©1995 Cable News Network, Inc.
Vonnegut Turns to TV to Satirize TV
Kurt Vonnegut's vision of the future has entertained readers for more than 30 years. Now his vision and one of his more popular characters, Harrison Bergeron, will take on cable TV viewers in a new movie. The following is a CNN transcript of an August 11, 1995 feature on Showtime's adpatation of Kurt Vonnegut's short story 'Harrison Bergeron.'

JIM MORET, Anchor: It's showtime for Kurt Vonnegut. The celebrated author is bringing one of his stories to the pay cable network Sunday night. Kurt Vonnegut's ''Harrison Bergeron'' imagines the United States 60 years from now, following a second American Revolution.

Paul Vercammen reports the future's social order is a trifle stifling.

[excerpt from 'Harrison Bergeron']

ACTOR: You shouldn't learn anything from television.

[end of excerpt]

PAUL VERCAMMEN, Correspondent: At least, that's the policy of American leaders in the year 2053 in Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi story, ''Harrison Bergeron.''

[excerpt from 'Harrison Bergeron']

SEAN ASTIN: I know the Constitution says that it's the function of government to render all people equal, but still-

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER: It saddens me-

[end of excerpt]

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Christopher Plummer and Sean Astin star in this Showtime adaptation, the story of a society where excellence and achievement are secretly suppressed by the government. This concept stemmed from thoughts Vonnegut had in his early teens.

KURT VONNEGUT: I was thinking in high school - you notice that some people can run a lot faster than you can. People are better looking than you. Some people can play musical instruments - how in the hell does he do that and everything. And there's something you can do. And so I thought, well, how funny it would be if the government finally decided that too many people were being made to feel unhappy. And I was thinking how funny if they would pass all these laws. If you could dance well, for instance, you'd have to wear sash weights tired around your ankles, you know what I mean? [laughs]

[excerpt from 'Harrison Bergeron']

SEAN ASTIN: Hey, Sinbad fell off! Did you see that? He's happy. Look at him. He's friggin' happy!

[end of excerpt]

SEAN ASTIN: It's, obviously, so absurd that you have to laugh at it, first of all. But it crystallizes it in a way that you look at it differently. You look at these issues of capital punishment. I mean, even human emotions - the human emotion of envy or the haves and have-nots. All these things that are, you know, the political fodder of every day pushed to the absurd.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Vonnegut says the concept of keeping the arts subdued and keeping people's intelligence at a simplistic level was originally just a funny idea.

KURT VONNEGUT: It turns out now it could be a political idea, although I never intended it to be, but the American right now has focused on political correctness in efforts to make people more equal.

I'm not the only source with crazy ideas. History has provided plenty of these - to name Nazism, Communism - because these are real science fiction ideas which have shaped life in a big way.

[excerpt from 'Harrison Bergeron']

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER: Once we covet, we hate, and when we hate, this is what happens.

[end of excerpt]

PAUL VERCAMMEN: While TV may not be a teaching tool in Vonnegut's year 2053, audiences in 1995 may learn something from ''Harrison Bergeron.''