Did the movie the Hotel New Hampshire spawn good business for a real hotel of the same name?
John Irving began his literary career with “Setting Free the Bears,” then “The Water-Method Man” and the “158-Pound Marriage,” but it wasn’t until the huge success of “The World According to Garp” that the rest of his novels would be practically guaranteed best-seller status. The first such book that reached near-instant fame after 1978’s “Garp” was “The Hotel New Hampshire.” The novel, which hit the top of the New York Times Bestseller list in 1981, inspired a movie by the same name and even a real life hotel in Durham, N.H., next to his alma mater, the University of New Hampshire. The Hotel New Hampshire opened on Durham’s Main Street in August of 2005, complete with permission from the author and a bear on the hotel’s sign. Though still open for business in the college town, the hotel is now a more generic Holiday Inn Express. “In New Hampshire the summer tourists went to the beaches — they were half an hour away. The mountains were an hour way, where the skiers went, and where ther
The Hotel New Hampshire is a 1984 film based on a 1981 novel of the same name by John Irving. The film was directed by Tony Richardson (who also wrote the screenplay) and stars Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, Nastassja Kinski and Beau Bridges. The film also features Wilford Brimley, Amanda Plummer, Matthew Modine, and a young Seth Green in a supporting role. In an introductory foreword that he wrote for a later edition of the novel, author Irving stated that he was thrilled when Richardson informed him that he wanted to adapt the book to the screen. Irving wrote that he was very happy with the adaptation, complaining only that he felt Richardson tried to make the film too faithful to the book, noting the manner in which Richardson would often speed up the action in an attempt to include more material onscreen. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.
