4. EXT. TOP OF SOME BUILDING - NIGHT

At the edge of some building, overlooking Moviopolis, a SHADOWY FIGURE stands guard.  He SIGHS and turns away, thoughtful.

SHADOWY FIGURE
(sighs)
It's just no use.  They're trying to overwhelm me with this barrage of films.  I
can't possibly protect the public from them all.  But--!  If only one Pauly Shore
comedy or reissue of Bram Stoker's Dracula makes it past me--there could be
panic in the streets.  By Raimi's shaky-cam!  The responsibility upon me is
almost too much for one cloaked guy to bear.
YOUNGER MALE VOICE
(from O.S.)
Don't despair, Phantom Grimace!  You can't give up now!
A CAPED YOUNG MAN with an "F" ON HIS CHEST swings into view and drops down next to the SHADOWY FIGURE.
SHADOWY FIGURE
And who are you supposed to be?  Letter-Man?  Are you here to take the BL off
my "blame" and turn it into "fame"?

CAPED YOUNG MAN

No, P.G.  That's not it at all.  I'm Franchise Boy, and I can be your new
sidekick.  I can make duplicates of myself at will, though each iteration of
myself grows steadily weaker, more convoluted and in some cases, someone
else wears the costume.  You'll never be outnumbered again!

SHADOWY FIGURE
(to himself)

Hmmm.  Dare I endanger this child my enlisting him in my fight for truth,
justice and decent flicks?  What ever shall I do?

Last uploaded: November 20, 1998

Some Short Cuts

Hola, amigos!  It's Professor Widgett, still seeking tenure in sanity, back with some more brutal nonsense for your edification and erosion.  So have you seen that Star Wars trailer yet?  Man, it's cool.  I'll even forgive them for the cheesy name, it's so cool.  I hope somebody fixes Yoda, though.  Man, did the way he look remind you as much of Oscar the Grouch as it did me?  All he needs is Slimer crawling around on his staff and there you go.  Man, George, next thing you know we'll find out Gonzo is really Luke's father.  Wow.

And speaking of franchises, am I the only one who finds it really amusing to see Warner Brothers and Sony and others desperately trying to restart or create new franchises whereas New Line's got Blade, Austin Powers and Adam Sandler (who's a franchise in himself, come on, you know it) among others?  I think it's funny as hell.  These are the people who brought you Freddy Krueger.  Man, I love it.

Oh, and by the way, in reference to our last episode, I need to plug a quick thank you in here to the venerable Prof. Ursula Doyle, who is responsible for introducing me to Beloved and many other fine pieces of literature.  I have no idea where she is but she was the best English professor I ever had.  So thanks!

So anyway, with the short cuts done I guess we'll just chase right to the cut and get on with the business at hand:

Authors and Novels and Movies, Oh My!

My coconspirator Mike Langford's recent attempt to clue Ray Bradbury into how the adaptation of his own novel was going got me thinking.  We always complain about movies and how they ruin the books that they're based on.  It's very hard to bring to the screen a faithful adaptation that pleases the readers.  Starship Troopers drew the ire of many a Heinlein reader because they focused on shoot em up when the book was more about the military life.  We won't even mention about those magnificent plasma-farting bugs, will we?  The Lawnmower Man was, well, admitted to be an amalgam of Stephen King's original short story and another script they had lying around.  So we went from mowing a backyard to reducing a guy to spinning marbles.  Sure it was neat, but it was a bit of a departure, to say the least.

But King himself put it best when he was asked how he felt about the screen treatment of his books.  I can't remember exactly who he quoted, please forgive me (I want to say Bloch or Straub but I think I'm wrong), but when this other person was asked about he felt about Hollywood ruining his books, the author pointed to his bookshelf and said: They're not ruined.  They're right up there.  They're fine.  And it's true.  Not that many members of the general populace would know a book if they tripped over one these days, but still--they're there.  And the movies will never be able to match what we envision in our pointed little heads.  That's a given.

But all seriousness aside: what do the authors think about all this?  Let's look at the fiasco regarding Interview With the Vampire for a second, because that one really messed with my head back when it was exploding.  Tom Cruise is cast as the vampire Lestat, right?  Anne Rice comes out and begins to riot about what a poor choice it was, and how they were all buffoons and the like.  Now I found this amusing, then annoying.  If Rice wanted to have a say in who was cast, why didn't she work that into her contract?  Look at Dr. Seuss' widow.  The studio wants Jim Carrey as the Grinch, but they've got to run it by her first.  I mean--how cool is that?  She can say, "He doesn't look good in greenface" and boom, they can't do it.  Instead, in this case, Rice goes ballistic and many of her fans follow suit.  The end result--once she saw the film, she recanted and said, "Sorry."  How twisted is that?  I mean, love your work, sure, I know I want to protect my fiction as well.  But go apeshit and campaign against the film when you don't like the casting choices?  How insane is that?

King at least has the right idea.  What he finds sacred, he doesn't sell the film rights to.  Take The Dark Tower series, for instance.  Every other piece of published fiction King has written (true last time I checked except for an epistolary story, "Jerusalem's Lot," though I'm sure by now someone has nabbed it) has the film rights sold, except for that series.  Why?  He doesn't want anyone to mess with it.  And what's screwed up, he fixes.  He sued to have the "Stephen King's" removed from the titles of the Lawnmower Man franchise since, as stated above, I think maybe a total of 45 seconds of the two movies combined were out of the story.  (Widge's side comment: Am I the only one who heard the word that Grant Morrison had written Lawnmower Man 3?  I want a copy of that script, by God!)  He also quit selling sequel rights (a standard part of any contract) to his works once it was apparent that Children of the Corn XVI: The Musical (tagline: "Sickles, Scythes and Song!") was only a matter of time in coming.  That only makes sense.  Which is good since Stand By Me 2 and Another Shawshank Redemption would have come out this year, I'm sure.  And dammit, quit your groaning, we've been over this: it's Hollywood we're talking about here!  Casablanca 2 is in the works, so nothing is sacred!

And poor Bradbury.  If you haven't gotten the skinnee on that little monstrosity, check out the Fahrenheit 451 page to get up to speed.  After the butchering and failure of the initial run of Something Wicked This Way Comes, the studio in question enlisted Ray and were able to salvage the film.  I would love to see the original version of that, just so I could compare for myself.  And now we've got the same thing happening with Mel Gibson's version of the film.  Uncle Ray just wants to help "fix" the movie version, so that the studio doesn't release it as it stands and then stand around scratching their heads when it flops then decide "THE SCIENCE FICTION GENRE IS DEAD."

So what does this all mean, now that we've come to the point of the ordeal where I try to make sense out of the last 1000+ words?  Well, I think Ray's got the right idea in that, "Hey, I'm here when you want to talk."  Granted, it'll probably turn out to be like the last time and instead be "Hey, I'm here when your first test screening goes straight into the toilet and you need someone to bail your ass out."  When you have authors heavily involved in the movie-making process, they can be great (Blatty's Exorcist III) or they can suck boulders (King's Minimum Underdrive).  Or even when they're just there to assist (Miller's The Crucible), it can be a wonderful thing.  Wouldn't it be neat to see a world in which studios employed them as advisors, not to completely dominate and supersede the director's vision, but to make sure it doesn't spawn damned things (Fahrenheit 451 action figures spring to mind, God help us all--"Guy Montag with Flamethrower, sidekick Dalmatian and KUNG-FU ACTION GRIP!!!!!")?  Sigh.  Maybe I am a utopian optimistic bastard underneath all this cynical pessimistic bastard front.

Then again...probably not.


Widgett is a figment of humanity's collective imagination given flesh, operating from a secret underwater fortress in an undisclosed location off the coast of Iowa .  He is the founder of The Sleep Deprivation Institute and an active member of the Secret Society of Guerilla Ontologists.  When he's not championing independent films or complaining, he spends his dwindling free time writing short fiction, poetry, novels, essays, screenplays and children's books under a pseudonym.  He also does weddings and bar mitzvahs.  His rates are quite reasonable, as he can normally be found wandering the halls of Corona HQ with a sign around his neck that says, "Will Write For Food."

Previous issues of Widgett's column are also available.