The Secret World of Roald Dahl - Adaptation

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, Robert Zemeckis, Quentin Tarantino. No other author’s work has attracted as many legendary filmmakers as Roald Dahl. Some adaptations become instant classics. Others crash and burn. And then there's the beloved film watched by millions every year that Dahl loathed. Featuring a conversation with NPR's David Bianculli, longtime critic for Fresh Air.    Follow "The Secret World of Roald Dahl": Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretworldpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SecretWorldPod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@secretworldpod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SecretWorldPod X: https://x.com/SecretWorld_Pod See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent. Host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala,

I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. It's unruly, it's unruly, unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala. Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. get your podcast. Most people out here think that taking care of one another is important. And most people would step up for a neighbor going through a tough time. Most people around here help out friends and family when they need it. But the funny thing is, most of us won't look for help when we need it.

Talk to someone if you're struggling with mental health because most people out here really care. Find more information at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. Brought to you by the Hunsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council. Now everybody over here? Oh, it's one of my other favorite places. The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens. Twilight gazebo.

What's next? Dead man's grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this? From Kenya Barris, the visionary creator of Blackish, comes Big Age, an audible original about finding your way in life's next chapter. This audio comedy series follows a retired couple's reluctant relocation to Sunset Gardens, a Floridian senior community that is anything but relaxing. Starring Comedy Legends Jennifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nisi Nashvettes.

Through its blend of outrageous comedy, key party anyone, and touching revelations, big age explores what it means to grow older without growing old at heart. Go to audible.com slash big age series to start listening today. I'm Kristen Davis. host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? In 1998, my life was forever changed when I took on the role of Charlotte York on a new show called Sex and the City. Now I get to sit down with some of my favorite people and relive all of the incredible moments this show brought us on and off the screen. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Throughout this series, we've covered Doll's monumental literary successes. But here's the thing. For countless children around the world, their first taste of doll's stories came not from turning pages, but from watching screens. And all of these films and TV shows were created through the work of the screenwriters and directors who adapted dolls stories.

These adaptations create a whole new dimension to a storytelling legacy. That's what we're diving into today. For my heart podcasts, Imagine Entertainment, and Parallax. I'm Aaron Tracy, and this is The Secret World of Roll Dahl. To start, let me take you back to the early 1960s. We're in a starry Hollywood party

and a giant, opulent producer's house in the hills. One of those suffocating parties where everyone's on top of each other and thick cigarette smoke gives all the faces a hazy sheen. Roll Dahl lurks in the corner, glass in hand, rattling his ice cubes, keeping himself apart. He's studying his surroundings, taking mental notes, a habit he found useful both as a spy and a writer. He's watching his actress wife, Patricia Neal, float through the room,

working her magic with a kind of effortless charm. It is, after all, the rap party for her latest film. She thinks it turned out well. You may have heard of it. It's called Breakfast of Tiffany's. Dahl is very much his wife's plus one tonight, which he always hates. He hasn't enjoyed a Hollywood party since the one Walt Disney threw in his honor decades earlier. Dahl can't stand actors, especially the ones always coming in and out of his house,

being loud and emotional, disturbing his work. And he really can't stand the phony, unsophisticated producers who continue not to see his brilliance. He's still several years away from getting hired to write James Bond. But then, scanning the room, he spots something that intrigues him, an incredibly beautiful brunette delicately perched on the back of the couch. Audrey Hepburn is in the middle of a story to her captivated circle of admirers, her giant eyes flashing. Despite himself, Dahl moves toward her, as if helplessly pulled in by a movie star's gravitational force. He listens, transfixed, as Hepburn recounts a story from her youth.

She was 16, she says, living in a small village in the Netherlands, which had been invaded by the Nazis. During the occupation, her uncle was shot and both of her brothers were forced underground. All Dutch civilians faced severe food shortages, regardless of whether or not they were Jewish. It became especially dire in late 1944 when Audrey and many others nearly starved to death. She weighed about 80 pounds and suffered from severe anemia and edema. Then, on April 16th, 1945, she continues, her town was finally liberated by Allied forces. The Nazi occupation was over. Audrey could finally venture into the streets. The first time in years she had been allowed in public without fear of punishment or attack. The entire population was

just erupting in celebration and embracing the Canadian and Dutch soldiers who press condensed milk and chocolate bars into their desperate hands. One officer, spotting this skeletal waif of a girl with a giant brown eyes, handed Audrey all seven of the chocolate bars he was carrying. It had been a very long time since Audrey had eaten anything sweet. The taste of these chocolate bars was the polar opposite of the fear and pain she'd been forced to live in throughout the war. And so, having barely eaten in weeks, she devoured.

all seven bars in a row, just gobbled them all up. And then she threw up. Despite that, Audrey tells her spellbound listeners, all these years later, after everything she's been through, all the fame and success she's achieved, chocolate, more than anything else, represents freedom to her and opportunity. The very smell of it feels like an escape from darkness into the light. Dahl is mesmerized, and like I said, he's taking notes. It's not too long after hearing Audrey Pepper and tell this tale that he begins work on his own story of a child for whom chocolate also represents the kind of freedom and opportunity beyond his wildest dreams. And ironically, even though it was one of Hollywood's greatest legends who may have partially inspired his chocolate

factory, Dahl absolutely despised what Hollywood did with that story, and so many of the others. I reached out to an expert on the subject to hear more. All right, hopefully you've got a message that says you're being recorded. Okay. If you're a long-time podcast junkie, you might recognize that voice just from that one word. I've been following his film and TV criticism for years, and his perspective has genuinely changed how I watch things. I'll let him introduce himself. I'm David Bean Coley. I'm the TV critic for Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR.

I'm also a professor of television studies at Rowan University, and I'm a lifelong TV critic. I asked David what he thought about the most famous and most beloved of the doll adaptations. Mel Stewart, who directed the original Willy Wauca movie, gets it so right in terms of tone that my kids, watching it growing up, they're in their 40s now, they still quote from it. There are still so many lines that hit them very long.

And they're from the book. They were also in the Johnny Depp movie, directed by Tim Burton. They landed better in the original, I think. A movie that Dahl really didn't like and sort of disowned. Oh, see, I don't even know that. Yeah, he wrote the screenplay. Yeah, but I didn't know he disowned it.

What was his dissatisfaction? My guess is a big part of it was just the shift in focus. He wrote Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, and the studio made Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory. And it's just that was not his intention. I think he had issues with Gene Wilder's performance. And he overall had a terrible taste in his mouth from Hollywood. The only experience he ever liked in Hollywood,

the two experiences were with Hitchcock and then writing the first James Bond film that he wrote. Let's pause for a second to dive a little deeper into the Chaco River. Several movie stars have played Willy Wonka over the decades, including Timothy Shalame, Johnny Depp, and even Neil Patrick Harris, and a strange video parody you can find online, not to mention all the stage actors who perform the role on Broadway

and in various theater productions around the world. But for me, and I think for most people, the defining portrayal of Doll's most memorable, most elusive character is by Gene Wilder in the 1971 film. There's no earthly way of mowing. He's singing. Which direction we are going. There's no knowing where we're rowing.

Or which way the river's flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a blowing? Not a speck of light is showing. So the danger must be growing. Are the fires of hell are glowing? Is the grizzly reaper mowing?

Yes, the danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing. And they're certainly not showing any signs that they are slowing. Yeah, it's a nutty performance. As I mentioned to David, rolled doll, hated it. Dahl's friend and biographer, Donald Sturrock, says, I think he felt Wonka was a very British eccentric. Gene Wilder was rather too soft and didn't have a sufficient edge. His voice is very light, and he's got that rather cherubic, sweet face.

I think Roald felt there was something wrong with Wonka's soul in the movie. It just wasn't how he imagined the lines being spoken, according to Sturich. To be fair to Dahl, Gene Wilder does take some crazy swings in that movie. If you've seen it, and since you're still listening to this show, nine episodes in, I bet you have. You know what I'm talking about. Wilder's entire performance is just kind of nuts in a really glorious way, terrifying one second, bursting into song for no reason the next, sadistic, cruel, and incredibly creepy later on, and then ends as kind of a teddy bear. It's just all over the place in a way that feels really interesting and unexpected.

The director, Mel Stewart, says about Wilder, quote, he came up with the most wonderful moments in the film, portraying Wonka as half man, half saint, and that's what makes the movie so good. In fact, it's such a unique performance that there's been a persistent rumor for half a century that Gene Wilder improvised the whole thing when he arrived on set. And of course, that's not true. But it does sort of feel that way. And the actor did have a lot of input. Here's Wilder from an interview he did with filmmaker Stuart Maybe in 2009. I wouldn't have done it in the film if they didn't let me come out walking as a cripple and then getting my cane stuck into a cobblestone and then doing a forward

somersault and then bouncing up and they all applauded. And the director said, well, what do you want to do that for? And I said, because from that point on, no one will know whether I'm telling the truth or lying. And he said, you mean if I say no, you won't do the film? And I said, that's right. I won't. And I meant it, too. So, They let me do it. It's not a surprise that Roald Dahl had a problem with this. As I already mentioned, he wasn't a fan of actors in general. And here's an example of an actor being given a lot of authority

to alter a role that Dahl created. But I think Dahl was always going to have a problem with whoever played Willie Wonka. In his book, Wonka is very underwritten, purposefully. He's an enigma, like his author, which offers the reader a delicious mystery. But when you put that same character on film and put a human face, and voice behind him. Either the mystery fades, or the actor comes up with such a strange interpretation that a whole new mystery is born. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.

The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country. From My Heart Podcasts, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk. One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. This is for Vietnam.

I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Do you rate me? They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine. Four free time. Let's get out. Freedom for Vietnam.

Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Sting here's madness. The world should hear about this. There's a fire. Coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent. Host of Untraditionally Lala.

My days of filling up cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. I've been full on over sharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz. I had a little bone to pick with Schwarzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I almost flipped a pizza in your lap. Oh my God, I literally forgot about that until just now.

Sorry, I don't want to blame alcohol. I got to blame that one on the alcohol. This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on life in. Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to. We're growing, we're thriving. and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala.

Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Most people out here think that taking care of one another is important. And most people would step up for a neighbor going through a tough time. Most people around here help out friends and family when they need it. But the funny thing is, most of us won't look for help when we need it. Talk to someone if you're struggling with mental health. Because most people out here really care.

Find more information at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council. Now everybody over here? Oh, it's one of my other favorite places. The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens, Twilight Gazebo. What's next?

Dead Man's Grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive? positive about this. From Kenya Barris, the visionary creator of Blackish, comes Big Age, an audible original about finding your way in life's next chapter. This audio comedy series follows a retired couple's reluctant relocation to Sunset Gardens, a Floridian senior community that is anything but relaxing, starring comedy legends Jennifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nisi Nashvettes, through its blend of outrageous

comedy, key party anyone? And touching revelations, big age explores what it means to grow older without growing old at heart. Go to audible.com slash big age series to start listening today. When Tim Burton made his version of Wonka in 2005, he went back to the source material and gave his film the same title as Doll's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But I'm not sure Doll would have liked it any better. Johnny Depp also gives a banana's performance as Wonka, basing it on the hosts of children's shows from his youth. Improvisation. You, little girl, say something.

Anything. Chewing gum. Chewing gum is really gross. Chewing gum, I hate the most. See? Exactly the same. Depp's performance is a big swing, but it isn't nearly as interesting

or alive or compelling as Gene Wilder's take. Dahl's other issue with the 1971 version is the big compromise that had to be made due to its really strange production story. It's actually pretty nuts. Apparently, it all began when the director Mel Stewart's daughter ordered her father to make a movie out of this book that she loved so much. So, Stewart took Doll's novel to his friend David Wolper.

Wolper was a prolific producer with the rare ability to think and work outside the box. As an example, he was having conversations with the Quaker Oates Company, trying to convince them to make a movie that would introduce a new candy bar they were working on. Somehow, Wolper persuaded the food company, which of course had zero previous experience in the film industry, that Doll's book was a once-in-a-generation opportunity for them. Amazingly, he got Quaker Oats to buy the rights to Doll's book and to fund the entire budget of the movie. Go back and re-watch the opening credits of the 1971 film.

You'll be surprised when you notice for the first time that in small type, it clearly states the movie's copyright is held by Wolper Pictures LTD and the Quaker O'T. Oates Company. Bizarre. Now, if Quaker Oats had just funded the movie and stepped away, that might have been fine with Dahl, but that's not how Hollywood works. Everyone wants their say, especially those opening their wallets. In my conversation with David just now, I suggested Dahl didn't like the shift in focus to Wonka away from Charlie. The reason this change was made was because Quaker Oates needed Wonka's name front and center. Otherwise, the film wouldn't help sell the line of Willie Wonka branded candy bars they were manufacturing,

and it was this change that shifted the entire focus of the film. It's pretty hard to blame Dahl for being annoyed about this. It's one thing to receive an annoying note from a studio executive. We all get that. It's quite another to get a creative note from a company known for their oatmeal. Honestly, even though I love the movie, learning this backstory has definitely put me in Dahl's camp. Of course, he resents his hard-fought story

becoming a crass money grab for product placement. One of the great ironies in all this, that Dahl probably really enjoyed, is that although Quaker Oates did indeed develop a Wonka Bar, apparently they couldn't get the recipe right. The chocolate kept melting before being opened, which is like the one thing you don't want your candy bar doing. The company eventually had to remove it from shelves.

And to add insult to injury, the movie kind of bombed. It got some good reviews, but no one went to see it in the theater. It wasn't until VCRs came around years later that the movie became the classic we now think of it as. Eventually, Nestle was able to buy the Willy Wonka Candy Factory and started making a new Wonka Bar to ride off the goodwill the movie has since accrued. Dahl was never shy about telling people how much he hated the film. It wasn't just the title or The Focus or Gene Wilder's performance.

He also hated the music, which he described as saccharine, sappy, and sentimental. Here he is on Desert Island Discs in 1979 talking more about it. It was made into a rather crummy film, yes. I wasn't pleased with it at all. Did you have anything to do with it? Well, I originally wrote the screenplay, but I made the mistake of letting Hollywood have a free hand, and I shall never do that again. I want to bring in another voice now, a critic who's written extensively on the doll adaptations, including a piece I loved on Wonka. He's someone whose childhood was really shaped by the author.

My name is Manuel Betancourt, and I'm the author of Hello Stranger and The Male Gazed. I grew up in Columbia, but I went to a British private school in Boeuta, and so all of her curriculum, especially for English, was very British focused. And so Dahl was my gateway drug to literature in general. So I was reading George's Marvelous Medicine and James a Giant Peach, eventually something like The Witches and Matilda, before I was like 12. And I was reading in my second language. It's one of those writers that I owe my own career as a writer and as a critic, because even then there's no way to read Dahl without understanding how a sentence is structured, how language helps show. shape a character, how an adjective can suddenly turn a phrase.

It hadn't dawned on me until I was starting to pull everything for that piece, how much of my childhood had had been shaped by him in ways that I hadn't even remembered. I asked Manuel to talk a little bit more about Roald-Dahl's specific feelings about the Gene Wilder film. I think it is the one that everyone knows the best, and it's probably the one that he disliked the most. And so it exists at this, like, weird, intersection where like if he had had his way, that is not the fellow like we would have gotten. There's a reason why there was never another Charlie in the Chocolate Factory adaptation

that happened in his lifetime because that is how much he hated the Gene Wilder version, the way that it focused on Wonka rather than Charlie. I think the reasons why he disliked it or he voiced his dislike is also one of the reasons that made it such a classic. There is a kind of honeying of his tone and a kind of softening of even the Wonka character. I think once you cast Gene Wilder, who is cookie and quirky and kind of out there, but immediately draws you in and is able to sort of ground a kind of crazed energy into something that's intriguing and alluring rather than terrifying, which I think you can sometimes read into the book. You have a very different story, a story that welcomes you, a story that

the music is sort of enveloping you that kind of wants you to embrace this, bizarre world of the chocolate factory that was created in the 1971 film and continues to speak to a lot of people. I'm both happy that we have it and then also keep wondering what kind of film would he have wanted for Charlie that maybe needed to be more biting, it maybe needed to be crueler, it needed to be a little bit more childlike and also sort of like adult. It's a fascinating curiosity that he so disowned it. But of course, Dahl didn't hate all of his Hollywood experience, or adaptations. He loved writing James Bond, and he loved working with Alfred Hitchcock on TV. David being coolly is an expert on the Hitchcock anthology that adapted Dahl, so I asked him to tell me

a little bit more about that. Six stories of his were done for the Hitchcock show. Two of them are absolute classics, Man from the South and Lamb to the Slaughter. And so I think anybody who knows Hitchcock has run into both of those as absolute classics. And I think, I think, think that the treatment of them was absolutely perfect. Interestingly, one of those, Man from the South, was remade by Quentin Tarantino in a movie Four Rooms, where he wrote, directed, and starred in one of the four segments, and he took the story and renamed it the man from Hollywood, took the same basic idea, and ruined it. I mean, much as I love Quentin Tarantino, you do not improve Hitchcock or Roald Dahl by just adding 5,000 percent more profanities.

It just didn't work. Any thoughts on why Dahl and Hitchcock were such a good match and maybe why he and Tarentino were a less good match? Sure. I think if you think of the other great anthology series of the time, which was the Twilight Zone by Rod Serling, when he went and had writers writing for him. him, Richard Matheson was a really good match for Rod Serling in much the same way. I mean, Hitchcock already thought like Roald Dahl did in terms of wanted twist endings, wanted

a lot of macabre subtext, but also humor and surprise. And they seem to be almost the same person in that regard. So whether Hitchcock was directing it or one of his trusted people like Norman Lloyd was directing it, it came out the same way. And also, Hitchcock was British. And so there's that sort of affinity with understanding the understated approach to things that works with Roald Doll Stories. I asked David to describe two of the most famous doll stories that were used on Hitchcock's show, the ones David referred to as classics. Man from the South stars Steve McQueen, before he was star Steve McQueen, in Vegas with his last like dollar and a half, and a guy early, early in the morning in Vegas comes up to him and

offers him basically a bar bet and says, I've got the latest convertible, I'll give that to you if the lighter that you just lit your cigarette with can light 10 times in six session without failing. And Steve McQueen's character says, well, I don't have anything to bet. And he said, well, I wouldn't ask you to bet anything that you couldn't afford to lose. I'm just, how about just the little finger on your left hand? And so that's what the whole show is. It just screams, don't try this at home. I can't imagine this being on TV today. But that was the idea. He is a menace, of course. The islands where we used to live, he took 47 fingers from different people. And he lost 11 cars.

That was one role, dull story. Another is a woman played by Barbara Belgettys, who later was the matriarch on Dallas. She plays a pregnant woman, her husband's a cop, he comes home and tells her that he wants a divorce, but she can keep the baby because he's fallen in love with a younger woman and he just wants to leave. So she tells him he's had a bad day at work, he's upset, he's probably hungry, let her make him some dinner. and then they can discuss it. And she pulls out a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer, and instead of cooking it, she hits him over the head with it and kills him. Then she puts it in the oven and serves it to the cops who come looking for the murder weapon. That's just, you know, that's just classic.

Boy, this is great. This piece of meat I've had in lunch. She said to finish her, didn't she, Jack? She did? I'd like to have a piece of this brown, crispy stuff left on the end here. Supposed to be right to take this bone home to my dog? George, she said you never want to see it again. I also asked David about Dahl's other most famous filmmaking association after Hitchcock.

And that, of course, is with Wes Anderson. He found a kindred spirit. Again, it's sort of like when a director or a writer finds somebody else that speaks in a similar voice, it's just a marriage that works. And so those four stories that Wes Anderson did for Netflix, I thought were wonderful and very complicated where you wouldn't think you'd be able to lift them off the page successfully because it was a narrator talking about a story

that then goes into another story and then that story, there's somebody in there telling another story. And then visually it's so amazing. I can't imagine Roald Dahl, the spirit of Roald Dahl, not being happy with those adaptations. Anderson does have such a unique style. Do you think that when he works on the doll shorts and on the feature, does it become more Andersonian?

Does it become more Dollyan? Is there a blending of the two? Oh, it's a blend. That's the best way to put it, because one of the things that Roald Dole did for television that wasn't with Hitchcock was he hosted his own anthology show in England. And he introduced it himself acting like a sort of Alfred Hitchcock or a sort of Rod Serling.

and he would sit in his little armchair, the place where he actually did his writing, and film introductions to his stories. Well, Wes Anderson took that and had Ray Fines play, Roald Dahl, introducing the story. So he adopted one of Royal Dahl's television shows as himself as the host to play with that and enter into a world which was less real than surreal. So it was definitely a blending of the two, but very respectful. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country. From My Heart Podcasts, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman.

You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk. One city, a divided country, and the war that tore of America apart. This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Do you rate me? They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches.

I'm on a landmine. For free time. Let's get out. Freedom from Vietnam. Run! Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Sting, here's madness. The world should hear about this.

There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the I-heart race. radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up Cupsett, sir, may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. I've been full on over sharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.

I had a little bone to pick with Schwarzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife. I almost flipped a pizza in your lap. Oh my God, I literally forgot about that until just now. Sorry, I don't want to blame alcohol. I got to blame that one on the alcohol. This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on life in. Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.

We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving. But we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unruly afraid, it's untraditionally la la la. Listen to untraditionally la la la. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And here's Heather with the weather. Well, it's beautiful out there, sunny and 75, almost a little chilly in the shade. Now, let's get a read on the inside of your car.

It is hot. You've only been parked a short time, and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the back seat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise, and that could be fatal. Cars get hot, fast, and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from Nitsai and the Ad Council. Now everybody over here?

Oh, it's one of my other favorite places. The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens. Twilight Gazebo. What's next? Dead man's grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this? From Kenya Barris, the visionary creator of Blackish,

comes Big Age, an audible original about finding. your way in life's next chapter. This audio comedy series follows a retired couple's reluctant relocation to Sunset Gardens, a Floridian senior community that is anything but relaxing. Starring Comedy Legends Jennifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nisi Nashvettes. Through its blend of outrageous comedy, key party anyone, and touching revelations, Big Age explores what it means to grow older without growing old at heart. Go to audible.com slash big age series to start listening to

I want to talk a little bit more about the Wes Anderson connection. Doll's work has been adapted by so many people, but almost all of them, even the ones we most associate with Doll, like Tim Burton or Steven Spielberg or Mel Stewart, only directed a single film based on a doll story. Hitchcock and Wes Anderson stand out here because they worked on so many. When Anderson and Noah Bombach, one of my all-time favorite screenwriters, were writing the adaptation of the fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson thought they should really immersed themselves. So he contacted Doll's widow, Felicity, about coming to Gypsy House, where Daw lived and wrote. Here's Wes Anderson and Felicity talking about that to the Associated

Press. And I thought it would be nice if Noah and I could visit here and if he could meet Lissy and see what it's like. And Lissy arranged at my request, I suppose, that we could work here and we set up an office upstairs. So Lissy set up an office for us upstairs with our own dedicated telephone line and a printer and a desk, and we worked here. And I think while we were here, it sort of went from being an adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox to being a combination, adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox slash. So, I mean, it became about doll. The character became about doll. And the more time we spent here, the more ideas from Gypsy House found their way into the story. Yes, I think that's true. Personally, I really admired the West Anderson

adaptations. The man has his detractors, but it's really hard not to be charmed by these films. I just don't understand the venom that some critics reserve for Anderson. When it feels like 90% of movies these days are formulaic, IP-driven sequels or comic books, why would anyone who loves movies get mad about a filmmaker expressing a personal vision, even if that vision doesn't perfectly jive with yours? I think critics who say Wes Anderson's films are all the same, and demean them as the cinematic equivalent of a corduroy suit, are missing how much range he actually has. The four doll stories he made for Netflix are a great example of this. The wonderful story of Henry Sugar, for instance, is upbeat and vibrant and basically a morality tale with a super happy ending.

It also has one of the all-time great setups. Gentlemen, I'm a man who can see without using his eyes. He was a small man, about 60 with a white mustache and a curious matting of black hair growing all over the outsides of his ears. You may bandage my head with 50 bandages in any way you wish, I will still be able to read you a book. He seemed perfectly serious. That's Anderson's first Netflix adaptation of Doll. His final one, Poison, with basically the same cast, is the opposite movie.

Downbeat, dark, muted, with a very unhappy ending, exposing the cruelty and bigotry of the main character. And when you think about it, this wide range of tone and plot and feeling is kind of perfect for adapting the work of a problematic author like Doll. Roll Doll could be sweet and caring and loving and did a remarkable amount for charity

and to make children's lives better all over the world. But, according to some of those closest to him, he could also be mean-spirited and sometimes cruel. And of course we know about his prejudice. So what does Anderson do? He gives us both. What I like most about these adaptations is how Anderson remains so faithful to Doll's writing

while seamlessly incorporating his own distinctive voice. Here's Anderson on a Zoom roundtable for Netflix on how he went about the adaptation. I took the text and the entire text, and I put it into my computer and started, you know, on a MS Word document, and started just pulling what I thought I wanted, and I realized that what I wanted was for him to tell the story, for a doll to tell the story. It's great. My favorite of the Anderson doll films is Henry Sugar.

It stars Rafe finds as Roald Doll, alongside Bennett at Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, and Ben Kingsley. It tells the story of a wealthy gambler who learns to be able to see through playing cards, literally to look at the back of a card and see that it's the ace of spades or whatever. He does this by practicing intense meditation for years. Sugar uses his new power to win a fortune at casinos until he finds the thrill empty and unfulfilling. So he devotes his winnings to establishing orphanages and hospitals around the world. It's basically a story about the power of meditation and unrelenting hard work to make you a better, more generous person. The inclusion of Dahl as a character in the film

works especially well here because it feels like such a perfect fulfillment of Dahl's original intentions. In his book, Dahl deliberately plays with our perception of the story as constructed artifice. In other words, he breaks the fourth wall, reminding readers that he's an author spinning a tale.

Near the end of Dahl's story, the doll figure cheekily steps out of the narrative to speculate about what might happen if this were a fictional story rather than a totally factual account of real life, even though readers understand it's clearly fiction. By casting an actor to play doll and read some of the actual prose from the book,

Anderson mirrors this metaphictional playfulness that began in doll's novella. I want to briefly return to my conversation with Manuel Betancourt and hear his thoughts on the Roald Doll-Wess Anderson connection, including all the other interesting ways that Anderson finds to be faithful to Doll's text. It had seemed a better-suited pair than I than I thought they'd be, both because Wes Anderson is, you know, we know him for this exacting

symmetrical, colorful diorama films. And what I think he does, and he did so well with Henry Sugar and these other short films that he made for Netflix in 2023 based on Doll Short Stories, was reveal artistry and craftsmanship in how he elevated Doll's prose. He's not using voiceover, he's having actually these characters basically read out the story. So in a way, there's almost like audio books that are coming to life. And I keep thinking of them as pop-up books because they have a kind of like handcrafted sensibility to them. Moving beyond Anderson, to me,

the most interesting filmmaker who decided to tackle doll is Quentin Tarantino. We'll hear what Manuel thinks about that collaboration in a second. We already heard what David B. and Cooley thinks about it. I think Quentin Tarantino is the biggest miss. Yeah, that seems to be the consensus, which is really surprising. Not only is Tarantino a first ballot Hall of Fame filmmaker,

but he made his adaptation of Dolls the man from the South right when he was at the peak of his powers. He made it directly after Pulp Fiction. And at first glance, Tarantino would seem to be as perfect to compliment a doll as Hitchcock is. Both Tarantino and Doll write very stylized dialogue. Both love dark humor,

both revel and violent or grotesque story elements, both make ample use of unexpected violence, like Whippo Falls the Kids in Doll's Chocolate Factory, or poor Marvin in the backseat and Pulp Fiction, both writers poke fun at genre conventions, and both really enjoy subverting audience expectations. But Tarantino's movie just doesn't work. He's adapting the same story that Hitchcock chose,

the one about someone whose finger will be chopped off if he can't get a cigarette later to work ten times in a row. And you can see why that setup would appeal to a guy like Tarantino who made such a meal out of cutting off an ear in his first film. I think Tarantino's movie doesn't quite hold together because he's not interested in the thing that makes Dolores, story so great. Doll's version is lean, focused, and builds tension through simplicity. Its power comes from the escalating stakes and the psychological cat and mouse game. Tarantino, maybe because he was

so young and it was only his third movie, gets bogged down in his own indulgences. I really do love Tarantino. I think he may be the most talented director working today. But in this case, it feels like he turned Doll's story into a verbose, self-referential wannabe thriller, lacking suspense. So, since you're going to be stuck remembering this for the rest of your life, you have to decide what that memory will be. So Ted, are you going to remember for the next 40 years, give or take a decade, that you refused $1,000 for one second's worth of work, or that you made a thousand dollars for one second's worth? Also, Tarantino's choice to change the setting and make it about celebrities and Hollywood culture dilutes the universal human drama

that makes Doll's original so effective. Essentially, Tarantino tried to make it a Tarantino film instead of serving the story, which, as we've talked about, rarely works with Doll. Wes Anderson and Alfred Hitchcock succeed because they manage to put their egos aside and blend their distinctive styles with dolls. Manuel made a similar point

when I asked him if there's anything he thinks the good adaptations got right and the bad ones got wrong. I think the best ones, or the ones that have stood the test of time understand how language was so key to his success. I think there's a world in which adaptations that try to update him or modernize him

or sand down the weird, quirky Britishisms that are so delectable in his work tend to fail because I think that's where the magic lies. And the ones that do it best are the ones that key into that kind of sensibility. I also think that, especially when it comes to the children's books, any of those films that don't just understand his work, but also his collaboration with Quentin Blake and those kinds of illustrations and the kind of tenor and tone of those. You know, I'm thinking of something like James the Giant Peach.

It visually, it's sort of so in the world of Dahl and Blake that I think it hits the right spot. But when you have filmmakers that are instead trying to use him just as a jumping off point and sometimes lose probably what made him so special on the page. In our final episode, we'll talk more about exactly what made doll so special on the page, including my conversation with an expert on the books who actually knew doll in life and can speak firsthand about the kind of impression he made. We'll also talk about doll's fascinating writing process, which I'm pretty obsessed with.

I'm really sad this journey with doll is almost over, but don't worry, we've saved some of the best for last. Join me for our final episode where I promise we'll try to go out with the kind of bang that doll would have wanted. See you there. The Secret World of Roll Doll is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for IHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me, Aaron Tracy. Produced by Matt Schrader. Post-production by Windhill Studios. With editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips.

Editing by Ryan Seton. Music by APM. Executive producers, Nathan Clokey, Cara Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Aaron Tracy. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review The Secret World of Roll Doll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Copyrate, 2026, Imagine Entertainment, IHeartMedia, and Parallax. Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the Valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.

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