Breakfast of Champions
Written and Directed by Alan Rudolph
Starring Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey
Rated R
Runtime: 1 hour, 50 minutes
25th Anniversary restoration in theaters November 1

by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

My love of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is well documented from when I reviewed the film Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time and I have long been a staunch defender of the film adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five from 1972. But if there was ever proof that adapting Vonnegut’s work is a Herculean task then it’s visible, without any abstractions, in Alan Rudolph’s 1999 fever dream of a film, Breakfast of Champions.

Vonnegut’s novel and Rudolph’s film are both about a man named Dwayne Hoover, played by Bruce Willis in the film, who is well on his way to losing his mind. He’s terrorizing his employees at the car dealership he owns and, when he finally meets science-fiction author Kilgore Trout, his mental health takes a steep decline. Trout introduces the idea of there only being one creature in the universe with free will, which truly messes with Hoover’s mind. 

In the novel, the one person in the universe with free will is the person who is currently reading the Kilgore Trout book where the idea is introduced (Now It Can Be Told), but in the film, Trout just kind of says the idea to Hoover, sending him on his spiral. Which is a great example of how loose the adaptation is. Because while there are many plot elements that are similar, Alan Rudolph’s script, and subsequent film, feels largely disconnected from its source material. 

However, as a lover of the original book, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. What it proves is that Vonnegut’s work is weird and wonderful, but perhaps too insular to have its themes put to film and reproduced in a way that feels authentic to the story, while also still delivering the message of the writing. Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a book that is largely about free will and mental health. And, because it was the 1970s, there’s some commentary on race relations and queer identity, especially in the Midwest. Are either of those two things done well and with any modern understanding? No—but it’s important to note where the book succeeds and where it does not. Especially as the idea of race seems absent from the film, at least the conversation of it, and there’s not a lot of actual commentary on queer identity, though it does still exist within the film. 

Something I think Rudolph’s film does exceptionally well, though, is bring forward the vibe of the book into the 1990s. The 1972 novel is, at its most macro level, an exploration of Midwest 1970s Americana and the average, albeit exaggerated, American experience of our capitalist hellscape. The film was released in 1999 and pulls those ideas and ideals forward, exploring what they would look like at the turn of our most recent century. Which is different, but works quite well—at least to me.

Not to mention that the restoration for the 25th anniversary is gorgeous. The film has a lot of weird and interesting special effects that aim to make sense of the kinds of stories that Vonnegut writes and, while they aren’t always successful they are deeply interesting to see and look wonderful in this new version of the film. They’re certainly late 1990s effects, but they have a real charm about them that makes me wish more people would view these kinds of ‘90s films and actually replicate these kinds of effects. For sure, they’d be harder to make now because technology has moved so far forward that trying to imitate something made at the breaking point of the industry is actually quite difficult, but they are deeply cool and create a real sense of time—even if that wasn’t the intent of them originally.

What doesn’t work about the film, though, is the frenetic energy. Vonnegut’s work is notoriously difficult to adapt for a few reasons. One of them is what his novels would look and, very specifically, sound like if they were to be adapted one-for-one. While they don’t necessarily feel frenetic, themselves, when you’re reading them, it makes sense to me that Rudolph chose to make Breakfast of Champions feel that way. He reimagines the plot, for better or for worse, but doesn’t give the audience a way in. Perhaps it played better in 1999, though that doesn’t appear to be the case given how little the film was seen. Without a basic understanding of Vonnegut’s work, let alone this novel in particular, I cannot imagine this film makes a whole lot of sense to the average viewer. 

But that’s not to say that I don’t think this film has its merits. It’s got a deeply interesting Bruce Willis performance that feels devoid of ego in a really particular manner. Nick Nolte somehow feels like the only grounded character, despite being deeply not, for reasons that are more to do with Vonnegut’s work than Rudolph’s. And then there’s Albert Finney as the Kilgore Trout. It’s a weird and strange piece of film history, but it acts as an artifact of both a late 1990s film and a rare adaptation of Vonnegut’s work. The restoration is gorgeous and while it might not work for most people, it’s entirely possible that Rudolph made it for you!