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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.tv
Subject: "GARP" Questions (Spoilers) (reposting)
Message-ID: <9218@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 14-Mar-85 11:58:20 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.9218
Posted: Thu Mar 14 11:58:20 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 05:41:06 EST
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Xref: watmath net.movies:5913 net.tv:2651

(This is a reposting; it was posted during a time when netnews feeds here
seemed erratic, and I have never seen any replies or answers, so I fear
it never made it out over the net.)

WARNING! SPOILERS!

Having just seen the movie of "The World According to Garp" on network TV
(mid-Feb, actually), I am left with questions I hope netters can answer:

1) What kind of car was it that Garp and his wife had? I mean the cream-colored
one that appeared to be something from the 40's? This should have
been 1974 or thereabouts, since Garp was born in '44 and he had said that
he had just turned 30. 

2) The night that his wife comes home after he had been told of her infidelity,
and he is gone with the kids to a diner and a movie: how did she get home?
The movie had shown her being the one that had that car at the university
as her regular transportation, yet that day he had the car at home. (There
was never any evidence of having another car, and her phone conversation
with her lover implied that she had not just been with him -- that is, he 
didn't leave her off at home that day [which she would not have allowed
to happen, anyway].) So she arrives at home with no previously-set-up
explanation of how she got there, such as a mention of carpooling or anything
in prior scenes. This seemed a continuity failure to me.

3) The crucial accident -- this was led up to by the earlier scene of Garp and 
wife coming home and him doing the trick with cutting the ignition and
coasting into the driveway. There she said it was "dangerous", which of
course presages the accident. But what is "dangerous" about it? All he
did was cut the motor and coast the final "n" feet to stop in his own
driveway. When the accident happens, he does this again to please the kids,
and hits the lover's car. Why would this have been a serious accident at all?
Since he was coasting, and was coming UPHILL on his driveway, he could not
have been moving very fast. Even if the rain made his brakes fade, he
would have ended up with a fender-bender, whiplash and various minor injuries
for the unsupported kids, himself, and his wife & her lover, NOT serious
injuries to everyone and the death of one child! The accident scene even 
clearly showed his headlights coming on again as he entered the driveway
and his viewpoint of seeing the lover's station wagon there. He could have 
stopped or at least swerved and missed it. This badly-staged accident
spoiled the whole recovery-period scenes for me; they could have simply
staged it better to make serious injury inevitable -- I wonder why they
did not.

4) I missed the credit for the seaside house, which both my wife and I
admired. Anyone know where it is, and if it is a publicly-accessible 
building, like a resort?

I haven't read the book, but am thinking about doing so, due to seeing
the movie. Any comments as to the relationships between the two? (E.G., 
is the movie "true" to the book, or a "travesty" of it, or somewhere
in between?)

Thanks for your answers!

Will Martin

USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin     or   ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA