Daniel Streeter, Jr

Hello Everybody, on this wonderful night in America in the wake of the long sought conviction of Despicable Don!! I finished watching the sixth and final episode of "A Man in Full" tonight, and was, sad to say, highly disappointed. I had read the book a few years ago, long after it was originally published in 1998. To render a decent interpretation of a Tom Wolfe novel on any screen, Imax-esque, cineplex, tv or streaming, is an endeavor that requires a deft hand, a stout heart and an instinct for an epic narrative. This production, while very solid in certain ways, fell short across the board on all three. The acting was crackerjack good, especially Jeff Daniels channeling his inner Willie Stark as realtor King, the always magnificent Diane Lane as his estranged wife, and the all purpose Bill Camp. Everyone was good, truth be told. Yet no matter how good the actors were, and the various interesting revolving directors were, the truncated and radically revised script doomed this production from the start. For those who did not read the book, rest assured like most Tom Wolfe novels, it ran over 700 pages, with wonderfully kaleidoscopic characters and any streaming series worthy of it would have been at least 2 seasons worth of 10 episodes or so. The choice to elevate the weasly Peepgrass character to a greater height than he had within the novel, and to wholly re-create the Conrad Hensley character in every manner was like a knife to the heart of the novel. In the novel, Conrad "Connie" Hensley is not black, but a white, working class, head banging fork lift driver in a Bay Area warehouse owned by Croker Industries. As the plot thickens and boils, his role and purpose intersects with Charlie's in ways far too sophisticated for the soap opera-esque limitations of the writing in the Netflix series. Further, the black character imprisoned perhaps unfairly, perhaps not in Atlanta's dreadful jail, is not a meek, hard working husband as portrayed in the Netflix piece, but rather a wholly different character, one Fareek "The Cannon" Fanon, an unpleasant, powerfully built young man who may or may not have sexually assaulted the daughter of a powerful real estate mogul and friend of Charlie's. Roger White's character defends him, not the faux Conrad Hensley this production concocted. The original story was both far more sensational, arguably controversial and much, much deeper. Then again, ain't that the way it often goes. The finale here is truly mind numbingly awful Check this Netflix six episode show out for the excellent acting and interesting story, but don't expect too much, and certainly don't expect anything resembling a Man in full.