by John Irving
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be the result of the evils of drink. When he drank less—
and still couldn’t remember in the morning what he’d said or done the evening before; still saw no relenting of his remarkably speeded-up process of aging; still hopped from one activity to the next, leaving a jacket in one place, a hat in another, his car keys in the lost jacket—when he drank less and still behaved like a fool, this bewildered him to such an extreme that he began to drink more. In the
end, he would be a victim of both Alzheimer’s disease and alcoholism; a happy drunk, with unexplained plunges of mood. In a better, and better-informed, world, he would have been cared for like the nearly faultless patient that he was.
In this one respect Heart’s Haven and Heart’s Rock resembled St. Cloud’s: there was no saving Senior Wor-
thington from what was wrong with him, as surely as
there had been no saving Fuzzy Stone.
The second moment is a description of the cider house after Mr. Rose’s death, when the men are picking up their few things and getting ready to leave.
At the end of the harvest, on a gray morning with a wild wind blowing in from the ocean, the overhead bulb that hung in the cider house kitchen blinked twice and
burned out; the spatter of apple mash on the far wall, near the press and grinder, was cast so somberly in shad-
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ows that the dark clots of pomace looked like black
leaves that had blown indoors and stuck against the wall in a storm.
Most of my friends who are novelists have told me that they never know the end of their novels when they start writing them; they find it peculiar that for my novels I need to know, and I need to know not just the ending, but every significant event in the main characters’ lives.When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it; rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened. The invention is over by the time I begin.All I want to be thinking of is the language—the sentence I am writing, and the sentence that follows it. Just the language.
In the case of adapting a novel for the screen, the
screenwriter usually writes with this kind of foreknowl-edge. One already knows the ending; one moves the story toward it. This is the only aspect of screenwriting that resembles writing a novel for me. I know the ending before I begin; I know where the blocks go. At least that much of the storytelling process is familiar.
I must know the structure of the story I’m telling,
whether I’m writing a novel or a screenplay. But there the comparison begins and ends.
The movie script of The Cider House Rules is a play in three acts. Act I, which details Homer’s relationship with
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Dr. Larch and his entrapped life at the orphanage hospital, ends when Homer leaves St. Cloud’s with Wally and
Candy. Homer breaks free of the orphanage and, momen-tarily, of Larch’s moral authority.
Act II introduces Homer’s new life at the Ocean View apple orchards: his acceptance by the picking crew of black migrants (and by Wally’s mother, Olive); his falling in love with Candy; his subsequent refusal to return to St.
Cloud’s and become Dr. Larch’s replacement.
Act III begins with the concurrent news that Mr. Rose has got his daughter pregnant—Rose Rose wants an abortion—and that Wally is returning from the war, paralyzed.
Simultaneously, Candy chooses Wally over Homer, and
Homer accepts that, as a consequence of his medical training, he has an obligation to give Rose Rose an abortion.
Once Homer acknowledges her need for that procedure, he must resign himself to a broader role: he goes back to the orphanage hospital at St. Cloud’s, exactly as Dr. Larch intended.
The last scene in the screenplay had to show Homer
Wells not merely accepting but embracing the role of Dr.
Larch’s replacement. In the course of the film, we have seen both Larch and Homer reading to the boys in the bunk room—always from Dickens, and at least once from David Copperfield, the first sentence of which (“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life . . .”) Homer finally fulfills.
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I knew I wanted to have Homer reading to the boys
from David Copperfield at the end, but there was something more important—unique to Dr. Larch. I wanted Homer
to imitate Larch’s blessing to the boys, his nightly benedic-tion. That was the last scene; it shone like a beacon on some distant shore. Wherever the story took Homer, I knew where he was going to end up. In that sense, it is the most important scene in the movie; it underwent the
largest number of revisions, accordingly. (Most of them concerned which passage from David Copperfield Homer should read.)
But there were two earlier scenes, both of which em-
phasize Larch’s possessive love of Homer, and they were equally important to me. They required very little in the way of revision, but if (for any reason) I had been unable to be on the set for most of the shooting of the film, I would have at least made sure that I was on hand for these two scenes.
It was not until I’d seen both of these scenes shot, as I had written them, that I felt certain of the film’s essential fidelity to the novel.
One morning at the orphanage, one of the orphans
finds a twelve-year-old girl sleeping on the ground near the incinerator—she’s not an orphan. The next we see of the girl, she’s in the operating room; Edna, Homer, and Dr. Larch are attending to her. It’s too late. The girl is going to die. But before she dies, she will inspire the most
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direct confrontation between Homer and Dr. Larch on the abortion issue.
Jane Alexander (Edna) told me that it was the abortion politics of The Cider House Rules that had made her want to be a part of the movie; this is the most political scene in the film.
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INT. OPERATING ROOM—MORNING
( Edna is holding the head of the frightened young girl.The girl is feverishly hot and whimpering; she keeps looking at her feet in the stirrups as if she’s an animal caught in a trap.
Larch and Homer stand on either side of her. ) EDNA
Her temperature is a hundred and four.
LARCH
( very gently) How old are you, dear? Thirteen?
( The girl shakes her head.The pain stabs her again. ) LARCH ( cont. )
Twelve? Are you twelve, dear? ( the girl
nods) You have to tell me how long you’ve been pregnant. ( the girl freezes) Three months?
( Another stab of pain contorts the girl. )
LARCH ( cont. )
Are you four months pregnant?
( The girl holds her breath while he examines her abdomen; Homer examines the girl’s abdomen, too. )
HOMER ( whispers to Larch)
She’s at least five.
( The girl goes rigid as Larch bends into position. ) LARCH
Dear child, it won’t hurt when I look. I’m just
going to look.
( Homer assists Larch with the speculum. )
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LARCH ( cont. )
Tell me: you haven’t done something to
yourself, have you?
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD
&n
bsp; It wasn’t me!
LARCH
Did you go to someone else?
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD
He said he was a doctor. I would
never have stuck that inside me!
HOMER
Stuck what inside you?
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD
It wasn’t me!
( Homer holds the girl still—she is babbling on and on while Larch is examining her. )
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD ( cont. )
It wasn’t me! I would never do
no such thing! I wouldn’t stick that inside me! It wasn’t me!
( Larch, his wild eye peering into the speculum, makes an audi-ble gasp from the shock of what he sees inside the girl. Larch tells Homer to have a look.As Homer bends to the speculum, Larch whispers something to Edna. She brings the ether bottle and cone quickly; she puts the cone in place, over the nose and mouth of the frightened girl. Larch drips the ether from the bottle to the cone. )
LARCH ( to the twelve-year-old )
Listen, you’ve been very
brave. I’m going to put you to sleep—you won’t feel it anymore.You’ve been brave enough.
( Homer stares into the speculum; he closes his eyes.The girl is resisting the ether, but her eyelids flutter closed. ) EDNA
That’s a heavy sedation.
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LARCH
You bet it’s a heavy sedation! The fetus is unex-pelled, her uterus is punctured, she has acute peritoni-tis, and there’s a foreign object. I think it’s a crochet hook.
( Homer has pulled off his surgical mask.He leans over the scrub sink, splashing cold water on his face. )
LARCH ( cont. )
( to Homer)
If she’d come to you four
months ago and asked you for a simple D and C, what
would you have decided to do? Nothing? This is what doing nothing gets you, Homer. It means that someone else is going to do the job—some moron who doesn’t
know how!
( Homer, furious, leaves the operating room. Edna lifts the girl’s eyelids for Larch so that he can see how well under the ether she is. )
LARCH ( cont. )
I wish you’d come to me, dear child.You
should have come to me, instead.
The word tweak is an important one in the movie business. Scenes are always getting “tweaked”; dialogue gets
“tweaked” most of all. In this scene—indeed, in most scenes—we changed some dialogue. Edna and Larch don’t talk about “a heavy sedation”; Larch says instead to “make it deep.” In the editing process, Lasse also chose to lose the dialogue at the front of the scene—about the girl’s exact age, and how many months pregnant she is—because he
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wanted to get to Larch’s lines “It won’t hurt when I look”
and “I’m just going to look” as quickly as possible.
Of course Larch’s most important lines are: “This is what doing nothing gets you, Homer. It means that someone else is going to do the job—some moron who doesn’t know how!” I thought that the camera should be on Larch when he delivers those lines, but Lasse wanted the camera on Homer’s face, on his reaction. A better choice.
The girl who played the twelve-year-old was actually twelve herself. Her mother was on the set. I talked to the mother between takes. Michael talked to the girl much in the manner that Dr. Larch might have. The girl’s mother told me that her daughter “understood absolutely everything” about the scene.Yet one of the wanna-be producers who’d been involved with the making of The Cider House Rules when Phillip Borsos was still alive insisted that this scene had to go; at the very least, the girl should be of
“legal age,” he said. It’s hard to imagine how someone who felt that way ever convinced himself that he wanted to produce The Cider House Rules in the first place.
Politically speaking, if I were to make a list of people who should see The Cider House Rules, two groups would go to the top of the list: politicians who call themselves pro-life (meaning anti-abortion) and twelve-year-old girls.
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The second most important scene to me,especially
regarding Larch’s love for Homer Wells, is that mo-
ment when Homer has told Dr. Larch that he’s leav-
ing, and Larch has just broken the news to Angela and Edna. In the film—not in the novel, as I’ve said—I imply that Nurse Angela (Kathy Baker) might have a romantic relationship with Larch, or that she might have had. Their relationship is much more physical than Larch’s relationship with Nurse Edna, which is not physical at all.At least there are moments of physical affection between Larch and Angela (most notably an ether moment), and Angela—as only a lover or a former lover can be—is unafraid to be critical of Larch. Kathy Baker played the undisclosed sexual mystery of Angela’s relationship to Larch to perfection.
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But this is Dr. Larch’s scene; Homer is his boy, and his boy is leaving.
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INT. KITCHEN—LATE AFTERNOON
( Buster and Mary Agnes are serving an early supper while Larch rails at Angela and Edna, who are helping Buster and Mary Agnes. The sound of children in the dining hall is intermit-tent and chaotic. )
EDNA
Going where? Does he have a plan of some kind?
ANGELA
Will he be back soon?
LARCH
I don’t know! He’s just leaving— ( to Angela) you’re the one who says he needs to see the world! ( to Edna) That’s what he’ll do—he’ll see the world!
EDNA ( stunned )
He’s leaving . . .
ANGELA
He’ll need clothes . . . some money . . .
LARCH
Let him try to make some money! That’s part of
“seeing the world,” isn’t it?
ANGELA ( angrily)
Oh, just stop it! You knew this was
going to happen. He’s a young man.
LARCH ( almost breaking)
He’s still a boy—out in the
world, he’s still a boy.
ANGELA ( with sympathy)
Just find him some clothes,
Wilbur. He could use some clothes.
( Camera closes on Larch. )
That scene wasn’t “tweaked” at all, and it survived
Lasse’s first three cuts untouched.
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Larch is right about Homer: “out in the world, he’s still a boy.”
As for the ending, I can’t count the hours I spent riding my stationary bicycle, looking for the perfect passage in David Copperfield; there were so many, any one of which could have served our purposes. We wanted to demonstrate that Homer is where he belongs; yet in the passage from Copperfield that Homer reads, we also wanted something that corresponds to his own life, the course of which has been marked by moments of inescapable loss, yearn-ing, sadness.
“But not too melancholic,” Richard warned. (Not too uplifting, either, I thought.)
“Something with closure,” Lasse said.
The first passage I chose was Copperfield’s view of
Steerforth’s drowned body, which has come ashore; it lies on the beach (“on that part of it where some lighter frag-ments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind—among the ruins of the home he had wronged—I saw him lying with his head upon his
arm, as I had o
ften seen him lie at school”).
One of the orphans asks, “Is Steerforth dead?”
“He sounds dead,” Curly replies.
“Of course he’s dead!” one of the older boys says.
“Yeah, yeah . . . he’s dead, he’s dead!” Buster con-
cludes.
(I wanted to see Buster’s face at the end—the innocent
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face of Homer-as-a-kid.) But Lasse said that the emphasis on death made us think too much about Larch and not
enough about Homer. I agreed.
I thought of the end of Chapter Sixty (“Agnes”), chiefly because it is so lovely—although romantic love would hardly impress the boys in the bunk room.
As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.
But to have Homer read this passage while reflecting on his own life too strongly implies that he is still pining for Candy.Wrong.
Richard liked a passage that posed a similar problem.
“Can I say of her face . . . that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face I may choose to look on in a crowded street?” (This passage also posed the problem that it is his mother Copperfield is remembering. Not good.)
I liked the title of Chapter Eleven (“I Begin Life on My
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Own Account, and Don’t Like It”) and the opening passage of that chapter. “I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.”
However, it fell into Richard’s “too melancholic” category to have Homer appear to be feeling sorry for himself for being an orphan. And how would the other boys in the bunk room respond to that? Wouldn’t they just nod their heads and look grim?
The end of that same chapter has a different appeal.
