![]() ![]() "I didn't think he had a rat's ass chance of making the movie. "And I gave him the option right there," says Dubus. Perelman told Dubus that he would never hurt his "baby," that he would make a movie from the book he wrote, with no compromises. "'But they're gonna take your baby, they're gonna chain it to the radiator, they're gonna rape and kill it.' Well, that got my attention." "He said, 'You may get some big Hollywood person to give you a lot of money to make this movie,'" recalls Dubus. He had never made a movie, but my agent said I oughta talk to him."Ī meeting was set up, and Perelman said all the right things. Then this guy Vadim Perelman was forwarded to me by my agent. ![]() "People large and small, known and unknown. ![]() "This book got over 140 calls from the film community, five or six a week, for 18 months," says Dubus, whose book received a huge boost when it was selected by Winfrey. He somehow knew it was all right to let a first-time filmmaker be responsible for the adaptation. The movie opened at area theaters last week.ĭubus, son of acclaimed short story writer Andre Dubus, may have no training as a teacher, writer or house builder, but he trusts his gut. Well, that's not entirely true: He did build "House of Sand and Fog," the Oprah Winfrey book club selection that was adapted for the screen. "Now I'm building a house in Newburyport," he says, "and I've never built a house." He's a college teacher, but he doesn't know the first thing about teaching. He's a novelist, but he's never taken a writing course. She also blogs at Snapshot.Andre Dubus III has been faking his way through life for as long as he can remember. Though she loves books, she has to admit that there is something about watching a story unfold on screen. ![]() Jennifer Donovan doesn’t get to the movies as often as she’d like. But if you aren’t afraid of a real thought-provoking drama, I recommend this book or movie (The movie is rated R, probably because of the mature grim theme as well as some infrequent use of strong language, although it’s nothing compared to the language in some other movies, and I think that the book content is actually more R-rated because of quite a few sexual situations). It’s very serious as people make choices borne from the deperation of hopelessness. I put “enjoyable” in quotes, because this movie is good - very good - but it’s not a laugh riot. It was no less “enjoyable” the second time around, and even flaunting my rule of waiting at least 6 months before viewing a screen adaptation of a novel I’ve read. Since it had been years since I had seen the movie, I didn’t remember details, I watched it again after reading the book. The book was different from the movie (of course!), but very true to story’s theme. Knowing how the story resolved from the movie, I read it carefully and cautiously, watching to see what would happen. Since I’d been curious about this book, and since Mahbod Seraji had done such a good job of painting life in 1970’s Tehran, I took his recommendation to heart, and finally read the book. When I reviewed Rooftops of Tehran ( join us for our bookclub discussing this title on October 6), I mentioned that the author had given some suggested reading about the Iranian-American experience in America, and that The House of Sand and Fog was on his list. The author’s biography mentioned that she was related to Andre Dubus III, the author of The House of Sand and Fog, and from that time on, I’d been curious to read something by this man. I didn’t really know that it was a book (or maybe I knew but did not care), until I read The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen about a year ago. They did not overact at all, which is sometimes difficult in such a dramatic movie. Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley were fabulous. When the movie ended, I just sat there, not knowing quite how to process what I had seen. It was such an intense movie, painting the ugly side of human nature or perhaps the human side of human nature: self-preservation and protection, selfishness, stubbornness, pride, deceit. Years ago I watched the movie The House of Sand and Fog on DVD. ![]()
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