To Academe, The Letter Of Scarlet Is A Huge ‘H’
(From For the record, Wednesday, July 19, 1995:) American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “The Scarlet Letter” in 1850, which makes it a 19th-century novel, not a 17th-century novel as reported in Tuesday’s People column.
Loose talk
Dean Cain of “Lois & Clark” on the difference between professional football and Hollywood (in TV Guide): “In football it was this: You’re a piece of meat. And in acting it’s this: You’re a piece of meat.”
In its latest attempt to adapt a Literary Classic for the big screen, Hollywood is alienating the academic community.
Which is nothing new. Hollywood can be pretty smarmy when it attempts to bring literature to life, and those ivory-tower types are never happy anyway.
Even so, in Roland Joffe’s version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” Demi Moore makes the best Hester Prynne this side of Madonna. And Joffe’s version, due this fall, reports Entertainment Weekly, reworks the 17th-century novel’s plot.
“What was interesting for us wasn’t to do a straight reproduction,” Joffe says. “This isn’t the book.”
To which Yale professor Harold Bloom responds, “Oh, God! Hawthorne would have been horrified! I don’t think I’ll see it.”
Happy birthday and may gawd bless
Red Skelton turns 82 today.
The tea and crumpet shop must have been closed
What with the whole state of Colorado on alert, it would be near impossible for Princess Diana to keep hidden. And so, with the aid of a gasstation attendant, the Brit-royal was seen in Vail on Thursday getting gas and searching for bagels.
‘Best friends’ do not the most passionate lovers make
While they remain partners in their fashion business and, in the process, “the best friends in the world,” Paloma Picasso and Rafael Lopez-Sanchez are divorcing. She’s the daughter of the late artist Pablo Picasso,, and he’s an Argentine businessman.
Because we get such interesting answers, that’s why
When asked by a member of the British press whether she had yet forgiven Hugh Grant, Grant’s girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley responded with a bit of English fire. “Why do you ask such irritating questions?” she snapped. “I don’t think you should ask questions like that. I wouldn’t ask you if your wife had done something bad.”
You gotta have the right stuff to hurl through space
Fred Haise, the third man on the Apollo 13 moon mission, loves Ron Howard’s movie version of April, 1970, event. He’s seen “Apollo 13” four times now. And the 61-year-old ex-astronaut is only slightly bothered by how actor Bill Paxton’s plays his real-life illness, in which he ran a high fever in the bone-chilling cold. “It was uncomfortable but not incapacitating,” Haise said. “The movie played that up too much.”
And He said, ‘Where’s the accordion?’
When a thunderstorm hit during a concert by The Chieftains in Wantagh, N.Y., on Sunday, flutist Matt Malloy took it as a compliment. “You see, God was listening to me with my flute,” Malloy said. “It was a sign of heavenly approval.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster