PSU Magazine Spring 2005

night in a hotel room in The Dalles. Cody, a former English teacher himself, had several concerns about the scene. "This is difficult to handle (in class)," he says. "They're not married. They're young people. They're drink– ing wine. l cut the overnight pan com– pletely. lt just doesn't belong in the high school classroom and that's where my book's being sold." After all, he says, his original pur– pose in editing the book was to make it more accessible to high schools. "I left in more than l took out," Cody says. "lt's not kiddy lit. lt's not dumbed down for children. Some people will still object to it." But with the revisions, Cody adds, "l think I've got a better, tighter book. lt still will be objectionable to some, but it will be harder to call it pornography. " Benin, of the censorship group, does– n't try to second-guess Cody's decision, but she does worry about the implica– tions. "lt's such a slippery slope," says Benin. "How do you know? Once the pressure is exerted, how do you know, even assuming everyone's trying to be honest with themselves. How do you disconnect the response from the anxi– ety the pressure creates? What we would hate to see is for the work to lose something, in some important way, because of the values other people bring to bear that may not necessarily be widely shared ." Cody is confident that hasn't happened with Ricochet River. "When an author gets a chance to redo something after 14 years, and when he's become a better writer, it's an opportunity. Of course the initial motive was to make it more accessible to teachers. There's some small sorri– ness that l chose to cut that comic sex scene in The Dalles. But that's balanced by going back to something l did nearly 20 years ago and making it shorter and cleaner and crisper and better as literature. That wasn't the motive going in-that was the surprise. " D (Melissa Steineger, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the arlide "Women of Honor" for the winter 2005 PSU Magazine.) 8 PSU MAGAZI E SPRING 2005 Tinsel Town's take Almost immediately after Ricochet River was pub– lished, Hollywood came calling. At first a production company merely wanted the option of being able to make the movie if they decided to. For the privilege, they paid author Robin Cody a small sum each year. "That went on for years," says Cody. "I gave up hope it would ever be a movie. People told me that Hollywood types take out options on lots and lots of stuff." But eventually, the option was picked up-rumor has it that actress Goldie Hawn wanted the script as a vehicle for her daugh– ter, Kate Hudson, who did play a lead role in the 2001 movie. "They called up and said, 'We're going to do it,"' says Cody. "As a courtesy they showed me the script, then disregarded everything I said about it." The movie was shot in Oregon with Cody and Oregon author Ken Kesey playing bit parts. "We were shooting down there on the MacKenzie river and a cousin of Kesey's was on the crew," says Cody. "I said, 'let's just call him up."' In the end, though, the film was less than magic. Never released in theaters, Ricochet River was distributed only on DVD. "The book is very slow develop– ing," says Cody, assessing its failure to translate to the screen. "It's liter– ary. It doesn't have a villain . The movie people tried to create a vil– lain, a black hat character and a white hat character and then create RICOCHET RIVER a love interest." None of which was in the book. Things like the theme of the teenagers taking their cue from nature went by the wayside. "The movie misses that and comes out pretty shallow," says Cody. "I was talking about it with Kesey. He thinks Hollywood ruined Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he was wrong. So I hesitate to criticize Hollywood. "On the other hand," he says with a laugh, "everyone says Ricochet River is a bad movie." And the big Hollywood bucks? "I got a choice of whether to take a percentage or a lump sum up front," says Cody. "I took the lump sum up front, which was the best financial decision I ever made. To a teacher-writer it was a lot of money. Counting the three or four years of options, it came out to $80,000." D