Everything needs to feel urgent on the part of the firemen. Every book is the enemy. Every breath released is a paranoid experience. When Montag starts to shed his skin, that dog needs to be sniffing closeby, clicking, blinking, and checking out his psychological and molecular changes. He's got all the wires to read perspiration, eye dialations, and nervous impulses. Let him go, unleash him, and let Montag earn his place in the history of great characters on the screen. For he is already one of the great characters on the written page.

The escape across the river needs to be paid its dues, also. (Re-read the final chapter.) Poetry, images, transcendental detail, dreamlike, and shear artistry on RB's part.

I did like the (movie's) final scene when the young boy reads to the old man as the snow falls peacefully. The youth finally has the book memorized, the man has died, and the story ends. Great moment.

But the book is filled with great moments. The original movie, for its time, did ok with what was available - maybe!

Now, F451 is a big success just waiting to be recaptured to film. With all of the remakes and fantasy fanfare in recent years, get to it Hollywood! Can't you hear Capt. Beatty spewing out his heresy, or is it truth?! The sweet voice of Clarisse, a siren, enticing so gently the unexpecting fireman. Mildred shaking out more pills, more loss, more self-centered treachery in setting up Guy.

The web says 2005. Is no news, bad news in considering the chances of this getting done?

For anyone who has yet to read the story, here is an enticement. Page 1, 1st 2 lines:

"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed."

....don't stop now! Hurry! Get a copy and read on!

This link used to work, and then it sometimes works, and now...??
But it had the "entire" book of 'Fahrenheit 451' on it... Maybe it gets shut down because it has something to do with copyrights and such..but you'll find out if it's working by clicking on: http://www.amcen.lunn.ru/library/text/bradbury/451.pdf

ALSO:

Elron, Russian fellow who posts here now and then, has a Web-Site with lots of Bradbury stories on it... This one steered here by Philnic... http://www.raybradbury.ru/cgi-bin/page.cgi?014

The Captain did indeed have books, in fact, a library.... So he knew first hand how they could cause conflicts, and mental anguish, and thus the need to eliminate them...

By the way:
W E L C O M E !!

Bradbury also wrote an essay about this, which I think was included as an afterword to a 1980s edition of the F451 novel, and also included in Zen and the Art of Writing.

(This is all from memory, as I don't have the books around me to check my facts.)

These comments are in the "Afterword" of more recent editions: "Don't you see the beauty, Montag? I never read them. Not one book, not one chapter, not one page, not one paragraph. I do play with ironies, don't I? To have thousands of books and never crack one, to turn your back on the lot and say: No. It's like having a house full of beautiful women and, smiling, not touching...one. ...These books die on the shelves. They are no better than dust.

The Capt continues and refers to his emptiness (life, love, dreams, deaths, murder, an onslaught of disease). The pages he onced consumed as a young boy, now were empty. "No solace, peace, harbor, true love. no bed, no light."

In the Simon and Schuster "Classic" edition, Bradbury provided a new introduction. In it he says:

"In writing the play, my Fire Chief, Beatty, told me why he had become a burner of books.
He had once been a wanderer of libraries and a lover of the finest literature in history. But when real life diminished him, when friends died, when a love failed, when there were too many deaths and accidents surrounding him, he discovered that his faith in books had failed because they could not help him when he needed the help.
Turning on them, he lit a match.
So that is one of the fine things that came out of the play and the opera. I'm glad to be able to speak of it now and tell you what Beatty had in his background."

I just read the book for the first time this past weekend. Greatly enjoyed most of it. Haven't seen the movie ever.

april
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Bradbury also wrote an essay about this, which I think was included as an afterword to a 1980s edition of the F451 novel, and also included in Zen and the Art of Writing.

- Phil[/B][/QUOTE]

but that's about all.

There is a vague possibility that it is somewhere on Elron/Pavel's russian Bradbury site, but I haven't been able to find it there. (www.raybradbury.ru). He has a lot of short story texts in full and in English.

Of course, the simple solution is to buy a copy of Zen In The Art Of Writing - for a mere $12 or so, you get this and other excellent essays on writing.

As of January 30, 2004, Frank Darabont has finished the Indiana Jones 4 screenplay and is now writing a NEW DRAFT for 451.

Or... Clarisse and the wife (sorry, I can't remember what she was called in the film, but it definitely wasn't Mildred) are represented as complementary - the wife has/had something, but Clarisse has something that is missing. If that makes any sense.

Personally, I think the dual casting was an interesting but failed experiment. I don't find Julie Christie very convincing as Clarisse. Then again, I find it hard to like Montag as well.