Word: comics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Calvin Trillin's 1977 comic novel Runestruck, the fictitious Maine coastal town of Berryville goes crazy when a stone with inscriptions that seem to be Nordic is unearthed there. Some townspeople want to cash in on the bonanza by doing such things as building a theme park and holding a festival. Others seek, in vain, to avoid exploitation. Chaos reigns as the citizens realize that Berryville is likely to become a national shrine: the site of the first Viking settlement in America. Last week real events in a small Maine community seemed on the verge of following those...
...legal aftermath. There are some giddy set pieces, most notably a gummed-up bubble gum factory robbery, but it is the intimate moments and throwaway wisecracks that pay off best. This is due in no small part to Friedkin's cast, which is full of idiosyncratic comic actors who delight in playing amiable lowlife slobs...
...brothers intent on complicating the plot, Prewitt cuts through the lethargy of the first scenes with an energetic and mischievious performance. Michael Bierer as the blustering, bureaucratic mayor Hebble Tyson leans toward exaggeration in comparison with other characters, but his haughty huffing and sorrowful snorting lend a badly needed comic touch to scenes which would otherwise fall flat...
Though some cinematic liberties are taken, the movie mostly follows the story line laid out in Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster's Comic books, starting 40 years...
...hysteria as he envisioned his project, his reputation and his bankbook being swallowed by some great blobbish bagel. "I was almost banging the knee of Dick, begging him to say something," he recalls. Finally Donner interjected that all the kids, including Brando's own, who had read the comic books would know that Superman's father was not a bagel. Brando admitted the logic of that and decided to play Jor-El as Marlon Brando...