Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0001235, Mon, 19 Aug 1996 16:09:20 -0700

Subject
The Lyne-Schiff LOLITA (1)
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE. There have been recent rumors about the status and
possible U.S. release of Adrian Lyne's new LOLITA film. Galya Diment
<galya@u.washington.edu> provides one such press account below. In a
following posting presented by Suellen Stringer-Hye
<STRINGERS@LIBRARY.VANDERBILT.EDU>, Stephen Schiff, the _New Yorker_
writer and film critic who wrote the script for Lyne's LOLITA, comments on
such reports.
Stringer-Hye's earlier interview with Schiff about his
LOLITA film script is available on ZEMBLA, the Nabokov Web site [http:
//www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/nsintro.htm] and in the NABOKV-L
Archive.
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---------- Forwarded message ----------


>From the Vancouver Sun, Friday, August 9, 1996:

LYNE'S LOLITA GETS FEW VOTES IN U.S. ELECTION YEAR

(by Marianne Macdonald)

London. A new film of Vladimir Nabokov's LOLITA by the British director
Adrian Lyne may have fallen victim to the pressure for political
correctness in Hollywood during election year. He has been unable to find a
United States distributor six months after completing filming, with Jeremy
Irons playing the lead opposite an unknown 14-year-old schoolgirl from
Malibu, Dominique Swain.

Lyne... this week suggested that the controversial plot... meant it was
"doomed from the start."... Lyne told ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY that he wanted
to film a new version of Lolita because the original script, also by
Nabokov, was so terrible. "Nabokov's screenplay is as bad as the novel is
magnificent."

The director.. wanted to make a more faithful adaptation of the 1955
novel; as a result, some of the sexual scenes were so provocative that he
used a body double instead of his child star. But the problem is getting
it shown. Distributors are fighting shy of the... movie.

... "Someone will pick up the film, I am sure, [Matt Mueller, editor of
PREMIERE magazine says] but it could mean waiting until after the
election. If Clinton gets in, it would not be so much of a problem."