# Great Expectations (1998)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

    The following is an interview with PLANET SICK-BOY and Great
    Expectations author Charles
    Dickens:

PLANET SICK-BOY "Thank you for meeting me Mr. Dickens"

CHARLES DICKENS "Charlie, please call me Charlie"

              PSB "Ok, Charlie, I just saw a screening of the new film version
              of Great Expectations. Have you heard much about it yet?"

              CD "Just the basics really. We get Variety up there, you know"

              PSB "Wow! Anyway, are you aware that they set it in modern times?"

j CD "Yes, I heard all about that. I imagine that there just trying to cash in on the success of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet"

              PSB "Did you get to see that film?"

              CD "Oh, yes. Bill was so proud of the commercial success. It's been a while for him"

              PSB "You mean Bill Shakespeare?

CD "Of course. Bill and I are great friends. We play basketball once a week. He has got a good shot, but his inside game pretty shabby. Anyway, he didn't like that fruit DiCaprio playing Romeo, but he was tickled pink that they kept the original dialogue"

              PSB "You're aware that they didn't keep your dialogue in this
    film?"

              CD (softly) "They what?"

              PSB "They not only updated the setting, they also updated the dialogue. Can I get you some water?"

              CD (turning ashen) "They didn't tell me about this when we signed the contracts. How much was changed"

              PSB "Well, Lustig said ‘Fuck' three times in the first five minutes"

              CD "Oh, my God. (pauses) Who is Lustig?

PSB "Oh, I'm sorry. The Lustig character in the film is the Magwitch character from your story. Pretty much all of the names were changed"

CD (slumping down in his chair) "I'm going to kill my agent. All he told me was that they got the kids that made A Little Princess. He kept saying that over and over again. Nothing about the names changing and the dialogue changing. Tell me, who else had a different name?"

PSB "Ummm, Ms. Havisham was Ms. Dinsmoor. The uncle was still Joe, but Coleman instead of Gargery and…"

              CD (interrupting) "What about Pip? They couldn't change Pip"

              PSB "Actually, Pip was changed to Finn Bell"

CD "Finn Bell? What kind of idiot name is that? I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and throw up a hundred better names than Finn Bell. What about Estella?"

              PSB "They kept her name

              CD "She was probably drop dead gorgeous, right?"

              PSB "Yes, she was. Gwyneth Paltrow played Estella and she had these amazing legs and…"

CD (interrupting, and becoming more irate) "The bastards! Now you see, that's the problem with films. I never even described what she looked like in the book. The reader was left to use his or her imagination. Movies are just spoon-fed garbage"

              PSB "Errrrr, the famous designer Donna Karan designed all of her outfits, too"

              CD "Well, Donna Karan is a bloody hack. If I had my say, they would have used Vera Wang instead"

PSB "Alrighty then. By the way, Karan usually only designs in black, but all of Estella's designer clothes were green. In fact, there seemed to be a green tint to the whole movie"

              CD "I don't even know what that means. They probably made a big production out of Estella kissing Pip, too"

PSB "Yes, they did. And it was Finn, remember? Anyway, when they were little, Estella erotically licked Finn's lips when he was drinking from a water fountain. She did the same thing years later in New York"

CD (standing up) "JACKALS! The first kiss was supposed to be bloody UN-ROMANTIC! ‘Given to the coarse common boy as if a piece of money might have been'. That's how I wrote the first kiss!"

PSB "Whoa, Mr. Dickens…please sit down. Do you want to talk about the use of painter Francesco Clemente's work in the film?"

CD (mocking) "No, I don't want to talk about that. Tell me, son, did they change the benefactor? By Jobe, they better have not or I'll gut Rupert Murdoch like a fish"

PSB "No, the benefactor remained unchanged, but they did change the opening line to ‘I'm going to tell it the way it happened, not the way I remember it'. I found that strange because it actually seemed like Finn didn't remember his own story and was making it up as he told it"

              CD "I don't really understand or care about what you're saying"

PSB "He didn't remember how it really happened so he distorted the facts and twisted the truth. I implemented the same technique when I wrote the essay question in 9th grade English. Not because I couldn't remember, but because I didn't read the book"

              CD "Yeah, that makes me feel better"

              PSB "On the bright side, Anne Bancroft was hilariously over-the-top as Ms.  Dinsmoor"

              CD "I thought she was dead"

              PSB "No, she's alive and kicking. It was fun to watch her ogle a young Finn, not unlike the way she looked at Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate"

              CD "I'd better go. I'm going to miss my bus and it's the last one today. I don't want to be stuck here overnight"

PSB "Wait, don't go away mad. There were some good parts. Emmanuel Lubezki did a great job with the photography and the sets were very well done. It was visually pleasing.

              CD "What do I care from visual?"

PSB "Right. Estella was still stony cold. She didn't tell Finn that she had no heart and ‘no sympathy sentiment nonsense', but she did walk out of the room after letting Finn digitally investigate her"

              CD "Jesus Christ"

PSB "Yeah. And Finn still has a surprisingly absent lack of will and ability to control his own destiny. It didn't, however, give me the same feeling about Finn expecting Dinsmoor to eventually ‘give' Estella to him. It was just sappy Hollywood romance bull-shit"

              CD "This is making me want to rent the 1946 David Lean version"

              PSB "That's probably not a bad idea. Hey, rent Scrooge while you're there"

              CD "Fuck you, dick-weed"

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://home.eznet.net/~jpopick

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