Revolutionary Road By The Book

Dianne Butler

April 07, 2009 12:00am

I'M getting mixed signals from those VB ads for Legacy - the one where the old biddy talks sadly about somebody who was killed in a war and then drinks beer.

Would this be allowed under the television ban on alcohol advertising? And what about all her medication – should an elderly woman in a reflective state of mind be combining her prescription medicines with an ice cold glass of VB? For what reason did they opt not to go with a poem that ended with the traditional VB phrase Matter of fact I've got it now? And so on. I'm also confused about Neighbours. Why is Andre Rieu on it tonight? The violinist? Super annoying? Ten's press release – which described him as a pensioner pin-up – said he was invited to go on the show after he "surprised" the audience in Melbourne by doing the Neighbours theme song when he toured in November. So many unanswered questions remain there.

There was a line in a review I read of that Kate Winslet movie Revolutionary Road, it said it felt like it was made less to be watched than to be discussed on arts programs. It's good isn't it? Puts you off the film a bit though. Wonder what all the publicity did for the book? The guy who wrote it, Richard Yates, hardly sold any while he was alive. He wasn't even in print when he died. Which tallies with all those stories you hear about his genius. The Scott Fitzgerald of his generation and all that. I'd like to see it as a made-for-television mini-series starring Britney Spears as the missus and that guy Michael Weatherly from NCIS in the Leonardo DiCaprio role. Will they discuss casting the film on First Tuesday Book Club tonight? Or will they do it – ready for this one? – by the book? Hahahaha. I hope they have some fantastic story about how this novel came to the attention of Kate Winslet who then passed it on to her husband Sam Mendes who then decided to make it into a movie starring his wife. Who is Kate Winslet. She'd always say when she was doing all those interviews for it that she couldn't put the book down but it might be interesting to know how she found it in the first place. This writer Sam Kashner did this great story for Vanity Fair last year about the making of The Graduate. It's got all this fabulous stuff about Dustin Hoffman and Mike Nichols and Simon and Garfunkel's theme song and how the guy who produced it saw a review of the book in The New York Times and decided to read it and he loved it so much he optioned the film rights using $1000 of his own money. Mike Nichols – you know who I mean don't you? Big shot film director, married to Diane Sawyer? He used to be a comedian and I just have to read you out one of his old gags, they mentioned it in the Graduate piece: A pushy mother and her put-upon rocket-scientist son: I feel awful, the son says after his mother berates him for not calling. If I could believe that, she says, I'd be the happiest mother in the world. So you can see why when they were making a movie of The Graduate they got Mike Nichols to direct it. A guy called Charles Webb wrote it, it was his first novel. Forty years later his book New Cardiff came out. That's the movie version on Seven tonight, it's called Hope Springs. For many of you all you need to know about it is this: it's got Colin Firth in it. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with the BBC series Hope Springs that's about to start in England, which I understand is about four former prisoners who somehow all end up living in the same town. It sounds like a comedy to me but the BBC website says it's a drama and I s'pose they'd know.