Thurber

I didn't want to toss this into a pile with other entries because I just love Thurber way too much. Most people can't write funny. Thurber could, consistently. I don't know how much he is read these days, but most of his work is timeless. Certainly "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is probably tossed about in classrooms somewhere, as it should be. Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa and all that.

I wasn't the only person rather taken aback by the idea of a Ben Stiller Mitty movie. Nor was I the only person who was taken aback by the old Danny Kaye movie. This is Thurber writing about the script: "He [the notoriously inarticulate Sam Goldwyn] told me the first sixty pages were all right and asked me not to read the last 100 pages, which he said were too 'blood and thirsty.' I read the entire script, of course, and I was horror and struck." Thurber wasn't particularly fond of the finished product either, needless to say.

The Hollywood Life Of "Walter Mitty" by Maria Bustillos does a great job of profiling Thurber, then talking about the disaster that was the first movie. Read it, think of Ben Stiller, and pray.