by John Irving
LARCH
Alcohol killed him—he drank himself to death.
FUZZY
But did you know him?
LARCH
Barely. It hardly mattered that I knew him.
FUZZY
Did you know your mother better?
LARCH
( nods, still whispers) She’s dead now, too. She was a nanny.
FUZZY
What’s a nanny do?
LARCH
She looks after other people’s children.
FUZZY
Did you grow up around here?
LARCH
No. She was an immigrant.
FUZZY
What’s an immigrant?
LARCH
Someone not from Maine.
What Lasse and I had wanted from this scene was to establish the simplest of reasons why Dr. Larch might not always have an American accent. We both felt that, if
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Michael was in every other way brilliant in a specific take of a scene, it would be a shame to have to shoot another take only to get the accent right. At first, Michael didn’t want to shoot the scene at all.With the professional actor’s commendable bravura, he wanted to do the American accent correctly—with no excuses. He worked very hard
with his dialect coach, Jess Platt, to make the scene super-fluous.
It was Lasse’s feeling, and mine, to shoot the scene just to be safe; it would cover an accent problem, if there was one. If Michael sounded American enough, we could cut the scene later.
But the scene has other merits. By the time we shot it, Michael was especially fond of it. This is Dr. Larch’s only moment alone with Fuzzy before Fuzzy’s death; not only does it set up the death scene, emotionally, but it’s also a logical question for Fuzzy (or any orphan) to ask Dr. Larch (or any grown-up)—namely, did you ever know your mother and father? By the time we shot the scene, it seemed central to the story for reasons having nothing to do with Michael’s accent.
When I saw the rough cut of the film, I was glad we’d done it. In the overall context of the movie, the scene won’t make the audience think about Michael’s accent; rather, it will make the audience consider that Dr. Larch is something of an orphan himself.
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In retrospect, I thought Michael’s accent was fine. He sounded more than American enough for me; there was
even something very New England about the sarcastic
twang of his voice. Nowhere is this more evident than in Larch’s voice-over, which Michael performs with gusto—
Mr. Caine loves voice-over. Here’s an example of Larch’s letter-writing voice. The letter is, of course, to Homer.
LARCH (V.O.)
Do I interfere? When absolutely helpless
women tell me that they simply can’t have an abortion, that they simply must go through with having another—
and yet another— orphan . . . do I interfere? Do I? I do not. I do not even recommend. I just give them what they want: an orphan or an abortion.
In Lasse’s second cut of the film—the two-hour, eight-minute, twenty-second version—he ended Larch’s voiceover with “I just give them what they want.” I mildly objected to deleting “an orphan or an abortion”; although the point is made earlier, I believed it was important enough to warrant repeating.
But this is the essence of why Lasse and I worked so well together. I am fond of hitting the nail on the head. Lasse likes to deflect the hammer.
Despite their many arguments, we know that Larch and Homer love each other. In Fuzzy’s case, there’s no argu-
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ing—both Larch and Homer just try to protect him.What does it matter that, in the book, Fuzzy’s death breaks Homer and, in the movie, his death breaks Larch? Either way, Fuzzy is the necessary heartbreaker; that is Fuzzy’s raison d’être.
“How come we get pumpkins only once a year?” Fuzzy
asks Homer. “Why can’t we have pumpkins for Christmas, too? We don’t get any good presents at Christmas, anyway.”
Fuzzy dies before Homer’s return—before Halloween,
too. When Homer Wells comes back to St. Cloud’s, the other orphans are still carrying around their jack-o’-
lanterns—just to remind us of Fuzzy.
The little ones never know Fuzzy died; they think he was adopted, however unlikely that might seem. “Why
would the little ones believe that anyone would adopt him?” Buster asks Dr. Larch.
“They’ll believe it because they want to believe it,”
Larch replies.
In the bunk room that night after Fuzzy’s death, it is Buster who convinces the younger boys to believe this.
151A
INT. ST. CLOUD’S—CORRIDOR—NIGHT
( Larch leans against the wall, covering his eyes, overhearing the boys. )
BUSTER (O.S.)
The family that adopted Fuzzy, they in-
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vented the breathing machine. It’s their business: breathing machines.
( Larch pauses; he waits to see if they believe this. ) CURLY (O.S.)
Lucky Fuzzy!
( Larch almost breaks with a sudden sharp breath. ) ALL THE BOYS (O.S.)
Good night, Fuzzy! Good night,
Fuzzy! Good night, Fuzzy Stone!
In the novel, it is the nearly sixteen-year-old Homer who convinces the younger boys that Fuzzy was adopted by a family in the breathing-machine business. Once again, I created Buster to compensate for losing Homer-as-a-kid from the film. But Fuzzy himself is an essential element in both the novel and the screenplay. The child who dies is the one we most remember.
Dr. Larch and his nurses are heroes, and Homer’s re-
turn to the orphanage makes him heroic, too. But Fuzzy is there to remind us that St. Cloud’s is not a happy place.
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The last time I counted,there were 64 scenes omitted from the shooting script of 234 scenes—that is, before shooting. This means that between the March
1998 draft of the screenplay—the first draft of the screenplay that Lasse and I constructed together—and the first day of principal photography, in September 1998, we
agreed to omit 64 scenes. In that same six-month period, Lasse and I added 21 scenes—one of which we later omitted. (I did not count the number of drafts of the screenplay; that might have been discouraging.)
While math was never my strong suit, it’s not difficult to determine the number of scenes we intended to shoot—
234 plus 21 minus 65 equals 190. But only 184 scenes were actually shot. The six scenes we didn’t shoot were casualties of the ever-present constraints of time. Miramax had given
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us a fifty-nine-day shooting schedule; they later gave us an additional three days. Even in sixty-two days, we simply ran out of time, and six scenes were lost.
Were they important? Well . . . it’s a reality of
moviemaking that you have to lose something you would have liked to shoot. I’ve already explained that, in the novel, Homer is adopted by four foster families before Dr. Larch gives up trying to have Homer adopted. In the screenplay, largely because these adoptions take place over the opening credits, I thought that three failed foster homes would suffice. But we ran out
of time to shoot the third family. The three scenes that comprise Homer’s third adoption are worth showing here.
14
EXT. COUPLE #3 HOME—DAY
( The doors opens to a THIRD COUPLE smiling at us, welcom-ing and embracing a sixteen-year-old Homer. Behind them waits the would-be STEPSISTER—an attractive girl, a little older than Homer. )
LARCH (V.O.)
I told the third family to take good care—
this was a special boy.
15
INT. STEPSISTER’S BEDROOM—NIGHT
( Homer and the stepsister are in bed together.The parents burst in on them—the father chasing Homer around and around the bed, the mother beating her daughter, who covers herself with a pillow. )
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LARCH (V.O.)
It was Homer who took too much good
care of himself.
15A
EXT. COUPLE #3 HOME—NIGHT
( From her window, the stepsister watches Homer leave the house carrying his suitcase. Homer looks up at her as he walks quickly to the street. )
The scenes aren’t very significant, but the screenplay—
especially given that it’s my adaptation of one of my novels—is lacking in humor, and these scenes were a comic interlude that would have enlivened the opening credits and reminded my readers of the tone of my novels. I was a little sorry to lose them.
The fourth scene that we didn’t get to shoot is a more serious loss. It was between Homer and Wally’s mother, Olive (Kate Nelligan), eating dinner in the Worthington house. Wally is still at the war. Unbeknownst to Olive, Homer and Candy are in the throes of their affair. The apple harvest is almost over; the migrant pickers will soon be hitting the road. Homer is considering staying on in the cider house. (Because of Candy, of course.)
158
INT.WORTHINGTON HOUSE, DINING ROOM—NIGHT
( Olive and Homer sit at the dining-room table, the remnants of an apple pie in front of them. Homer is still eating. Pictures of Wally are on the wall. )
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OLIVE
I used to hate it when Wally went back to col-
lege—even when it was just college! And that was
when his father was still alive . . . I hated it even then.
Naturally I hate this more.
( Homer nods in sympathy. His mouth is stuffed with apple pie. ) OLIVE ( cont. )
What I mean is . . . I would like it very
much if you thought you could be happy here, Homer.
HOMER ( wiping his mouth)
Mrs. Worthington, I feel I’m
very lucky to be here.
OLIVE
There’s not a lot of work in the winter, and you’ll
have to tolerate Vernon—even Wally despises him, and Wally likes everyone.
( Olive’s thoughts drift; her eyes look up at a photo of Wally. ) HOMER
I think Wally will be fine, Mrs. Worthington—
he seems indestructible to me.
OLIVE ( distracted )
I don’t know. ( intently at Homer) Just
promise me one thing.
( Homer is tense. Does Olive suspect about Candy? ) HOMER
Uh . . . sure.
OLIVE
Just promise me that, if there’s a blizzard, you’ll
move into Wally’s room until it’s over.
( They both laugh, but Homer has a hard time looking her in the eye. )
We don’t need the scene for the sake of the plot.We will see Homer saying good-bye to the pickers, and we’ll also see Candy come to the cider house and say to Homer,
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“Olive told me.You might have told me yourself.” We know he’s staying. But the scene is a good moment for Olive—a complex and sympathetic character—and Kate Nelligan
was superb in the role. I just wanted to see more of her.
Ten scenes later, we lost a shot of Dr. Larch at his typewriter. In the shooting schedule, the scene fell into the last hectic days, and we axed it—it seemed expendable enough at the time. Moreover, we were confident that we would find some other scene in which to use Larch’s voice-over.
(We did.)
168
INT. LARCH’S OFFICE—NIGHT
( Edna and Angela view him anxiously from the doorway as Larch furiously types and types. )
LARCH (V.O.)
My dear Homer, I thought you were over
your adolescence , that period which I would define as the first time in our lives when we imagine we have
something terrible to hide from those who love us.
In retrospect, I regret losing this scene more than I thought I would. It is the only scene we had of Larch at his typewriter. In the novel, he seems to spend half his life at the typewriter, writing A Brief History of St. Cloud’s. (Naturally it isn’t brief.) A pity, therefore, not to have one moment of him typing in the film.
The sixth (and last) scene we ran out of time to shoot is
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near the end of the movie. It is not a heartbreaking loss, and I won’t bother to reproduce it here. Larch’s death scene, his ether overdose, was previously intercut with two other scenes at the orphanage. One is of Buster, bringing in the wood. He smells the spilled ether, even in the corridor, and heads toward the dispensary, sniffing.We shot that scene—
we had to. Buster is the one who finds Larch dead.
The other scene is of Nurse Edna getting the girls ready for bed. In the film, we see a lot of Edna (Jane Alexander); and Edna’s nightly prayer, which she recites with the girls in their bunk room, plays both near the beginning of the movie and at Dr. Larch’s burial near the end. At the moment of Larch’s death, we didn’t really need another shot of Edna with the girls, although Jane Alexander was a terrific Nurse Edna and I regret losing any scene with the orphans. The orphans are what The Cider House Rules is about; even when we don’t know their names, they are often the most important characters on camera.
That was it for lost scenes. As for the other scenes I wrote—that is, the remaining 184—we shot them. As for how many of the 184 will survive the editing process . . .
well, that’s another matter. In the rough cut of the picture that Lasse first showed me, there were 154 scenes remaining. (That was the two-hour, seventeen-minute, forty-second version.) Not to put too fine a point on it, but as of March 1999, Lasse had already cut 30 scenes from the film.
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As of this writing, May 1999, there are 151 scenes remaining in The Cider House Rules, and the film’s running time is two hours, nine minutes, and one second. (This includes about four minutes of end credits.) I’ve told Lasse that I believe we would benefit from losing part of one scene and all of another; I’m also lobbying on behalf of a third scene, where I think we should put two lines of dialogue back into the picture.Whatever happens, I’m guessing that the “finished” film will have about 150 scenes and a running time of approximately two hours and five minutes—not counting the end credits.
The final cut will be Lasse’s decision, and I trust him. I may disagree with one or two of his choices, but I trust his instincts. It’s my job to give Lasse notes—I’m always telling him what to keep and what to lose—but, in the end, there can be only one director. Lasse is the director.
When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
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T H E T W E L V E - Y E A R - O L D
G I R L
There is no language in a screenplay.(For me,dia-
logue doesn’t count as language.) What passes for
language in a screenplay is rudimentary, like the directions for assembling a complicated children’s toy. The only aesthetic is to be clear. Even the act of reading a screenplay is incomplete. A screenplay, as a piece of writing, is merely the scaffolding for a building someone else is going to build. The director is the builder.
A novelist controls the pace of the book; in part, pace is also a function of language, but pace in a novel and in a film can be aided by the emotional investment the reader (or the audience) has in the characters. In a movie, however, the screenwriter is not in control of the pace; that kind of control doesn’t get exerted until the editing process.
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As for what novelists call “tone,” the cinematography may provide a close equivalent to a novel’s tone, but no matter how evocative of a book’s narrative voice the camera is, it isn’t the same as language.
However many months I spend writing a screenplay, I
never feel as if I’ve been writing at all. I’ve been constructing a story—that’s true—but without language. It’s like building a castle (and the characters who inhabit and/or attack the castle) with blocks. The scenes are the blocks. I always write a lot of letters when I’m working on a screenplay, doubtless because I miss using language.When I’m writing a novel, I write very few letters; my language is all used up.
The moments that matter most to me in a novel are all moments of language. Here are two examples from The Cider House Rules, for which there are no equivalents in the screenplay. (If, in the finished film, equivalents exist, they are solely the magic of Oliver Stapleton with his camera. I had nothing to do with them.)
The first moment is a description of Senior Worthington, Wally’s father—“only a tangential victim of alcoholism and a nearly complete victim of Alzheimer’s
disease.” Senior has Alzheimer’s before anyone has identified the disease.
There are things that the societies of towns know about you, and things that they miss. Senior Worthington was baffled by his own deterioration, which he also believed to
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