This Is A Movie?
When had CHILD OF GOD been made into a movie?
COG was the second book I’d ever read by Cormac McCarthy. The first was THE ROAD. Both prompted a McCarthy frenzy which sort of petered out before I read the last book I’d bought by him, BLOOD MERIDIAN. I’ve blogged about this in the past, with this book, and this one.
I’d come away from those with a bit of burn out based on his repetitious style of writing. Granted, he can take a situation and for several hundred pages have you following along because sometimes you think, “it just can’t get any worse,” and then it does. He’s extraordinarily talented with revealing just how corrupt and backwards some individuals can be when forced to live at the edges of society. He writes about characters who are depraved, ignorant and typically desperate.
At any rate, imagine my surprise as I stood there trying to decide since I can’t have CAKE, (ha) what’s it to be? And then I saw it,and my curiosity about how they could take a story like THAT and make a movie of it won out. I rented it. I figured James Franco directed, I can’t go wrong.
Just like with books, I don’t typically rely on the ratings too much. It was a little surprising however, when I got home and searched for the movie’s release date (2014), to see that Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it two stars. And reviewers who use IMDb ranked it at 5.4 out of 10. I watched the trailer. I thought it looked pretty good.
Maybe it’s the extraordinarily tasteless acts ole Lester Ballard engages in that has turned folks off. If nothing else, you got to hand it to McCarthy for going “there.” No one else has, not that I know of. I thought certain topics were taboo and he proved that’s not the case necessarily.
I’ll hand McCarthy this. He writes as if everyone he knows, or anyone who might judge him is dead. There is no topic off limits. As a writer, I’ve yet to learn this. I think twice before I word something a certain way. I write a scene over and over and over with the thought, “who might read this? Oh, yeah, them.” DELETE.
I want to learn to write like no one’s looking over my shoulder.
Don’t you?
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