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Last Week's Movie Quiz Winners

Filed under: Imported

Last week's musical clue was from the 1953 classic The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, starring Tommy Rettig, Hans Conried and Peter Lind Hayes. It was the only feature film ever written by the one and only Dr. Seuss (he did the story and then co-scripted with Allan Scott). Many people are going to be surprised to learn that Seuss was the author of the lyrics from the song we used for the hint. Here's an excerpt:

Second floor dungeon/Jewelry department/Leg chains, ankle chains, neck chains, wrist chains, thumbscrews and nooses of the very finest rope.

It's a film that is a very fond memory for many of us who saw it when we were young, and one that inspires strong reactions from some movie fans when they compare it to the crap that's shovelled at kids today. One reader, who didn't wish to play the quiz and asked to be identified as Melvin Mole, had this to say about the difference:

"Like the best children's fiction, 5,000 Fingers operates as a bridge between the adult and child worlds, written by a man sympathetic to the way the target audience interprets their parents and adult authority in general. The vast majority of stuff being churned out for kids today is generally written by people who have nothing but contempt for the genre but are desperate to get a credit of any sort in order to begin a lifetime of hackwork."

Then our friend Mr. Mole really gets down to it, by quoting from letters by E.B. White regarding the cinematic handling of his books Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little in the 1960s. White summed up how he felt about film adaptations in general with the following passage from 1967:

"It is the fixed purpose of television and motion pictures to scrap the author, sink him without a trace, on the theory that he is incompetent, has never read his own stuff, is not responsible for anything he ever wrote, and wouldn't know what to do about it even if he were. I believe this has something to do with the urge to create, and the only way a TV person or a movie person can become a creator is to sink the guy who did it to begin with."

Mr. Mole goes on to show sad comparisons between what White wanted from adaptations of his work then and the treatment Hollywood doles out to his work now. White wrote: "I want the chance to edit the script whenever anything turns up that is a gross departure or a gross violation. I would also like to be protected against the insertion of wholly new material--songs, jokes, capers, episodes . . . I will give you an example of what I call a 'gross' violation. In my book, Charlotte dies. If, in the screenplay, she should turn up alive at the end of the story in the interests of a happier ending, I would consider this a gross violation and I would regard my disapproval as reasonable." Mr. Mole then adds a parenthetical aside: "Consider the new, improved subtext of Stuart Little, in which the theme of life as a quest is replaced by one suggesting that if you don't like your parents, find better ones. There's an electric boogaloo number in there somewhere too, I believe, though I have avoided both of those pictures like the plague and make the sign of the cross when I catch a glimpse of the direct-to-video Charlotte's Web II: Back in Black."

Our friend MM concludes, sadly, "They really do spit in the faces of people like White and Seuss these days, don't they? White is so direct in his integrity that we can take it for granted that he would have been outraged by what his estate has allowed to be done to his thoughtful books for the sake of greed alone. Seuss, meanwhile, could only reply by rewriting one of his books himself . . . The 500 Hacks of Bartholomew Cubbins, in which a studio assigns every hustling film student and Hawaiian-shirted unfunny-man in town to produce an endless stream of worthless 'development' burying one of his classics in increasingly awful drafts."

To which all I can add is an angry "Amen."

But we can still feel good about the people who made it into this week's winners' circle by correctly identifying the movie: Wayne A. Palmer, E. Yarber, Sally Ryan and Hank Parmer, all of whom have impeccable taste in kids' movies. Congrats, gang-- treat yourself to a big helping of Dreamstuff.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 23, 2003 5:59 PM

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