Wristcutters: A Love Story vs. "Kneller's Happy Campers"

It's never fair to compare a film to its prose counterpart, but readers do it all the time. So when it comes to Wristcutters: A Love Story and "Kneller's Happy Campers" - written by Etgar Keret and can be found in the collection The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories - there are few things that irked me.  

First of all, the names are changed. Rather than following Mordy, Uzi and Lihi on their afterlife adventure into the unknown, we're following Zia, Eugene and Mikal. Kneller, who is played by Tom Waits in the film, and Desiree (Leslie Bibb) are the only characters who keep the names of the literary counterparts. But that's something I can get used to because it was expected. "Kneller's Happy Campers" wasn't originally written in English - it is, after all, a translation - so it was expected that some sprucing up would taken place. And with that, the characters' nationality vanished, too. 

Now conflict is always big so, with an adaptation, there has to be some sort of tension between the characters. Mordy was obsessed with finding Desiree in the short story so his attention toward Lihi minimum, but you can see the budding romance between Zia and Mikal as the search for Desiree carries on. So it would make sense that the whole guy meets gal, gal runs away, guy slowly realizes his love for gal. 

Most of the movie follows the same idea as the short story. Additions here and there to explain the problems with Eugene's headlight problem and what not, but otherwise it keeps the same idea. A plot device is added in the film's story - a black hole beneath Eugene's passenger seat adds to the movie's conclusion. And while the bitter sweet ending in the short story - Mordy hopes that Lihi one day returns to the world of suicides, continues on with his afterlife by mixing a little everyday screw ups into his daily routine - is endearing on its own merit, the film decides to give us the ol' Hollywood ending. It's not bad, however it's not good either. It's just so-so.

"Kneller's Happy Campers" has also been adapted into a graphic novel entitled Pizzeria Kamikaze - where Mordy/Zia is employed in the afterlife. I wonder if the movie borrows elements from the graphic novel. Either way, the winner of this is the short story. While the movie was good - dramatic where it needed to be, humorous when it was appropriate - it holds no flame to the short story. 

When I Was I Kid, I Thought I Was Jesus

I'm going to be honest, the only reason I picked up The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God by Etgar Keret was for the story "Kneller's Happy Campers," which was adapted into the film Wristcutters. I haven't watched movie yet, mostly because I wanted to read the story. It's silly, I know, but sometimes reading the story first allows me to watch the movie comfortably. What I didn't know was that Etgar Keret's collection of short stories is a translation. I've mentioned how translations tend to mess with my mind sometimes. 

Either way, the book is brilliant. From start to finish - which just happens to be "Kneller's Happy Campers" - the book is filled with stories that are a little bit amusing, a little bit lovely and downright weird. Warped and Wonderful, as the quip says at the bottom of the cover. It's not lie. From grandfathers coming back as sneakers, finding Heaven within a pipe or a man who is afflicted with a crippling disability of being too nice, the stories never have pause to ask whether or not they're believable. You simply accept them. 

Much like Bizarro fiction - from authors such as Carlton Mellick III - Etgar Keret engages us with themes that  we can relate to or recognize while dazzling our senses with a slice of imagination that we normally don't read in contemporary literature. His voice carries through the pages, description wrapping us. 

The first book of the season, and I'm glad it was a memorable one. I'll write more on "Kneller's Happy Campers" and Wristcutters in a later post. Until next time, happy huntin'.

More books arrived

I tell you, nothing makes a book hunter happier than receiving books in the mail. And last week, I received my package from Better World Books - purchased off Amazon - which contained Sex Diaries edited by Maxium Jakubowski and Dying For It: Tales of Sex and Death edited by Mitzi Szereto. 

In the mail today, I received my (hopefully) final order from Amazon for the year. The order was made up of Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God, a book I've been lusting after since I saw the trailer for Wristcutters: A Love Story. Stapled to that book was Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and God Hates Us All by fictional fiction writer Hank Moody from Showtime's Californication. 

I started on Keret's collection of short stories and plan to move on Hank Moody's novel. At the moment, however, my only concern is getting over this cold. Because being sick puts a damper on my reading groove. Until next time, keep on huntin'.