Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor...anyone read the book or seen the movie?

[Heddi]

I first saw the movie when I was young...maybe 10 or so. My mom was a big fan of making me watch movies regardless of their age-appropriateness. She felt their importance in art or film or message was more important than seeing boobs or hearing "fuck".

I saw an uncut version of Caligula around 11 or 12 but I did have to avert my eyes during the more "blue" scenes. But even that wasn't a big deal.

anyways, back to Wise Blood.

Saw the movie when I was young, and for my age I *got* it. I understood the basic premise inasmuch as a 10 year old could. I was reminded of so much of my surroundings, growing up in SC, having all my family and near family live up the country. The small dying towns of a post-industrial south, where each graduating high school class was smaller and smaller....the little towns that are just about dried up and blown away now. Miles off the new interstate, boomed when the hi-way drove through. Signs on the side of the road "BE NICE! Or the Devil's Gonna Git 'Cha!"

I recognized Ms. O'Connor's south. And as I got older and read the book, and was able to understand more of the world and see more of the world, I was able to understand more and better Wise Blood, and the characters, and the struggles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_Blood_(film)

the trailer makes it like a wacky comedy...it's not. At its best a Dark Comedy. It's very serious, very dark.

And I think it deals with the issues of belief and faith, and the loss of belief and the loss of faith very well. And that starkness afterwards of "now what?"

[trotsky]

1. I had never heard of this.

Sounds like quite the story though.

[Heddi]

2. try to find it. It's a good movie

if you're a torrenter.....it's easy to find

[Nevernose]

3. I teach several of her short stories to high school students.

Many of them deal with rather esoteric themes of her Catholicism. It plays a big role in all of her writing, although frequently the only way to see it is to be "on the lookout" for it. IIRC, at one point she wanted to be a nun.

She is, however, one of my favorite writers, and the students really like her, too -- even the ones that couldn't find the South on a map. I don't recall "Wise Blood," but I'll see if I can't dig it out of one of my many book vaults.

[progressoid]

4. That's one to add to my winter watch list!

Thanks Heddi!

[onager]

5. One of my favorites!

(You're right, I haven't posted for a LONG time. I've been lurking while I deal with some real-life problems. I really don't like to yak about my personal life on the internet, so I'll just leave it at that.)

Now on to "Wise Blood," which contains some of my favorite dialogue ever...

"I'm gonna start me a new church. Where the blind don't see, the crippled don't walk, and what's dead stays that way."

Hazel Motes: "I'm a preacher."
Landlady: "What denomination?"
Hazel Motes: "The Church of Christ Without Christ."
Landlady: "Is that Protestant?"

Some random trivia:

--Making the movie was the idea of Flannery O'Connor's literary executors (and lifelong friends), the Fitzgerald family. John Huston agreed to direct the movie if the Fitzgeralds could raise the money. They finally did, after many years.

The movie was shot in Macon, GA, on a shoestring budget. Everybody, including John Huston, agreed to work for minimum (Hollywood) wages. Many of the small parts went to local people who had never acted before.

--While "Wise Blood" is often attacked as atheist propaganda, Flannery O'Connor was a devout Catholic who went to Mass every day. She died at age 39 from lupus. That same hereditary disease had killed her father when she was 15 years old. So no wonder a lot of her writing is on the dark side.

e.g., "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," not as shocking now as it must have been in the early 1950's, when "serial killer" wasn't an everyday phrase.

--I first saw "Wise Blood" at an "art theater" in Los Angeles. My date was a woman from the South, who had grown up like me, surrounded by Evangelicals and Baptists. We were both laughing continuously thru the movie, but many of the people around us just sat there with "WTF?" looks on their faces.

--If you're...cough...looking for this movie, try to find the Criterion Collection version. It has a lot of nice bonus features, including a Huston interview and a very rare recording of Flannery O'Connor herself reading "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." Link to it here: http://www.criterion.com/films/1424-wise-blood

[Heddi]

6. I thought of you when I made that posting!

HOpe you're doing okay and I really appreciate your insight into the movie. I figured it was one of your favourites (either book or film or both). I'm glad anotha South'na can appreciate the delicate nature of the things in the film that I think only anotha south'na can truly understand.

And I knew it was filmed somewhere in georgia based on the state road signs, but I didn't know it was Macon. Growin' up in Chas'son I had a familiarity with Georgia and felt it was closer in many ways to South Carolina than North Carolina is (as it stands, I hate Atlanta with a passion of 10,000 suns and would have helped Sherman light a match had I been around then). However, I enjoy back-woods Georgia and I think the Georgian accent is closer to southern South Carolinian than any North Carolina accent ever was