Humbert Humbert

"It's a minefield, a movie that's guaranteed to offend everyone." That's how screenwriter James Dearden ("Fatal Attraction") describes his task of adapting Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" for filming in the 1990s. Carolco Pictures International paid $1 million to the Nabokov estate to acquire rights to film a new version of the tale of 40ish professor Humbert Humbert's obsessive lust for a 12-year-old girl. Adrian Lyne ("Fatal Attraction," "9 1/2 Weeks") will direct.

What do Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Humbert Humbert have in common? Not much, at first glance -- the stern leader of Iran's Islamic revolution; the depraved but eloquent antihero of Vladimir Nabokov's most famous fiction, "Lolita." But U.S.-educated Azar Nafisi, who taught Western literature at universities in Tehran from 1979 to 1995, knows better. Khomeini was a visionary who tried to drag Iran back to the 6th century, the time of the prophet Muhammad.

Concerning "A 'Lolita' for the '90s," in the June 10 Outtakes: The original 1962 movie version of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" may have only featured "a pedicure as the film's most erotic scene," but the considerable combined talent of Stanley Kubrick, James Mason, Peter Sellers and Shelley Winters managed to produce a near-masterpiece that more that adequately brought the painful psychology of Humbert Humbert to the screen. That individuals with the track records of James Dearden, Adrian Lyne and Carolco International should feel that they can do better with such a supremely delicate subject can only serve as a further demonstration of the overweening arrogance, shameless exploitation and transcendental lack of taste driving too much of contemporary Hollywood.

Speak, memory. It was 1947, October, maybe November. I was in the Ramsdale Orpheum with my Uncle Eddie watching his pal Dutch Reagan in one of those feel good war shorts, when she walked in with her mom and the man we later came to know as Humbert Humbert and sat down in front of us. I don't think she knew who I was, except for some guy in her seventh grade class.

Regarding British director Adrian Lyne's upcoming attempt to remake the film "Lolita" ("Not Your Average Nymphet," Calendar, July 14) and his comments that "I could make a movie about a 13-year-old girl getting chopped up and eaten and no one in the United States would say anything." Well, I am here to say to Lyne: Wrong! No matter how you package garbage, no matter what label you put on it, garbage is still garbage. Whether it is labeled satanic cannibalism or erotic, gratuitous sex, it's garbage.

I can remember the ad campaign for "Lolita" clearly. It was 1962, I was 9, and the advertising suggestively screamed "How did they ever make a movie out of 'Lolita'?" Then there was Sue Lyon, the 14-year-old unknown chosen to play novelist Vladimir Nabokov's most famous erotic symbol. Her pretty adolescent features were the top of beauty to a kid just beginning to sense the links between aura and sex appeal.

When towering Abraham Lincoln met tiny Harriet Beecher Stowe, or so the story goes, he peered down at the woman whose "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had inflamed the North against slavery and said, "So this is the little lady who started the big war." And so it is on finally seeing "Lolita." Shown to and refused by studio executives early in 1997, debuting in Europe in September and finally opening in Los Angeles 10 months later for a one-week Academy Award-qualifying run before going nationwide Aug.

What do Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Humbert Humbert have in common? Not much, at first glance -- the stern leader of Iran's Islamic revolution; the depraved but eloquent antihero of Vladimir Nabokov's most famous fiction, "Lolita." But U.S.-educated Azar Nafisi, who taught Western literature at universities in Tehran from 1979 to 1995, knows better. Khomeini was a visionary who tried to drag Iran back to the 6th century, the time of the prophet Muhammad.

"The Enchanter" is a dark, agonized, involuted novella (55 typewritten pages in the original) that Vladimir Nabokov wrote in 1939, the final work of Russian fiction he would produce. The next year, he emigrated to America, and some time after that, he felt so dissatisfied with this "first little throb of 'Lolita' " that he destroyed the manuscript.

Speak, memory. It was 1947, October, maybe November. I was in the Ramsdale Orpheum with my Uncle Eddie watching his pal Dutch Reagan in one of those feel good war shorts, when she walked in with her mom and the man we later came to know as Humbert Humbert and sat down in front of us. I don't think she knew who I was, except for some guy in her seventh grade class.

When towering Abraham Lincoln met tiny Harriet Beecher Stowe, or so the story goes, he peered down at the woman whose "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had inflamed the North against slavery and said, "So this is the little lady who started the big war." And so it is on finally seeing "Lolita." Shown to and refused by studio executives early in 1997, debuting in Europe in September and finally opening in Los Angeles 10 months later for a one-week Academy Award-qualifying run before going nationwide Aug.

Regarding British director Adrian Lyne's upcoming attempt to remake the film "Lolita" ("Not Your Average Nymphet," Calendar, July 14) and his comments that "I could make a movie about a 13-year-old girl getting chopped up and eaten and no one in the United States would say anything." Well, I am here to say to Lyne: Wrong! No matter how you package garbage, no matter what label you put on it, garbage is still garbage. Whether it is labeled satanic cannibalism or erotic, gratuitous sex, it's garbage.

I can remember the ad campaign for "Lolita" clearly. It was 1962, I was 9, and the advertising suggestively screamed "How did they ever make a movie out of 'Lolita'?" Then there was Sue Lyon, the 14-year-old unknown chosen to play novelist Vladimir Nabokov's most famous erotic symbol. Her pretty adolescent features were the top of beauty to a kid just beginning to sense the links between aura and sex appeal.

Concerning "A 'Lolita' for the '90s," in the June 10 Outtakes: The original 1962 movie version of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" may have only featured "a pedicure as the film's most erotic scene," but the considerable combined talent of Stanley Kubrick, James Mason, Peter Sellers and Shelley Winters managed to produce a near-masterpiece that more that adequately brought the painful psychology of Humbert Humbert to the screen. That individuals with the track records of James Dearden, Adrian Lyne and Carolco International should feel that they can do better with such a supremely delicate subject can only serve as a further demonstration of the overweening arrogance, shameless exploitation and transcendental lack of taste driving too much of contemporary Hollywood.

"It's a minefield, a movie that's guaranteed to offend everyone." That's how screenwriter James Dearden ("Fatal Attraction") describes his task of adapting Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" for filming in the 1990s. Carolco Pictures International paid $1 million to the Nabokov estate to acquire rights to film a new version of the tale of 40ish professor Humbert Humbert's obsessive lust for a 12-year-old girl. Adrian Lyne ("Fatal Attraction," "9 1/2 Weeks") will direct.

"The Enchanter" is a dark, agonized, involuted novella (55 typewritten pages in the original) that Vladimir Nabokov wrote in 1939, the final work of Russian fiction he would produce. The next year, he emigrated to America, and some time after that, he felt so dissatisfied with this "first little throb of 'Lolita' " that he destroyed the manuscript.

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, waiting for a call from a man who doesn't trust me, hoping he'll have answers about a man I don't trust, which may clear the name of a man no one gives a damn about. To distract myself from this uneasy vigil--and from the phone that never rings, and from the icy rain that never stops pelting the window--I light a cigar and open a 40-year-old newspaper.

Kudos to Patt Morrison for "These Stories Are Classics for a Reason" (June 21). Sanitizing "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is tantamount to turning "Nessun Dorma" into Italian rap. Later this year, a new film version of a modern classic, Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," is due out. I have no idea what director Adrian Lyne has wrought, but I fear the worst. Watch, the new "Lolita" will feature Clare Quilty and Humbert Humbert (played by Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise) agreeing to create a radio talk show on which they will promote pedophilia as a way to get fathers more involved in their children's lives.