Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...President's performances these days are often subdued--seven weeks of stalling and refusing to explain his relationship with Monica Lewinsky seem to have shorted out his emotional connection to America. And now comes Travolta in Primary Colors, the Mike Nichols movie based on Joe Klein's novel about the 1992 campaign, with a portrayal so deeply and exuberantly Clintonian that it reminds you of everything you've ever loved and hated about the man. Blurring fact and fiction is old hat by now, but the hat has never fit quite so snugly. Imagine Alan J. Pakula...
...importuning drivers for last-minute votes like a squeegee guy cadging a dollar. To hell with the odds; this man won't give up. He will keep asking, charming, wheedling, until people finally collapse under his will to be loved. As a character says in the Joe Klein novel on which the film is based, "The heart is a lonely hustler." But hustling--hey, that's politics. That's entertainment...
...Klein's book would be a movie only in his head. The directors on his list, including Nichols, passed. Then the buzz got booming, and a fierce bidding commenced. Each suitor was allotted 30 minutes for a pitch. Nichols smartly said, "The reason I want to film the novel is that it's about honor, and that's the thing very good movies are about." That speech, and $1.5 million, put him over. Universal later reimbursed him for the rights (plus an almost equal amount tied to various bonus incentives) and also spent a reported $5 million...
These thinnish, arc-less characterizations--shocking from the creator of Song of Solomon's galvanizing Milkman and Pilate, or Beloved's triumvirate of mother and daughters--detract from the novel as a whole. Again, though, this ailment of the text proved ironically rewarding for the Faneuil Hall audience, who could follow the movements of plot and character easily without the impediments of tortuous internal conflicts or irreducible psychic complexities...
Even with his impressive, ground-breaking body of work, Haden continues to play and innovate, and is widely considered one of the top acoustic bassists in jazz today. Though the Montreal Tapes, with their relatively standard arrangements, do not push the envelope of jazz like Haden's most novel work, they display his solid and adaptable bass style in abundance...