jack know that he could have hurt him. But Jack doesn’t return with the pickers for the second harvest.
“He just wasn’t up for the trip,” Muddy says evasively.
“That Jack just never knew what his business was,” Mr.
Rose adds with some finality.
Later, when Muddy warns Homer not to mess with Mr.
Rose, he says, “You don’t wanna end up like Jack!” Lasse cut that line in his first edit; it is part of the scene where Muddy gives Homer his knife and tells him to give it to Rose Rose. She will kill her father with it. But Lasse liked it better that we don’t even know Rose Rose has a knife until after she’s stabbed her father; Lasse cut the whole scene. It was a very smart cut, I think—it enhances the aforementioned “level of mystery” about all the pickers and the migrant world.
Both the actual violence and the threat of violence in
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the migrant pickers’ lives are cloaked with secrecy, shaded with doubt. “This ain’t your business,” Rose Rose tells Homer, when he tries to help her with her unwanted pregnancy; yet earlier, when Homer is falling in love with Candy, Rose Rose warns him that he’s in trouble.
“I’m not in trouble,” Homer insists.
“Yeah, you is,” Rose Rose replies. “I know when people is in trouble, and you is.”
Second only to her father, how Rose Rose looks is critical. She was the last major character we cast. She needed to look like a young girl, but not too young; she needed to look like a young woman, but just barely. And given that she truly loves her father and hates him—given that she depends on him but that she also absolutely must leave him—whoever we found to play Rose Rose had to be able to act, too.
I remember talking to Delroy before Rose Rose’s part was cast. He was worried. If Rose Rose looked as young as we wanted her to look, what if she couldn’t act? If she could act, she would probably look too old. “It’s got to be someone with chops,” Delroy said.
We were lucky to find Erykah Badu; she had just the right girl-woman looks, and she had the “chops,” too. She and Delroy needed to demonstrate some completely natural father-daughter affection before their relationship darkened and became sexual. Delroy couldn’t do that alone.
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There are three especially powerful scenes that depend on a realistic father-daughter history. The first is when Homer performs the abortion on Rose Rose, with her
father’s assistance; the third (and last) is when Mr. Rose dies.
But it was the second of these father-daughter scenes—the actual reading of the cider house rules, following Rose Rose’s abortion—that gave Lasse and me fits.We once had the reading of the rules on the first night Homer stays in the cider house, more than a year before Rose Rose’s abortion; we also had Mr. Rose ask Homer to read them to him on his deathbed. (Mr. Rose hears the rules, reacts, then dies; it was an idiotic idea, and it was all mine.)
Delroy proposed the most interesting alternative—
namely, that, to everyone’s surprise, Mr. Rose knows how to read. He reads the rules (instead of Homer); all these years, Mr. Rose has just been pretending that he can’t read the rules. His daughter is, of course, indignant. “You can read!” she cries. “Damn you, Daddy! How come you never taught me?”
But Lasse worried that it made Mr. Rose seem too
cruel, and I was worried that, realistically—to be historically truthful to black migrant apple pickers from the South in the 1940s—Mr. Rose probably wouldn’t know how to read; that he’d be as illi
terate as his daughter and the others.
In the novel, Mr. Rose knows how to read and write,
but I had many scenes—and many, many pages—to make
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Mr. Rose unique, to make him special. There is something about a movie that follows a more documentary path.Yet Delroy’s point was well taken. In the book, Mr. Rose knows how to read.Why not in the movie?
Lasse and I simply liked it better that Homer was the only reader among them. In the novel, Homer never stays in the cider house; he never sleeps there. He sleeps in Wally’s bed-room in the Worthington house. But in the movie, Lasse and I had already decided not to let Homer get that close to Wally or Wally’s mother.We liked the idea of Homer living with the pickers. Hence Homer is the one to read the rules.
Whether Mr. Rose or Homer reads them, the principal
point is the same. The rules are irrelevant. The rules are pointless. “Don’t smoke in bed”—the pickers smoke all the time, everywhere. “Don’t go up on the roof at night.”
But the pickers go up on the roof when they want to; they always have.Where are they the morning after Rose Rose stabs her father and runs away? On the roof. Where are they when the police come to take Mr. Rose’s body away?
Watching from the roof. The rules don’t matter to
them—they’re not their rules.
In both versions of the scene, whether Homer or Mr.
Rose reads the rules, the scene comes down to this.
PEACHES
They’re outrageous, them rules!
MR. ROSE
Who live here in this cider house, Peaches?
Who grind them apples, who press that cider, who
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clean up the mess, and who just plain live here . . . just breathin’ in the vinegar? ( he pauses) Somebody who don’t live here made them rules. Them rules ain’t for us. We the ones who make up them rules. We makin’