John Irving’s new book, “My Movie Business,” explains the difficulty in transforming a book into a movie. Throughout the memoir, one can sense the longevity and patience it took for Irving to finally release the film “The Cider House Rules.”

The book delivers a summary of the process of finding a producer, actors and a setting for “Cider House Rules.” Irving also wrestled with several versions of the screenplay.

In the first version, the bleak one, Irving did not want the movie turned into a love story because it is not what the book is about.

Though that would draw some people away, Irving wanted to focus more on Dr. Larch, Rose Rose and other characters. The first of four directors, Phillip Borsos, liked the idea. Once he died, the bleak version died with him.

After Borsos’ death, Irving needed another promising director. After a few days of bickering with the second director, Wayne Wang, it was on to a third director.

Although the new director wanted the movie fixed on a love triangle between Wally, Candy and Homer, Irving was less argumentative after two directors and several years of struggles.

The disagreements became more intense, and Irving eventually discovered his fourth attempt, Lee Hallstrom. Finally, it was time to start finding actors and actresses.

Although, early on, both Irving and Hallstrom had wanted Paul Newman to play the role of Dr. Larch, Newman rejected the chance because of too many scenes by the incinerator. Irving later found the wise, dramatic Dr. Larch in Michael Caine.

Since the movie was being altered so much, Irving was not settling for inaccurate characters as seen in the movie.

With the lost character development in converting the book to a movie, Irving reduces the importance of some of the characters’ roles, but still tries to keep the storyline focused on Dr. Larch and Homer.

Reading the memoir proves the movie took a tremendous amount of time and effort in order to present a realistic film from such a descriptive book.

For example, the story was supposed to take place in the fall when the apples are ripening, but after taking 13 years to finally premiere “The Cider House Rules,” Irving settled for spring.

Along with telling about hardships in “The Cider House Rules,” Irving also emphasizes other books he has tried to convert to movies but still has not been able to do so, such as “The Son of A Circus.”

Two other books of Irving’s have been transformed into movies, “The World According to Garp” and “Setting Free the Bears,” although Irving had nothing to do with the making of those films.

The main idea in writing the book was to explore the fickle nature of the movie business.

3 Stars

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