Good one, thanks dandelion.

Note that this is one of many interviews where Ray says Truffaut did a good job, and F451 is a good film. In his later years, he kept saying that Truffaut had ruined it!

Phil, I must say that I heard Ray discuss the Truffaut version of F451 several times over the years, and I never once heard him say that Truffaut had "ruined" the film. He usually said that Truffaut did a good job, that the final scenes of the Book People in the snowy forest were wonderful, and that Bernard Herrmann had written a beautiful score, but that he thought the film could have been even better. His main criticisms were that Truffaut had left out certain important portions of the book, especially those dealing with the mechanical hound, and that he did not think that Julie Christie was especially successful in playing the young Clarisse.

Alas, Richard, 'tis true. From a quick Google search, here is one example:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...c-novel_N.htm?csp=34

Thank, Phil. I must say that comment is far different from what I ever heard Ray say.

I think he started getting a bit cranky regarding the Truffaut film during the last five or six years of his life. A shame, but when you live that long I think you're entitled to be cranky.

The link isn't working for me?

It's working for me. Try again?

Now it's working, website must have been down when I tried.
Thanks!

8/3/2009 - date of this article!

We have wondered here from "long ago" if F451 as a classic movie presentation will ever have its match lit!?

Maybe we should fan the flames from this RB site in honor of Mr. Bradbury's lifetime of literary genius. What do you think phil, DS, jkt, Richard, et al!?

Fan the flames? Yes. But what does this mean?

How about a letter to an appropriate office expressing the concern of RB's most stalwart fan-base that the need of a modern F451 movie is long overdue!!

Does Mr. Darabont have intentions of ever getting this underway ...somehow!? (Or other names that have been raised when this topic gets us going.)

"Jump off the cliff and build the wings on the way down."

Could Ray have been getting cranky to promote a new version, or the need for one?

In the very first letter Mr. Bradbury ever sent to me and my "wonderful students" (dated May 9, 1996), his opening comments included the following:
"I wish I could answer each of your notes to me personally, but my heavy schedule, trying to answer 200 or so letters per week plus finishing work on a new screenplay of FAHRENHEIT 451 for Mel Gibson, I am busy as all Hades."

Dandy, from all I have read since that time, I have felt an accurate F451 seemed "needed." The Gibson ownership (?) may be a labyrinth of its own. (I am not at all versed in the manner in which such rights are handled.)

quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
Could Ray have been getting cranky to promote a new version, or the need for one?

Yes, I think that is likely to be part of it. But I also think that in his later years he became harsher in his condemnation of John Huston and other directors/collaborators whose work he had once praised.