Practical Magic

Midnight Margaritas Practical Magic
Warner Bros. 1998

One thing from the 1990s that I remember is that there was this huge interest in New Age spirituality, Wicca, and magic.  A lot of books on the subject were published.  Books that provided instructions, talked about countless beliefs, concepts, and practices, books that included or were all about the history of these spiritual practices and beliefs, and even fiction novels.

Is this why I read the Mayfair Witches series or why it fascinated me?

No.

But just to keep things weird, the reason the Mayfair
Witches series caught my attention when I came across that copy of Lasher was something less glamorous: a ghost.

I don't talk much about what I believe spiritually.  In fact, I don't think I talk about that at all.  Here is one thing I do believe in: ghosts.

Wait...did I think the novel was a ghost story?  No, it had a very specific type of "ghost", one that isn't exactly a ghost in the traditional sense.  That part of the story appealed to me because...well, there was a ghost in my world, and my young brain was trying to find answers to one question: "Just what the hell is going on here?"

Practical Magic
by Alice Hoffman

Which is funny in this post because the Owens aunts asked the same question of their two nieces when the four women got trashed on a witch's brew of alcohol, alcohol...and more alcohol. 

And a ghost crashed the party.

That was a scene in the 1998 movie Practical Magic.  I hadn't seen it in years, but it came on TV very recently.  I watched it.  My mother was watching it, too, and remarked that she wondered if the TV show Charmed might have been inspired by this movie.  Or the book.

Please tell me you saw that last part coming.

Yes, Practical Magic was based upon a 1995 novel of the same name by Alice Hoffman.  I had seen the movie in theaters when it came out, but I'd only heard of it because I happened to see the novel on a bookstand.  I wanted to know what it was, so I bought the book and read it.  I'm looking for where I put that book so I can reread it, but I remember enough that this article didn't exactly rattle me:

Practical Magic
Warner Bros. 1998

The Book That Inspired 'Practical Magic' Might Not Be What Fans Expect

Now, I have no idea if it matters or not, but it isn't unlike me to do a blog post that I leave open to updates.  Especially when I practically have to launch a search par-tay to find my copy of a book.  However, I would love to go more in-depth with a page to screen comparison of Practical Magic.

Isn't that what this asylum--I mean blog--is about?

I braved the comment sections of Immortal Universe again, and...okay.

There are going to be differences between a book and a movie.  A series of books and a movie or TV show.  That's a given.  If people hate a show as much as they say they do, why do they go to the social media for it to say that repeatedly?  Why bother if they hate it so much?

The rule seems to be that the book is always better, but is Practical Magic an exception to that rule?  The author of the article thought so.  That somehow, the way the story was told in the movie was...an improvement, I guess...on the original story that Alice Hoffman wrote.  As in, what drives the plot is clearer in the movie but not so much in the book.

What is Practical Magic about, anyway?

Let's start with the film.  Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) Owens grow up with their two aunts on an island their ancestor, Maria, had been banished to 300 years earlier.  Maria Owens escaped being--ah...asphyxiated--as a witch with "the gift of magic".  Come to find out, Maria had been pregnant by her married lover, who never came back to her.  Maria turned her heartbreak into a curse.  One that would mean death for any man who loved an Owens woman.

An Owens witch.

300 years later, Maria's two orphaned descendants grow up with their two aunts because that cursed deathwatch beetle came for their father.  Then, their mother died of a broken heart.  When Sally and Gillian see their aunts casting a spell for a lovesick woman, they oversee a horrifying part of the ritual that has a polarized effect on them.  While Sally hoped she would never fall in love, Gillian couldn't wait to.

The adult lives the two sisters lead are seemingly in direct opposition to one another.  It is Gillian's abusive boyfriend that becomes the catalyst for the sisters' opposite worlds to collide in a most unpleasant way.  But how to make sure this death of a man who loved an Owens without benefit of being announced by the deathwatch beetle first is concealed from everyone?  How to keep the destruction of Gillian's life from being the destruction of Sally's life?

While I look for my copy of the book, here's something I do remember from it.  One of the aunts answering the door to the pizza delivery guy and asking something like, "This is your job?  Delivering people's food to them?"

Well, yes.

Now, let me find my book, and this post can be revisited.

I will even look for my copy of The Witches of Eastwick.