Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

About This Project: Questions Answered

Gulliver's Travels: the TV movie

"Ted & Mary's Excellent Adventure" TV Guide

        'What's sad is that Jonathan Swift didn't get the joke, in
my mind," says Danson, who costars with his new wife, Mary Steenburgen.....
'He saw the greed, the stupidity, the ignorance, the ego, the pride -- all
of the foibles of mankind.  What he didn't do is turn the corner and say,
'That's what it is to be human.'
        If Swift were alive today, he might learn something from
Danson, 48, and Steenburgen, who turns 43 this week, celebrated
performers who admit having their share of human weaknesses. ....
        'If you know you're an egomaniac, or you're a vain, silly
person, then it's a great source of humor.'
        'We spend 90 percent of our time laughing about our frailties,'
Steenburgen says.
        'And next to sex, laughing is as good as it gets,' Danson adds.

     I found the TV adaptation quite colorful.  THe frame tale at least gave
the plot continuity of the sort one expects on TV and the frequent montage
shots did make things look at bit like VH-1, maybe, but, hey, it's the
postmodern age.  Don't expect 1960s filming techniques.  And a number of the
issues Swift talks about got nice modern equivalents--you can't expect to
explain about British-specific things on American network TV without losing
its audience.
     ANd the horses were great!  I really didn't think we'd get real ones.
O'Toole was great fun, too.  ... who came over to watch with us,
remarked that he played the role like a young actor determined to make the
most of his first big part.  The Omar Sharif sequence was bizarre but admittedly
really scary, too.  Elevating Mary Gulliver's role (played by Ted Danson's
real wife, by the way) did give Dr. Bates some motivation--at least a
typical TV motivation--for disposing of Gulliver.  I liked the Hogarth touches
in the madhouse sequences for their visual and thematic connections.

>What is the lesson that he took back from this experience, and why in
>the movie that I saw, he is going back and forth to the imaginary and
>reality?  

Hello, i just watched the epic 192 minutes of the new 
gullivers travels movie and i need to find a full cast list 
for the movie. I've found a small cast list of the major 
names but i need a list of all the characters and cast for 
an extended essay i'm doing. I really hope you can help 
me, thanks for the time anyway even if  you can't help,

Try http://www.nbc.com/entertainment/gulliver/index.html or http://us.imdb.com/Title?Gulliver%27s+Travels+(1996)+(TV) Otherwise I don't know where to find this info.

> can you please tell me the names of the rest of the cast in the Ted Danson version of the 
movie?
>
>I am specifically after the name of the British actor who played the King ?

 the movie database you link to now includes
two additional Travels Movies, including what I think may be the best so
far, the Ted Danson TV miniseries (which is also widely available on
videotape).

I like that version because it dispels the
cartoon-gulliver-in-llilliput-but-nothing-else vision of Gulliver's
Travels in popular American culture...I hope you can add a link directly
to the movie database listing for that version.

Under movies, thought you might want to include the 1995 Gulliver's
Travels starring Ted Danson (Cheers), Mary Steenburgen, and Peter
O'Toole.  It's available on video from Hallmark Home Entertainment.

As a projection of Swift's Gulliver, 'twas poorly done; that it was
done at all is remarkable.  I confess to immoderate laughter in the
caseof the two female Yahoos pursuing and catching Gulliver with
rape in mind.  But all in all, a popular TV version dares not confront
the audience with the really dark elements of the Travels: Yahoos as
slaves, the Houyhnhnm Council and the debate about exterminating Yahoos
and Gulliver's constructing his canoe from Yahoo skins.  The Yahoos
of the TV version are unambiguously human beings, Gulliver's kinfolk.
The happy ending was saccharine with honey sweetened with plain old
sugar, but oddly there allusions to the misanthropic real Gulliver
living in the stable and refusing to eat with wife and children.
Bowdler would not have been unhappy the sanitized version.

The film proved to be instructive in a way that I had not anticipated. I
could not keep my 9-year-old son from watching it with fascination.
Even Part 3 was interesting to him.  And though he fell asleep during the
Houyhnhnm sequence, he asked me to record it.

This gave me the opportunity to introduce the 18th century to him.  I
explained the split between reason and passion, and it was clear to him.
Now he has an idea about what I do.

I couldn't agree more that the liberties taken with the plot are in bad
taste, but the good effect that the film had on our family discussion was
worth it.  Better than the Classic Comic that I once read!

Like most of the other commentators, I was pleasantly surprised by "Ted
Danson's Travels," given that I had expected the worst.  The madness frame
would have been a lot more successful without the evil Dr. Bates angle
(what John O'Neill perceptively called the Odysseus/Penelope plot)--
particularly since the final voice-over made it clear that the adapter had
no idea what to do with him after Gulliver won his case.  Surely Bates
could have tried to consign Gulliver to Bedlam without having designs on
the latter's wife?

A frame device of Gulliver trying to prove his sanity strikes me as a
reasonable narrative thread, and the cross-cutting proved a very clever
way to illustrate his perception problems.  Given that one could not
illustrate every bit of the book, at least not in 3.5 hours, the choices
overall weren't bad.  I agree that the revision of the Struldbruggs and
the omission of the Houyhnhnm extermination plot were low points.  I also
missed Pedro de Mendez, and was sorry to see Gulliver cheerfully united
with his family--but again, that's family television for you.

One point that really interested and surprised me was the reassignment of
so many of voices of authority and sanity from men to women.  Not only did
we have the Queen of Brobdingnag usurping the role of the king, but we
also found the Queen of Laputa running a sort of "Lysistrata" community on
Lagado and partly taking on Lord Munodi's role as Gulliver's guide, while
in Houyhnhnmland Gulliver's teacher and companion was a mare, called
"Mistress," rather than a stallion.  And of course Mary Gulliver assumed a
prominent role in speaking for her husband and ensuring his opportunity to
defend himself.  Any thoughts?

In retrospect, the film actually reminds me rather of "Jurassic Park,"
where the ulterior purpose of the hero's fantastical adventures and
hardships turns out to be a bathetic lesson in the value of "commitment,"
marriage, and children.  This certainly was a Gulliver for the early '90s.

A couple of points briefly in defense of the show, in response to earlier
comments: Doug Canfield objected to the "persistent exoticizing"--Swift
does describe Lilliputian dress as a combination of Oriental and European,
so there's some precedent in the book, though not throughout.  Leland
Patterson (I believe) mentioned the omission of several dark aspects of
Book IV--true, but the Yahoo-skin boat was not among those cuts.
Gulliver's voiceover described the boat as "made of skins" and the boat in
the accompanying shot was clearly Yahoo-grey.

I taped the show--deleting the commercials--and will probably use it as a
paper topic in my survey class.  I have had a lot of success asking
students to analyze one of the Frankenstein films as an interpretation of
the novel.  This film, because of its problems, strikes me as equally
well-suited for the purpose of making them think about the modern contexts
for and value of what they read.

>From the FINDAVIDEO review of the TV-film:
>
>Like Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books, Jonathan
>Swift's 1726 classic defies translation into
>other media. Today we would say that the story
>lacks an "arc," that the targets for his vitriol are
>now lost to the ages, and his pessimistic
>outlook is too unsettling in an era when we
>must all feel each other's pain. Perhaps it
>should not be surprising that this biting attack
>against a bulging bourgeoisie has been carved
>down to a harmless little fairy tale. Who, then,
>would have imagined a made-for-TV
>production would be the most faithful and
>entertaining adaptation yet? . . .

I am proud to say that I'm not one who believes that "Gulliver's Travels" is 
'a harmless little fairytale', and I have been advocating some support against 
that notion. Although I haven't studied "Gulliver's Travels" as intensely as 
you have, have you had enough film experience to criticize its (the films's) 
attempt? Everything that the FINDAVIDEO reviews says is true: how difficult 
it is to adapt the book into a film, how humanity, even a few thousand years 
before Swift's time, but particularly now, would refuse to accept his ideas, 
and that the 1996 TV-film IS the most faithful and entertaining adaption to 
date. I personally was surprised at how much Charles Sturridge crammed into 
that film, and how much of the book he got across, particularly in the second half.

I read through 'most' of your site and I must say that it's quite interesting. I know you 
dislike the Ted Danson series that improperly portrays Gulliver Travels, but I'd like to say 
the following about it. 

I had never read the book until I watched the movies, the movies got me interested enough 
that I went and bought the book and since read it twice. I think the TV series was 'cheesy' 
enough so that the everyday laymen who doesn't ready 18th century work and/or 
understand the english used in it could, maybe, get a small feel for the story. 
The way Lemuel's insights were protrayed by Danson weren't all that bad, BUT, I agree 
they weren't even close to the work of literature. 

I guess what I'm saying is that it was interesting enough that I just had to read the book, 
but you've gotta understand, I'm a 'Hated the movie, i've read the book already' kind of 
guy.

I do however agree with you that they butchered the story. Since I had never read GT I 
assumed it was a story of some amazing adventures, after watching the show I thought it 
was the story of a raving madman. Well I was almost disappointed when I began reading 
the story and realise it was nothing like the movie. After 20 pages, I was more upset with 
Hollywood for ruining another great work of Literature. It's bad enough they refuse to stop 
butchering Shakespeare now they kill Swift. 

We just watched the movie (video) of
Gulliver's Travels, and we were quite taken by it - 
have not been exposed to the story as adults