One might imagine America's most dramatic Nobel laueate in Literature would merit more adaptation. The fact that Ford chose four of O'Neill's little one acts set on the Glencaim to adapt rather than one of O'Neill's record four Pullitzer winning plays (Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, Long Day's Journey into Night ) seems idiosincratic. Ah, but the sea calls whom she calls. "I suppose there's a woman in it somewhere." Like O'Neill's ships' crews was the Zen monestary where I studied in the Jemez mountains. It soon emerged that every monk was there studying over some story with a woman. Ford/O'Neill's merchant marines dream of land as otiose as heaven, as akward among the civilians as the decommissioned in Best Years of our Lives.
Such plays are necessarily ensemble affairs, but the plotlines never tangle. Admire Ford's police-flashlighting the characters in their bunks by way of introduction. Emotional notes rise and fall quick as waves, from the comedy "he talks English too good" to the pathos of the reading of Smith's letters. The men know they are worth less than the cargo. Who would not act the hairy ape under such conditions? FEMA once called me an 'asset' to be used as they saw fit. Ford advances the action one world war farther along, then adds explosives to ratchet up the wages of fear. Oh, add your stone to the cairn, passer-by. Compared to the Glencairn, Cameron's Titanic is just a prop.
Another compelling O'Neill adaptation stars the imcomparable old man river himself Paul Robeson as Emperor Jones.
Such plays are necessarily ensemble affairs, but the plotlines never tangle. Admire Ford's police-flashlighting the characters in their bunks by way of introduction. Emotional notes rise and fall quick as waves, from the comedy "he talks English too good" to the pathos of the reading of Smith's letters. The men know they are worth less than the cargo. Who would not act the hairy ape under such conditions? FEMA once called me an 'asset' to be used as they saw fit. Ford advances the action one world war farther along, then adds explosives to ratchet up the wages of fear. Oh, add your stone to the cairn, passer-by. Compared to the Glencairn, Cameron's Titanic is just a prop.
Another compelling O'Neill adaptation stars the imcomparable old man river himself Paul Robeson as Emperor Jones.
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