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big fish
The back cover of the paperback edition of Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish, carries an endorsement from Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump, calling the book “a jewel.” It is a fitting tribute to the magic realism of Wallace’s book, which contains giants, werewolves, witches, travelling circuses and a pair of conjoined Korean lounge singers called Ping and Jing - and, of course, the “big fish” of the title.
Big Fish features the larger-than-life character of Edward Bloom, whose escapades as a young man are later wildly embroidered. Ed Bloom is a man who is fond of tall tales. And, given that Wallace’s book is subtitled “A novel of mythic proportions,” if any film-maker was suited to bringing it to the screen, it was Tim Burton. As the movie’s producer, Richard Zanuck, points out, Burton is first and foremost a teller of strange tales.
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IT’S EASY TO SEE WHAT DREW TIM BURTON TO BIG FISH - THE GIANTS, WEREWOLVES AND CIRCUS, PLUS THE STRANGE AND MAGICAL ATMOSPHERE OF DANIEL WALLACE’S NOVEL. MAX LEVANT DOES HIS BEST TO DISTINGUISH TRUTH FROM REALITY.
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“As he’s shown in films like Edward Scissorhands, Tim’s stories have whimsy and fantasy with great heart,” says Zanuck. “When you think of the wacky, almost surreal Ed Wood, you also remember Martin Landau’s moving performance as Bela Lugosi, that won him an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Big Fish offers Tim the opportunity to go even further, to delve into the complex universal issues that resonate between fathers and sons and also to exercise his great gift for visualising the exotic and the bizarre.”
Moreover, the subject matter of Wallace’s stories play to Burton’s imaginative strengths. “Edward is a compulsive story teller,” says Wallace, “and that’s what Southern literature is about: storytelling almost for its own sake. Folk tales and tall tales demand that the truth be stretched, a little or a lot. It’s sleight of hand, a form of magic - possibly the only real magic many of us have an opportunity to be a part of in our adult lives. It’s the magic a child experiences while growing up, one that most of us unfortunately lose. Novels and movies bring us in touch with that sense of wonder.”
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