FAHRENHEIT 451

In partnership with The Brattleboro Literary Festival and Brooks Memorial Library, Epsilon Spires presents a new series showcasing film adaptations of banned books. The film and book will be introduced by screenwriter and producer Tim Metcalfe and writer and film buff Tom Bedell. Popcorn and refreshments provided! Doors 7pm. 

Bring your Library Card for Free Admission!

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 dystopian sci-fi film directed by French New-Wave Auteur François Truffaut, starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, and Cyril Cusack. Based on the 1953 novel by Ray Bradbury, set within a tightly controlled future where the government deploys "firemen" to incinerate all literature to prevent any independent thinking that books would encourage that could come to question or challenge the established order. Fahrenheit 451 presents a disconnected society where technology and media creates a pacifying virtual world far from the disturbing truths of reality. In the novel, Bradbury portrays television and mass media as a distracting veil that obscures real experience and interferes with the viewers' ability to think deeply about societal issues or act with agency over their own lives. 

History of Censorship:

"Ironic as it may seem given the role that book burning plays in the novel itself, Fahrenheit 451 has faced multiple censorship and banning attempts throughout the years, primarily for vulgarity and discussions about drugs. In 1967, and edition known as the “Bal-Hi edition” censored swear words and changed “drunk man” to sick man. In a similar instance in 1992, obscenities were once again censored by the school system. A more recent attempted happened in 2006 where the novel was challenged in Texas for going against religious beliefs (because a Bible was banned and burned) in addition to the common criticism that the novel contains “dirty talk”. Despite the efforts by parents and schools to ban or at least censor the book, any censorship made did not last long due to complaints by teachers or other parents." -Banned Books Project, Carnegie Mellon University

Tom Bedell is a journalist, book lover and film buff. He began his writing life as a generalist, writing on anything and just about everything. Now over the 1,000 mark in total articles, interviews, essays, book and beer reviews, he has appeared in hundreds of outlets from Reader’s Digest to Billiards Digest, Men’s Health to Cosmopolitan. He has also published poetry in a variety of literary

magazines. Past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, he is the only writer that is a member of both the Golf Writers Association of America and the North American Guild of Beer Writers, both subjects he writes about extensively. Originally from New York, he resides in Williamsville, VT.

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors. 

Tim Metcalfe, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, is a screenwriter and producer. His first film, Revenge of the Nerds, was released in 1984, and he has been busy penning a new film every year or two ever since. His film and television credits include Higher Ground, The Haunting in Connecticut, Street Time, 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out, Bones, The Day Lincoln Was Shot, Killer: A Journal of Murder, and Kalifornia. After nearly thirty years of being stuck in traffic in LA, he and his family moved to Vermont and never looked back. Metcalfe lives in Brattleboro.

François Roland Truffaut (1932 – 1984) was one of the founders of the French New Wave; in filmmaking, and remains an icon of the French film industry. He began as a film critic and reviewer, then went on to set up his own film company and make his own films, and, in a film career lasting just over a quarter of a century, he fulfilled the functions of screenwriter, director, producer or actor in over twenty-five films. Many of his films, including The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, The Soft Skin, Fahrenheit 451, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, Day for Night, The Story of Adèle H., Small Change, The Man Who Loved Women, Love on the Run and The Last Metro won international acclaim. Truffaut is one of the hundred or so most important and influential figures in the history of world cinema.