To tackle a Kurt Vonnegut novel on film, you have to be a fool. It has only be done once with any true success. "Slaughterhouse 5" (1972), directed by George Roy Hill, is a marvellous translation. Others pale in comparison. "Breakfast of Champions" is no exception. But there are still a few things to like here.

Directed with what is perhaps way too much flair by Alan Rudolph, the film stars Bruce Willis as Dwayne Hoover, who owns his own new car dealership and pitches his business incessantly on TV. Willis marvellously brings to light a pitchman who has become so phony that he does not know who he is anymore. His plastered on smile is his only emotion left. It's all he knows and even this is slipping away from him. He rambles his way through the film constantly trying to figure out just who in the hell he is, what is real and what is not, and why he is here. This is the core essence of Vonnegut's book: "Why are we here," the eternal question. Written as Vonnegut's 50th birthday present to himself, "Breakfast of Champions" is an existential manifesto which cannot be surpassed. It sincerely strips down all of our angst about existence on the planet and comes up with only one answer, "Until you die, it's all life." Dwayne Hoover takes the entire film to glean this.

But Rudolph is not as successful as he should be at bringing the chaotic world of Vonnegut's hero to light. I consistently thought throughout the viewing how great the film might be if Hal Hartley had written and directed it. Rudolph creates a world in a time warp. Many of the 70's themes of chaos, environmental waste, taboo sexuality and local media celebrity have become outdated. Rudolph, who wrote the script here, can't incorporate them well into his film. Apparently he was too apprehensive about making a "period piece," because "Breakfast of Champions" is the quintessential 70's book and updated to the 90's, it looses something. Mainly, because, I think, the world has become a better place. We have taken many of the issues that Vonnegut discusses in the book and addressed them. Perhaps toxic waste, gay bashing, pornography, and extramarital affairs still exist, but the don't have the same "hot button" charm as they once did.

So Rudolph is left adrift in 90's sensibilities addressing 70's issues and it doesn't work. One of the most obvious examples is the usage of Dwayne's son Bunny, a homosexual piano player. Lukas Haas has the saddening duty of bringing this character to light and he fails miserably. It a revolting performance, almost as narrow as Vonnegut's portrayal of the character in the book. But it did help me to understand Bunny's presence in the book. Vonnegut has always seemed slightly homophobic to me. The idea of homosexuality seems to make him uncomfortable, perhaps because he is as unsure of himself as a sexual being as he is of himself as a human being (at least at the time of the writing of the book). Bunny, in the book, represents all that Hoover cannot understand about life. His son's homosexuality befuddles and embarrasses him. In the film, this idea becomes clear. And in the end, where Hoover finally understands the incomprehensibility of his existence, he comes to accept his son. He has broken into the realm of understanding which says that life is what we make it, so, to paraphrase Papa V, "Goddamn it, we've got to be kind." We have to love one and other and accept one and other. It's a beautiful albeit typical message. Again, very 70's, much more 70's than 90's. In the 90's although we are still struggling to become a more integrated and accepting society, things in this area of human existence are much better than they were just 20 years ago. Immensely better.

So, Haas has a terrible time on film. He looks silly; his character is ridiculous. It's a lousy performance and a horrible character. Odder yet is the 40's gumshoe who seeps into the film as Bunny's manager and would-be suitor. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's just weird.

Another problem is Albert Finney as Kilgore Trout. It does not really work. I have seen Kilgore Trout in my mind and he is not Albert Finney. The closest actor I can imagine in the role is Wallace Shawn. I think people get the impression that Trout IS Vonnegut. I'm surprised Finney doesn't wear a fake moustache here to go with his untamed Vonnegutian mane. But the truth is: There is at least one other characters in the film that is also Vonnegut. Hoover is Vonnegut too. And, finally, and sadly, Vonnegut does not play himself in the end of the film. Although, in the book, he is definitely there, watching, in his mirrored sunglasses. In the film, as a character, he does not exist. This is a fatal flaw.

There are moments in the film that are perfect little entities. Nick Nolte (a Vonnegut alumni from "Mother Night"), plays closet transvestite Harry LeSabre with some problems. But an odd conversation between Hoover and LeSabre where there is rampant misunderstanding on Harry's part is perfect here. It's too bad that Rudolph can't mold this aspect of LeSabre's unraveling in the book more cleanly into the film. Likewise, there are the final moments between Hoover and Trout that are breathtaking. In the insanity of Hoover's breakdown and violent outburst, moments of clarity pop up, where Trout and Hoover talk and the lucidity of deep, intelligent, existential dogma bursts forth with a beauty and a instantaneous discovery that deeply affects us. I even teared up at some of this. It was revelatory.

The end of the film, even though it is slightly effective, misses out on all I had hoped for. In the end of the book, Trout meets the creator of the universe on a deserted street, sitting in a car, late at night, and asks him to "Make me young..." This is done here, in the film, in a different manner. But Vonnegut's meaning becomes more clear here, even if done unsatisfactorily. Reading the book, I have always understood that Trout/Vonnegut meets Vonnegut/God and asks to be young again. Vonnegut's book is about a man's existential midlife crisis. Of course the kicker is going to be his wanting to be young again. But it isn't about wanting more "time" on Earth as much as it is about wanting a second chance. A time to "do it right." But in this film, the idea is more about the planet and the species. When Trout asks "the creator" to make him young, he is speaking for the whole planet. Rudolph has created a glitzy, blindingly vibrant, media circus frenzied, hollow and shallow world for Trout and Hoover to inhabit. It is vile and corrupt and void (very 70's). When Trout asks, "Make me young..." he speaks for us as a species. Make us young again. Make the planet young again. Give us a second chance.

Life is all about the here and now. Our perspective is skewed. We cannot see the future and the past slips away from us easily. We don't get second chances. What we do today effects tomorrow, whether we can see it today or not. This is the nature of existence. And in reminding us that life is all about the "here and now," that "it's all life until you die," Vonnegut and Rudolph also remind us that it's our duty to make not only the here and now valuable - but the tomorrow as well, whether we are here for it or not.

Ah, Papa Vonnegut. I love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Even when your vision is skewered and skewed, your beauty and your hopefulness ring through with the resonance of a booming bell.

Note: Vonnegut appears in cameo as a TV commercial director.

Also with Vicky Lewis, Glenne Headly, Barbara Hershey,Buck Henry, Owen Wilson, and Omar Epps. Scout Willis plays the young girl.

Music by Mark Isham. Haas performs his own songs which he wrote with Rudolph.

Vonnegut's drawings from the book are used in the film at places. Note where his drawing of an "asshole" is used.

It was said that Willis and many others involved worked for "scale" to get the film made. Willis is apparently an uncredited "Producer."

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