April 27th, 2007
Time To Stop Making The Doughnuts
Okay, here's the loosest of threads to grasp at: I dimly remember a film or video of some sort that I saw at least once in elementary school, which means it must've fallen into the canon of Movies Safe For Teachers To Show To Elementary-School Classes While Said Teachers Hang Out And Smoke In The Teachers' Lounge. This group of films included "The Ransom Of Red Chief," The Apple Dumpling Gang, and for some goddamn reason, Where The Red Fern Grows, even though every fucking kid in class bawled his or her eyes out when the dog-death part comes around.
Digressions aside, the movie in question centered around a donut machine. I believe the film must've taken place in a small town, and what I remember of the plot involved everybody in town going completely apeshit over the donuts from this donut machine that some bakery or another had installed. Knowing what everyone should know about lame plot conventions, it would stand to reason that either the donut machine posed some kind of a threat to the business of a smaller, scrappier donut operation, or else that the bakery that bought the donut machine realized the true value of, I don't know, making their own fucking donuts by hand or some shit.
But that last part is speculation; what I remember about the film is a) donut machine, b) apeshit patrons, c) probably saw it in elementary school (1980-1985). Good luck. We're all counting on you.
Brian Byrne
Tasha Robinson is glad to be counted on:
Perhaps not surprisingly, Brian, your speculations about where the story goes are way off-base, but then, you're thinking about lessons kids might have been expected to get out of their folky fiction in the '80s, when you first saw this film, instead of in 1943, when the book it came from was written, or even 1963, when the film version you likely saw was made. You're thinking of "The Doughnuts," a short film adaptation of Robert McCloskey's story of the same name.
In the story—one of a series about Centerburg, Ohio whippersnapper Homer Price, collected in Homer Price and Centerburg Tales—Homer's Uncle Ulysses installs an automatic doughnut-maker in his coffee shop, but winds up with a couple of extra pieces, which he asks Homer to try and install. Homer does, with the result that the machine won't shut off. Due to the involvement of a weird rich lady with a diamond bracelet, the machine has 10 times the usual amount of batter in it, so it's guaranteed to keep spitting out unwanted doughnuts for hours. Then everybody realizes the lady's diamond bracelet is gone, and that it clearly wound up inside the machine, and is probably inside a doughnut.
So with the help of an advertising man, Homer whips up a sign offering two doughnuts for five cents while they last, plus a $100 reward for whoever gets the doughnut with the bracelet in it. Hence the townsfolk going apeshit—although some of the apeshittery is about the entire idea of this wacky newfangled modernized machine in sleepy little Centerburg. Eventually, the doughnuts are sold, the bracelet is found, and the day is saved. It's a quaint, homey little story of the kind Garrison Keillor might like, if it was delivered in a low enough monotone.
The film version was made in 1963 by Weston Woods Studios, which adapted a number of children's books into "distract the kids while the teachers smoke"-type films—not so much educational as harmless. (And featuring a bunch of actors who turn out to have absolutely no other credits.) That's probably the version you saw—I know it's the version foisted on me when I was in elementary school. There's a vague chance you might have seen the 1977 TV version, "Homer And The Wacky Doughnut Machine," which was an episode of ABC Weekend Specials, but it seems unlikely that your teacher was able to get her hands on a copy in those days, when VCRs were pricy, cutting-edge technology. If you want to be sure, the film version came out on VHS back in the early '90s as Homer Price Stories, and while it's out of print, copies are pretty easy to find.
Why do I know all this? Because, as I said, I was subjected to the same film, but I was also subjected to the story in class. It's fairly famous old-school kid-lit, and even now, if you look around online for "Homer Price" and "Robert McCloskey," you'll find a ton of classroom materials aimed at using the story to teach economics.
Book-Stumped No More!
Last week, we featured five letters from people asking us to identify books or stories they half-remembered; we invited you, the reading public, to take a shot at helping them, since we couldn't. And as usual, you proved that you're awesome:
Michael Dorfman asked about a book in which talented children are isolated from existing music so their compositions will be entirely original—except for the protagonist, who's "tainted" by forced exposure to Mozart. Many, many people wrote in to identify this as Orson Scott Card's story "Unaccompanied Sonata," available in his collection "Maps In A Mirror." A quick glance at the first page of the story through Amazon's "search inside" function makes it pretty clear that all the Card fans know what they're talking about. "Keith In Akron" added some more detail for Michael's benefit: "It has 4 or 5 parts, and he pretty accurately describes the first part, except that it was Bach, not Mozart, and he wasn't so much tricked as tempted. There follow other parts (each named after a piece of a classical work—get it??) where he is unable to keep himself from making music even though he is banned from it. He receives worse and worse punishments (he painlessly loses his fingers at one point). He eventually becomes one of those who police the society, because they can't think of what else to do with him, or that's the only way he'll learn. Or something. In the last section, 'Applause,' he hears some teenagers play one of his songs in a café, and somehow that just makes it all right."
Donald DiPaula asked about a children's picture book full of animals made up of common household objects. Several readers suggested he was thinking of Arnold Lobel's The Ice Cream Cone Coot And Other Rare Birds, which he eventually confirmed was the book he was looking for. Unfortunately, it's out of print. Very unfortunately, as once The A.V. Club found a cover image of this book, we remembered it from our childhoods too, and now we want our own copy.
"Joshua" remembered a book in which time-travelers wipe out a satellite system that Martians were using to preserve dinosaurs on Earth. A number of people explained that this is End Of An Era, a novel by Robert J. Sawyer… including Robert J. Sawyer himself. Thanks for the confirmation, Robert, and sorry if we gave away the ending.
Aryeh Cohen-Wade wanted us to ID a trilogy of books in which aliens are about to destroy a fantasy-novel version of Earth, and a hero stops them by burning giant geometric shapes that can be seen from space, though in the process, he ends the mythic era. In what may be a Stumped! first, only one person wrote in with the correct answer: "Melissa2" in our comments section pointed us to Tom McGowan's "Age Of Magic" trilogy, The Magical Fellowship, A Trial of Magic, and A Question Of Magic. Looks like these books are out of print too, though they're findable online pretty cheaply.
Finally, Dan Riddle asked about a book from the '80s in which "Armageddon comes and God is nowhere to be found." A few people suggested he was thinking of the last volume or two of Piers Anthony's "Incarnations Of Immortality" series, which are about God and Satan, and do feature a character having sex with a demon. Still, The A.V. Club is betting on the people pointing at James Blish's Black Easter and The Day After Judgment (available in a single volume as The Devil's Day). They seem a lot closer to the plot in question. You're the one with the fuzzy memory, Dan… do you recall whether your book ended with Satan nominating and electing a new version of God, or spouting off a Milton-esque soliloquy about how he was uniquely qualified to take over in God's absence?
Next week: What does "literacy" mean in a songwriter? Is that animated bee really who it sounds like? This and more of your questions, which you can send us at asktheavclub@theonion.com.
« Previous | 1 | 2
- Comments