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A review by larrys
Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry
4.0
Hud is one of my favourite films and I didn't even realise it had been based on Larry McMurtry's first novel until after I'd decided I loved Larry McMurtry novels, so I've been meaning to read this one for a while. I grew curious about how the screenwriters turned a novel into the screenplay.
It's an interesting case. One of the most disturbing things I heard about the film is that after test screenings, the producers learned that despite making Grandpa and Hud unambiguously good vs evil, audiences sided with Hud. Why did they do that? There's not a single redeeming quality to him. He'd sell diseased cattle, he's a rapist, he's mean and abusive...
1. Paul Newman was handsome, and that makes up for a lot
2. We see Hud through Lonnie's eyes, and in the film Lonnie looks up to him.
3. Audiences are like ducklings and tend to fall in love with the first character they see, or the character they see most of. And that'd be Hud.
4. Hud may be terrible but he is at least interesting.
I'm guessing that's it. Plus the more sobering fact that a tightwad (the granddad) is harder to forgive than a rapist. Because that's the culture we live in. And before you think well, that was a 1963 audience -- we'd be harder on a murdering rapist character now, I offer you Walter White as a case study for comparison. That said, Breaking Bad is 10 years old this week, and maybe after these women's marches things might start to change fictionally. Who the hell knows.
So how is Hud presented in the novel? He's both worse and better than Paul Newman's film version. The farm hands in the novel feature much more heavily. These farmhands are the men young Lonnie look up to, not Hud. They also get a lot of Hud's most sociopathic lines. But in the film the granddad dies of natural causes, whereas in the novel Hud finishes him off with a shotgun.
Another big difference between book and film: Black Halmea becomes White Alma in the film. This conflicts me. This amounts to the symbolic annihilation of Black women in Hollywood, but that's no damn surprise now. Conflicting because Patricia Neal makes for such a perfect Alma.
The book is more disturbing. In general. Lonnie is far less sympathetic than as acted in the film. In the film Lonnie is naive and can swing either way, pulled to the moral side by his grandfather and to the immoral side by his uncle (who in the book is his step-uncle). He ultimately chooses the good side. In the book he has left temporarily, but it looks like he's going to separate himself from his awful step-uncle. We see him hitching a ride to see his friend who was injured in the rodeo.
For comparison I am thinking of Annie Proulx's short story The Mud Below, in which the rodeo is used as a metaphor for toxic masculinity. I'm pretty sure that's what it stands in for here.
Lonnie's step-mother (Hud's real mother) is not dead in the novel. She gets some great lines as a cranky old hypochondriac battleax. But in the end she is another woman reduced to a cow -- for some reason she is degraded with her 'teats hanging out'. Women are routinely considered as heifers in this tale about toxic masculinity. Each one of them has her breasts exposed, and described in detail. Because Alma has agency in the film and is wise and world-weary, this misogyny is somehow easier to take in the adaptation.
It was interesting to see how McMurtry's writing started out -- he quickly dropped the phonetic spellings for Black dialect, which he uses here and dates the book terribly. The film on the other hand could've been made yesterday as a period piece. But McMurtry was a great stylist from the get-go, as this first novel attests.
If you love the film I wouldn't necessarily recommend the book. Horseman, Pass By was adapted for screen by two master screenwriters, who improved on a work from a first time novelist. They wanted to make something starring Paul Newman because they'd worked with him before and he drew huge audiences, but the novel stars the old man. Hence the change of title.
I'm sure it helped that one of the screenwriters was a woman, because I for one am glad a lot of the most confronting misogyny was dropped. It was still there all right, but if we'd seen it on the screen it would've been something else altogether. Unfortunately, with the way Hollywood works today, if this novel were adapted in 2018, all the rape and degrading female nudity would've been left in and then some added for good measure.
And a segment of the audience would still fall in love with a handsome, murdering rapist.
It's an interesting case. One of the most disturbing things I heard about the film is that after test screenings, the producers learned that despite making Grandpa and Hud unambiguously good vs evil, audiences sided with Hud. Why did they do that? There's not a single redeeming quality to him. He'd sell diseased cattle, he's a rapist, he's mean and abusive...
1. Paul Newman was handsome, and that makes up for a lot
2. We see Hud through Lonnie's eyes, and in the film Lonnie looks up to him.
3. Audiences are like ducklings and tend to fall in love with the first character they see, or the character they see most of. And that'd be Hud.
4. Hud may be terrible but he is at least interesting.
I'm guessing that's it. Plus the more sobering fact that a tightwad (the granddad) is harder to forgive than a rapist. Because that's the culture we live in. And before you think well, that was a 1963 audience -- we'd be harder on a murdering rapist character now, I offer you Walter White as a case study for comparison. That said, Breaking Bad is 10 years old this week, and maybe after these women's marches things might start to change fictionally. Who the hell knows.
So how is Hud presented in the novel? He's both worse and better than Paul Newman's film version. The farm hands in the novel feature much more heavily. These farmhands are the men young Lonnie look up to, not Hud. They also get a lot of Hud's most sociopathic lines. But in the film the granddad dies of natural causes, whereas in the novel Hud finishes him off with a shotgun.
Another big difference between book and film: Black Halmea becomes White Alma in the film. This conflicts me. This amounts to the symbolic annihilation of Black women in Hollywood, but that's no damn surprise now. Conflicting because Patricia Neal makes for such a perfect Alma.
The book is more disturbing. In general. Lonnie is far less sympathetic than as acted in the film. In the film Lonnie is naive and can swing either way, pulled to the moral side by his grandfather and to the immoral side by his uncle (who in the book is his step-uncle). He ultimately chooses the good side. In the book he has left temporarily, but it looks like he's going to separate himself from his awful step-uncle. We see him hitching a ride to see his friend who was injured in the rodeo.
For comparison I am thinking of Annie Proulx's short story The Mud Below, in which the rodeo is used as a metaphor for toxic masculinity. I'm pretty sure that's what it stands in for here.
Lonnie's step-mother (Hud's real mother) is not dead in the novel. She gets some great lines as a cranky old hypochondriac battleax. But in the end she is another woman reduced to a cow -- for some reason she is degraded with her 'teats hanging out'. Women are routinely considered as heifers in this tale about toxic masculinity. Each one of them has her breasts exposed, and described in detail. Because Alma has agency in the film and is wise and world-weary, this misogyny is somehow easier to take in the adaptation.
It was interesting to see how McMurtry's writing started out -- he quickly dropped the phonetic spellings for Black dialect, which he uses here and dates the book terribly. The film on the other hand could've been made yesterday as a period piece. But McMurtry was a great stylist from the get-go, as this first novel attests.
If you love the film I wouldn't necessarily recommend the book. Horseman, Pass By was adapted for screen by two master screenwriters, who improved on a work from a first time novelist. They wanted to make something starring Paul Newman because they'd worked with him before and he drew huge audiences, but the novel stars the old man. Hence the change of title.
I'm sure it helped that one of the screenwriters was a woman, because I for one am glad a lot of the most confronting misogyny was dropped. It was still there all right, but if we'd seen it on the screen it would've been something else altogether. Unfortunately, with the way Hollywood works today, if this novel were adapted in 2018, all the rape and degrading female nudity would've been left in and then some added for good measure.
And a segment of the audience would still fall in love with a handsome, murdering rapist.