Joe Pesci Would Have Captured a Much More Bloody, Introspective Marv
When I first read Upton Sinclair's Oil!, I thought the story of a sweet-talking oil salesman who tries to scam the pants off the residents of a sleepy Iowa town until he learns to sing a few songs, falls madly in love with the prudish librarian, and teaches all the boys in the town to play the euphonium would make a great movie. Boy was I wrong.
Now perhaps I shouldn't blame Paul Thomas Anderson for taking a couple of liberties with the characters, even though the ardently anti-billiards Daniel Plainview of the novel would certainly never bowl in his own home. But in the wrong hands, even the most towering literary achievement can come off achingly banal on the big screen. Here's Pangea 3000 on Chris Columbus botching the adaptation of their favorite novel, The Wet Bandits.
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