Speaker 1: Throughout this series, we've covered Doll's monumental literary successes. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. For countless children around the world, their
Speaker 1: first taste of dolls stories came not from turning pages,
Speaker 1: but from watching screens. And all of these films and
Speaker 1: TV shows were created through the work of the screenwriters
Speaker 1: and directors who adapted Doll's stories. These adaptations create a
Speaker 1: whole new dimension to a storytelling legacy. That's what we're
Speaker 1: diving into today for my hard podcasts, Imagine Entertainment and Parallax.
Speaker 1: I'm Marrion Tracy, and this is the secret world of
Speaker 1: Roll Doll. To start, let me take you back to
Speaker 1: the early in eighteen sixties. We're at a starry Hollywood
Speaker 1: party and a giant, opulent producer's house in the hills,
Speaker 1: one of those suffocating parties where everyone's on top of
Speaker 1: each other and thick cigarette smoke gives all the faces
Speaker 1: a hazy sheen. Roll Doll lurks in the corner, glass
Speaker 1: in hand, rattling his ice cubes, keeping himself apart. He's
Speaker 1: studying his surroundings, taking mental notes, a habit he found
Speaker 1: useful both as a spy and a writer. He's watching
Speaker 1: his actress wife, Patricia Neil, float through the room, working
Speaker 1: her magic with a kind of effortless charm. It is,
Speaker 1: after all, the rap party for her latest film. She
Speaker 1: thinks it turned out well. You may have heard of it.
Speaker 1: It's called Breakfast of Tiffany's. Doll is very much his
Speaker 1: wife's plus one tonight, which he always hates. He hasn't
Speaker 1: enjoyed a Hollywood party since the one Walt Disney through
Speaker 1: in his honor decades earlier. Doll can't stand actors, especially
Speaker 1: the ones always coming in and out of his house,
Speaker 1: being loud and emotional, disturbing his work, and he really
Speaker 1: can't stand the phony unsophisticated producers who continue not to
Speaker 1: see his brilliance. He's still several years away from getting
Speaker 1: hired to write James Bond. But then scanning the room,
Speaker 1: he spots something that intrigues him. An incredibly beautiful brunette
Speaker 1: delicately perched on the back of the couch. Audrey Hepburn
Speaker 1: is in the middle of a story to her captivated
Speaker 1: circle of admirers, her giant eyes flashing despite himself, Dahl
Speaker 1: moves toward her, as if helplessly pulled in by a
Speaker 1: movie star's gravitational force. He listens transfixed as Hepburn recounts
Speaker 1: a story from her youth. She was sixteen, she says,
Speaker 1: living in a small village in the Netherlands, which had
Speaker 1: been invaded by the Nazis. During the occupation, her uncle
Speaker 1: was shot and both of her brothers were forced underground.
Speaker 1: All Dutch civilians faced severe food shortages, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: or not they were Jewish. It became especially dire in
Speaker 1: late nineteen forty four, when Audrey and many others nearly
Speaker 1: starved to death. She weighed about eighty pounds and suffered
Speaker 1: from severe anemia and edema. Then on April sixteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, she continues, her town was finally liberated by
Speaker 1: Allied forces. The Nazi occupation was over. Audrey could finally
Speaker 1: venture into the streets, the first time in years. She
Speaker 1: had been alloted in public without fear of punishment or attack.
Speaker 1: The entire population was just erupting in celebration and embracing
Speaker 1: the Canadian and Dutch soldiers who pressed condensed milk and
Speaker 1: chocolate bars into their desperate hands. One officer spotting this
Speaker 1: skeletal waif of a girl with the giant brown eyes
Speaker 1: handed Audrey all seven of the chocolate bars he was carrying.
Speaker 1: It had been a very long time since Audrey had
Speaker 1: eaten anything sweet. The taste of these chocolate bars was
Speaker 1: the polar opposite of the fear and pain she had
Speaker 1: been forced to live in throughout the war, and so
Speaker 1: having barely eaten in weeks, she devoured all seven bars
Speaker 1: in a row, just gobbled them all up, and then
Speaker 1: she threw up. Despite that, Audrey tells her spellbatt listeners,
Speaker 1: all these years later, after everything she's been through, all
Speaker 1: the fame and success she's achieved, chocolate, more than anything else,
Speaker 1: represents freedom to her and opportunity. The very smell of
Speaker 1: it feels like an escape from darkness into the life.
Speaker 1: Doll is mesmerized, and like I said, he's taking notes.
Speaker 1: It's not too long after hearing Audrey Hepburn tell this
Speaker 1: Dale that he begins work on his own story of
Speaker 1: a child for whom chocolate also represents the kind of
Speaker 1: freedom and opportunity beyond his wildest dreams. And ironically, even
Speaker 1: though it was one of Hollywood's greatest legends who may
Speaker 1: have partially inspired his chocolate factory, Doll absolutely despised what
Speaker 1: Hollywood did with that story and so many of the others.
Speaker 1: I reached out to an expert on the subject to
Speaker 1: hear more. All Right, hopefully you've got a message that
Speaker 1: says you're being recorded.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: If you're a long time podcast junkie, you might recognize
Speaker 1: that voice just from that one word. I've been following
Speaker 1: his film and TV criticism for years, and his perspective
Speaker 1: has genuinely changed how I watch things. I'll let him
Speaker 1: introduce himself.
Speaker 3: I'm David being Cooley. I'm the TV critic for Fresh
Speaker 3: Air with Terry Gross on NPR. I'm also a professor
Speaker 3: of Television studies at Rowing univer and I'm a lifelong
Speaker 3: TV critic.
Speaker 1: I asked David what he thought about the most famous
Speaker 1: and most beloved of the Doll adaptations.
Speaker 3: Mel Stewart, who directed the original Willy Walko movie, gets
Speaker 3: it so right in terms of tone that my kids
Speaker 3: watching it growing up, they're in their forties now, they
Speaker 3: still quote from it. There are still so many lines
Speaker 3: that hit them very long in there from the book.
Speaker 3: They were also in the Johnny Depp movie directed by
Speaker 3: Tim Burton. They landed better in the original.
Speaker 1: I think a movie the doll really didn't like and
Speaker 1: sort of disowned.
Speaker 3: Oh see, I don't even know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wrote the screenplay, Yeah, but I.
Speaker 3: Didn't know he disowned it.
Speaker 1: What was his dissatisfaction, My guess is a big part
Speaker 1: of it was just the shift and focus. You know,
Speaker 1: he wrote Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, and the studio
Speaker 1: made Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and it's just
Speaker 1: that was not his intention. I think he had issues
Speaker 1: with Gene Wilder's performance, and he overall had a terrible
Speaker 1: taste in his mouth from Hollywood. The only experience you
Speaker 1: ever liked in Hollywood. The two experiences were with Hitchcock
Speaker 1: and then writing the first James Bond film that he wrote.
Speaker 1: Let's pause for a second to dive a little deeper
Speaker 1: into the Chocolate River. Several movie stars have played Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka over the decades, including Timothy Shalomy, Johnny Depp, and
Speaker 1: even Neil Patrick Harris in a strange video parody you
Speaker 1: can find online now to mention all the stage actors
Speaker 1: who performed the role on Broadway and in various theater
Speaker 1: productions around the world. But for me, and I think
Speaker 1: for most people. The defining portrayal of Doll's most memorable,
Speaker 1: most elusive character is by Gene Wilder in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one film.
Speaker 2: There's no earthy way of lowing, singing which direction we
Speaker 2: are going, There's no knowing where we're rolling or which
Speaker 2: way the river's flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing?
Speaker 2: Is a cane of blowing?
Speaker 4: Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger
Speaker 4: must be grown. Are the fires of hell a glowing?
Speaker 4: Is the grizzly Reaper mowing? Yes, the danger must be growing,
Speaker 4: for the rowers.
Speaker 5: Keep on rowing, and they're certainly not showing any signs
Speaker 5: that they are flowing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a nutty performance. As I mentioned to David,
Speaker 1: Roald Dahl hated it. Doll's friend and biographer Donald Sturrek says, quote,
Speaker 1: I think he felt Wonka was a very British eccentric.
Speaker 1: Gene Wilder was rather too soft and didn't have a
Speaker 1: sufficient edge. His voice is very light, and he's got
Speaker 1: that rather cherubic sweet face. I think Roll felt there
Speaker 1: was something wrong with Wonka's soul in the movie. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't how he imagined the lines being spoken. According
Speaker 1: to Derek, to be fair at it, do all, Geen
Speaker 1: Wilder does take some crazy swings in that movie. If
Speaker 1: you've seen it, and since you're still listening to the
Speaker 1: show nine episodes in, I bet you have, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Wilder's entire performance is just kind
Speaker 1: of nuts in a really glorious way. Terrifying one second,
Speaker 1: bursting into song for no reason, the next sadistic, cruel
Speaker 1: and incredibly creepy later on, and then ends as kind
Speaker 1: of a teddy bear. It's just all over the place
Speaker 1: in a way that feels really interesting and unexpected. The
Speaker 1: director Mel Stewart says about Wilder, quote, he came up
Speaker 1: with the most wonderful moments in the film portraying Wonka's
Speaker 1: half man, half saint, and that's what makes the movie
Speaker 1: so good. In fact, it's such a unique performance that
Speaker 1: there's been a persistent rumor for half a century that
Speaker 1: Geen Wilder improvised the whole thing when he arrived on set,
Speaker 1: And of course that's not true, but it does sort
Speaker 1: of feel that way, and the actor did have a
Speaker 1: lot of input. Here's Wilder from an interview he did
Speaker 1: with filmmaker Stuart Maybe in two thousand.
Speaker 6: And nine, I wouldn't have done the film. And if
Speaker 6: they didn't let me come out walking as a cripple
Speaker 6: and then getting my cane stuck into a cobblestone and
Speaker 6: then doing a forward somersault and then bouncing up and
Speaker 6: they all applauded. And the director said, well, what do
Speaker 6: you want to do that for? And I said, because
Speaker 6: from that point on, no one will know whether I'm
Speaker 6: telling the truth or a lyne. And he said, you mean,
Speaker 6: if I say no, you won't do the film. And
Speaker 6: I said, that's right, I won't and I meant it too,
Speaker 6: so they let me do it.
Speaker 1: It's not a surprise that role. Dahl had a problem
Speaker 1: with this, As I already mentioned, he wasn't a fan
Speaker 1: of actors in general, and here's an example of an
Speaker 1: actor being given a lot of authority to alter a
Speaker 1: role that Dahl created. But I think Doll was always
Speaker 1: going to have a problem with whoever played Willie Wonka.
Speaker 1: In his book, Wonka is very underwritten purposefully. He's an
Speaker 1: enigma like his author, which offers the reader al mystery.
Speaker 1: But when you put that same character on film and
Speaker 1: put a human face and voice behind him, either the
Speaker 1: mystery fades, or the actor comes up with such a
Speaker 1: strange interpretation that a whole new mystery is born. When
Speaker 1: Tim Burton made his version of Wonka in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, he went back to the source material and
Speaker 1: gave his film the same title as Doll's book, Charlie
Speaker 1: and the Chocolate Factory. But I'm not sure Dal would
Speaker 1: have liked it any better. Johnny Depp also gives a
Speaker 1: banana's performance as Wonka, basing it on the hosts of
Speaker 1: children shows from.
Speaker 7: His youth improvisation You Little Girl, Say Something.
Speaker 1: Any schelling gum?
Speaker 6: Chewing gum is really gross chewing gum.
Speaker 5: I hate them most see exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Depp's performance is a big swing, but it isn't nearly
Speaker 1: as interesting or live or compelling as Gene Wilder's take.
Speaker 1: Doll's other issue with the nineteen seventy one version is
Speaker 1: the big compromise that had to be made due to
Speaker 1: its really strange production story. It's actually pretty nuts. Apparently,
Speaker 1: it all began when the director, Mel Stewart's daughter ordered
Speaker 1: her father to make a movie out of this book
Speaker 1: that she loved so much. So Stewart took Dahl's novel
Speaker 1: to his friend David Wolper. Wolper was a prolific producer
Speaker 1: with the rare ability to think and work outside the box.
Speaker 1: As an example, he was having conversations with the Quaker
Speaker 1: Oats Company, trying to convince them to make a movie
Speaker 1: that would introduce a new candy bar they were working on. Somehow,
Speaker 1: Wolper persuaded the food company, which of course had zero
Speaker 1: previous experience in the film industry, that Doll's book was
Speaker 1: a once in a generation opportunity for them. Amazingly, he
Speaker 1: got Quaker Oats to buy the rights to Doll's book
Speaker 1: and to fund the entire budget of the movie Go
Speaker 1: Back and Rewatch the opening credits of the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one film. You'll be surprised when you notice for the
Speaker 1: first time that, in small type it clearly states the
Speaker 1: movie's copyright is held by Wolper Pictures Ltd. And the
Speaker 1: Quaker Oats Company. Bizarre. Now, if Quaker Oats had just
Speaker 1: funded the movie and stepped away, that might have been
Speaker 1: fine with Doll, but that's not how Hollywood works. Everyone
Speaker 1: wants their say, especially those opening their wallets. In my
Speaker 1: conversation with David, just now, I suggested Doll didn't like
Speaker 1: the shift and focus to Wonka away from Chartley. The
Speaker 1: reason this change was made was because Quaker Oats needed
Speaker 1: Wonka's name front and center. Otherwise the film wouldn't help
Speaker 1: sell the line of Willy Wonka branded candy bars they
Speaker 1: were manufacturing, and it was this change that shifted the
Speaker 1: entire focus of the film. It's pretty hard to blame
Speaker 1: Doll for being annoyed about this. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: receive an annoying note from a studio executive. We all
Speaker 1: get that, it's quite another to get a creative note
Speaker 1: from a company known for their oatmeal. Honestly, even though
Speaker 1: I loved the movie, learning this backstory has definitely put
Speaker 1: me in Doll's camp. Of course, he resents his hard
Speaker 1: fought story becoming a crass money grab for product placement.
Speaker 1: One of the great ironies in all this that Doll
Speaker 1: probably really enjoyed is that although Quaker Oats did indeed
Speaker 1: develop a Wonka bar, apparently they couldn't get the recipe right.
Speaker 1: The chocolate kept melting before being opened, which is like
Speaker 1: the one thing you don't want your candy bar doing.
Speaker 1: The company eventually had to remove it from shelves, and
Speaker 1: to add insult to injury, the movie kind of bombed.
Speaker 1: It got some good reviews, but no one went to
Speaker 1: see it in the theater. It wasn't until VCRs came
Speaker 1: around years later that the movie became the classic we
Speaker 1: now think of it as. Eventually, Nestley was able to
Speaker 1: buy the Willy Wonka candy factory and started making a
Speaker 1: new Wonka bar to write off the good will the
Speaker 1: movie has since accrued. Doll was never shy about telling
Speaker 1: people how much he hated the film. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: the title, or the focus or Gene Wilder's performance. He
Speaker 1: also hated the music, which he described as saccharine, sappy
Speaker 1: and sentimental. Here he is on Desert Island Discs in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine talking more about it.
Speaker 8: It was made into rather crummy film. Yes, I wasn't
Speaker 8: pleased with it at all.
Speaker 2: Did you have anything to do with it?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 8: I originally wrote the screenplay, but I made the mistake
Speaker 8: of letting Holly would have a free hand, and I
Speaker 8: shall never do that again.
Speaker 1: I want to bring in another voice now, a critic
Speaker 1: who's written extensively on the Doll adaptations, including a piece
Speaker 1: I loved on Wonka. He's someone whose childhood was really
Speaker 1: shaped by the author's.
Speaker 9: Bet Court and I'm the author of Hello Stranger and
Speaker 9: The Mail Gazed. I grew up in Columbia, but I
Speaker 9: went to a British private school in Bowaka and so Oli.
Speaker 9: Our curriculum, especially for English, was very British focused, and
Speaker 9: so Dahl was my gateway drug to literature in general.
Speaker 9: So I was reading George's Martin's Medicine and James de
Speaker 9: Giant Peach eventually something like The Witches in Matilda before
Speaker 9: I was like twelve and I was reading in my
Speaker 9: second language. It's one of those writers that I owe
Speaker 9: my own career as a writer and as a critic,
Speaker 9: because even then, there's no way to read Dahl without
Speaker 9: understanding how a sentence is structured, how language helps shape
Speaker 9: a character, how an adjective can suddenly turn a phrase. Hadn'
Speaker 9: dawned on me until I was starting to pull everything
Speaker 9: for that piece, how much of my childhood had been
Speaker 9: shaped by him in ways that I hadn't even remembered.
Speaker 1: I asked ben Well to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about Roald Dahl's specific feelings about the gene Wilder film.
Speaker 9: I think it is the one that everyone knows the best,
Speaker 9: and it's probably the one that he disliked the most,
Speaker 9: and so it exists at this weird intersection where like,
Speaker 9: if he had had his way, that is not the
Speaker 9: felt that we would have gotten. There's a reason why
Speaker 9: there was never another Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adaptation
Speaker 9: that happened in his lifetime, because that is how much
Speaker 9: he hated the Gene Wilder version, the way that it
Speaker 9: focused on Wonka rather than Charlie. I think the reasons
Speaker 9: why he disliked it, or he voiced his dislike, is
Speaker 9: also one of the reasons that made it such a classic.
Speaker 9: There is a kind of honeying of his tone and
Speaker 9: a kind of softening of even the Wonka character. I
Speaker 9: think once you'd cast Gene Wilder, who is cookie and
Speaker 9: quirky and kind of out there, but immediately draws you
Speaker 9: in and is able to sort of ground a kind
Speaker 9: of crazed energy into something that's intriguing and alluring rather
Speaker 9: than terrifying, which I think you can sometimes read into
Speaker 9: the book. You have a very different story, a story
Speaker 9: that welcomes you, a story that the music is sort
Speaker 9: of enveloping you, that kind of wants you to embrace
Speaker 9: this bizarre world of chocolate factory that was creating the
Speaker 9: nineteen seventy one film and continues to speak to a
Speaker 9: lot of people. I'm both happy that we have it,
Speaker 9: and then also keep wondering what kind of film would
Speaker 9: he have wanted for Charlie That maybe needed to be
Speaker 9: more biting, It maybe needed to be crueler, and needed
Speaker 9: to be a little bit more childlike and also.
Speaker 5: Adult.
Speaker 9: It's a fascinating curiosity that he so disowned it.
Speaker 1: But of course Dahl didn't hate all of his Hollywood
Speaker 1: experiences or adaptations. He loved writing James Bond, and he
Speaker 1: loved working with Alfred Hitchcock on TV. Being Coolly is
Speaker 1: an expert on the Hitchcock anthology that adapted Doll, so
Speaker 1: I asked him to tell me a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: Six stories of his were done for the Hitchcock Show.
Speaker 3: Two of them are absolute classics, Man from the South
Speaker 3: and Lamb of the Slaughter, And so I think anybody
Speaker 3: who who knows Hitchcock has run into both of those
Speaker 3: as absolute classics, and I think that the treatment of
Speaker 3: them was absolutely perfect. Interestingly, one of those, Man from
Speaker 3: the South was remade by Quentin Tarantino in a movie
Speaker 3: Four Rooms, where he wrote, directed, and starred in one
Speaker 3: of the four segments, and he took the story and
Speaker 3: renamed it The Man from Hollywood, took the same basic
Speaker 3: idea and ruined it. I mean, much as I love
Speaker 3: Quentin Tarantino, you do not improve Hitchcock or Roll Doll
Speaker 3: by just adding five thousand percent more profanities. It's just
Speaker 3: didn't work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any thoughts on why and Hitchcock were such a
Speaker 1: good match and maybe why he and Tarantino were a
Speaker 1: less good match.
Speaker 3: Sure, I think if you think of the other great
Speaker 3: anthology series of the time, which was The Twilight Zone
Speaker 3: by Rod Serling when he went and had writers writing
Speaker 3: for him, Richard Matheson was a really good match for
Speaker 3: Rod Serling in much the same way. I mean, Hitchcock
Speaker 3: already thought like Roald Doll did in terms of wanted
Speaker 3: twist endings. Wanted a lot of macabre subtext but also
Speaker 3: humor and surprise, and they seemed to be almost the
Speaker 3: same person in that regard. So whether Hitchcock was directing
Speaker 3: it or one of his trusted people like Norman Lloyd
Speaker 3: was directing it, it came out the same way. And
Speaker 3: also Hitchcock British and so there's that sort of affinity
Speaker 3: with understanding the understated approach to things that works with
Speaker 3: roal doll stories.
Speaker 1: I asked David to describe two of the most famous
Speaker 1: doll stories that were used on Hitchcock Show, the ones
Speaker 1: David referred to as classics.
Speaker 3: Man from the South stars Steve McQueen before he was star,
Speaker 3: Steve McQueen in Vegas with his last like dollar and
Speaker 3: a half, and a guy early early in the morning
Speaker 3: in Vegas comes up to him and offers him basically
Speaker 3: a bar bet and says, I've got the latest convertible.
Speaker 3: I'll give that to you if the lighter that you
Speaker 3: just let your cigarette with can light ten times in
Speaker 3: succession without failing. And Steve McQueen's character says, well, I
Speaker 3: don't have anything to bet, and he said, well, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't ask you to beout anything that you couldn't afford
Speaker 3: to lose. I'm just how about just the little finger
Speaker 3: on your left hand, And so that's what the the
Speaker 3: whole show is. It just screams, don't try this at home.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine this being on TV today, But that
Speaker 3: was the idea.
Speaker 10: He is a menace. Of course in the islands where
Speaker 10: we used to live. He took forty seven fingers from
Speaker 10: different people and he lost eleven cars.
Speaker 3: That was one roll dull story. Another is a woman
Speaker 3: played by Barbara Belgetti's who later was the matriarch on Dallas.
Speaker 3: She plays a pregnant woman. Her husband's a cop. He
Speaker 3: comes home and tells her that he wants a divorce,
Speaker 3: but she can keep the baby because he's fallen in
Speaker 3: love with a younger woman and he just wants to leave.
Speaker 3: So she tells him he's had a bad day at work,
Speaker 3: he's upset, he's probably hungry. Let her make him some
Speaker 3: dinner and then they can discuss it. And she pulls
Speaker 3: out a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer and
Speaker 3: instead of cooking it, she hits him over the head
Speaker 3: with it and kills him. Then she puts it in
Speaker 3: the oven and serves it that The cops who come
Speaker 3: looking for the murder weapon just you know, it's just classic.
Speaker 7: Boy, this is great.
Speaker 3: This piece of meat I've had in food.
Speaker 1: She said it finish it, didn't she jack?
Speaker 2: She did I'd like to have a piece of this
Speaker 2: brown crispy stuff left on the end.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 7: I supposed to be all right to take this bone
Speaker 7: home with my dog.
Speaker 5: Gosh, she said you didn't want to see it again.
Speaker 1: I also asked David about Doll's other most famous filmmaking
Speaker 1: association after Hitchcock, and that, of course, is with Wes Anderson.
Speaker 3: He found a kindred spirit again. It's sort of like
Speaker 3: when a director or a writer finds somebody else that
Speaker 3: speaks in a similar voice. It's just a marriage that works.
Speaker 3: And so those four stories that Wes Anderson did for
Speaker 3: Netflix I thought were wonderful and very complicated where you
Speaker 3: wouldn't think you'd be able to lift them off the
Speaker 3: page successfully because it was a narrator talking about a
Speaker 3: story that then goes in it to another story, and
Speaker 3: then that story there's somebody in there telling another story,
Speaker 3: and then visually it's so amazing. I can't imagine Roald Dahl,
Speaker 3: the spirit of Roald Dall, not being happy with those adaptations.
Speaker 1: Anderson does have such a unique style. Do you think
Speaker 1: that when he works on the Doll shorts and on
Speaker 1: the future, does it become more Andersonian? Does it become
Speaker 1: more Dollion. Is there a blending of the two.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a blend that that's the best way to
Speaker 3: put it. Because one of the things that Roald Dahl
Speaker 3: did for television that wasn't with Hitchcock was he hosted
Speaker 3: his own anthology show in England and he introduced it himself,
Speaker 3: acting like a sort of Alfred Hitchcock or a sort
Speaker 3: of Rod Serling, and he would sit in his little
Speaker 3: armchair the place where he actually did his writing and
Speaker 3: film introductions to his stories. Well, Wes Anderson took that
Speaker 3: and had ray Fin's play Roald Dahl introducing the story.
Speaker 3: So he adopted one of Royal Doll's television shows as
Speaker 3: himself as the host to play with that and enter
Speaker 3: into a world which was less real than surreal. So
Speaker 3: it was definitely a blending of the two, but very respectful.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: Wes Anderson connection. Doll's work has been adapted by so
Speaker 1: many people, but almost all of them, even the ones
Speaker 1: we most associate with Doll, like Tim Burton or Steven
Speaker 1: Spielberg or Mel Stewart, only directed a single film based
Speaker 1: on a Doll story. Hitchcock and Wes Anderson stand out
Speaker 1: here because they worked on so many When Anderson and
Speaker 1: Noah Bombach, one of my all time favorite screenwriters, were
Speaker 1: writing the adaptation of The Fantastic Mister Fox, Anderson thought
Speaker 1: they should really immerse themselves, so he contacted Doll's widow, Felicity,
Speaker 1: about coming to Gypsy House, where Doll lived, and wrote,
Speaker 1: here's Wes Anderson and Felicity talking about that to the
Speaker 1: Associated Press.
Speaker 11: And I thought it would be nice if Noah and
Speaker 11: I could visit, and if he could meet Lissi and
Speaker 11: see what it's like. And Lissi arranged at my request,
Speaker 11: I suppose that we could work here and we set
Speaker 11: up an office upstairs. So Lyssi set up an office
Speaker 11: for us upstairs with our own dedicated telephone line and
Speaker 11: a printer and a desk, and we worked here. And
Speaker 11: I think while we were here, it sort of went
Speaker 11: from being an adaptation of Fantastic Mister Fox to being
Speaker 11: a combination adaptation of Fantastic Mister Fox slash. So I
Speaker 11: mean it became about Doll, the character became about Doll,
Speaker 11: and that the more time we spent here, the more
Speaker 11: ideas from Gypsy House found their way into the story.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's just personally. I really admired the
Speaker 1: Wes Anderson adaptations. The man has his attractors, but it's
Speaker 1: really hard not to be charmed by these films. I
Speaker 1: just don't understand the venom that some critics reserve for Anderson.
Speaker 1: What it feels like ninety percent of movies these days
Speaker 1: are formulaic, ip driven sequels or comic books. Why would
Speaker 1: anyone who loves movies get mad about a filmmaker expressing
Speaker 1: a personal vision, even if that vision doesn't perfectly jibe
Speaker 1: with yours. I think critics who say Wes Anderson's films
Speaker 1: are all the same and demean them as the cinematic
Speaker 1: equivalent of a corduroy suit are missing how much range
Speaker 1: he actually has. The four Doll stories he made for
Speaker 1: Netflix are a great example of this. The Wonderful Story
Speaker 1: of Henry Sugar, for instance, is upbeat and vibrant and
Speaker 1: basically a morality tale with a super happy ending. It
Speaker 1: also has one of the all time great setups.
Speaker 6: Gentlemen, I'm a man who can see without using his eyes.
Speaker 11: He was a small man, about sixty, with a white
Speaker 11: mustache and a curious matting of.
Speaker 1: Black hair growing all over the outsides of his ears.
Speaker 4: You may bandage my head with fifty bandages in any
Speaker 4: way you wish, and I will still be able to
Speaker 4: read you a book.
Speaker 1: You seem perfectly serious. Dad's Anderson's first Netflix adaptation of
Speaker 1: Doll his final one Poison, with basically the same cast,
Speaker 1: is the opposite movie downbeat, dark, muted, with a very
Speaker 1: unhappy ending, exposing the cruelty and bigotry of the main character.
Speaker 1: And when you think about it, this wide range of
Speaker 1: tone and plod and feeling is kind of perfect for
Speaker 1: adapting the work of a problematic author like Doll. Role
Speaker 1: Dahl could be sweet and caring and loving and did
Speaker 1: a remarkable amount for charity and to make children's lives
Speaker 1: better all over the world. But according to some of
Speaker 1: those closest to him, he could also be mean spirited
Speaker 1: and sometimes cruel, And of course we know about his prejudice.
Speaker 1: So what does Anderson do? He gives us both. What
Speaker 1: I like most about these adaptations is how Anderson remains
Speaker 1: so faithful to Doll's writing while seamlessly incorporating his own
Speaker 1: distinctive voice. Here's Anderson on a Zoom Roundtable for Netflix
Speaker 1: on how he went about the adaptation.
Speaker 7: I took the text and the entire text, and I
Speaker 7: put it into my computer and started out an MS
Speaker 7: word document and started just pulling what I thought I wanted,
Speaker 7: And I realized that what I wanted was for him
Speaker 7: to tell the story. For Dahl to tell the story.
Speaker 1: It was great, I wonder. My favorite of the Anderson
Speaker 1: Doll film is Henry Sugar. It stars Raife Finds as
Speaker 1: Roll Dall alongside benett At Cumberbatch, Dev Patel and Ben Kingsley.
Speaker 1: It tells the story of a wealthy gambler who learns
Speaker 1: to be able to see through playing cards, literally to
Speaker 1: look at the back of a card and see that
Speaker 1: it's the use of spades or whatever. He does this
Speaker 1: by practicing intense meditation for years. Sugar uses his new
Speaker 1: power to win a fortune at casinos until he finds
Speaker 1: the thrill empty and unfulfilling, so he devotes his winnings
Speaker 1: to establishing orphanages and hospitals around the world. It's basically
Speaker 1: a story about the power of meditation and unrelenting hard
Speaker 1: work to make you a better, more generous person. The
Speaker 1: inclusion of Doll is a character in the film. Works
Speaker 1: especially well here because it feels like such a perfect
Speaker 1: fulfillment of Doll's original intentions. In his book, Dahal deliberately
Speaker 1: plays with our perception of the story as constructed artifice.
Speaker 1: In other words, he breaks the fourth wall, reminding readers
Speaker 1: that he's an author spinning a tale. Near the end
Speaker 1: of Doll's story, the Doll figure cheicily steps out of
Speaker 1: the narrative to speculate about what might happen if this
Speaker 1: were a fictional story rather than a totally factual account
Speaker 1: of real life, even though readers understand it's clearly fiction.
Speaker 1: By casting an actor to play Doll and read some
Speaker 1: of the actual prose from the book, Anderson mirrors this
Speaker 1: metafictional playfulness that began in Dalls novella. I want to
Speaker 1: briefly return to my conversation with Manuel Bettencourt and hear
Speaker 1: his thoughts on the Roll Doll Wes Anderson connection, including
Speaker 1: all the other interesting ways that Anderson finds to be
Speaker 1: faithful to Doll's text.
Speaker 9: It had seemed a better suited pair than I thought
Speaker 9: they'd be, both because Wes Anderson is you know, we
Speaker 9: know him for this exacting zymometrical, colorful diorama films and
Speaker 9: what I think he does and he did so well
Speaker 9: with Henry Sugar and these other short films that he
Speaker 9: made for Netflix in twenty twenty three based on Doll
Speaker 9: short stories was reveal artistry and craftsmanship, and how he
Speaker 9: elevated Dall's prose. He's not using voiceover, he's having actually
Speaker 9: these characters basically read out the story. So in a way,
Speaker 9: they're almost like audiobooks that are coming to life in
Speaker 9: this sort of I keep thinking of them as pop
Speaker 9: up books because they have a kind of like handcrafted
Speaker 9: sensibility to them.
Speaker 1: Moving beyond Anderson, to me, the most interesting filmmaker who
Speaker 1: decided to tackle Doll is Quentin Tarantino. Well, hear what
Speaker 1: Manuel thinks about that collaboration. In a second. We already
Speaker 1: heard what David ban Cooley thinks about it.
Speaker 3: I think Quentin Tarantino is the biggest miss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be the consensus, which is really surprising.
Speaker 1: Not only is Tarantino a first ballot Hall of Fame filmmaker,
Speaker 1: but he made his adaptation of Dolls The Man from
Speaker 1: the South right when he was at the peak of
Speaker 1: his powers. He made it directly after pulp fiction, and
Speaker 1: a first glance, Tarantino would seem to be as perfect
Speaker 1: a compliment to Doll as Hitchcock is. Both Tarantino and
Speaker 1: Dall write very stylized dialogue. Both love dark humor, both
Speaker 1: revel and violent or grotesque story elements. Both make ample
Speaker 1: use of unexpected violence like what befalls the Key Kids
Speaker 1: and Doll's Chocolate Factory, or port Marvin in the Backseat
Speaker 1: and pulp fiction. Both writers poke fun at genreck conventions,
Speaker 1: and both really enjoy subverting audience expectations. But Tarantino's movie
Speaker 1: just doesn't work. He's adapting the same story that Hitchcock shows,
Speaker 1: the one about someone whose finger will be chopped off
Speaker 1: if he can't get a cigarette lader to work ten
Speaker 1: times in a row, and you can see why that
Speaker 1: set up would appeal to a guy like Tarantino, who
Speaker 1: made such a meal out of cutting off an ear
Speaker 1: in his first film. I think Tarantino's movie doesn't quite
Speaker 1: hold together because he's not interested in the thing that
Speaker 1: makes Doll's story so great. Doll's version is lean focused
Speaker 1: and builds tension through simplicity. Its power comes from the
Speaker 1: escalating stakes and the psychological cat and mouse game. Tarantino,
Speaker 1: maybe because he was so young and it was only
Speaker 1: his third movie, gets bogged down in his own indulgences.
Speaker 1: I really do love Tarantino. I think he may be
Speaker 1: the most talented director working today. But in this case,
Speaker 1: it feels like he turned Doll's story into a verbose,
Speaker 1: self referential, wanna be thriller lacking suspense.
Speaker 5: So, since you're going to be stuck remembering this for
Speaker 5: the rest of your life, you have to decide what
Speaker 5: that memory will be so ted you can remember for
Speaker 5: the next forty years, give or take a decade, that
Speaker 5: you refused a one thousand dollars for one seconds worth
Speaker 5: of work, or that you made a thousand dollars for
Speaker 5: one seconds.
Speaker 1: Worth of work. Also, Tarantino's choice to change the setting
Speaker 1: and make it about celebrities in Hollywood culture dilutes the
Speaker 1: universal human drama that makes Dolls original so effective. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Tarantino tried to make it a Tarantino film instead of
Speaker 1: serving the story, which, as we've talked about, rarely works
Speaker 1: with Doll. Wes Anderson and Alfred Hitchcock succeed because they
Speaker 1: managed to put their egos aside and blend their distinctive
Speaker 1: styles with dolls. Manuel made a similar point when I
Speaker 1: asked him if there's anything he thinks the good adaptations
Speaker 1: got right and the bad ones got wrong.
Speaker 9: I think the best ones, or the ones that have
Speaker 9: stood the test of time. I understand how language was
Speaker 9: so key to his success. I think there's a world
Speaker 9: in which adaptations that try to update him, or modernize him,
Speaker 9: or stand down the like weird, quirky britishisms that are
Speaker 9: so delectable in his work tend to fail because I
Speaker 9: think that's where the magic lies, and the ones that
Speaker 9: do it best are the ones that key into that
Speaker 9: kind of sensibility. I also think that especially when it
Speaker 9: comes to the children's books, any of those films that
Speaker 9: don't just understand his work, but also his collaboration with
Speaker 9: Quentin Blake and those kinds of illustrations and the kind
Speaker 9: of tenor and tone of those you know, I'm thinking
Speaker 9: of something like James the Giant Peach It visually, it's
Speaker 9: sort of so in the world of Dull and Blake
Speaker 9: that I think it hits the right spot. But when
Speaker 9: you have filmmakers that are instead trying to use him
Speaker 9: just as a jumping off point and sometimes lose probably
Speaker 9: what made him so special on the page.
Speaker 1: In our final episode, we'll talk more about exactly what
Speaker 1: made Doll so special on the page, including my conversation
Speaker 1: with an expert on the books who actually knew Doll
Speaker 1: in life and can speak firsthand about the kind of
Speaker 1: impression he made. We'll also talk about Doll's fascinating writing process,
Speaker 1: which I'm pretty obsessed with. I'm really sad this journey
Speaker 1: with Doll is almost over, but don't worry. We've saved
Speaker 1: some of the best for last. Join me for our
Speaker 1: final episode, where I promise we'll try to go out
Speaker 1: with the kind of bang that Doll would have wanted.
Speaker 1: See you there. The Secret World of Role Dall is
Speaker 1: produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Created and written by Me Aaron Tracy, Produced by Matt Schrader,
Speaker 1: post production by wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring and
Speaker 1: sound design by Mark Henry Phillips, editing by Ryan Seton,
Speaker 1: music by a PM. Executive producers Nathan Kloke, Karl Welker,
Speaker 1: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Aaron Tracy. If you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode. Be sure to rate and review The Secret
Speaker 1: World of Role Dall on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: and Parallax