last night, with the help of my friend Ron, a perennially skeptical Capricorn, i discovered the 1987 Merchant Ivory Productions film version of E.M. Foster's 1912 novel MAURICE. as i told Ron today, if i had seen this film when it first came out, my dear crazy Mother would probably still be alive, though close to 80. but as it is, i think she has been reborn and is living quite near. so now she's young and healthy again (2yrs. old) and living in northern California, The Promised Land, where i always thought she should be. it may be a while before we meet again, but i'm glad she's done quite well for herself despite my sometimes somewhat interpersonally destructive behaviour(a phrase i learned from Ram Dass' BE HERE NOW).the weirdest part of this are all of these strange coincidences for me: E.M. Forster, born in England in 1879, went to India in 1920 and subsequently wrote his most famous book A PASSAGE TO INDIA in 1924. He had written his novel MAURICE twelve years earlier, but because of it's Gay subject matter, Forster never published it. It was finally published after his death in 1971. James Ivory, the Ivory part of Merchant Ivory Pictures, was born in Berkeley, California in 1928. as a film student, Ivory won a grant to make a film and in 1959, he made a documentary about Indian art. while in New York for a screening of the film, he met the young Indian movie producer, Ismail Merchant. they formed Merchant Ivory Productions and later made their most famous movies from Forster novels. they maintained their partnership until Merchant died in 2005.
their third movie, produced in 1969, was called THE GURU, and depicted a British Rock star, played by Michael York, who goes to India to learn to play the Sitar.
in 1986, 15 years after Forster's departure from Earth, Merchant Ivory made the first film version of a Forster novel, A ROOM WITH A VIEW, followed by MAURICE in 1987, and then HOWARD'S END in 1992, which won three Academy Awards.
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