Tonight was the second installment of Short Story & Movie Night. We read the short story It Had to be Murder by Cornell Woolrich. About 13 pages long, there’s not a lot of mystery to it, but it’s a good solid basic murder story.

Then we got together and watched Rear Window, with Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Raymond Burr.

Again, three of the four of us hadn’t seen the movie before, and none of us had read the story before.

The film definitely kept most of the story’s elements, and what it changed, we all felt changed for the better. The two female characters in the movie didn’t exist in the story, and added a great deal to the film – in no small part because they were living breathing human characters, and not just “sexy lamps” or “dark action girl“. Because of their addition, some of the action from the story got rearranged, but it still all fell nicely into place. (and do I even need to start about Grace Kelly or her character’s wardrobe? *swoon*)  We all quite liked the film – thumbs up all around!

Tonight’s tie-in dinner was eggs (scrambled, with cheese), bacon, toast, and coffee (well, coffee cocktail), per both the story and the movie. Mostly because I wasn’t up to dealing with lobster and pommes frites.

Looking forward to next month’s Short Story & Movie Night!

The invitation read something like this:

I want to do more reading, and I want to do more socializing. But Book Club is too haaard! I don’t have time to read a whooole book! Talking about books for two hours is boooring!

Let’s read a short story then watch a movie based on it instead!

Read the story ahead of time. Then come over and hang out with us. I’ll have something dinner-like available. Feel free to bring food/drink to share as well, if you like.

The emphasis was on the social aspect – the short story and movie give us a reason to get together and stuff to talk about.

This month’s story & movie was Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

While I’d seen parts of the movie, I’d never read the story. In fact, I’ve never read any Truman Capote before this. I got the four-story collection from the library and read it all. While the writing it good, I can’t say I’m dying to read more of it. Maybe it’s a matter of cultural shifts and no-longer-relevant references. It was hard to get past the overt racism of several characters. I may try to read “In Cold Blood” just because.

No one else in the group had watched the movie before, so we’re all watching it several decades after it was made. Again, lots of no-longer-relevant cultural references, lots of cultural shifts.

We were all properly horrified by Mickey Rooney’s character, found everyone else in the movie pretty much unsympathetic, pondered whether Marilyn Monroe (Truman Capote’s choice for the lead) would have been a better choice than Audrey Hepburn, wondered why Hannibal Smith was in this movie without the rest of the A-Team, were glad to have seen it for the overall cultural reference, loved pretty much all of Audrey Hepburn’s clothing, and we thought Cat was easily the best actor.  We had a great time talking about the differences between the story and the movie, and which movies and stories these reminded us of.  Also: what genre is this movie?  Definitely not a romance. Redemption? Drama? Screwball drama?

Dinner was chicken enchiladas (per “chicken and sauce” in the movie) and margaritas (just because).

And of course, I’ve had this song stuck in my head for two weeks straight.

The next Short Story and Movie night is already scheduled!