and I'll keep my manager, thank you.
None today.
In the last Sneak Previews class we watched the only Hollywood movie of the quarter, The General's Daughter, a suspense-thriller set an army base starring John Travolta, who plays Paul Brenner, a Criminal Investigations officer with the military, who's running an undercover operation at a base in Georgia. The operation blows up, but he's at the base when Capt. Elizabeth Campbell, daughter of base commander Gen. Joe Campbell (who's contemplating a Vice Presidential spot), is raped and murdered. And everyone, it seems, want to cover this up post-haste.
Everything about this movie is very good--the acting (Travolta is terrific and likeable, and James Woods is excellent in a small part), the script (for once I like a William Goldman script), the cinematography, everything.
But.
I stayed for the discussion after the movie with producer Mace Neufeld and actor James Cromwell--the class moderator, Stephen Farber, told us that studios don't like to send their movies to this class when people leave afterward so stay already!--and Neufeld mentioned that in the seven years it's taken to get The General's Daughter to the screen reality has caught up to fiction with Tailhook, Lt. Kelly Flynn, and other military scandals both here and abroad.
And he's absolutely right, although he didn't seem to understand what that means for his movie. The secret of The General's Daughter feels more pedestrian than shocking. It's like the beginning to a joke: if you thought that was bad, lemme tell you this... I needed the ending--not the first ending but the second ending (you'll know what I mean if you see it)--to hit me a lot harder than it did. Yes, it was horrible...but not horrible enough. And the surface mystery is fairly easy to solve, simply using the Law of Hollywood Casting: there's pretty much only one candidate for the murderer.
If you like Travolta at all, however, I recommend seeing the picture: he's very winning (and there's even a hilarious scene that points this out). Madeleine Stowe has very little to do in this picture--check this movie out for a good example of what women get to do in non-romantic-comedies today: absolutely nothing. At least she doesn't have to get naked. The supporting cast is for the most part very good--I didn't care for the General's daughter (who does get naked), but she's not in it very much.
Today I had lunch with Michele at King's Road, a cafe at (where else?) King's Road and Beverly. We discussed our Novel Writing class. For the most part, we thought very highly of most of the people in the class and their writing; several people could have a real good shot at actually having a publishable novel if they keep at it. Several people in one single Novel Writing I class: that's not bad. We also discussed the teacher, whom we both really liked and who got some great work out of people who seemed hopeless at the beginning.
Michele's taking Novel Writing II, whereas I'm taking Mystery Writing. We're both applying for the Masters Sequence in Novel Writing come fall, and if I don't get into that I'll take Novel Writing II then.
I've been playing telephone tag with my manager for the past week, which annoys me. I'd think he was avoiding me, but instead I have found out that he's been a busy boy indeed. (Victoria is a 1996 grad of the same USC program I graduated from in 1998. I didn't know her, but Linda did.) So I'll tolerate his busyness this time.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com