Made for Warner Bros-Seven Arts, the film was directed by Jack Smight from producer Howard B. Kreitsek's screenplay, adapted from John Updike's 1960 novel. Updike had wanted to write the screenplay but the offer did not come, which disappointed the author, as he had deliberately written the novel like a film, in present tense. Rabbit, Run was shot on location in 1969 in Updike's home town of Reading, Pennsylvania, with many locals playing extras.
John Updike said in an interview at Moravian College that while he appreciated the money received from film adaptations of his work, he felt "embarrassment and extreme unworthiness that I've caused all these gifted people - handsome actors, gorgeous actresses, gifted directors and cameramen - I've put them all in this kind of box they can't get out of, the box being my little story, whose life on paper and from thence into the mind of the reader I tried to make as real as I could, but which in the film media, becomes kind of nonsense. I thought that Rabbit, Run was too faithful to the book. The book tries to deliver a very complex message. It tries to agitate the reader about these questions of morality and domesticity and flight versus sticking with it. [...] A movie cannot engage in this kind of debate.[...] [I]t had some good performers in it. James Caan went on to good things, and Carrie Snodgress made Janice much more appealing than Ruth, and made her so appealing you didn't know what the fuss was about. So it was a very uneven, I would say, adaptation."
Rabbit, Run premiered in Reading on October 28, 1970, but the audience reaction was so bad that Warner Bros. decided not to spend the money on a wide release - or even screen it in New York. James Caan later famously said that the film wasn't released, "It escaped." Updike retained kind feelings about the film; as late as 1973, he told the New York Times that he was sorry for Caan and Snodgress, who he thought were "terrific as Rabbit and his wife, and I always had a lingering hope that some day Warner might remake some of the weak scenes and then give the movie another push."
The failure of the film did not end Updike's saga. He would revisit the character of Rabbit Angstrom in other novels; Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990).
SOURCES:
De Bellis, Jack The John Updike Encyclopedia
Hischak, Thomas S. American Literature on Stage and Screen: 525 Works and Their Adaptations
The Internet Movie Database
Negley, Erin "Rabbit, Lost" Reading Eagle 18 Mar 07
Plath, James John Updike's Pennsylvania Interviews
By Lorraine LoBianco
