Based on the book.

[osaraba]

A quick thing, before crashing...

So I started reading Hard Core Logo, the book by Michael Turner (on which the movie is based), this morning as I left the house. The format is more a collection of poetry and journal entries rather than in "novel" form. So I'd gotten more than halfway done with the book by the time I got to my desk at 9:30am. Finished up the rest during lunchtime.



These are definitely rambling thoughts I'm typing mostly as I think, so please excuse their disorder.


It was an interesting read, but mostly for comparison to the movie. I was trying to figure out earlier -- if I'd read the book before watching the movie, how might my impressions have differed? I'm not really sure they would have -- the characters in the movie are much stronger than those of the book. There are some distinct differences -- Joe's complete and utter lack of political-mindedness in the movie, for example, as opposed to his tree-hugger tendencies in the book. But we already knew how Hugh Dillon completely made Joe Dick his own. John Pyper-Ferguson's addition of John's schizophrenia made his character much more chaotic, and dynamic. I guess I felt that book!Billy was just kind of a scaled-down version of movie!Billy. Of them all, I think Billy may have stayed the most true to character in the transition from book to movie, even if some of the details were changed.

Book!Joe. He surprised me. Book!Joe is almost a complete non-entity in comparison to movie!Joe. Joe's the main character; everything revolves around him. He's like a magnet whose pull the others can't resist. Even if they know better. This is the same in both. But movie!Joe that has all these plans and thoughts and feelings -- he wears them on his sleeve, but they're not any less complex for being out in the open. Book!Joe doesn't seem to react to a whole lot. There just seems to be a dearth of the passion I associate with movie!Joe.

It seems that book!Joe certainly hasn't changed much since the band has been apart, and that's true for movie!Joe as well. I can see where some lines, quotes, thoughts survived the transition from the book to the screenplay. But book!Joe seems much more passive than movie!Joe -- and again, is that all Hugh Dillon's doing?

Looking up some information about the book, I got the impression that it's used in high school and/or college courses quite often. I really wonder, what is being taught that uses this book as its text? And that's not meant to be a disparaging remark.

Another question that came to mind -- what did Bruce McDonald envision when he read this book and thought he'd like to make it into a movie? Was it only the road-trip/band-tour aspect that excited him? I know he didn't originally envision the documentary style, and from the 5 million rewrites that Noel did, I know the story concept was no where near the final product. How do you see something in the bare bones that is this book and end up with that movie?!

Comments

[surya74.livejournal.com]

I think I remember somebody pointing out that in the book Billy was abused as a kid. Is that true?

[osaraba]

Hmm, I didn't get that from the book. In fact, there's a part when John is recounting a memory where they drop Billy off at his parents' place, the band joins them for a turkey dinner, and Billy plays this acoustic guitar for his nieces and nephews. It's John's version of how Billy got the scar on his hand -- the guitar blows up because it's "unacclimatized to our weather"... I suppose one could make a case for the scene being a metaphor, but I think it would be reaching a bit far.

There is a part when Pipe reveals that Joe comes from money, John & Billy are middle class (comfortable enough to have bought equipment), but that Pipe basically had to stick with the original drum kit his parents bought.