Thursday, December 11, 2014

White Palace variations

I went to see White Palace when it was first released, and at the time I was around the same age as the James Spader character, but now I'm older than the Susan Sarandon character. Tempus fugit. I still mostly like the movie, with some reservations, as I discussed a couple of years ago here.

One of the things I had reservations about was that the Nora character basically rapes the Max character. I recently bought a copy of the original novel the movie was based on, also called White Palace and to my surprise it actually uses the word "rape" to describe the encounter. So I'm glad the author, Glen Savan, had that much awareness.

Savan had a cameo in the movie, as can be seen in the first scene in the movie's trailer ("Yo, buddy, I'd like to get my hamburgers.) Poor old Savan died at the age of 49 of a heart attack.

There are several other difference between the novel and the movie, but I haven't found them all yet because I've been too busy to finish the novel.

One fascinating thing I've discovered is that this scene from the movie is hugely popular for "scene study" exercises.



You really appreciate the actorly abilities of Spader/Sarandon when you see these people do the scene:



And even in Norwegian!