The Lathe Of Heaven

Cafe Society
1

I recently picked up the original TV version of **The Lathe Of Heaven ** after hearing sci-fi fans rave about it for years. I liked it, and think it’s a shame that a old broadcast videotape is the only remaining source for this film, and thus a poor-quality DVD is likely all we’ll ever have.

I’ve never read anything by the author whose novel this was based on, but I’m definately interested in persuing her works.

Two questions for anyone who’s in the know:

  1. Why so many legal issues with this version? I’ve read that the film was practically buried because of music licensing issues, specifically the Beatles track used. This makes sense, but I was wondering if any other problems caused it to practically disappear for years.

  2. Is the recent version with James Cann and Lisa Bonet any good? I’ve been eyeing it at Blockbuster, but they’ve only got one DVD copy and it’s always out.

2

PBS affliate channel 8 here in Houston aired it a year or two ago,so i imagine the legal issues were worked out.

3

Read the book. Read also Le Guinn’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Excellent novels, both. I quite liked the Thomas/Bonet/Caan/Straithairn version, myself.

4

No. Dull and boring. Worse, the subtext implies that George Orr murdered Lisa Bonet’s husband so she was free to go to bed with him.

5

I liked how, in the original TV version, the aliens wore body armor that looked like the Sidney Opera House.

6

I’m a big fan of Ursula K. Le Guin.

The DVD of the original LoH is now available and of pretty good quality.

The A&E remake has little to do with Le Guin. She wasn’t involved in it.

The book is better.

Other fine Le Guin works include
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Dispossessed
The Eye of the Heron

If you enjoy coming of age stories about young wizards, The Earthsea books (beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea) are wonderful, and much more serious than Harry Potter. Earthsea is an interesting series to read because she wrote the trilogy a while ago, then has added more books more recently, with more of a feminist consciousness (e.g., posing the question of why all the wizards are male).

7

My wife works with Ursula LeGuin’s daughter.

Don’t know why I’m sharing this.

Just name-dropping, I suppose.

8

The original version, with Bruce Davidson? I thought it looked exactly like what it was, a DVD transfer made from a old and battered videotape. Passable, but certainly not good quality.

9

IMO, the old TV version was good; quite faithful to the book – the recent version was neither faithful nor good.

LeGuin is a fantastic writer.