THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

How did I get here? Why did I watch this movie?

a. Vincent D'Onofrio, the star, is a remarkable actor I saw first in THE SALTON SEA, an excellent modern noir recommended to me by Don Riemer. Vincent D'onofrio is a mesmerizing villain in that film.

b. I was surprised to find D'Onofrio with several producer credits. I checked them out, and found one of those producer credits is on THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, in which he also stars.

c. I learned that THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD is about Robert E. Howard, a celebrated pulp writer, creator of Conan. Since in my day job [designer of lurid computer roleplaying games], I create Conan-like heroes and narratives, I had a professional interest in the subject.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover a delicate personal romance between Robert Howard and a woman, Novalyne Price, who later became a college teacher. And I found that the screenwriter, Michael Scott Myers, had once been a student of Novalyne Price. Myers dedicates the movie to her, and her memoir, 'One Who Walks Alone', of her time with Howard during the last years of his life, was the basis of the screenplay.

So the story is very personal, and the film is deeply touching and affecting. Renée Zellweger is splendid as Novalyne Price.

Recommended **** for exploration.

Today I was working hard on preparing a script for our upcoming game, OBLIVION. Patrick Stewart is the voice for the role of the emperor [a sort of Julius Caesar figure]. And I found myself arguing desperately with my producer that we COULD NOT stray from the tight, controlled, Stoic personality and dialog I had written for Stewart because games just flat CANNOT communicate any range of emotional depth in the faces of our actors.

And watching THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, it was clear how film CAN produce that emotional depth.

Of course, Conan doesn't need any great depth of emotional expression. Neither do Gandalf or any of the characters in LORD OF THE RINGS. Not many people will want to see a film like THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. They would much rather skip the deep emotional stuff and see some tough, wooden-faced Stoics beat the livin shit out of some orcs.

Sigh.

I really would like to try making a computer game with some emotional depth. But I doubt there's a market for such, even if we had the technology to produce animated, emotional faces.


NETFLIX BLURB

This Dan Ireland-directed film stars Renee Zellweger as Novalyne Price, a Texas schoolteacher with literary ambitions who falls for pulp fiction scribe Bob Howard (Vincent D'Onofrio) -- a man who gracefully traverses a world of words but can't seem to fit into real life. Howard's most famous literary hero is Conan the Barbarian; he, too, is a barbarian of sorts. He's a capable writer, but is he capable of love?