Word: pilgrimate
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...being a middleman, can't get very far with ideas. He doesn't link up Dresden with any inherent political or social conflicts it symbolizes, implying instead a state of moral squalor necessary for such a catastrophe to have taken place. And his vision is only that of Bill Pilgrim, a stupid if sweethearted protagonist, bumbling between the Ilium upper-middle-class of Vonnegut's present, the Dresden holocaust, and the planet Tralfamadore, where he cavorts with a nubile Hollywood starlet in a fantasy-world designed to protect him from being fatally bound to his depressing earthliness...
Vonnegut might yet recognize the underlying unrelieved fatalism of his Slaughterhouse view, and may move beyond it having admitted the limits of his hero. So may many of the high school students and undergrads who think Billy a traditional pilgrim moving to some new point of enlightenment, and not a sad comment on the heroic temper of our times...
...fashion, even clearing up some narrative mess, making the whole more consistent and straightforward and thus more powerful. What he and a skilled novice screenwriter (Stephen Geller) have done is combine some of the Vonnegut reactions the author presents intermittently in his book with a now slightly-more-articulate Pilgrim. They have also cut away any digressive interludes with such past Vonnegut characters as do-gooder Eliot Rosewater and sci-fi prophet Kilgore Trout, and built up interplay between two characters more central to the heart of Slaughterhouse itself: Edgar Derby, Billy's best friend, substitute father figure and moral...
MICHAEL SACKS is a perfect Pilgrim--an ordinary Joe, likeable to the core, without an ounce of bellicosity in him, wanting to fill a need for people in more ways than being an optometrist. He has an unsynched walk and awry grin before Dresden, but ages believably into a self-controlled human shell who finds outlet for his bank of sympathy by raising a dog named Spot. He is ably supported by Eugene Roche's Derby, a solid man who's based his life on Christian principle (though not aware of its shaky national foundation), moving with that authority even...
Slaughterhouse Five. Easier to accept than the book, because here Billy Pilgrim is the whole story. Uniformly well-acted, and though it won't shoot your pecker off, it won't leave you untouched. CHERI III THEATER...