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Simon Birch is a 1998 American comedy-drama film loosely based on the 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and written for the screen and directed by Mark Steven Johnson in his directorial debut. The film stars Ian Michael Smith, Joseph Mazzello, Jim Carrey, Ashley Judd, and Oliver Platt. It omitted much of the latter half of the ...
- $20 million
- Marc Shaiman
- September 11, 1998
Reception. Film, television and theatrical adaptations. Cultural references. Footnotes. External links. A Prayer for Owen Meany is the seventh novel by American writer John Irving. Published in 1989, it tells the story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany growing up together in a small New Hampshire town during the 1950s and 1960s.
- John Irving
- 617
- 1989
- March 1989
Author John Irving doubted his novel, "A Prayer for Owen Meany", could ever be turned into a film, and sold the screen rights on the condition it not be released under the same name as his book. Irving himself provided the name Simon Birch for the producers to use in place of Owen Meany.
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- The first sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany is John Irving’s favorite. Irving always writes the ends of his novels first, and Owen Meany was no different: He wrote the penultimate paragraph of the novel first, and added the last paragraph two days later.
- John Irving based Owen Meany on a childhood friend. The author was home in Exeter, New Hampshire, for Christmas in the early ‘80s, where he and his childhood friends were discussing other friends who had gone to Vietnam and never come back, or who had come back but were messed up from the experience.
- A Prayer for Owen Meany is full of homages to other novels. In the novel, Johnny’s mother is killed by a baseball hit by Owen Meany—which, Irving said in an interview with the Denver Post, is an homage to the Robertson Davies novel Fifth Business, in which the protagonist’s mom is hit by a snowball.
- Hester in A Prayer for Owen Meany is similar to another of Irving’s characters. If Johnny’s abrasive cousin Hester in Owen Meany sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve read Irving’s 1985 novel The Cider House Rules.
Sep 11, 1998 · He seems to know his way around small towns and broad emotions. His story was "suggested'' by the novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany'' by John Irving, unread by me, although no doubt much more complex and ambiguous; Johnson goes for a purity of tone that children may identify with as much as adults.
Jan 21, 2014 · 1. 927 views 9 years ago. Trailer for A Prayer for Owen Meany. Ben Klimek and Steven Roach put on truly magical performances to lift this film to incredible heights. Come see it in...
- 4 min
- 1037
- Steven Roach
Mar 8, 1989 · Owen plays the Christ Child in the Episcopal Church's Christmas pageant, and turns Him into a surly, manipulative mirror image of Owen himself. When he spots his hapless parents in the ...
