Don't You Noah?: March 2010

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

'Water for Elephants,' by Sara Gruen

Trunk Show

On our first date, my husband took me to see Tod Browning's "Freaks," a 1932 horror film with a distinctly Diane Arbus feel that takes a voyeuristic delight in dwarfs, fat ladies and other sideshow improbabilities. Sara Gruen's arresting new novel, "Water for Elephants," explores similar subject matter — the pathetic grandeur of the Depression-era circus. And like Browning, Gruen infuses her audacious material with a surprisingly uplifting strain of sentimentality.

"Water for Elephants" begins violently and then veers into weirder terrain. Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student at Cornell, discovers that his parents have been killed in a car accident. Aimless and distraught, he climbs aboard a train that happens to be carrying the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and inveigles a job as an animal doctor. His responsibilities draw him into the unpredictable orbit of August Rosenbluth, the circus's mercurial menagerie director, and his beautiful wife, Marlena, whose equestrian act attracts enthusiastic crowds.

Jacob immerses himself in the bizarre subculture of acrobats, aerialists, sword swallowers and lion tamers, mastering a vernacular that reflects a rigid caste system. Ringling Brothers is nicknamed "Big Bertha," performers are "kinkers" and members of the audience are always "rubes." When an aged Jacob observes a contemporary circus, he sees children carrying blinking toys: "Bet their parents paid an arm and a leg for them, too. Some things never change. Rubes are still rubes, and you can still tell the performers from the workers."

The troupe crisscrosses the country cannibalizing acts that have gone bankrupt in the Depression-era economy. After Uncle Al, the autocratic ringmaster, purchases Rosie, an elephant with an unquenchable thirst for lemonade and the inability to follow the simplest command, Benzini Brothers looks doomed. How Jacob coaxes Rosie to perform — thereby saving the circus — lies at the heart of the novel.

Gruen, whose first novel was "Riding Lessons," turns horses and other creatures into sympathetic characters. According to an author's note, she studied elephant body language and behavior with a former handler at the Kansas City Zoo. The research pays off. August's mistreatment of Marlena pales beside the visceral wallop of his nonchalant cruelty toward Rosie: "I look up just as he flicks the cigarette. It arcs through the air and lands in Rosie's open mouth, sizzling as it hits her tongue. She roars, panicked, throwing her head and fishing inside her mouth with her trunk. August marches off. I turn back to Rosie. She stares at me, a look of unspeakable sadness on her face. Her amber eyes are filled with tears."

Second-rate and seedy, Benzini Brothers suffers a collective inferiority complex (no one is permitted to utter the word "Ringling" in Uncle Al's presence). When Lovely Lucinda, the 400-pound fat lady, dies suddenly, Uncle Al orchestrates a funeral procession led by 24 black Percherons and an army of mourners competing for the three dollars and bottle of Canadian whiskey promised to whoever puts on the best show. "You've never seen such grief — even the dogs are howling."

Gruen's circus, with its frankly mercantile morality, symbolizes the warped vigor of capitalism. No matter how miserable or oppressed, the performers love the manufacturing of illusion, sewing a new sequined headdress for Rosie or feeding the llamas as men die of starvation in a devastated America. August's paranoid schizophrenia feels emblematic — an indictment of a lifetime spent feigning emotions to make a buck.

At its finest, "Water for Elephants" resembles stealth hits like "The Giant's House," by Elizabeth McCracken, or "The Lovely Bones," by Alice Sebold, books that combine outrageously whimsical premises with crowd-pleasing romanticism. But Gruen's prose is merely serviceable, and she hurtles through cataclysmic events, overstuffing her whiplash narrative with drama (there's an animal stampede, two murders and countless fights). She also asserts a grand passion between Jacob and Marlena that's never convincingly demonstrated.

Black-and-white photographs of real American circus scenes from the first half of the century are interspersed throughout the novel, and they brilliantly evoke the dignified power contained in the quieter moments of this unusual brotherhood. The grainy photos capture the unexpected daintiness of an elephant disembarking from a train, the symmetry of a marching band, a gaggle of plumed showgirls stepping gingerly across a patchy lawn and the haunting solitude of an impeccably dressed cook.

Circuses showcase human beings at their silliest and most sublime, and many unlikely literary figures have been drawn to their glitzy pageantry, soaring pretensions and metaphorical potential (Marianne Moore leaps to mind). Unsurprisingly, writers seem liberated by imagining a spectacle where no comparison ever seems inflated, no development impossible. For better and for worse, Gruen has fallen under the spell. With a showman's expert timing, she saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale.

Elizabeth Judd has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Salon and other publications.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

The movie: an adaptation of Sara Gruen's 2006 bestselling novel "Water for Elephants," about a veterinary student who quits his studies to join a traveling circus.

The scene: a group of students, circa 1931, on the campus of Cornell University.

Jim Elyea's task: to make sure the briefcases the students are carrying look authentic when the film begins shooting this May in Santa Paula, Calif.

The co-owner of the History for Hire prop house in North Hollywood combs through a 1931 Sears catalog in his 5,000-book library, finds the correct design and selects the appropriate model among his collection of 400 vintage briefcases.

It's just another day at the office for Elyea, who could tell you what guitar and amp Elvis' guitarist Scotty Moore played, or the type of powder horn used at the Alamo.

Elyea and his wife and business partner, Pam, established their company 25 years ago and have managed to survive in a Hollywood sector that has suffered several casualties over the last decade. Their winning strategies: avoiding debt and specializing in hard-to-find historical props, including Revolutionary War muskets, vintage Rickenbacker electric guitars and film cameras from the dawn of Hollywood.

The company's props, which fill a 30,000-square-foot warehouse, have been used in films such as "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "The Aviator" and numerous TV shows, including "The Pacific," the HBO miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg.

"You don't just rent a physical item; you rent the research that goes with it," said Jim Elyea, a 59-year-old Texan. "We know our history."

The business is a second career for the couple. Pam had worked as a manager for a media buying company and Jim was a courtroom artist, sketching the likes of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, before indulging his passion for antiques, which he developed hanging around his mother's antique shop in Arlington, Texas. A banner from the shop hangs outside his office.

The Elyeas were still living in their Hollywood apartment when Jim landed his first major job, supplying military gear to Oliver Stone's film "Platoon." He shipped 85 boxes of flak vests, helmets, machetes and other gear to the Philippines.

Opening in a small storefront in North Hollywood, the company rapidly expanded after it acquired a warehouse full of props from Paramount Studios in 1989.

A big break came a year later when director Richard Attenborough wanted to rent film cameras, dollies, eyeglasses and beach equipment for his movie "Chaplin."

"Richard Attenborough told us that people learn their history from the movies, so it's important to get it right," Pam Elyea said. "That has been our philosophy."

Scores of other projects followed, and by 2007 the company's annual revenue had climbed to about $2 million. History for Hire's inventory includes about 1 million props, from a 1920s can of peaches that rents for $5 a week to a camera dolly from Hollywood's silent-film era that goes for $3,500 a week.

Painstaking historical research is a key part of the business. Hope Parrish, a veteran property master who worked with the couple on "The Aviator," recalls how Jim drew a diagram on butcher paper showing precisely where microphones and cameras should be placed to re-create the actual Senate hearings depicted in the film.

"Their attention to detail makes my job 120% easier," Parrish said.

Like many other prop houses, however, History for Hire was hard hit by a production falloff triggered by the writers strike, a standoff between the major studios and the Screen Actors Guild, and the recession, which caused studios to make fewer movies and dried up commercial filming.

The downturn led several production support companies to slash payrolls and prompted one of the industry's largest prop houses, 20th Century Props, to announce that it would close.

History for Hire saw a double-digit percentage drop in sales, but the company had built up enough savings to cover the falloff and has avoided long-term debt. The company cut salaries 15% but retained its dozen employees, including a former U.S. Navy petty officer who is an expert on weaponry and a onetime restoration specialist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

History for Hire also diversified, renting out props not only for films and TV shows but also for commercials, music videos and magazines including Rolling Stone, which rented one of the company's guitars for a cover that featured Melissa Etheridge.

Rather than renting out larger props like furniture, History for Hire focused on smaller, mostly lightweight props that could be easily shipped around the country. The firm, for example, will ship cooking utensils, umbrellas and other items to New York for "Mildred Pierce," an HBO series starring Kate Winslet based on the Joan Crawford film set in the Depression.

As the economy recovers and studios ramp up production again, business has begun to rebound for companies like History for Hire. Sales are projected to climb up to 25% this year over last year, said Pam Elyea, attributing part of the uptick to the effects of California's new film tax credits.

"Things are looking much better as far as production goes, although there is a huge concern about 2011, when the labor contracts expire," she said. "Another strike would be devastating."

richard.verrier@latimes .com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Stephenie Meyer's New 'Twilight' Book

Introduces a Surprising New Heroine

by Joseph Brannigan Lynch · March 30, 2010

Well before "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" hits theaters on June 30, "Twilight" fans will be treated to a new glimpse into author Stephenie Meyer's vampire universe.

On June 5, the 36-year-old multimillionaire author will release "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner," a novella that takes place concurrently with the events in the third "Twilight" book, "Eclipse." Only this time, the bloody tale of revenge and romance will be told from the perspective of Bree, a "newborn" vampire recruited by antagonist Victoria (to be played by Bryce Dallas Howard in the upcoming film) to kill human heroine Bella Swan (played, of course, by Kristen Stewart).

If fans are confounded by the news that a minor character from the series is the star of the first "Twilight" book in two years, they're not the only ones. "It's a surprise...I never intended to publish this story as a stand-alone book," Meyer says on her website. "I began this story a long time ago-before Twilight was even released. Back then I was just editing Eclipse, and in the thick of my vampire world.... I started writing from Bree's perspective about those final days, and what it was like to be a newborn."

The short story was originally slated for the upcoming tome The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide, but when Meyer's publisher informed her it was far too lengthy for inclusion, they decided to release it as a separate book instead.

Anyone skeptical that the wildly successful vampire-genre author is just trying to bleed her fans for more money can rest easy-starting June 7 at noon and until July 5, the entire story will be available at http://www.breetanner.com/ for free. "You all have bought a ton of my books," Meyer noted on her site. "I wanted to give you this story as a gift."

The book will also be released in hardcover by Little, Brown on June 5. One dollar from the first 1.5 million copies sold in the U.S. will go to will go to the American Red Cross International Response Fund to help ease crises like those in Chile and Haiti.

Before Meyer decided to release "Bree Tanner" to the public, however, this short story was lent to "Eclipse" screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to help her understand how Victoria-the vampire set on making Bella and Edward pay for her lover's death-created her army of newborn vampires, and to provide details of the vampires' feeding frenzy in Seattle.

Readers of the novel may recall Bree's unique role in Eclipse-she was the only newborn vampire left alive after the Cullens (the good bloodsuckers) triumphed. But as the title indicates, Bree's second life didn't last very long. After being tortured by a member of the Volturi, Jane (played by Dakota Fanning in the film), Bree was destroyed for breaking the cardinal vampire rule: Don't reveal yourself recklessly to humans.