I’m participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge, where I post every day in the month of April (except Sundays) and each day is a letter.

My theme for the month is a series of posts about the things that shaped me.

The Prestige

I love magic — in books, in movies, whatever. Whenever someone is trying to convince me that magic is real in some sense, I’m ready with my suspension of disbelief. And The Prestige (book AND movie) did this beautifully.

It is the story of dueling magicians in the late 1800s, and a compulsive need for revenge that gets more and more irrational and deadly as time goes on. There are some fabulous twists in the tale, leaning on some Nikola Tesla-manufactured magic and some very impressive sleight-of-hand.

The movie flaunts an all-star cast: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, Andy Serkis, and the incomparable David Bowie(!). Director Christopher Nolan certainly does justice to the novel; I can’t say which of the two I like better, so that’s definitely saying something.

If you liked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell — but want something several hundred pages shorter with not so many footnotes — you should read The Prestige. I promise you’ll enjoy it.

Psych

Then there are stories where the main character pretends to have magical abilities, but really he’s completely full of it.

I was a religious viewer of the Monk, the OCD detective series. One day I was watching a new episode, and it was immediately followed with a premiere of a show I’d never heard of, starring some people I’d never seen before. I was bored, lazy, and couldn’t find the remote, so I left it on.

And holy shit did it make me laugh. Like, right out loud, ready-to-pee-my-pants laughing.

Psych tells story of a ultra-hyper-observant dude (James Roday) who gets in trouble with the local police when they don’t believe he solved multiple crimes just by watching the local news. So he claims he has psychic abilities, decides it’s super-fun and ropes his very straightlaced best friend (Dule Hill) into opening a detective agency.

It’s ridiculous, absurd, and absolutely hilarious. I have loved almost every episode (some of season 6 was iffy) and every movie (three so far — please make more, Steve Franks). The mysteries aren’t usually very deep, but I’m not really watching for spine-tingling mysteries. I watch because Shawn, Gus, and especially Carlton Lassiter (the brilliant Timothy Omundson as a supercop-in-his-own-mind) will always make me smile.

Paul Newman

You really don’t get cooler than Paul Newman.

One of the greatest movie stars of all time, he’s made so many wonderful movies, I’m sure you’ve seen at least one: Cool Hand Luke, The Color of Money, The Hustler, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Long, Hot Summer, Slap Shot, The Hudsucker Proxy, Road to Perdition…

And that’s only some of them.

My personal favorites are the ones he did with Robert Redford — The Sting, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He tended to play anti-heroes, characters who usually live in the grey area between good and bad, but he gets you to root for them anyway. Maybe it’s the heavy streak of sarcasm, or maybe it’s just those ridiculous blue eyes.

But Newman is here not just because he’s a phenomenal actor, but because he was an amazing human being as well. You’ve heard of Newman’s Own, I’m sure — you know, the salad dressings and whatnot? That’s his. And every penny of profit (well over $100 million) goes to charity. Newman also created the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a summer camp for kids with cancer and other serious illnesses to “raise a little hell.”

He also raced cars in his spare time, was loudly liberal, and stayed married to actress Joanne Woodward for over fifty years. In an interview he was once asked if he was ever tempted to stray with the attractive actresses he worked with. His response: “Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?”

He’s just good people.

The Princess Bride

This is THE movie of my childhood.

Or maybe of my life.

I don’t remember the first time I watched it, but I have watched it so many times, I can recite entire scenes off the top of my head. (I was so bored in an American History class one day that I proceeded to write out the Miracle Max scene in the margins of my notebook. Totally nailed it.) My original VHS copy was worn out long ago from repeat viewing.

If you don’t know (and if you don’t, please climb out from under the rock from which you live), the story has everything you could possibly ask for — “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…” A little something for everyone. Who could hate this movie? (I actually do know of one person. She shall remain forever nameless because I wouldn’t want the world to know she has no sense of romance, wonder, whimsy, OR fun.)

It was several years (and a couple hundred viewings) later when I discovered that there was a book. I remember finding it in the grown-up section of the library, a bright red hardcover — The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, the “Good Parts version,” abridged by William Goldman.

It was brilliant. That particular edition had sections of the book in red text (Goldman’s “observations” on S. Morgenstern’s literary style, asides he and his father had when his dad was reading the novel to him as a child, etc.), while the main story was in the usual black. Back then I probably skipped over Goldman’s little tidbits to get to the “good parts.” And boy, were they good.

In order to get a proper film adaptation of any book, you need to have the original writer do the adapting. He knows what’s important, and he will lift entire passages word-for-word if necessary. And that’s what Goldman did. You get more backstory on each character, but it’s all still there, just like it is on film, full of delight and adventure and charm.

From R.O.U.S.es to the six-fingered man; from the Cliffs of Insanity to the Pit of Despair; from iocane powder to a chocolate-covered miracle pill — there is no more fantastically wonderful movie/novel/story than this.

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