Adaptation

Interesting piece (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) on adapting novels for the screen. Don't know how I missed it for two weeks. Sorry.



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and there's nothing to say.

Ah, a Nude French Poet!

The article is about a filmmaker, but she cast a poet in the lead role. (Have you ever noticed that every profile of a woman artist - esp those written by men - always mention how the woman is attired?)



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How Can You Turn Your B-Grade Novel into an A-Grade?

Film it.



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CGI Orcs Duck and Run!

Okay, it's not really bookish, but it's still a fun piece. (LOL* Boingboing)




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When I Used to See Her Hanging Around Toronto's Annex Neighbourhood, I Never Thought My Fantasy Would Come True...

Well, I never thought it would come true without me... (LOL* Maud Newton)



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"But if he is not a novelist, he is the greatest essayist and one of the greatest poets that the cinema has known."

A bio on Godard.



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Now Anne Can Finally Rest

Unless Gilbert is getting out of jail this month... His lawyer said it's likely since he's served two thirds of the time and has a clean record (except for that run in with Mexican mafia, which really wasn't his fault, and which he "paid" for in the prison currency of cigarettes and steamy love.)



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They should've sued Sullivan for using the Anne name in movies that bear no relation to the books. Gilbert goes off to the Front and Anne runs after him. Horrible stuff.

Edited by author 01-27-2004 09:13 PM
Pinero Biopic Myopic

So what if it sucks? I get off on these kinds of movies. I even liked Pollack (is it just me, or does Jackson get drunker every year?) I'm still waiting for the Frank O'Hara biopic. The dune buggy scene better have string music.
 


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"This year we saw some very high-quality literary-dramatic projects made with all the technique and expense usually lavished on, say "Bad Boys 2," "SpiderMan" or this year's "X-Men" and "The Hulk." Not to slight Stan Lee, but it's good to see Tolkien and "Master" author Patrick O'Brian getting the same treatment."

A Bookninja movie is currently in pre-production, but having read this, we're holding out for more budget. I'm pretty sure we can get six Pixie Stix each, and maybe a can of grape soda thrown in. (Pete's insistence on Poprocks and a subscription to Mad nearly blew the entire deal!)



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I saw Lost in Translation the other night at the local rep cinema. Anyone else see it? My impression is that the script was totally juvenile, but that the direction and acting was wonderful. Sophia needs a screenwriter to shine, methinks.

I've always thought Bill Murray was totally under appreciated. I hope he gets the Oscar (yes, Zach, awards suck and mean nothing -- except to ex-Second City guys who have always had to play beneath them).

Any opinions?

I saw it recently too, and have similar feelings about it. Acting/cinematography great, script/plot vacuous. I have so little interest in/sympathy for wealthy young-to-middle-aged characters whose only appeal is that they are lost and wandering aimlessly. Unmitigated atrophy, entropy and anomie just don't make for compelling art.

I loved Lost in Translation. Way better than S.C.'s first movie (which sucked) based on the Eugenedies novel.

I liked Lost in Translation. I didn't have a problem with the script - I thought the attention to detail was great. Or is that direction? How can you separate the two? If the script has directions in it and the director just follows them, then isn't it the scriptwriter that should be commended? I have no idea if such directions are in this script, but they certainly have been in other screenplays I've read. I've just never been able to figure out how you know when someone's a good director.

I don't think this is a Best Picture kind of movie, but I thought it was well done. It could easily have turned into a bad Hollywood romance, so I appreciated the restraint.

Thought Bill Murray was great and I expect he'll win. I'm rooting for the girl in Whale Rider for Best Actress.

Rachel, I worked for Alliance for a while reading script and now I read the scripts my husband brings home (he works in film construction) and my experience is that scripts have very little integral direction. They are mainly dialogue with maybe a bit of prop/wardrobe indicators. They are very different in this way from plays.

Yeah, guess I'm just thinking of plays like Arthur Miller's. Though "Withnail and I" has a lot of rather whimsical directions.

Related query. Who are the artists in film? Is an actor an artist? Does someone have to create something original to be an artist? Or can interpreting (directing/acting under direction/adapting a book to screen) be an act of art? Sorry if this sounds stupid, but it's something I've been wondering.

Edited by author 02-04-2004 11:26 AM
Rachel, I think some actors are artists, and some are entertainers, some are merely hired hands. An actor who creates a character and brings that character fully formed to the film-making process, is an artist. Ben Kingsley is, I believe, such an actor. Some actors just play themselves in every role they get, and rely on the director to help them develop any sense of character whatsoever, and here you have flat, one-note, wooden performers like Sean Connery.

Combine that type of wooden actor with an equally wooden director, and you get Kevin Costner.

Remember what Alan Swan (Peter O'Toole's character, a thinly veiled portrait of Douglas Fairbanks) said in the film My Favourite Year: "I am not an actor, I'm a movie star!"

I think there is a difference.

I used to do a fair bit of theatre, both as writer and actor, and I can tell you stage directions, unless you're Beckett, get ignored by directors and actors alike. Honestly, you might as well not write 'em unless they're good for a laugh or unless you're writing specifically for a very amateur theatre that has no idea how to put a play together. Exit stage whatever.

I loved Lost in Translation.

BN, Z - expand on 'juvenile' and 'vacuous' pretty please and thank you very much.

KK, RL - I think it's harder to decide what part is script and what part direction when the same person is doing both. While I'm sure the screenplay looks very much like a screenplay, Coppola knew she'd be directing when she was writing. That must influence the process.

Vacuous: bereft of significant content. I found very little in the characters to either love or hate, and in me they elicited not sympathy, but a vaguely bored pity. And there were about 50 too many jokes about how the Japanese pronounce their l's and r's. Haha, velly funny. Yawn.

I have to agree with Zach and BN re: Lost In Translation. I really liked Bill Murray, but I thought he made the movie
smarter than it really was,that he helped to hide
its director's glaring smugness and lack of originality. I was really surprised to see how many good reviews she's received; I thought Virgin Suicides was at best mediocre and whatever impact it had came from its source material. I really loved In the Mood for Love and Rushmore, and I get the feeling the director did and thought she could sort of graft one on another, and I don't think it works that
way. The vision of Japanese culture, while I'm sure was accurate, and languorous and full of wonder, was nevertheless uninteresting and unoriginal: I've seen the karaoke, the video arcades, the wacky TV game shows before. Also, all the secondary characters--outside Murray and Johanssen--were really flimsy and uninteresting,
and shows a lack of compassion on the part of the
director. The photog husband was not even two-
dimensional and that starlet was so unfunny in
her shallowness (I HATED that scene in which
Johanssen--the Yale grad who doesn't read--
complains when the starlet checks under the name
Evelyn Waugh. It's set up to show the starlet
doesn't know EW's a man, but how many starlets
would know his name in the first place? I'd
think, if say Scarlet Johannsen, checked under
the name Evelyn Waugh or George Eliot, that she's
well read and is aware of the gender confusion).
Also, way too may "lat pack" jokes.

And speaking of Bill Murray making shows smarter than they are, let's not forget his Letterman show appearance.

What I liked about Lost in Translation was how well it captured the feel of travelling alone. I've never been in Japan (my sister and brother-in-law, who lived there for a few years, really connected with the movie) but still felt that I could relate to that surreal, aimless, lost life. The strangeness of it all.

I didn't really feel like there were lots of jokes about the Japanese - a lot of people laughing in the audience, but I guess I didn't see those parts as necessarily intended to be funny. Sometimes audiences just ruin things.

Filming Poetry

Welsh poetry gets a Hollywood treatment.



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Literature Butchers Get Their Hands on Judy Blume

Disney has bought the rights to Blume books such as "Are You There God?" and "Deenie." Wave bye bye to your youth, ladies.



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As long as they don't do anything with _Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself_

Reece Witherspoon is on board to play Margaret.

And Brittany Spears as Deenie?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I'd like to have a drink with Kaufman sometime. We wouldn't even have to talk or anything. We could just look perplexed at each other over a table full of peaches or something. Right before I leave, I'd say: "Why, Charlie? Why Carey?"



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"Nihilists... fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism... at least it's an ethos..."
While a lot of people really don't like The Big Lebowski, it's my favourite Coen brothers film. Now you can read the script online, or use the Big Lebowski Random Quote Generator.

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Nobody fucks with the Jesus.

'cept Mel Gibson

ZING!

"Terrible" Writer Gets Movie Deal

Water flows downhill, 9 comes after 10, cells divide and DNA is passed on, a guy named Theodore is called Ted, Saturday and Sunday continue to comprise "weekend," uneducated people continue to vote Bush, fluorescent lights hum incessantly, and life as we know it continues...



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Malkovich Hitches a Ride

John Malkovich has been cast in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as cult leader Humma Kavula -- a character Adams created specifically for the screenplay. (Funny how the BBC can spend an entire article talking about this odd bit of casting and not mention that Ford Prefect is being played by a black rapper.)



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"...not mention that Ford Prefect is being played by a black rapper."

So.

Where is Ford ever described as white? And why do you presume Ford is white? The character is an alien after all.

Edited by author 04-20-2004 12:02 AM
His hair is described as ginger. Anyway, it was about Mos Def playing him, as a casting choice. It's about the fact that they linger on Malkovich and not the interesting choice... It's about how the BBC's avoidance of the "issue" creates an issue.

"It helps not to read the books in question in the first place."

How can filmmakers/moviegoers better pick which movies-based-on-books they film/see? "The House of Mirth isn't one of Edith Wharton's better-known novels, but I'd written my college thesis on it. I'd lived with that book. I could try to describe my response to the casting of Dan Aykroyd as Gus Trenor in the film version, but a gurgle of rage doesn't quite convert to print."



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Books into Movies = Stupid Americans

And it's written by an American!

The recent trend of books being adapted for the screen is making America stupid. More stupid than it already is. It's a phenomenon with a tag line (sung to the tune of "Amazing Grace"): "I once was worldly, but now I'm ignorant," or "I once was literate, but now wouldn't pick up a novel and read it if I was being forced by a pitchfork-wielding Truman Capote." Basically, this trend is making the stories that first appeared in books-many of them award-winning-too easily accessible. Our society is all about convenience. Why go to the book store and choose one based on its pretty cover (admit it, we all do) when you can go to Cinemark and watch the same book acted out for you, in a comfortable two-hour timeframe?

You know, I'm hard on Americans right now, but that's mostly because, despite the minor key organ music and the ever present thunderstorm, they haven't risen up with pitchforks and torches and stormed the dark, bat-infested halls of their pinhead leader. Mostly, I love Americans. Above a certain parallel... Particularly Daniel Nester. He's so cute.



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Born Into This: Bukowski Doc

Bukowski didn't always revel in his outsider status. A pariah in high school, he suffered from severe acne vulgaris, which covered his face with running sores that left his skin deeply pitted. He recalls standing miserably in the dark outside his senior prom, too humiliated to show himself.

Okay, Chuck, you can be part of our gang.*



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Okay, about film, but dealing with some interesting ideas

A discussion with filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev* yields some interesting "should"s.

"Let me tell you, there is an old Eastern parable about a Buddhist monk who once went out to teach under the trees and just before he started speaking, a bird started singing," Zvyagintsev says.

"He stood there silent, not saying a word, listening. When the bird finished singing, he told his pupils that the lesson was over.

He rose up, went away ...

"Communication is not just speaking using words, notions, ideas, because we don't know much that way. We cannot express much that way. It's not the fullness of understanding.

"And there is such an idea - Plato, quoting Socrates, says that an artist, a poet should create myth. An artist should create images, not thinking patterns. A poet should create images, not trains of thought."

And a playwright?

"The playwright or a novelist, they're also poets. But they are dealing only in words, and cinema has other means of expression. How could you describe with words, convey with words, a pause, a silence, a glance?"

Isn't that what all those funky line breaks are doing?




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At the Quinte Hotel -- the movie?
Has anyone seen this movie version of "At the Quinte Hotel" where Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie plays Al Purdy?

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Actually, I still haven't seen this movie, even though a friend of mine was involved in producing it. I'm eager hear what others have to say about it.

Edited by author 07-15-2004 05:11 PM
They play it on Bravo every once in a while, in that slot just before the Law and Order repeat. It's pretty good, with Downie being a little more goofy then Purdy would probably have liked to have been protrayed and he never really convinces you that he's the scrapper type, but it's really well edited and shot and Downie's read of the poem is surprisingly good.

I can just see it now: Beowulf 2... Grendel's Got a Blender!

No, Virginia, nothing is sacred.



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Beowulf of the Greats? Shouldn't that be Geats??

Yes it should.

M. Night Shyamalan: Auteur/Thief?

The Village seems to be very similar to Margaret Peterson Haddix's YA book, Running Out of Time...

Similar? Without spoiling the film's big surprise, we can say Running Out of Time and The Village are both set in an insular rural town where something major happens that requires medicine. In both projects, the protagonists are tomboys and the adults are keeping a secret - the same secret, say those familiar with the works - from the young people. Haddix's book, aimed at 8-to-12-year-olds, has sold more than a half-million copies, according to Simon & Schuster.

Me smells lawsuits, preeecioussss.



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Hot buns Pitt & Aniston, lit playahs

Apparently, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are the midlist author's dream... That's funny, I thought selling out your advance was the midlist author's dream.



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Selling out your advance, followed by a celebratory three-way with Brad and Jennifer.

Without a doubt, Mel Gibson deserves a humanitarian award for creating the recently-released film "Paparazzi." In about 90 minutes time, Mr. Gibson portrayed these vermin for exactly what they are.

I am pleased to see that someone in the film world was willing to take on this societal disease. As in all walks of life, YOUR RIGHTS TERMINATE AT THE TIP OF MY NOSE. Simply, because you own a camera and have no life other than stalking, you don't have a right to interfere with other peoples' lives.

Congratulations to Mel Gibson for performing a great public service. The term 'paparazzi' is directly connected to low-life creatures of our world, as it should be.

Thanks, Mel!

Film, as the corporation meant it to be

Maisonneuve blogger and Now film critic Wendy Banks wonders aloud on her Wendyopolis blog whether films supported by corporate money constitute art. Not expressly book related, but with people selling product placements in their novels and that fool out west flying free while she dances like a semi-poetic monkey for the people laughing at her... perhaps it's a good time to visit the issue here.



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Fiction vs. Film
Which medium will deliver the knockout punch? Whose cuisine will reign supreme?


As college ended, however, I became increasingly aware of America's emerging writers. Deeply smug, intimidatingly erudite and colossally self-involved, these new authors lived very much inside their own labrythine and mostly East Coast-based heads. But unlike their ancestors — writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon — the new postmodern wave seemed to have all the kinks, crinkles and self-referential twists with very little of the philosopical and historical backbone that made their predecessors so hypnotic.

In short: New books seem to be less about mind-altering ideas than splashy biographies.

At the same time, cinema was coming alive. Pulp Fiction was released, hitting the scene like the first drop of rain before a storm of great movies. Wes Anderson and the Coen Bros. became increasingly productive, throwing knockout punch after knockout punch. Their output — extremely funny, visually gorgeous, and as sharply written as anything anywhere — started to become my lodestone. Books faded away.


Also by Flak: Stop Canadian Change: "This site isn't recommending that you kill a Canadian."

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For a moment I thought this read "Michael Crichton" and I was confused
Thankfully, everything is clear now (full text below).


Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon will write Snow and the Seven, a martial-arts retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for Walt Disney Pictures, Variety reported. Yuen Wo Ping, the choreographer of groundbreaking action films The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, will direct the live-action movie. Previously known as Snow White and the Seven Shao Lin, the movie will mark Yuen's English-language directorial debut.

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The Saddest Music in the World

I just watched Maddin's Winnipeg saga over the weekend (this is what parents do, apparently--rent and watch DVDs) and am both intrigued and repulsed by it. What a peculiar film. Did anyone read the novel? I can't decide if I like or hate the film. Love is out of the question. I save that for big budget Hollywood. You know, you see legs made of beer on the cover and you think, why not...



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"this is what parents do, apparently--rent and watch DVDs"

...while nonparents, at least some, watch CBC's Movie Night in Canada, submitting themselves to The Mexican starring, and I use that term ever so loosely, Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt. Eeek!

thought that Maddin's film was really interesting too. Not sure if like is the right term, since it was difficult, but respect works.

Edited by author 11-23-2004 02:46 PM
Movie roundup
Paul Greengrass, director of The Bourne Supremacy, has replaced Darren Aronofsky as director of the Watchmen movie. Doesn't bode well. In other movie news, the Wachowski brothers — the, uh, filmmakers responsible for those idiotic Matrix flicks — are producing an adaptation of V for Vendetta (full text below). Is there anything Hollywood won't defile?

Andy and Larry Wachowski (the Matrix movies) will produce a film adaptation of Alan Moore's futuristic graphic novel V for Vendetta, and Matrix first assistant director James McTeigue is in talks with Warner Brothers to direct, Variety reported. The Wachowskis originally wanted to direct the adaptation themselves, but set it aside to do the Matrix trilogy of films. Matrix producer Joel Silver will also produce V, the trade paper reported.

V for Vendetta takes place in an alternate future in which Germany wins World War II and Great Britain becomes a fascist state. A terrorist freedom fighter known only as "V" begins a violent guerilla campaign to destroy those who've succumbed to totalitarianism and recruits a young woman he's rescued from the secret police to join him, the trade paper reported.

The project has been around for years, with Romeo Is Bleeding writer Hilary Henkin taking a stab at it at one point, but without success, the trade paper reported.

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Alexander stoned

I'm not so sure the American public was ready for this movie... But I am pretty sure everyone down there is just hoppin' ready to hate Oliver Stone. Not a good combo. And I'm also certain, sad as it is, a rescue based on kudos from Gore Vidal for depictions of bisexuality isn't going to help.



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Revised Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I kind of liked the last Charlie Kaufman film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I thought the ending was weak and rather romantic comedyish. Not surprisingly, the ending in the original script is far more disturbing -- and poignant.

She shakes her head. He punches a couple of buttons on his computer console. A tape recorder starts up and his computer screen lights up so only he can see it. On it we see a whole file on Clementine Kruczynski: a list of fifteen dates of previous erasures stretching back fifty years, all of them involving Joel Barish.

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Movie updates
Tis the season for film adaptations of great books. Boing Boing points out the trailers for Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Spielberg's War of the Worlds (Quicktime link). Meanwhile USA Today interviews Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) about the Unfortunate Events movie.

Last weekend, he saw the movie, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is based on the first three books, and says he's pleased. "I'm still in a continued state of amazement that it was made." It's "more Perils of Pauline than Wuthering Heights," he says.

And don't forget the librarian parody of Cops, Overdue.

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Shakespeare on film
The London Review of Books considers The Merchant of Venice.

Many would agree with the general proposition that the best Shakespeare movies are not in English but in Japanese or Russian, the reason being that these works are treatments of the stories of Macbeth or Lear: the stories behind or inferred from the plays, rather than the plays themselves, so there is no direct debt to the English texts.

The hell with Shakespeare -- when are we going to see a film version of The Duchess of Malfi? There's a play that speaks to our times.

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NOW you've done it. Quentin Terentino's probably casting it as we speak; you should have approached him directly. Oh, no...Baz Luhrman...

"There will be no betrayal of any kind"
Philip Pullman addresses the claims he's happily agreed to remove anti-religious overtones from the movie version of His Dark Materials.

To take an answer from one context, invent a question that hadn't been asked, and put the answer next to it is not what used to be called honest journalism. To flag that answer in large type beside the new story, as if it came from the story itself, compounds the dishonesty.

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V for Vendetta movie
I put together a weekly books page for the Province newspaper in Vancouver, and for this Sunday's issue I've written a piece on upcoming film adaptations of graphic novels. Turns out there are three films based on Alan Moore works coming out. Looks like Natalie Portman is going to star in V for Vendetta. Full text from Sci Fi Weekly below:

Natalie Portman is in final talks to star in the Wachowski brothers' film based on Alan Moore's graphic novel V Is for Vendetta for Warner Brothers and producer Joel Silver, Variety reported. The Matrix creators wrote the script for the film, and their longtime first assistant director James McTeigue will make his helming debut on the movie. The Wachowskis will produce Vendetta with Warners-based Silver. Vendetta takes place in an alternate future in which Germany wins World War II and Great Britain becomes a fascist state. A terrorist freedom fighter known only as "V" begins a violent guerrilla campaign to destroy those who've succumbed to totalitarianism, and recruits a young woman he's rescued, or possibly kidnapped, from the secret police to join him, the trade paper reported.

I've also got a piece complaining about the Canada Reads reading list, but that's another story....

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Sin City trailer
As a followup to my recent post about film adaptations of graphic novels, here's the trailer for Sin City (Quicktime link). Don't know about this one.

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Al Pacino is ... Shylock!
Also in film, Slate reviews the Merchant of Venice film with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. I still want to see it.

Pacino, as is his wont, is pretty buggy from the get-go. The point is that this Shylock is so beaten down that he positively revels in the opportunity to enact an Old Testament vengeance on his chief antagonist, Antonio (Jeremy Irons), the devout Christian merchant of the title. Radford drives the enmity home with a prologue in which Antonio literally spits on Shylock in the course of a demonstration (outside the Jewish ghetto) against non-Christians. As Pacino's Shylock stonily wipes the spittle off his face, the last ember of hope seems to die in him.

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Has anyone sued Desperate Housewives yet?
IMDB.com reports Peter Jackson has signed on for a movie version of The Lovely Bones. Full text below:

Director Peter Jackson and his screenwriter wife Fran Walsh will follow up this year's King Kong re-make with a screen adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-selling novel The Lovely Bones. American movie trade publication Daily Variety reports the Oscar-winners used their own money to buy the feature film rights to the grim tale from British production company Filmfour. The 2002 book is narrated from heaven by a 14-year-old girl who has been raped and murdered, as she follows the lives of those left behind to deal with the tragedy. Jackson and Walsh will begin adapting the screenplay with their partner Philippa Boyens next January, and will promote the project to studios when it is finished. Jackson says, "It's the best kind of fantasy in that it has a lot to say about the real world. You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film."

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Trainspotting on mead
Neil Gaiman gives the lowdown on how the upcoming Beowulf movie is based on an old script he wrote with Roger Avary.

In 1998 Roger Avary asked me to cowrite a script for Beowulf for him to direct. We went off to Mexico together and wrote it as a sort of Dark Ages Trainspotting, filled with mead and blood and madness, and we went all the way from the beginning of the poem, with Beowulf as a hero battling Grendel, to the end, with Beowulf as an old man fighting a dragon. Robert Zemeckis really liked the script, and his production company, Imagemovers, bought it, for Roger to direct.

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If Robert Zemeckis is directing this, does that mean Tom Hanks HAS to be Beowulf?

Lahf is lahk a box o monsters

Being cheeky pays off

Canadian screenwriter Annmarie Morais declines 10 pages of typed suggestions by famous director, re-enters big Hollywood contest and wins with the script that was turned down last time. Fame and fortune are so fickle. Luckily they're sometimes fickle in your favour. (discuss)



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This doesn't make any sense to me at all
Alex Garland is writing the screenplay for the Halo movie. Ah, I'll still see it.

In an unorthodox move that's sure to raise some industry eyebrows, Microsoft (developer Bungie's corporate overlord) has hired screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later, The Beach) to adapt its hit videogame series Halo for the big screen. Variety reports that Garland signed a million-dollar deal with the tech giant. Garland's finished screenplay will reportedly be offered to studios as a complete "turnkey" script and rights package.

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Screenwriters anonymous
There used to be a time when the writers of movies mattered. Has that time passed?

So even though several awards for original screenplays will be handed out in the next few weeks, most writers know their originals will never be produced -- instead, they use them as calling cards. "You write something original that springs full blown from your forehead in order to launch or reinvigorate your career," says Howard Rodman, dean of the USC screenwriting department. "The studios use them to figure out who's a good writer. But they don't get made. What the studios consider a studio movie has never been narrower than it is now."

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The horror... the horror...

Did you know Orson Welles tried to adapt Heart of Darkness in the 40s? Neither did I. Now we do. Isn't this internet thing like magic?!?



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And? I assume "tried" is the operative word?

The sheer volume of stuff on the Internet is shocking. I once wanted two lines of dialogue from a film and had successfully Googled the script within two minutes.

I doubt our kids will be as gee-whiz about it, though. Democratization of information via printing press, move over!

"The bitch is still dead"

Why writers should get more respect on the movie set. (From Tingle Alley)



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Edited by author 03-17-2005 05:50 PM
The Watchmen movie
Chud (?) interviews Paul Greengrass, the director of the upcoming film. (He's the guy who did The Bourne Supremacy, if the name doesn't ring a bell.) I'm actually a little optimistic about this one.

How do you deliver the Citizen Kane of comic books to screen? That is basically the problem. It's a bit intimidating to be honest. I believe two things, really: I do believe, obviously because I am here, that you can make a film based on Watchmen the novel that is both truthful to the novel and also works in two hours. I really do believe that, I wouldn't be here if I didn't. The second point is that I believe in an odd kind of way that it's twenty years since Watchmen, give or take a year or two -- certainly twenty years since it was set -- and I think in many ways a lot of what Watchmen was about is very, very relevant to today.

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Woody Allen wants to be a tragic poet

He has the distinction of being one of only a handful of actor/directors I've gotten up and left the theatre on (Scenes from a Mall - though it might have been Bette Midler, who I react to like turned dairy products), yet with all the stuttering and neuroses, I suspect he would blend right in.


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But who will watch the studio heads?
SciFi Weekly reports the Watchmen movie may be in trouble. Full text below.

Speculation is running high that new Paramount chief Brad Grey is pulling the plug on the film version of Alan Moore's seminal superhero graphic novel Watchmen, but others say the studio will go ahead with the much-anticipated film, Variety reported. Producer Larry Gordon and studio spokeswoman Nancy Kirkpatrick insisted to Variety that Paramount will go ahead, with British director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) at the helm. "We really want to make it," Kirkpatrick told the trade paper. "We think it's a great piece of material."

Watchmen came under scrutiny in the wake of Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman's replacing Donald De Line as studio president; De Line reportedly found out about the change while in London meeting with Greengrass about Watchmen and the need to cut its budget, rumored to be $100 million, the trade paper reported. Paramount had been aiming for a June start, but in recent days, some of the crew members working on preproduction have been released. Kirkpatrick said some crews remain on the job, the trade paper reported.

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Edited by author 04-15-2005 12:26 PM
Mark down April 28th

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes to the screen and apparently it's good.

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Kingdom of Heaven my living Hell

Author of Warriors of God says, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven ripped me off! Lawyers faint and pee themselves with delight.


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Then... DON'T come see my movie... I know you won't anyway...

George practices reverse-psychology as marketing plan... Um, if people don't come to your movie, G, it's because the last two sucked like Sucky McSucklestein sucks a suckie suck. You hear me? ... ... ... ... ... Okay, I'll go. NeeeEEEErrrrrrd!
 

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Robert Downey Jr. as an insane drunk?
George and I once had a drunken argument about whether or not Sylvester Stallone was intelligent and sophisticated. I forget who argued what now, but I recall that we eventually came to agreement on the fact that Stallone was shiny. Anyway, he's making a film about Poe now. I'm not sure how that affects our argument.

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Stallone = shiny! You boys crack me up. But you're right. He *is* shiny.

Roald Dahl museum

A museum dedicated to the life and works of the beloved children's author is set to open in his hometown. Mostly, this article is an excuse for me to ask whether you've seen the trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That Depp is one fucked up bird. I love him. I took Kathryn's boys to see Star Wars on Sunday and two very depressing things happened. One, John Cusack appeared on a television monitor in the lobby and I spent about ten minutes trying to explain who he was and why he was so important to me when he'd never been in The Lord of the Rings, and two, there was this trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which the kids thought was great, but didn't seem to understand the sheer power and range of Depp's ability. I restrained myself and said with a chuckle, "Oompah-loompah." Then we watched the suck-assed-yet-ten-times-better-than-the-last-two movie.


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So writers are to blame?
Movie stars now come with personal screenwriters -- who can make up to $250,000 a week. Yeah, well, I still have my integrity. Only because no one will buy it.

When Will Ferrell was cast in Bewitched, he brought along Adam McKay, who has been writing funny bits with the actor since their Saturday Night Live days. Some of Adam Sandler's dialogue in The Longest Yard was rewritten by his longtime go-to scribe, Tim Herlihy. And filmmaker Sydney Pollack returned to Three Days of the Condor screenwriter David Rayfiel to polish the script for The Interpreter.

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty movie
SciFiWeekly reports it will star Owen Wilson. Full text below:

Wilson Is The New Mitty
Paramount has tapped Owen Wilson to star in its long-in-development The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, to be produced by the father-son team of Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and John Goldwyn, Variety reported.

Mark Waters (Mean Girls) will direct, from a script by Richard LaGravenese.

Mitty originated as a short story by James Thurber and was turned into a 1947 comedy starring Danny Kaye, produced by Samuel Goldwyn Sr. While the new film retains the concept of a man prone to vivid daydreams, the storyline has changed considerably. In this version, he falls for the daughter of a bank robber. In the '47 film, he was caught up with some crown jewels hidden since World War II, the trade paper reported.

Samuel Goldwyn Jr. has been trying for more than a decade to mount a new version. He had developed the project at New Line, then moved it to Paramount, when John Goldwyn was president of the studio, with Jim Carrey attached to star and Steven Spielberg directing.

At various points, other directors attached included Ron Howard and Chuck Russell. Drafts have been developed by writers such as Russell, Peter Tolan and the team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, the trade paper reported.

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Da Vinci Code film to alter storyline?
To please Christians? My favourite line:

"A lot of people are getting their view of Christianity and the Bible from the book," said Alex McFarland, a speaker and writer for Focus on the Family, an evangelical group.

Yeah, we wouldn't people to get their religion from a book.

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Poor Grendel has had an accident
I don't know about the casting of the new Beowulf movie....

Winstone ("Sexy Beast") has signed on to play the title character and will be joined by Glover as Grendel and Jolie as Grendel's mother. Rounding out the cast are Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Alison Lohman and Brendan Gleeson.

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I assume Hopkins will play Hrothgar. The rest can only be guessed at.

If it's more of an animated thing, I can see Crispin Glover providing Grendel's voice, but Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother????? Nope, can't see it.

I can see Angelina Jolie as... Never mind, you all don't want to know....

G

I'd like to see a big budget film with a large cast of characters, where every single one of the different characters, from starring roles to extras, are portrayed by the same actor.

I also look forward to the day when the public has matured to the point where it is acceptable for male and female actors to be cast in roles that are opposite to their gender.

I look forward to when our acting isn't farmed out to the poorest developing countries anymore, just so they can be paid slave wages.

Plain Jane

A little love for the ugly girls. What do you get when Hollywood tries to squeeze extra tits and lips into a role written for a plain lady? Hilarity! No, wait, something else. Um, sadness? Upset? Lack of authenticity? Ratings?

Can a beautiful female actor do justice to characters who aren't supposed to be beautiful? Can they really channel the power of the plain? In theory, a good actor can convince us of anything, can make us believe them dowdy or ordinary despite their facial geometry, and give us the interior life instead.
...
But in a world, as the man who narrates the trailers would say, where all the women are beautiful, the value of beauty can be strangely devalued. Many films are populated with stunners but the plot demands that nobody notice. How on the screen do you show a fierce spirit or a strong intellect?

In Hollywood, the best way to suggest a woman with an intellect is to cast an actor who doesn't have a deep suntan. Thus we get Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman, sad and ethereal, playing a parade of scholars and writers. Although Kidman hasn't played an Austen heroine, all three have squeezed into the bodices of masterpiece theatre and all have played dead, white, female writers.

True, Gwyneth got Sylvia, whose own physical attractiveness has informed her legend, all scarlet lips and aggressive pashing sessions with Ted Hughes. Kate Winslet channelled Iris Murdoch with a pageboy bob and a hammy collection of gestures to suggest the novelist/philosopher's intellect: Winslet threw her head back when she laughed, she rolled her eyes, she frowned prettily. Kidman was more restrained as the suicidal Virginia Woolf but couldn't project the writer's formidable presence - she could only strike a pose in a putty nose, doing sad very well but not brilliance, and certainly not Woolf's uneasy mixture of pride and insecurity.

(Ah, Kate Winslet... I'd be her fat, bumbling scholar any day.)


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I'd like to option the zeitgeist
When films resemble books. In development. By the same studio.

The novelist Michael Marshall Smith suggested it was the zeitgeist when asked about the similarities between his 1996 novel Spares and the new Hollywood film, The Island. Both tell the story of an escape from a farm where human clones are bred for body parts for transplants. In an e-mail to fans, Smith admits he is upset: the more so as his novel was in development at Steven Spielberg's production company DreamWorks, the outfit behind The Island.

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Perfume -- the movie
Patrick Suskind's classic is finally being adapted. But, like many writers, he wants nothing to do with the film (except for the money). The Times Online looks at why writers avoid Hollywood (but cash the cheques).

writers see their carefully-honed treasures head off to the film factory and wonder if they will come back stunted and deformed, faithfully replicated, or, worst of all, transformed into something so much better than the original book that no one remembers who wrote it in the first place.

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Umm... I just really thought this needed to be posted;
saw it today while reading Now Magazine's listings:

Monday, September 12
MICHAEL MADSEN Actor launches his new poetry book, 46 Down. 7 pm. Free. World's Biggest Bookstore, 20 Edward.

Then I thought, Is this really fucking true? And Google answered, Yeah, it is true: www.michaelmadsen.com

But I think the burning question on everyone's mind is when is Evie Christie's new poetry book going to be launched?

"Poetry book" & "burning question"?! That kind of sarcasm will get you your eyes poked out, Madsen.

PS I loved you in that movie where you were like the cool tough guy and...

Correction: Michael Madsen's new book is "The Complete Poetic Works of Michael Madsen." 46 Down is included in this book. He will be signing at The World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, Sept. 12.

Read the book or watch the movie?
Hmm....

We won't question a system that buys 10 times as many books as can ever be made into films, commissions five times as many scripts from those books as it can ever shoot, pushes them through rewrite after rewrite in an attempt to achieve the elusive balance of commercial elements, then inevitably picks the worst and makes a movie out of it. Those are all pathologies to be dealt with another time or, preferably, by someone else.

That's right, don't question. Take the money and pay off those student loans. Shhh....

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Damn right I'm going to take the money and pay off my student loans!

And what in the name of all that is blessed is wrong with that?

Granted I'm not selling a book; It's a screenplay. I *know* that should it go into production it will be warped and twisted and pulled. Some of the darkness will be wrung out, the truth will be bleached a bit and edges smoothed. But still. If I hadn't expected that, I would've made it a novel. HA!

Good article, but I wonder about this line:

"Literature -- even simple craftsmanship -- is a higher art than filmmaking."

Hmmmm??

"Literature -- even simple craftsmanship -- is a higher art than filmmaking."

What a load of toss. A writer is a sniper. A filmmaker is a general.

Uh, I'm gonna go get my bulletproof underwear now...

I thought writers were the deserters.

P

Rick Moody and the icing on the cake
Otherwise known as Hollywood.

I had my Hollywood moment. It's not that I would turn down an opportunity to be adapted (there are a couple of stories by me optioned at the moment), but I don't need it. It's just icing on the cake. As I said in 1997, movies are a particularly good billboard for a book. Movies need fiction and literature more than vice versa, because literature is where most of the genuine takes place. I don't want more fame, power, or influence. I sort of get uncomfortable with that kind of thing. I just want to be able to keep writing.

I've seen The Ice Storm but never read a Rick Moody book. Don't know what that means.

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Shocking news! Reader discretion advised!

Hollywood screen writing a bastion of white male dominance. World, also a bastion of white male dominance, makes Macaulay Culkin face from Home Alone.


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Edited by author 11-04-2005 12:03 PM
Agenda 1: Short experimental films by W. Burroughs

If you happen to be in New Orleans next Thursday, you might want to catch this.

"They're pretty experimental," Broussard said about Burroughs' films. In his novels, Burroughs used a cut-up writing technique where he would cut manuscripts into fragments, put them in a hat, draw them out at random and piece together a new narrative. "His film representations are related to his novels."

The Velcrow Ripper night showing Scared Sacred is sure to be interesting, as well.

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What did you guys think about the movie adaptation The Woman in White? The book by Wilkie Collins is incredible, and they made some dramatic changes to the overall feel for the movie...did you guys think it was better or worse?

Hot gay cowboy sex!
Well, that should get us more hits. Anyway, you can stop checking Google for those nude Heath Ledger pics that were leaked a while back. Brokeback Mountain is coming out and getting good reviews.

Sure, some women literally just like to watch guys get it on. But there’s a whole lot more who get off on watching a man cry—and not in that nasty Last Seduction way. For women Brokeback Mountain viewers, there’s sympathy, empathy, romance and—well, yes—just a teeny Myra Breckinridgian overtone of in-the-butt proto-feminist vengeance.

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Cannes opener

Further proof that the modern film festival has lost all relevance: Da Vinci Cash to open Cannes.


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