The River Why - the movie

[Rick J]

here is a clip of the movie The River Why - one of my all time favorite books - can't wait until it comes out!!!

http://www.midcurrent.com/news/2010/...-why-movi.html

[Swinging4Steel]

This is one of my favorite novels and I've often wondered what a film adaptation would be like. And I've also wondered if anyone could do it justice.

I believe it's being screened in NYC this Friday the 27th, according to the film's website. I will be practicing casting up on the Salmon this weekend, so I'll have to pass and wait for the DVD release.

[wiscokid]

Here is some info from the author regarding the movie, for what it is worth. he released this statement this spring and I'm just passing the info along...

Some background:

This movie was made by filmmakers who I fought in court for several years. One reason I conducted this expensive, unpleasant battle was that I believe my film rights were given away (settled in 2008). But the chief reason I fought so hard was that I hoped to make a River Why movie that could do something significant for wild salmon, particularly those going extinct in Idaho, eastern Oregon and Washington due primarily to four lower Snake River dams. I had put together a team including producer Patrick Markey (“A River Runs Through It”), producer Matt Salinger (a maker of many independent films), and I was going to co-write with my old friend, Sherman Alexie. We planned to move the story to an Idaho river so that every salmon or steelhead would be an endangered survivor of the gauntlet of dams. Sherman would have created hilarious, heartbroken Nez Perce characters being screwed out of the fish that are their birthright, treaty right, wealth, and Eucharist by the Obama Administration’s false stewardship under NOAA — a blunder instituted largely by the inane politicking of Senator Patty Murray (D, WA). (Feel free to send her an irate letter!) In order for my team’s project to fly I needed to block the film that is now appearing. We tried our best and came close, but a betrayal sabotaged us. No sense naming the betrayer, it’s all water under the bridge (and salmon smolts blasted dead through the turbines) now. Though my name was removed from the film and I was awarded a settlement, I failed to stop what I now call, after its makers, The Marin County River Why.

My feelings today:

The makers of The MCRW were legally obligated to send me a copy of their film before it aired at the Ashland Film Festival. They did so. When the film arrived at my home I happened to be on the road, filling a gap between speaking engagements by fishing the Driftless region of Wisconsin with my musician friend, Jeffrey Foucault. A few friends and family members watched The Marin County River Why and weren’t happy. But on the day they saw it, I happened to be catching one spring creek brown trout after another on blue-winged olives amid a deafening choir of ecstatic redwing blackbirds. And when, that evening, my friends phoned to tell me their reactions to the film, I was sitting on a porch sipping Maker’s Mark, listening to Jeffrey’s stupendous music, live, watching sandhill cranes, bald eagles, and Amishmen in horse-drawn buggies pass by in the river valley below. I tried to focus on the laments and to sympathize with the sense of trespass or outrage over the movie. But I just couldn’t stop smiling at the sweet Here and Now before me. And as I lay in bed that night, the proverbial “still small voice” interrupted the owls just long enough to suggest something that hadn’t occurred to me:

Don’t watch the movie.

Why didn’t I think of that? I exclaimed to the silent voice.

What peace I then began to feel! Giving in, at the age of 26, to the word-drunk fish-crazed literary impulse that became The River Why was a pleasure and privilege and stroke of stupendous luck. The book’s main tributaries were twenty years of love for Oregon Coast streams and a skein of coming of age stories (Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Dharma Bums, Narcissus and Goldmund, Troutfishing in America) I more or less got to live in a moss-covered version of my own. The book’s success turned me from a mower of lawns living in Portland into a teller of tales living on rivers, where I remain to this day. That “Glum Gus” (as Ma rightly calls him) managed to express a love contagious enough that it continues to touch good people thirty years later is a lot of good fortune for one measly coming of age novel. I seek no better or other fortune than this.

So, to the filmmakers — and the betrayers, too: peace. And to anyone who wants to see The Marin County River Why, proceed at your own risk. But, for me personally, I see no reason to add what trusted friends tell me is a heap of canned Cool Whip to what has already been a fine piece of homemade pie. So I won’t be seeing you at the movies. But on a little river one of these days, who knows?

[Aldo]

Seeing movies based on my favorite books always makes me nervous. Occasionally the film does the book justice (Gettysburg/Killer Angels, Cold Mountain), but far too often, the film falls woefully short (A River Runs Through It), even with the best of intentions.

I watched the trailer for this one, and it left me a little flat. I know, it's probably foolish to make a judgment about the entire film from a 90 second clip, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go see this one. The magic in the book, for me at least, was in the quirky characters and dialog they had with Gus; remember Ma harassing the "witlesses" and blowing the neighbor's doberman away with her shotgun? And Gus' brother's "bood gooky", or the way the guy who shared the cabin with him for awhile (forgot his name) used to look at a hook before he put it in a vise - and why? Or Sigrid the Small and Alfred the Great and his tragic end? I have a feeling little if any of that will make it into the movie.

Here's to hoping that I'm wrong, and that the movie will honor the spirit and character of the book.

[beau purvis]

The Trailer looks like the typical hollywood that does not understand outdoor/nature sport and makes everything in it way more 'dramatic' then it needs to be. I don't have to swimm after a fish to make it a memorable experience...often it is just the pure beauty of the fish or the glimps of a large buck up close for a few moments or even the smallest fraction of time. Fifty years ago,while fishing the Duckabush river, I came around a corner and saw 6 tremendous Rosevelt bull elk on the other side of the river...I can still pull up that vision in my memory bank as if it was yesterday, and be moved by it. Nothing dramatic,just a scene of serene beauty that most of you understand!

[Rick J]

Beau - I remember vividly jumping off the ledge at the Racks on the North Umpqua as a fish went over the lip!!!!!! Maybe I can be in a film!!

[beau purvis]

Depends on how damatic you made it and how many times a lifeless fish 'jumped?'. Don't get me wrong, I have hopped in the river and dug them out of the brush on the far side,but that's maybe 6 times max out of more than 50yrs. And,it really has nothing to do with sustaining my love for the sport and the critters.

[Michael Parsons]

Seeing I live in Marin County, I needed to see why he called it,"Marin County River Why". Couldn't find much, but I will keep looking. I will need to stop by the office of Steel Head Films and see if anyone there has actually fished for one. If you go to a film festival, it appears you can also see a documentary of it being filmed "Green". I am starting to hate that word.

[moethedog]

I don't know what the movie will be like....but it couldn't be any worse than the movie Duncan WANTED to make, according to wisco's post!