Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "hyde-park-on-hudson"
Hyde Park on Hudson
Today I saw the new movie "Hyde Park on Hudson" at Cine Athens. The movie stars Bill Murray as my hero Franklin D. Roosevelt. The advertisements suggest that the film is all about the weekend in 1939 when FDR hosted the King and Queen of England at his New York home.
The movie is really more about the brief romance between FDR and his distant cousin Daisy Suckley. It's kind of based on the book Closest Companion, which was a compilation of Daisy's diaries that were published after her death.
The movie-makers use the book as a jumping-off point, I guess. They put in a few events that are not in the book - like Daisy giving FDR a hand job and Daisy discovering a naked Missy LeHand having a tryst with the POTUS at a secret hideaway.
I have read a few books about our 32nd President. I am more intrigued by his private life than the public stuff. In particular, I like to read about how his paralysis impacted his life and made him a better person than he would have probably been otherwise.
I was watching for how the paralysis was dealt with. Overall, it seemed accurate to me. There were a couple of times when FDR got around better than he really could have. Still, the paralysis was neither ignored nor trivialized. It was even something he was able to use when talking with the King to say that his stuttering was simply a facet of him and not a terrible thing to be ignored or denied.
I was also pleased with how the film dealt with the busy-ness of FDR's life as President. He relied on a lot of people to be his legs. Two of these, Missy and First Lady Eleanor, are given prominence in the film. Eleanor, interestingly, is treated as if her homosexuality were a fact of which most inner circle folks were aware. I don't really know that this was the case.
Bill Murray did not do an imitation of FDR. He captured many mannerisms, but he never seemed to be attempting the upper-crust New England dialect of Roosevelt's.
In appearance, they chose to make Murray look like FDR in 1943. By then, he had lost weight and the possibly-cancerous mole over his left eye was noticable. In the movie, that mole is a little too prominent. By the time it was that size, FDR had secret surgery to have it removed.
I was disappointed that the movie chose to diverge from reality at a few points, but I cannot complain a lot about that. The fact that this movie gives an inside view of the life of FDR is pretty amazing.
The movie is really more about the brief romance between FDR and his distant cousin Daisy Suckley. It's kind of based on the book Closest Companion, which was a compilation of Daisy's diaries that were published after her death.
The movie-makers use the book as a jumping-off point, I guess. They put in a few events that are not in the book - like Daisy giving FDR a hand job and Daisy discovering a naked Missy LeHand having a tryst with the POTUS at a secret hideaway.
I have read a few books about our 32nd President. I am more intrigued by his private life than the public stuff. In particular, I like to read about how his paralysis impacted his life and made him a better person than he would have probably been otherwise.
I was watching for how the paralysis was dealt with. Overall, it seemed accurate to me. There were a couple of times when FDR got around better than he really could have. Still, the paralysis was neither ignored nor trivialized. It was even something he was able to use when talking with the King to say that his stuttering was simply a facet of him and not a terrible thing to be ignored or denied.
I was also pleased with how the film dealt with the busy-ness of FDR's life as President. He relied on a lot of people to be his legs. Two of these, Missy and First Lady Eleanor, are given prominence in the film. Eleanor, interestingly, is treated as if her homosexuality were a fact of which most inner circle folks were aware. I don't really know that this was the case.
Bill Murray did not do an imitation of FDR. He captured many mannerisms, but he never seemed to be attempting the upper-crust New England dialect of Roosevelt's.
In appearance, they chose to make Murray look like FDR in 1943. By then, he had lost weight and the possibly-cancerous mole over his left eye was noticable. In the movie, that mole is a little too prominent. By the time it was that size, FDR had secret surgery to have it removed.
I was disappointed that the movie chose to diverge from reality at a few points, but I cannot complain a lot about that. The fact that this movie gives an inside view of the life of FDR is pretty amazing.
Reader and Writer
I began to write because it seemed to be a realm in which one could exercise omnipotence. It's not.
My characters demand to make their own decisions and often the outcomes are wildly different from wha ...more
My characters demand to make their own decisions and often the outcomes are wildly different from wha ...more
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