Re: re: filmed, splendor

I don't think I've ever agreed with Ralph Dumain here before, but on 
this I agree completely.

None of Delany's books and stories are high-concept enough for 
Hollywood. That is, there is no single plot you can summarize into 
one sentence, like "super-strong androids want to be human and must 
be stopped"--which gives you Blade Runner.

And yet I admit I would be intrigued by an anime version of The Star 
Pit, if it were done by the creators of Cowboy Bebop. And if David 
Cronenberg wanted to direct "Triton," I'd be intrigued, because his 
cinematic obsession with the problematic relationship between the 
body, bodily integrity, the self, gender, and how our mapping to the 
social roles we play is always imprecise, intersects nicely with the 
concerns of the book, and he would resist the temptation (and studio 
pressure) to turn Bron into a likable hero and give her a happy 
ending.

But more likely an option to film one of Delany's books would be 
picked up by a hack like Brett Ratner or Soderburgh, or someone 
totally unable to connect with the intricate and important ways that 
intelligence, talent, race, gender, class and sexuality play through 
all of Delany's novels (e.g., Spielberg or Carpenter). It is only by 
directly addressing that specificity that you can get to the 
universal.

Long before anyone even tries to make any film version of Delany, I 
suspect someone in Hollywood will discover Octavia Butler, and we'll 
see first "Fledgling", then the Parable Books (with some other title) 
and then Clay's Ark, and then the Lilith's Brood series, all much 
more translatable into Hollywood terms than anything in Delany's 
canon.


At 1:38 PM -0400 5/30/07, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>But Soderbergh's remake of "Solaris" was a piece of shit.
>
>The whole thrust of movie sci fi--which is all shit including The Matrix,
>is to produce multimillion dollar high tech special effects blockbusters
>with insipid content.  These people are not going to try to do justice to
>Delany even if they would touch him.  Maybe back in the more freewheeling
>'70s, but the big money boys are out to produce conformism, not the
>subversion of accepted ways of thought.
>
>But go on and enjoy your dream world.
>
>At 10:10 AM 5/30/2007 -0500, Jon Olsen wrote:
>>I don't know. I think many of the short stories could work as films.
>>I would also love to see Babel-17 or the Fall of the Towers  filmed.
>>As much as I'd like to resurrect Andrei Tarkovsky from the grave and
>>have him produce his own version of "Dhalgren" in Russian or
>>something... I'm sure it's not going to happen.
>>
>>Maybe we can get Soderbergh to do it. YEAH! Soderbergh has enough
>>clout to make an insane-o epic nonlinear masterpiece. He could get
>>some of the big stars he's always working with to be in it, too. I'd
>>pay cash money to see a three way bisexual lovefest in a burned out
>>scorpion nest between Matt Damon--I'm supposing in this scenario that
>>he plays Kidd, you know, just because they'd need a bankable name to
>>get producers to pony up for the flick--and two others. As I believe
>>the kids say these days, "Hawt".
>>
>>And yeah, I want _Splendor and Misery_ just as badly. You know, I
>>know there's perfectly valid reasons (like that stuff about the Thor
>>Power decision I remember reading one time) for why books don't get
>>finished and published.
>>
>>But let's just play with this for a moment: in a long long career of
>>writing challenging texts, looping difficult, complex texts and
>>intertexts and ouroboros texts, what if a writer wanted to create the
>>greatest metatext of all time? How might he do it? Couldn't he create
>>a wonderful work that has an almost cliffhanger ending, announce the
>>sequel, wait, publish a few supposed lines from the sequel in a
>>review somewhere, and wait ten more years, publish a *new, different
>>book* and go on with his life? Occasionally mention it in interviews
>>when asked. That sort of thing. Now we in the audience all have a
>>wonderful inventory: the most evocative title in ages, a deep
>>unsatisfied longing, a hint of what is there, and our speculations.
>>This book is already written in our minds, inasmuch as it is
>>*unwritten* in reality. If he passes before it's finished, I'm going
>>to just assume that's what he intended all along!
>>
>>Shouldn't we just mail him a check for $12.95 or something?
>
>
>
>== Posted to delany-list, hosted at yahoo groups ==
>== A mailing list for the discussion of the works of Samuel R. Delany. ==
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>



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