Has anyone seen the movie who also loved the book? What do you think?
Thanks,
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This is one of those rare times that I can say I loved the book AND loved the movie.
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I've just finished it (read it in a day) - an inspiring story.
I too am in Australia - this film may go straight to DVD here??
I just watched the movie on DVD. I thought it did a pretty good job of capturing the spirit and the story of the book. But I liked the book better as it fleshed out the story better.
shareI just wanted to report that today I finally got over to my local library and was pleased to find they have a copy of the book and it was on the shelf. I checked it out and I look forward to beginning it ASAP.
shareIt is interesting and goes very fast. Let us know how you like it....
shareOk, well I finished the book last night before turning in.
You're right GNOMON2, it did go fast and it was really interesting.
I very much enjoyed this book. I agree w/ the person (forget who it was now) who said they enjoyed getting more details about the specifics of the family dynamics and the contests. As in all movies, the one based on this book takes several anecdotes and compresses them into one in various places to save time and to give the viewer a sampling of the best in the story. They also take some liberties w/ the true facts of some incidents to make for better drama, which is quite typical of films. Overall, however, I do think the movie is to be commended for being fairly faithful to its source material, which I believe is a good thing when the source material is as good as this.
I'm glad to learn, for instance, that Evelyn DID get to go to NYC afterall, and that she had such a fine time. In the movie, for dramatic purposes, Evelyn cashes in the trip (or simply forgoes it) to handle the crisis w/ Rog getting busted for stealing. It works nicely for poetic reasons in the film to have Evelyn run into consistently bad luck whenever it comes to possibly breaking out of her kind of sad, dreary routine in Defiance, Ohio while having consistently incredible luck winning prizes just when she needed them most. It achieves a lovely poetic balance which works nicely as an artistic device. But in reality, it's reassuring to know she succeeded in breaking out of the rut at least once. I can imagine what a ball Evelyn had (I don't know if Bruce had as good a time) and what an exciting adventure it must've been for her. I also think it's really nice that she got to go w/ Bruce and didn't have to drag Kelly along. Talk about putting a damper on a good time!
There were some lovely gems in the book. For instance, the business w/ the Dr, Pepper win was even more dramatic in how it really happened than it was as conveyed in the film---hard to believe! The movie didn't let on just how close to the wire it really came down to for the family. The bank in Defiance was absolutely rigid about reposessing the house on the date given if the payment wasn't in hand, and it was only days from that date when the call from Dr. Pepper came. It was a huge deal that the bank managers would and could make the concession that if Evelyn came in w/ the confirmation letter of the contest win, the bank would find a way to allow the family the needed extra time to make the loan repayment when the prizes came through. Evelyn was expecting to get the confirmation letter the next day, as she should have, considering it was sent out special delivery, air mail. Due to the idiots Detroit neglecting to put postage on the envelope, the letter is delayed by a couple of days, as postage being owed, which brought things down to the very edge of the wire, w/ foreclosure and eviction scheduled for the morning. In a further irony, the family is required to pay the 30 cents on the postage owed--a sum none of them even altogether had. Had not Barb thought of the idea of paying w/ stamps themselves, which Evelyn had, of course, they seriously may have been stuck w/ no solution to the foreclosure, all for a lack of 30 cents. The final irony of course is that this multi-million dollar corporation "defaulted" on 30-cent postage, leaving this utterly impoverished, almost homeless family to scramble for a way to cover the loss to secure this desperately needed letter.
You can't make up drama like that! It truly is one of those life imitates art kind of thing.
I was moved almost to the point of tears, too, reading the letter Evelyn was forced to right to essentially beg for the scholarships for her children to which they had worked so hard and had every right. It was gut-wrenching that she had to humble herself that way and air her dirty and very private laundry before a collection of strangers like that, illuminating just how harrowing a life her family endured. But it was completely in keeping w/ Evelyn's make-up that she would do whatever she had to to fight for what her family needed. And most impressive, once again Evelyn showed that through her amazing skill at wording things just the right way, she "won" what she needed for her family. I hope the officers of that scholarship committee were plenty ashamed of their miserliness when they read her letter, realizing what an indignity it was to subject a person to having to share such personal and painful facts of her life w/ them.
When I finished the book, I handed it off to my husband, who was the one who picked out the movie from Blockbuster that, left up to me, would probably never have been seen by me. He's excited about starting it. When he's done, I'll loan it to my father, who's quite elderly, but is an avid reader still and I know he'll be fascinated by the story.
Well, I realize I've gone on at some length about the book, but even so, I would love to discuss it more if anyone is interested.
I am glad you enjoyed it. It was in fact a fascinating book, so I lent it to my sister and recommended it to others in my family. As you point out, the amazing thing about the book is that IT IS ALL TRUE! So many made-up books and movies cannot even come close to the true stories in the book, full of emotion, both drama and humor.
On a personal note, I too am from a (Catholic) family of 10 kids, so I could empathize with the Ryan family. Even though we were not that poor, we did not have a lot when we were growing up, but we were happy in our own way. Luckily my dad was not a drunk squandering their money, he worked hard and saved, but still my mom had to pinch pennies to make ends meet. We did eat jello and peanut butter sandwiches etc, but we always had milk just like they did.
It's a bit ironic that the studio did not do more to publicize this movie, which is about a REAL family with REAL experiences, and yet still interesting and amusing. Instead they will spend millions on advertising a fake comedic family like "Cheaper by the Dozen" or even a silly escapade like "The Shaggy Dog" or such.
I think it is good that, judging by the activity on these boards, there are a lot of people who did see and appreciate the movie. It is a little disappointing though that many of them seem to be in Canada or Europe and not the USA. More people should see this. Hopefully on DVD this will happen.
Dear GNOMON2 and others,
totally agree with you, what a great book!!! I have re-read it numerous times, and keep finding little treasures that I missed before hand.
Just to let you know, VERY few people in Canada saw this movie in the theatres, I THINK it was only in two venues, one in Toronto and Montreal which is both in the eastern part of Canada. Seems most folks on this board found this story via the book first (Terry did some TV interviews, one was Oprah and Rosie) and secondly with the movie in the rental/buy market. I know our local video store only had 2 copies of it, so it's not being pushed that way either. Sure hope the actual sales of the movie do better.
Cathy from Canada :O)
I was just thinking of another interesting bit of timing and uncanny luck in the life of Evelyn Ryan. It was how the contests stayed in vogue just long enough for her to raise her whole family until the youngest children were old enough that she could take a paying job outside the home. From the book, it sounds like the youngest kids were entering high school, or near high school age around the time of the big Dr. Pepper win. After that, Terry says her mom didn't win any more big contests, and that they stopped coming along. It was at that point that Evelyn found the job at JC Penny's as a sales clerk. (I bet she was great at it too!) But just imagine if the contests had gone out of style while the youngest kids were still quite young. It would've been very difficult for her to work outside the home w/ small children at home.
I was so angry when I read the part about the nun after church one Sunday advising Evelyn to take in washing. Maybe it made me so furious because I remember someone telling my mom this when my dad was out of work for a long stretch when I was in high school. The family money situation wasn't even that bad! But some jerk busy-body, know-it-all suggested to my mother that she take in washing. It was such an insulting and completely crazy thing to say to her.
Getting back to Evelyn...here's one thing I didn't understand...maybe someone here can explain it to me. The book (and the movie) said that once Kelly retired, he secretly deposited every pension check of his into a secret account, which apparently accrued interest, leaving $60k to Evelyn upon his death. Terry says that when her mother died, more than 10 years later, the kids discovered that her mother had never touched a penny of the money Kelly left, presumably so the kids would have something as an inheritance. She probably figured the dad owed the money more to kids than to her. But Terry said it seems her mother subsisted entirely on the "interest" from her own pension from JC Penny.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this at all. How could Kelly deposit the total of every pension check in a bank account from retirement until his death? Does that mean they were living completely on Evelyn's income from her sales job at Penny's? Wouldn't she have asked him where are his pension checks? As little money as they had, her income from the Penny's job had to have been considerably less than even Kelly's low-paying salary at the machine shop. I don't see how the 2 of them could've lived only on that and that Evelyn would never have talked to Kelly about his pension. Not to mention that as little as her store clerk's income would be, the "interest" on the pension from that job had to be a mere fraction of that. I just don't see how she survived on such a pittance, through all the years of runaway inflation, into the 80s and 90s.
It's the one part of the story that just didn't add up for me.
You know, I kinda wondered about that myself....I can't remember exactly what it said in the book (I read it about 3-4 months ago), but as an accountant I always look for numbers to add up correctly and this kinda puzzled me, though I didn't focus on it like you did. Perhaps she got money from the kids or something. Maybe he and she got social security and they used that, so he could "bank" the pension and not touch it?? It would be interesting to talk to Terry (Tuff) and ask some of these questions.
shareI have the book right in front of me. Here's what it says in the 2 places regarding the money:
My father left a legacy of atonement that stunned my mother and all of their children. He told Betsy about his plans ten years before his death. "I go down to First Federal every month, Bets, and I just put this pension check right in the bank, see? It's a surprise for Mother. It belongs to her. You make sure she uses it. Will you do that for me?"
Then it goes on to say that when he died, they discovered he had saved over $60K, which seems to have surprised them all.
Then Terry goes on to talk about how her mother traveled all over the country after the father died, visiting all her children. Unless the kids were paying for all the trips, she wasn't simply sitting at home budgeting out every last penny.
After Evelyn dies, the kids go through her personal effects and are stunned once again to discover that the entire $60K is all there. Here's what it says:
Mom had lived off the interest (of the pension savings) and her own JC Penny pension to preserve the capital for her children.
I guess I did misunderstand it a bit. She wasn't living off the interest of the JC Penny pension. She was living off her own full pension checks PLUS the interest from the $60K Kelly left her. Still, it's hard to fathom how she made it on the interest alone, supplemented only by the pension from a sales clerking job at a small town department store where she worked for maybe 20 years. It also doesn't explain what she thought Kelly was doing w/ his pension if she was so surprised by finding the sum after his death.
Evelyn does say in her letter to the scholoarship committee officers that Kelly was managing to put a little bit of money into savings to cover the cost of home repairs, so in his own way, he was trying to atone. Terry says that at this point, Kelly had retired. So it sounds like Evelyn knew he was getting something and that he was putting some of it into savings. All I can think is, he must not have been putting the whole amount into the savings account, as Terry makes it sound. He must've been misrepresenting to Evelyn how much his pension checks were, using some of it to pay for living expenses and some for upkeep on the house, while tucking a portion of every check away into hidden savings. I'm just surprised that a smart woman like Evelyn could've been fooled to that extent. Then again, Kelly did fool her about the second mortgage, so maybe he really was that sneaky. Still, it seems amazing to me that Evelyn managed to get by on so little after Kelly's death--all so that her children would inherit something from them. It's almost heart-breaking.
Just adding an update for fans of the book...
Yesterday, I brought the book over to my dad so he could read it. He's less than 10 years younger than Evelyn Ryan was and raised his kids around the same time the Ryans raised their family, just starting a little later. He started out as s newspaperman too and knew tons of people in the advertising business during the 40s, 50s and 60s. I just knew he'd enjoy this book.
I just got an email from him telling me he's been reading the book all day and absolutely loving it. He said he's been nearly unable to put it down and will be done w/ it soon. He thanked me profusely for lending it to him.
Oh, and my husband loved it too! : )
that's good to hear that he loved the book. Seems everyone who gets the chance to read it feels the same way. In fact, bought a second copy of it (paperback) so that I could lend that one out to folks, while keeping my original one at home.
Cathy from Canada :O)