An alcoholic, a “yard sale”, nosy neighbors, marital troubles, desperation, and a record player; all of these are components of the short story “Why Don’t You Dance?”, and the movie based off of it, Everything Must Go. The short story “Why Don’t You Dance?” written by Raymond Carver, focuses on an alcoholic man with possible marital troubles having a “yard sale” on his front lawn, and his experience dancing and drinking with strangers who want to purchase his belongings. The movie Everything Must Go directed by Dan Rush focuses on the same main character, ex-salesman Nick Halsey, with emphasis on his marital troubles and relationships with his neighbors, sponsor, and mentee. The movie Everything Must Go abandons the use of audience imagination …show more content…
Nick Halsey, the main character, loses his job due to reasons associated with his alcoholism and returns home to find that his wife has kicked him out and thrown all of his belongings on the front lawn (Everything Must Go 0:00:00-00:07:11). With his accounts frozen and no money, he becomes content to sit on his lawn and drink all day until his cop friend, a boy from down the street, and a new neighbor inspire and push him to have a yard sale and start over. The director of this movie chose to add more characters, backstory, resolution, emotions, and obstacles for the characters to overcome in order to elongate the story to become a film enhance audience enjoyment. The climax and subsequent resolution of this film happens when Nick finally decides to give up his “sit-in” on his lawn, and sell all of his belonging in a yard sale with the boy from down the street (Everything Must Go 1:07:16-1:14:30). In this scene, Nick encounters many different types of people wishing to buy his stuff, however in “Why Don’t You Dance?”, the main character only encounters two individuals who mistake his predicament as a yard sale. Dan Rush, the director, most likely choose to build the story to eventually lead to the yard sale as a turning point for Nick, where he finally decides …show more content…
Authors of short stories, like Carter, have the freedom to write as much or as little as they want, in any manner they please. The genre of short stories is so vast and diverse that authors are allowed to write in different styles, lengths, and descriptiveness. However, the general public has specific expectations of films that producers, directors, writers, and actors must fulfill in order to create a successful film. In order for the audience to enjoy the film, Dan Rush couldn’t limit it to the ideas presented in Carver’s short story, he had to expand the details of the plot and provide more information to the audience. By providing more information and detail, this makes the film a more enjoyable and immersing experience for the audience.
The movie Everything Must Go and the short story “Why Don’t You Dance?” are very similar in their basic plotline, theme, and ideas, but the movie expands upon these concepts in order to create a more thorough captivating plot that audiences would enjoy. This might be due to the more demanding medium that the film is produced in. Compared to Everything Must Go, “Why Don’t You Dance?” allows the audience to imagine the aspects of this story not specifically laid out. The film is a result of one person’s imagination and interpretation of that short story, how do you imagine the man with the “yard
Henry Reyna and his 38th Street Gang members headed to a local dance. While at this dance, they encounter the rivals of The Downey Gang. Henry’s brother, Rudy,
Ferris Bueller is a young, rebellious, high school senior who gets away with just about everything. One day, he decides to play hooky and skip school for the ninth time. He tricks his parents into thinking he is sick with his signature fake stomach cramp and clammy palms. After his parents leave for work, Bueller calls up his rigid, hypochondriac best friend Cameron to join him on his day off. Initially refusing to leave the comfort of his bed, Cameron finally is persuaded to not only join Ferris, but to also bring his Father’s precious Ferrari out on the town. The first stop on their rebellious journey is to bail out Bueller’s girlfriend, Sloane, from school. They do so by calling Ed Rooney,
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Save the Last Dance is a love story about the pros and cons that comes along with interracial dating. Hollywood displays Sarah as your typical white girl whose forced to move into a low-class neighborhood (with her father, Roy), which is inhabited mostly by blacks, after her mother dies in a tragic car accident on her way to one of her audition. The theme of the movie is really plain and simple. Sarah has always wanted to become a ballerina and attend Julliard, a school of performing arts in New York, however, after the death of her mother, she loses the passion for her dream. Like I mentioned above, Sarah was forced to move with her father, Roy, who lived in an old ratty house deep in a ghetto (inhabited mostly by blacks) in New York City.
The last night of their high school began with a borrowed Impala car. The audience experiences relationship woes, a sock hop, a mysterious blonde, and pranks on the cops. More importantly, as the movie goes on, daring street races, run-ins with greasers, vandalizing, and booming rock ‘n’ roll replace the happy atmosphere. The movie orchestrates many storylines and is full of fashionable nostalgia, music and vivacity of the night. The movie also crafted scenes with risky antics, using contemporary music to spectacularly enhance the tenor of the
In The Pathos of Failure, Thomas Elsaesser explains the emergence of a new ideology within American filmmaking, which reflects a “fading confidence in being able to tell a story” (280) and the dissolution of psychologically relatable, goal-oriented characters. He elaborates that these unmotivated characters impede the “the affirmative-consequential model of narrative [which] is gradually being replaced by another, whose precise shape is yet to crystallize” (281). Christian Keathley outlined this shape in more detail in Trapped in the Affection Image, where he argued that shifting cultural attitudes resulted in skepticism of the usefulness of action (Keathley). In Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, this crisis of action is a key element of the main characters’ failure, because it stifles the execution of classical narrative and stylistic genre conventions.
The main protagonist of the film, Scotty Smalls, is introduced as a straight-A, friendless young boy who has just moved into a new neighborhood in new state. While
Pike, Gerald. “Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers.” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research International Limited, 1990. 90. Print.
As the case with most “Novel to Movie” adaptations, screenwriters for films will make minor, and sometimes drastic, adjustments to the original text in order to increase drama and to reach modern audiences. Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film interpretation of The Great Gatsby followed the 1925 classic great plot quite accurately, with minor deviations. However, Luhrmann made some notable differences to the characters and settings of The Great Gatsby in order for the story to relate to the current generation and to intensity the plot
The film’s real intentions are to display the challenges of homelessness as well. The film is based on a true story is probably the main reason as to why it is so powerful and moving. The challenges Gardner have to cope with are the same problems facing various people in our current societies. Anyone who has familiarized with Gardner’s story which was featured on ABC in 2003, wouldn’t be mesmerized by the way the movies comes to an end. However, I still grew curious and sought to know more about the end of the movie which surprisingly was the source of the film’s title, “The Pursuit of Happyness.” In truism, we do not see so much happiness in Gardner’s struggles regardless of what became of him. It is through this understanding that the movie lives the audience with warm fuzziest. Instead of people’s expectations, the fictional play relays what is right. It is quite likely that a person will find this film hard to forget
Every movie that is written has a certain attitude to it. Some of these are intended to be laughed at and others are meant to be heartfelt. Though each movie is written with its own voice, so to speak, many have similar plots or themes. The two movies Fools Rush In and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are two of these movies that have similarities in the themes, but not necessarily in the plots. Both of these romantic comedies have strong religious backgrounds on the woman’s side of the family and differences in culture. The main theme between these two movies is the quest for happiness and all the troubles that must be overcome to achieve it.
The idea for the film is based on every parent’s worst nightmare. The concept based-plot is filled with twists and turns, captivating the audience. This film succeeds in creating the desired feeling of suspense with its sound score and creates heightened emotions by filming on location and often in the dead of night. Filmed in realistic color, the storyline takes place on Thanksgiving and the days after. The scenes are often filmed outside, in the cold ...
John Singleton’s view of social problems in South Central Los Angeles happens in a tale of three friends growing up together. Doughboy and Ricky Baker are half-brothers and have opposite personalities. Ricky is a football player who hopes to win a scholarship and spends most of his time playing football. On the other hand, Doughboy is a young man who looks upon his environment for guidance. He is involved in violence, abusing drugs, and participates in violence. In between is their friend Tre, who actually has a father to teach him what is right from wrong. Furious Styles, who is Tre’s father in the film does everything in his strength to keep his son from becoming another startling statistic. As you can see, it is always important for parents to be a part of their child’s life because it can make a big difference not only in their life but also their child’s future.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
In Wim Wenders’ 1984 film, Paris, Texas, we find its theme of loneliness harboured in Travis Henderson, but very much so in the film’s imagery, eloquently captured by Dutch cinematographer, Robby Müller, “When I choose to work on a film, the most important thing to me is that it is about human feelings. I try to work with directors who want their films to touch the audience.” And his imagery does just that in Paris, Texas.