exploring adaptation
Film, food and fun: Austin Bat Cave presents a screening of The Ice Storm withauthor Rick Moody
This upcoming Tuesday, December 6, local literary powerhouse Austin Bat Cave debuts a new series: Page 2 Screen.
The innovative event will feature a film screening—this month’s selection is The Ice Storm—that explores the process of adapting novels from page to film.
This inaugural screening will feature an appearance from writer Rick Moody, whose 1994 novel of the same namewas adapted by Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee. Tickets are available online for the event, which takes place at the Blanton Museum of Art and includes food, drink and live music.
Moody is the author of novels Garden State (1992), The Ice Storm (1994), Purple America (1996), The Diviners (2005) and last year’s intellectual sci-fi hit, The Four Fingers of Death (2010). He’s also released several collections of stories—The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven (1995), Demonology (2001) and Right Livelihoods (2007)—and a The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions (2002), which explores his experience with alcoholism.
Texas Tribune Editor-in-Chief Evan Smith will speak with Moody about his writing, his experience with the film and the many diverse projects he’s been involved with since.
What can you expect at the event? Here’s what ABC has to say:
Each Page 2 Screen will feature an author discussing his or her work and the transition it made from the page to the screen, and then the movie itself. We will also offer appetizers and a cocktail reception and book signing, a chance to interact with the author, and, after the screening, time to ask him or her questions—about books, about movies, about almost anything, really.
The series is the latest in a long line of creative literary events hosted by ABC. Proceeds benefit their unique writing curriculum, which includes in-school programming, after school tutoring, college essay writing workshops and more.
The Ice Storm stars Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes (in her first feature film). Set in 1973 over a particularly frigid Thanksgiving weekend in suburban Connecticut, it follows two families who are more closely connected than they think.
While the drama is largely domestic, the novel (and film) uses the Hood and Williams families to explore larger cultural issues. The sexual revolution of the 70s serves as a backdrop, framing a way to discuss the complex bonds we forge with friends and family; The Ice Storm focuses on the adulterous exploits of two married couples, and the equally secret explorations their children engage in.
In a Summer 2001 interview with David Ryan from The Paris Review, Moody explains the inspiration for The Ice Storm:
I had been reading a lot about American policy in Cambodia, because I sometimes get really obsessed with public-policy issues and historical difficulties… I decided that if I was going to write a book about the early seventies in Connecticut, I might somehow indicate, too, the immense hypocrisy of the Nixon administration, as it trickled down into a group of people. I already had the cast in mind and I had the landscape, but I was looking for an angle. What would make this story go? Turned out it was the so-called sexual revolution, which, when it finally got to the suburbs, looked exactly like Nixon policy in Cambodia, after a fact. Both were founded on deceit and hypocrisy.
Director Ang Lee won’t be in attendance, but if you’re interested in hearing the acclaimed director’s thoughts on the film, take a look at this 1997 Charlie Rose interview with Lee and Moody.
Take a look at the trailer for The Ice Storm:
Want more Moody? Here’s a short story that appeared in Post Road Magazine. Below, Moody performs with his band, the Wingdale Community Singers.
---
Don’t miss this screening and conversation with Rick Moody, taking place Tuesday, December 6 at the Blanton Auditorium. Tickets to Page 2 Screen are still available, with a discounted rate for students, seniors and teachers.