What BOOK would you choose to adapt into a movie?
February 19th 2007 23:20
The first question you’ve been handed by the phantom benefactor is to choose a book, or novel to adapt. They don’t want something entirely original, they want to use something previously published that already carries a little weight. You can even use a newspaper article, as long as it’s not from the National Enquirer or News of the World.
You need to have some kind of villain or menace (which can be played by one or more people), or at least a kind of corrupt and malevolent antagonist. There needs to be violence, not necessarily a lot, but there needs to be some shocking content, dark themes that permeate the movie heavily. Some sex and/or nudity is always good, although beware of anything too subversive or transgressive. Keep in mind the horror can be expressionistic, but the narrative can’t be too impenetrable or so arty and pretentious in its depictions that it alienates the audience.
The movie should be artistic, yet in ways still satisfy hardcore horror audience sensibilities. And it can’t be too long.
So what fiction or non-fiction publication would you choose to have adapted?
Frank is a methodical, superstitious and ritualistic young lad who constructs elaborate torture and killing devices designed for the insect and animal world. However he’s also murdered humans as well.
The story is narrated in the first person (Frank) and commands an extraordinary compelling and surreal insight into the mind and behaviour of this most disturbed mind. There is a macabre sense of humour and a fantastic use of imagery. The dénouement is one of modern literature’s more outrageous revelations.
I would have the movie directed by David Cronenberg, as he loves the visceral and body horror. He brings with him his own production crew, whom he has used on many of his films, however as cinematographer I would have Darius Khondji (Delicatessen, The City of the Lost Children, Seven, Alien Resurrection, The Ninth Gate) to fully capture the dark, earthy grime and ephemeral disease which exudes from the novel.
And I'd have Ian Banks pen the screenplay based on his novel. I reckon he'd do a very good job at capturing his own darkness and turning it into cinematic language.
* images on this page were taken from the following wikipedia pages:
Christian Bale and The Wasp Factory
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Comment by David
I'd definitely adapt Harold Schechter's 'HH Holmes.' (America's first 'known' serial killer)...
Firstly, the story is little known, which always adds to the audience's enjoyment.
He was America's first 'serial killer' but back then, they hadn't invented the term.
He was the biggest fraud, con-man, trickster and Scheister the country had ever known (and probably still ranks up with the best of them, which is saying something for America*).
Holmes (a pseudo Chemist by trade) built a three story guest house (horror house), above his Pharmacy. It was purposely designed to bump all of the guests off (and his various wives and children when he tired of them and wanted a new wife). The mansion was like a maze, and almost impossible to find one's way around in. It had various shutes leading from the rooms into the basement, where there was a crematorium, and doors that couldn't be opened from the inside Holmes could gas the guests to death. One of his wives? He sat listening to hear scream for her life for three hours, while he masturbated, and she finally died in a vault. The damage that women did to herself trying to get out? Holmes got off on it.
He never paid one tradesman who had any part in building his mansion, nor did he pay one goods supplier for any of the materials used (and this building took up a whole corner block). And Holmes got away with it (and was considered an upstanding gentelman by the local community). He was that good at deception. He would have made a great blogger ... *
And the lengths Holmes went to, to kill his 'business partner's' wife, and her three children (carting the three children all over America while he befriended their mother, and had one of his many wives in tow, keeping both women, unaware of the other's existence, and the mother unaware of the children's whereabouts), sent police and PIs on a wild goose chase all over the US States. The complexity of his movements in this single chapter of his life alone, would make most movie plots seem quite thin. I got headaches reading the chapters on his movements. And Schechter said he got headaches researching it, writing it, and re-reading what he had written.
Holmes defended himself at his own trial (long before Ted Bundy did).
He also wrote his (full of lies) autobiography from jail for the national newspapers (for quite a huge sum). And, changed his story quite a few times (about every few days) depending upon how his appeals were going. For he was eventually convicted. The guy was just outstanding. From memory I think we're talking late 1800s to early 1900s here.
Holmes did actually kill his 'business partner's' three children. And, the chapter about the mother finding out the news, having to identify their bodies (or what was left of them, which was very little), and then having to attend the trial and listen to all of his lies? It would have to the saddest chapter I've read in any book (which to me is testimony to Schechter's writing ability as much as it is to the events themselves). The mother had to identify one of her little girls just by a scrap of hair.
And hence, there's probably only one director who could do justice to a screenplay of this nature; one that puts the depravity and beauty of humanity on display in all of its excesses into one film: David Lynch. And I'd give him complete and absolute control over everything.
David ...
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
The character Luke Rheinhardt is a novelist, autobographer and psychiatrist who decides to live his life by the roll of a dice, making all decisions based on potential snake eyes.
#1 Cook Dinner
#2 Quit the job
#3 Rape the girl downstairs
#5 Rent a movie
#6 Kill my mother
A dark comedy horror about a society unwilling to take repsonability for its action. eager to follow The shrink soon becomes a cult leader with sex, violence and mayhem all around.
Director:
David Fincher or Christopher Nolan
Starring:
Aaron Eckhart as Dr Luke Rheinhardt
Catherine Keener as Arlene
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lillian
Rutger Hauer as Dr Mann
i secretly hope it doesnt get made because this is the only book I have ever wanted to adapt into a film and direct.
Comment by Cibbuano
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previous to this year, I really wanted to write an adaptation of Perfume.
There's a lot of Lovecraft that I think would transfer easily... there was a story about rats that freaked me out.
But my real pick would have to be Dead Babies by Martin Amis. It's a surreal, drug-fueled freak fest- they made it into a movie that I haven't seen, but it has several moments of disgust and terror that would be wonderful to see onscreen.
Director? I'd say David Fincher would capture the mood, but I'd like to see it in the hands of Edgar Wright.
Comment by dementia
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Comment by Brenton
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But maybe Killing Aurora.
It's about two girls, Aurora, internally destructive, dying of anorexia, and Web, externally destructive would be anarchist.
Director:
Jonas Åkerlund of Spun.
Starring:
Aurora and Web, young up and coming Aussie actreeses.
Budd Tingwell as the grandfather
Noah Taylor as Web's father
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I want to see them all!!!
David, that true crime sounds absolutely chilling!
JD, yeah, love that novel!!! Someone, somewhere has the rights.
Cibby, Martin Amis sure has a biting wit about him.
Dementia, haven't read that particular book of Poppy's, but other stuff of hers is great.
Brenton, I don't think I've heard of that book. But I like the title and premise.
Comment by Luke
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Comment by Lilla
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Better late than never huh?
...Bin buzy,,
Bin workin'...
Bin Tarot Card Readin’
~oOo~
Assuming you mean horror/Thriller-type film adaptations?
...my response was/is, two stories of no consequence, which I'm sure no one else has read (of course), one called, The Long Sleep and the other called Mindmix.
The Long Sleep
A guy wakes up in what looks like an old disused office block. He has no memory ... and explores (as is the human nature). He starts to pick up a thread of truth and this faceless man appears with a glove covered in hypodermic needles and pats him on the back. *oops*
The guy wakes up again and he is in a float tank, weightless. He exits the tank into a room like a clinic. There is a doctor there and a nurse. They grab him and tranquilise him.
The guy wakes up and the nurse is leaning over him, he notices a faint piece of dust? In her cleavage? She is beautiful and so familiar to him. The doctor appears and before he can ask questions, is tranquilised again.
The guy (and I can’t for the life of me remember his name, sorry)… anyway, he wakes in the middle of the night goes over to the window. He noticed the beautiful starry sky and a highway with traffic in the distance across a fast field of green grass.
He sits by the window for the longest of times and eventually it dawns on him that the stars are not moving across the sky and the ‘same’ cars keep going by on the highway?
He reaches out the window, only to touch a WALL? Onto which is projected the picture of the sky and road and field. He jumps into this “next Room,” into which the holograph was projected.
A couple appear, a father and his daughter. The father is carrying a hypodermic needle and sticks him. As he looses consciousness he notices that the two people are the same people who previously played the doctor and the nurse?
He awakes in a dungeon. The are torture devices all around and the head torturer is the guy who had previously been the Doctor and the father. There is a woman in a cell on the far side, it is the same woman? A whole chapter is dedicated to conversing with his captor and the girl - eventually killing the old guy - and rescuing the girl ... before the faceless hypodermic-glove guy knocks him out again!
He awakes back in the bedroom, only it is morning. The nurse is sitting beside him. He manages a short conversation and a few questions. She becomes agitated and leaves, He grabs her arm to insist she answer one last question, which she does and he notices the same dust as before, but this time also in her hair too.
This goes on, he awakes and falls back to sleep through many fascinating scenes, where the same old guy and young girl appear in different guises each time and each time he is sedated again, each time he gets closer to the truth. Overall, there is a feeling of progress to some awful truth and through the hero, we have surmised that we are inside a building that is shaped like an inverted pyramid?
He escapes the bedroom again to cross a holo-projected field to a small city street. He discovers it’s all projected with hologram machines, in yet another large hall. The holograph machines are masquerading as the traffic lights. In his anger and frustration he smashes one of the machines and under it, he finds an old piece of yellowing paper, folded in half. It must be about 50 years old. It crackles as he opens it and the edges crumble of. The message scrawled on it says;
‘Do not be afraid, you have passed this way before.’
The spooky thing is the writing is his own hand?
The faceless guy appears from behind him with the hypodermic glove and before he can say, “oh oh, tricked again,” he’s out cold.
The guy’s ambition becomes to escape through some grates in the basement. He gets a good way too, before this awful red weedy substance clogs everything nd blocks his way. Of course the faceless hypo guy zapps him again before he can continue.
Okay so far?
Well, eventually he gets closer to the girl, who he keeps 'pumping' for information? ... and eventually rescues her (talks her into joinging him on escaping this grand conspiracy he feels he is living in). She does everything humanly possible to dissuade him from his mission, but he is determined – more so – every time he wakes up into another scene where she is playing another role.
Eventually, he grabs the girl and a tank-type armoured vehicle he’s found in some armoury section of the building and busts out.
What does he discover?
I’ll tell you if you really want to know… just tell me…
~oOo~
Mindmix has a simpler premise, but is a great film to adapt to Horror/Thriller.
It is the future and a pandemic virus plague sweeps the earth. No antibodies, no cure, no way the scientists can stop its incredibly advance. Twenty years have passed and only a few thousand humans remain on the planets surface.
The virus? Insidious horrible symptoms of bloating, big weeping sores, then blood oozing from the outside of the skin, eyes bulging… all the lovely SFX a horror virus could muster, right? *cringe*
One guy, Harlan, is immune.
The ‘great minds’ of current society are all dying and with them the possibility to find a cure. So with what technological expertise they have left (or something… sorry, it’s been a while since I read this…) … they find a way to extract the memories of great minds and inject them into Harlan.
Harlan becomes that person for a period of time.
There are side effects and Harlan knows the danger. Although reluctant at first he eventually decides to become noble and help mankind. (swoon)… *lol* anyway, he is injected and sets about the task of a cure…
Of course there is still greed and avarice left and they ask more and more of him and he is injected with various “brains,” all so that posterity can be served…
The result to Harlan … he is starting to loose his identity, his thought patterns… his psyche…. His …. mind?
Caio,
Lilla …
Comment by PokerPro
Comment by Bryn
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Comment by Lilla
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I don't know, that's the kick in the guts. I sold the book to go overseas a hundred years ago and never saw it again? Maybe do some goggling or Amzonian. Biblioquest.com handles out of print books, maybe there. Please PM me if you strike gold, I would sooo love to read it all again...
Poker Pro, (and Bryn) it is up to you if I reveal the ending or not, please let me know Bryn if I have permission... don't want to spoil it, if you want to track doen and read this book first?
Lilla ...
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Anonymous
America and is brutal. It would have to be directed by Tarantino (although an untestedChuck Palahniuk might be interesting) and the score some modern anger / speed metal. No stand outs in the case, so I'd populate them with quirky, gritty, excellent actors like Joseph Gordon Levitt and Audrey Tautou. Cinematography is a nod to old school with Owen Roizman (The Exorcist). Costuming by Chung Man Yee from Curse of the Golden Flower.
- lilith
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile