3x3: books that should be movies

[Djscman]

@Slumberland

Oh yeah also majorly bummed that the Coen Bros. apparently let go of their intentions to adapt Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union. That would have been something.

Yeah, that would have been really interesting. I would love to see the Coens do something with science fiction, and if they don’t do anything with lasers or spaceships, an alternate universe would be cool too. I wonder if the budget for building a Jewish Sitka would be prohibitively high? Or could they just shoot in any snowbound city, superimpose a model of the Safety Pin/World’s Fair monument, and say this city was built by WWII refugees? Maybe Rudin (who secured the rights when Chabon’s book was a page-and-a-half proposal) should look into animation to bring the story to life.

@triggercut

Ok, here’s one I almost submitted but chickened out on at the last minute.

I recently saw 12 Years A Slave. I think my reaction to it was similar to the one you guys had on the podcast–to the extent the movie wants to show me things and teach me things, it’s teaching me things that I already know. Thus, while I enjoyed many of the supporting performances, I thought the message of the movie–“Slavery is bad” was kind of facile.

That’s an interesting post, trigger. I’ve put David Walker’s Appeal on my reading list. It’s only 90 pages so it should go quickly. I’d also recommend to you the original Twelve Years a Slave account, found on various public domain sites, if you haven’t already read it. It tones down the sexual violence with a blanket of darkly hinted innuendo and provides more detail as to the legal mechanics of slavery. Anyway, it taught me things I didn’t “already know” about slavery, and Solomon Northup’s ordeal comes clear across as the terrifying unfair nightmare it was. I liked the movie but slightly preferred the book.

My 3 picks:
3. OK, I’ve beat the drum for this one in several previous posts, but I really liked Strange Angel, a biography of John Whiteside Parsons. Jack Parsons was a kid who grew up in luxury until the Great Depression bankrupted his family. He had a knack for chemistry, or at least for blowing stuff up. He never had formal college education but was allowed to conduct experiments at CalTech. He began experimenting in rocketry in the days before WWII. His greatest triumph was inventing a kind of underslung wing rocket that would boost planes to better take off from aircraft carriers. He and his buddies founded Jet Propulsion Labs. Yeah, that JPL. Also, he was fascinated with science fiction back when it was in its Golden Age. He rubbed elbows with a number of SF luminaries and was such a big fan that versions of him were written into stories by his writer friends. Also, he was a magician. Not in the pull-a-rabbit-from-a-hat but the weirder, quasi-religious kind. He joined one of the cults set up by Aleister Crowley, the “wickedest man in the world.” He was as fascinated by spells as his scientific work. At one point, he and L. Ron Hubbard (yeah, that L. Ron Hubbard) conjured up a fiery redhead for conjugal purposes, then L. Ron wound up stealing his girlfriend and life savings. Jack wound up working several odd jobs, including creating pyrotechnics for the film industry. It was probably this work that killed him when a massive explosion ripped through the garage in which he was working. He had an interesting life, and I think a movie version of this biography would be an interesting look at both mid-century California and the Dark Arts and Sciences. The high concept pitch would be something like “think The Master crossed with The Right Stuff, with some fucked up Kenneth Anger art-housey bullshit.” Middling high critical review aggregate but low box office.

2. Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Universal Studios has the rights to this story, but who knows if they’ll ever move on it. It’s a revenge story set in the future, in a world where the hot new thing is teleportation for the masses. A brute of an astronaut is nearly killed in space by a mystery spaceship. This guy could barely put four words together but he figures out how to save himself. Mr. Hyde figures out how to become Dr. Jekyll, then becomes the Count of Monte Cristo to get his vengeance. There’s violence and rough romance and a MacGuffin and interesting ideas and explosions in space. Potentially high box office and critical reception.

3. Minister Faust’s (if that is his real name) novel The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad. As Miramon accurately wrote about the book when it came out ten years ago:

@Miramon

The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust is a pretty good novel in a sort of comic-book way. Modern fantasy with an African-Canadian genre-fanboy spin, if that makes any sense…

The characterization of the villains is rather interesting; they are all pretty well humanized except perhaps the worst of them. I wonder if there is an intentional differentiation between “evil” and mere “badness.” In some sense, all the villains deserve to die for their sins (they are all members of an amazingly reprehensible and vile conspiracy which includes casual murder as a mere element of the plan.) If you killed one of them in a violent confrontation, you wouldn’t shed a tear, but most of them have some redeeming feature that might suggest if not the potential for rehabilitation, at least some sort of moral counterweight to their villainy. In fact, the apparently most monstrous of them all (who turns out to really be second worst) seems to be able to love honestly and completely, which is rare in any villain. On the other hand, the vilest of the villains seems to have absolutely no human qualities, and in some sense really is evil in a spiritual or preternatural way.

Additionally, the two eponymous protagonists are appealing, friendly, easy to root for, fresh and underrepresented. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with a Canadian of African descent as the main character. There’s fun riffing on pop culture, there’s weird fantasy in an urban setting that doesn’t involve Kate Beckinsale or Milla Jovovich…I think it would make a great movie! Box office would be worse than Constantine, though; it’s a movie set in Canada and a majority of the cast are minorities, and there wouldn’t be the angry DC Comics nerd audience seeing it to complain at how poorly cast Keanu Reeves was. It’s set ten years before the book came out, which was ten years ago. Well, it’s the box office’s loss for overlooking it.

Runners Up: I used to really want to see Neal Stephenson’s first novel The Big U turned into a movie. It’s rough and dated, but I thought the characters were great and the setting was incredible. A college gradually descends into literal chaos and barbarism. Then I realized that happens on Community a few times every season. Four meowmeowbeanz.

There hasn’t been any adaptations of Rafael Sabatini’s works (Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Scaramouche, etc.) in a while. I’d kind of like to see a new Scaramouche, another revenge story filled with orations, greasepaint, genealogy, and fencing against the backdrop of the French Revolution. If Hollywood really wanted to go crazy they could update it to a modern setting, maybe with the cast of This Is the End recast as the different commedia dell’arte players in the second third of the story. Danny McBride as Pantaloon? The housing bubble replacing the French Revolution? Maybe not. Anyway, it’s a cool story, and there’s more to it than some guy being asked to do the fandango.