The End of The Road - Adaptations

Adaptations

The End of the Road is the only of Barth's works to have been adapted to film. Director Aram Avakian's loose adaptation End of the Road (1970) stars James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach and Harris Yulin in their earliest feature roles. Graphic scenes, such as those of the botched abortion and what Barth calls a "man rapes chicken" scene not found in the book, earned the film an X rating. Barth and critics widely panned the movie; Barth wrote disdainfully about it in the introduction to the 1988 single-volume edition of The Floating Opera and The End of the Road. Academics Ken Pellow and Rita Hug opined that the linguistic, literary and philosophical aspects of the book made it difficult to adapt; Jake Horner's frequent speaking to the reader, they write, is key to the book's effectiveness, but does not lend itself to film.

Director Paul Edwards made a stage adaptation of the novel for Roadworks Productions in 1993, with John Mozes as Jake, Kate Fry as Rennie, and Patrick McNulty as Joe. Edwards makes Jake's immobility central to the play; it opens with him seated and writing, and closes with him doing the same until the audience has left. The production won a Joseph Jefferson Award in 1993.