by John Irving
“When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth . . . When I tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange experiences and sordid things!” But Lasse didn’t like the “pity” and Richard was appalled by the “sordid things,” although it seems to me that Homer has been exposed to some pretty sordid things.
“Closure!” Lasse repeated.
“There’s been enough ongoing pain, hasn’t there?”
Richard asked.
We had other choices, too numerous to mention here.
Finally we chose the end of Chapter Fourteen (“My Aunt Makes Up Her Mind About Me”).
Lasse shot so many takes of scene 234—I mean just the
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part where Tobey reads to the boys—that one of the
younger boys fell asleep.
234
INT. BOYS’ DIVISION—NIGHT
( Homer reads to the boys from David Copperfield. While his voice is strong—positive, optimistic, certainly reassuring to the boys—there is in the conclusion of the chapter something that distracts him. He seems to hesitate; he misses a line or two, and he appears to purposely skip one or two others. [ Possibly Homer’s eyes wander ahead, to the title of the next chapter:“I Make Another Beginning.” ]) HOMER
“Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and
with everything new about me. . . . I felt . . . like one in a dream. . . . The remembrance of that life is
fraught with so much . . . want of hope. . . . Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and . . . there I leave it.”
( Homer stops and looks at the boys’ faces. ) CURLY
What happens next?
( Homer smiles. )
HOMER
That’s tomorrow, Curly. Let’s not give the story
away.
( Homer puts out the lights and leaves the boys in the familiar semidarkness. Seconds later, the closed door to the hall is flung open, flooding the room with light from the hall, and
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Homer delivers his best imitation of Larch’s popular blessing. )
HOMER
Good night, you Princes of Maine! You Kings of
New England!
( On Copperfield and Steerforth and Curly as the door to the hall is closed and semidarkness prevails in the room again.
There is some giggling, some nervous laughter. Copperfield, smiling, shuts his eyes. After a second, the wide-eyed Steerforth shuts his eyes, too.Then Curly. )
( The last to close his eyes is Buster. )
FADE TO BLACK.
We tweaked Curly’s line: “What happens next?” became
“Is that it?” (Or words to that effect.) We dispensed with Homer closing the door and opening it again—he just delivers his blessing before he leaves—and we added an angle of Homer in the hall, after he’s closed the door. At first we tried to end on Buster with his eyes open instead of closed. (I’ve seen the ending so many times that the decision to have Buster’s eyes open or closed is immaterial.) Of course we kept the “FADE TO BLACK.”
The last day of shooting, I was on the set until after dark, but I drove home to Vermont that night; I didn’t stay for the wrap party. It didn’t look as though they would finish on the set until midnight, and Richard told me that the
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party would be at a bar in Northampton—a place that was popular with Smith students, Leslie said. I’m not a late-night person, and—largely because I’m deaf in one ear—
parties with a lot of noise annoy me.
I was in bed, asleep, when the phone rang—it was 1:30
A.M. I could hear the music and the cheering; on the count of three, a chorus of voices shouted my name. “Irving rules!” someone else yelled. There was more whooping, and then—mercifully—whoever it was hung up the
phone. I hadn’t said a word.
My wife rolled over. “Who was that?” she asked.
I was already falling back to sleep, but I managed to say to Janet: “They’ve wrapped.”
Fade to black.
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A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
JOHN WINSLOW IRVING was born in Exeter,
New Hampshire, in 1942. He is the author of
nine novels, among them A Prayer for Owen
Meany and A Widow for One Year. Mr. Irving is married and has three sons; he lives in Toronto
and southern Vermont.
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A B O U T T H E T Y P E
This book was set in Perpetua, a typeface de-
signed by the English artist Eric Gill, and cut
by the Monotype Corporation between 1928
and 1930. Perpetua is a contemporary face of
original design, without any direct historical
antecedents. The shapes of the roman letters
are derived from the techniques of stone-
cutting. The larger display sizes are extremely
elegant and form a most distinguished series
of inscriptional letters.
