Eddie and The Cruisers, the movie has been on TV recently and it’s a movie I usually watch, and I decided I wanted to read the book to see how it compares to the movie. Did the screenwriters just adapt what was in the book? Or was the book a starting point for them? And, of course, it adds to the eternal debate which is better, the book or the movie? This is a review of P.F. Kluge’s Eddie and The Cruisers (until the last paragraph).Frank Ridgeway is a high school English teacher who is getting a divorce and pretty much doesn’t like the students he teaches or his life. In his past he was a guitar player and lyricist for the 1958 era band Eddie and the Parkway Cruisers, who‘s lead singer, Eddie Wilson, died mysteriously. After one of Frank’s classes he’s contacted by a reporter, Elliott Mannheim, who is doing a retrospective story on The Cruisers because their song “Far Away Woman“ has been getting some airplay, and there‘s a rumor of undiscovered recordings Eddie made right before he died. After the interview with Mannheim, Frank is contacted by Doc Robinson, the former manager of The Cruisers who was somewhat of schemer/scammer but now is making a living as a DJ at a college radio station. Doc tells Frank there may be tapes, he doesn’t know but he started the rumor there were to flush them out if there were any tapes. And this is where the plot starts to get a little implausible to me. Doc tells Frank he needs to seek out all the old Cruisers and see if they know or have the tapes. Why doesn’t Doc do this himself? Frank agrees to do this at the very least to make peace with his past.As Frank visits all the old Cruisers, Salvatore “Sally” Amato, Kenny Hopkins, now a Reverend, Wendell Newton, and finally Joann Carlito, he starts hearing how Eddie, the month before he died rented a Quonset hut in Lakehurst New Jersey ostensibly to record music that would bring together black and white music. Wendell, who is in a mental institution swears that Eddie brought together ‘the kings” of black and white music and they had jam sessions. But the characters and their motives seem forced like actors trying to make an unwieldy script work. Frank and all the other Cruisers suspect the reporter of trying to steal the tapes (if they exist) with no real evidence or actions by the reporter to suspect him of that.This is where I find more implausibility’s. The Parkway Cruisers are described as a small local N.J. band that released one album and they’re playing small bars and Eddie is able to summons rock legends “the kings” of music? Eddie for no stated reason abandons The Cruisers, he doesn’t take any of them to the jam session except Wendell. As in the movie Eddie considers Frank important to the band because he’s “The Wordman,” and Eddie also tells everyone it’s ‘words and music” that make the band. If words and music were so important to Eddie and Frank was the “Wordman,” why didn’t Eddie take Frank to Lakehurst?Another shortcoming of the novel is that Kluge introduces characters that go nowhere, and don’t really add anything to the understanding of Eddie or the music, such as Eddie’s wife and parents. The characters of the reporter Elliott Mannheim and his girlfriend appear in the beginning, disappear, only to reappear at the end. Joann Carlito appears as an after thought, her position is never really delineated, she’s “Eddie’s girl” other than that we don’t know if she’s in the band and a back up singer, like in the movie, or someone just hanging out with Eddie and the how and why of that aren’t explained too much. As the relationship with Eddie’s wife isn’t explained.The world that Kluge is familiar with is what stands out. He knows schools and the academic life. The scenes at Frank’s prep school ring the truest, the descriptions and the motivations of the kids at school, even the Toby Tyler scene works much better in the book and isn’t as awkward as it is in the movie. What Kluge doesn’t know or isn’t able to render is a feeling for Eddie and The Cruisers or their music.There’s a lot of ambivalence in the characters starting with Eddie, there’s not much of a mystery if Eddie is dead or how he died. The Lakehurst tapes, did Eddie make any tapes or not? In the beginning Doc admits he put out the rumor of there being tapes but no one in the story has any idea if there are any tapes or if they should be looking for them? I think Kluge wasn’t clear whether this was supposed to be a detective story, or a murder mystery, there’s a double murder towards the end but it’s cleared up within a half a page, or if Kluge was trying for something else all together.Movie vs. Book - By the above review you can tell the screenwriters of “Eddie and the Cruisers” stripped the story down to its skeleton and added a more plausible story based on the elements of the novel. I think, in this case, the movie is a little better than the book.
What do You think about Eddie And The Cruisers (1999)?
This is a book that you will keep coming back to. Eddie and the Cruisers is one of the first movies I consciously remember seeing as a child, and it made a huge impression on me for some reason. From then on, every few years I would remember this movie and watch it, hum the soundtrack to myself, think about all the characters, and then forget. When I was in middle school, I finally discovered that there was a book, and so of course I had to read it. What I found, was a book that was much darker than the movie, and very different. This book is about destruction of music, about media and how the media morphs art, memories and bad memories, and regret. When Eddie's music begins to play on the radio again, after more than 20 years after his death, it sends his remaining band members into a frenzy. They are forced to come to terms with the past, and deal with the death of a good friend when the media suggests that Eddie might be alive. Once digging, they find out things about Eddie, reinterpret what their memories mean, and are forced to redefine the summer that they all toured together. Honestly, read the book, it is something that will stick with you for a long time, and be relatable to you at any age. This is a book for everyone.
—Gem
Like a lot of people I think, including Sherman Alexie who wrote the intro, I didn't realize the movie was based on a book. After watching it while on the couch sick, I got curious and wikipedia let me know about the book. It's written as one of the characters as an author, Wordman, and captures the heady excitement and deep despair of being close to greatness. That greatness being Eddie, with a thirst for music that eclipsed everything else. Kluge captures the gritty run-down East Coast of the early 80s, the nostalgia of driving around with friends on long summer days with nowhere to go, and the disappointment of life not being all you want.
—Rebecca
