Who was your favorite character: movie v. book?

Book: Chief White Halfoat; I thought he was hilariously tragic.
Movie: Nurse Duckett; I was 14 when this came out, had a crush on Paula Prentiss, and she got NAKED!!!

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Orr was my favorite character in the movie. He was good in the book, but even better in the movie. In some ways, he was portrayed as being the craziest one (always crashing his plane) but ironically, he may have been the smartest!

He had a plan, thought it out, practiced & prepared for it, and executed it


Bob Balaban did a great job playing Orr in the movie, I just remember how he speaks to Yossarian in the tent, saying softly with a little grin on his face - "you really should come with me" and Yossarian thinks & says that its crazy, b/c Orr is always crashing... and Orr says "but i'm a good pilot... a really good pilot... you really should come with me!"

And Yossarian SHOULD have gone with him


Alan Arkin did a good job too, I dont know if he was the perfect Yossarian, but, Yossarian would be a hard character to play. Lots of angles / dimensions to that character. I think that character could have been played a lot of different ways, but Arkin's way was good. Off the top of my head, if I think of the movies he played in, I think this was one of his best

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The book was great, and the movie was a pretty good adaption. - nationalazkaban2

That's a fair assessment, although I'd modify that a bit: The book was brilliant, life-changing, heartbreaking and hilarious, while the movie was a well-meaning if superficial adaptation. But I've never thought of Mike Nichols as being an incisive filmmaker.

Who was your favorite character: movie v. book?

The funny thing about the book is that, at least for me, there comes a point with each character at which I dislike him or her, which is pretty much the way it is in real life. That may be a back-handed way of saying that it's hard to pick favorites.

In the book, Yossarian of course, Orr, and so many others. I feel most empathetic toward Chaplain Tappman. He seemed to be a lamb thrown among the lions--and I hated the way Corporal Whitcomb treated him at any time.

In the film, Anthony Perkins played Tappman, but I thought that he could have also been Major Major; I like Bob Newhart a lot but I thought he was miscast as Major Major. In the novel, if I'm recalling correctly (it's been a few years since my last re-read), Major Major is described as being a little like Henry Fonda--what a coup if Nichols could have got Fonda for the role.

But I have to say that one of my favorite characters in both book and movie is . . . Colonel Korn! Sure, he's one of the "bad guys," but it's clear that he's the brains behind the Cathcart operation, and that he must suffer Cathcart's pompousness in order to maintain his status as the power behind the throne. In the novel, he's described differently, but I like Buck Henry's portrayal of him in the film. (Okay, I cherish Henry's appearance in any film or television show.)

One favorite I love to hate is Aarfy Aardvaark, and casting Charles Grodin was another about-face. Aarfy is a character designed to be loathed, a man who claims to be moral but is a scheming sycophant interested only in furthering himself, and, more odiously, refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. One of the most powerful moments of futility in the story is when Yossarian is literally pounding on him in the nose of the B-25 but his blows just bounce off his soft, blubbery form (which is why the trim Grodin is miscast). It is symbolic of how criticism and opprobrium simply ricochets off him, particularly when he rapes and then murders Michaela, and of course the cruel irony in that scene is that when the MPs do arrive, they arrest Yossarian for not having a pass for his leave.

Not to wander off the trail, but Aarfy helped to inspire a name I've given to the character Kramer on the sitcom Seinfeld: Gilligaarfy. I'm not crazy about Kramer, although I don't loathe him, but I can't believe how he gets away with causing so much grief--and it's because he's a Gilligaarfy. The first half is Gilligan, from Gilligan's Island, who of course sabotaged the castaways' chances of escaping the island in various ways many times. But he is not overtly malicious about it, and he does not seem to be indifferent to the consequences of his actions. Not so with Kramer, who does manage to ruin the others' plans but then refuses to accept responsibility for it--that's the Aarfy part. Hence, Gilligaarfy.

Well, enough of that. Apart from the main and subordinate characters in Catch-22, there are also the bit characters, such as the Old Man in Rome and the Maid in the Lime-Green Panties, whom I've been hoping to meet all my life, along with General Dreedle's Nurse.

Closing trivia: Bob Newhart later reunited with Bruce Kirby, Jack Riley, and especially Peter Bonerz in his sitcom The Bob Newhart Show.

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"We hear very little, and we understand even less." - Refugee in Casablanca

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Orr. Made me love Bob Balaban as an actor.

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