The novel "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me" by Richard Farina is fantastic, a singular achievement that deserved better treatment than this film, which basically left out all the really good stuff, the fear and loathing political content, and used only the easy material. I saw a really bad copy of it, but it was clear enough to see that they missed the point pretty much completely. Unfortunately, the soundtrack was in good shape; I say unfortunately because most of the music, aside from the background 50s rock, was totally inappropriate for the time period - seventies folk/pop crap instead of jazz.
Supposedly the film was set in 1959, but the novel sure felt like 1965 to me. It could have been any time in the early 60s, I suppose. I recognized many of the people in the book from my own experiences in the 60s, and the film actually got a couple of them almost right. But the film all but ignored one of the central characters in the novel, G. Alonso Oeuf, and turned Kristin into less of a villain than she really was. Yes, I realize that they didn't want to make a 3-hour movie in 1971, but I think they could get away with it today. Get the right person to play Gnossos, give it some narration, use jazz only for background music, keep the campus political stuff, and I think it could be done. Hollywood is so busy remaking bad TV shows and re-doing movies that were fine the first time; maybe they should try getting this one right instead.
Supposedly the film was set in 1959, but the novel sure felt like 1965 to me. It could have been any time in the early 60s, I suppose. I recognized many of the people in the book from my own experiences in the 60s, and the film actually got a couple of them almost right. But the film all but ignored one of the central characters in the novel, G. Alonso Oeuf, and turned Kristin into less of a villain than she really was. Yes, I realize that they didn't want to make a 3-hour movie in 1971, but I think they could get away with it today. Get the right person to play Gnossos, give it some narration, use jazz only for background music, keep the campus political stuff, and I think it could be done. Hollywood is so busy remaking bad TV shows and re-doing movies that were fine the first time; maybe they should try getting this one right instead.