James Hilton’s romantic Goodbye, Mr. Chips describes the courtship of Chip and Katherine as being so brief that within a week of meeting “they were head over heels in love” and married soon after. This is not what a filmmaker wants in a romantic tale. The consequence...
Rob Reiner is faithful to William Goldman’s novel The Princess Bride , the screenplay of which is Goldman’s. “Indeed,” he writes in the novel, Vizzini “had set out a little picnic spread. From the knapsack that he always carried, he had taken a small handkerchief,...
Grass’ unconventional picnic in The Flounder (1977) is among the worst. Not only does Grass mock the accepted idea of a picnic but in doing so turns Greek mythology topsy-turvy. It’s an episode in which the key figure is Sybille, aka Billie, a name that is a variation...
Newlyweds, Carl and Ellie dream of their future at a picnic. Walking out into the countryside, Karl and Ellie spread a picnic on the grass and dream of a family. Ellie looks up and sees clouds. Of course, their romantic dreams are never fulfilled. They grow old and...
Woolf’s picnic on the summit of Monte Rosa, a fictional place in South America, is the high point (pun intended) of The Voyage Out (1915). Journeying on donkeys walking in single file, the narrator creates the image of “a jointed caterpillar, tufted with the white...
Up and down romantic suds with a happy ending. Aw shucks. Featured Image: A moment of picnic levity for picnic for Erica Barry (Diane Keaton) and Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson). See: Nancy Myers. Something’s Gotta Give (2003). Screenplay by Nancy...
Trillin’s joke about his “no-frills picnic” while en route from New York to Miami is a tongue-in-cheek report of the consequences of his wife Alice’s frugality that he calls “Law of Compensatory Cashflow.” Because Trillin always (almost) defers to Alice’s superior...
Arthur Ransome’s juvenile novel Swallows and Amazons takes its name from the Swallow and the Amazon, two fourteen-foot dinghies the children of the Walker and Blackett families sail in Coniston Lake in the English Lake District. Many of their adventures take place on...
Among ruined picnics, Kingsolver’s Congo picnic ranks high. It’s a highlight of misadventure in The Poisonwood Wood Bible, a novel the name of which is derived from a misunderstanding of local language. When Reverend Nathan Price says, “Tata Jesus is...
“This is war, not a garden party!” Dr. Meade’s stern admonition to Scarlett O’Hara and Aunt Pittypat Hamilton during the siege of Atlanta. Meade reminds Scarlett that she must not abandon Melanie Wilkes and Pittypat that ordinary social customs don’t apply in war. ...
