Skip to main content

JUST STOP IT ALREADY: FILMING THE UNFILMABLE



So, this is happening. In spite of the fine cast featuring every Irish actor ever, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a metafictional novel about an author's characters coming to life and interacting with the real world is unlikely to make a good movie.

Why do filmmakers have such a compulsion to film unfilmable books? Why don't they pick on unfilmable plays, or comics or paintings for a change? Does the novel still have such a high place in our culture that movie makers have to try it "because it's there" like Mount Everest? 

TOP SIGNS THAT A BOOK IS PROBABLY UNFILMABLE

1. It is just a series of events or arresting images without much of a narrative through-line (Orlando, Naked Lunch, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Catch-22). Plotless movies can work, but the director has to set the rhythm to keep them from becoming either dull or frenzied, hard to do with someone else's material.

2. It's mostly about the author's style or avant-garde techniques (Bonfire of the Vanities, Tropic of Cancer, Crash, Ragtime). There's no way the director can capture that in a different medium.

3. Most of the action happens inside the characters' heads (Housekeeping, anything based on the work of Henry James). If you are not making a film noir, narration has to be used very sparingly, or it becomes an audiobook with pictures.

4. Magical realism. (Mermaids, Household Saints, anything based on the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez). In books, the reader has the choice to believe it really happened, it's just a legend/folklore, or somewhere in between. There's no way to convey this in a movie.


So, Brendon Gleeson, I'm sorry, but I must put a curse on you. And if anyone tries to make a movie out of the following books, I will find some way to punish you:  Call It Sleep, Libra, Pale Fire, Loving, Two Girls Fat and Thin.



What's on your unfilmable list?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TOP TEN LIPSYNCH FOR YOUR LIFE SONGS FOR A DRAG KING EQUIVALENT OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

 The Advocate has suggested that the greatest (i.e. only good) reality show ever, Rupaul's Drag Race , have a drag king contestant.  That's fine, but it would be much more entertaining to have a whole drag king competition. One of the best parts of Drag Race is seeing all the different types of queens compete: beauty queens, funny queens, conceptual queens, androgynous queens, scary queens, singing and dancing queens.  I want to see punk kings, gangsta rap kings, cock-rocking metal kings, panty-dropping R & B kings, country kings, baggy-pants burlesque comic kings, and of course, Elvis. I picked out some songs that make me think of different aspects of masculinity:  swaggering men, heartbroken men, lustful men, romantic men, philosophical men, and suicidally depressed men (interesting fact: I can think of dozens of songs by men about suicide, but only one female one: "Gloomy Sunday". What's up with that?) "That's Life" - Frank Sinatra

Things I Learned in 2020

Well, this has been quite a year, yessiree bob. But I’m being thankful right now of what I have and how my powers of Super-Introversion were activated by the current crisis as a laser-focus on learning stuff. Not that there weren’t many long hours of being too tired and paralyzed to move from the couch to the bed and vice-versa. And dusting and many other cleaning activities that didn’t aid in bodily sanitation were left by the wayside. Anyway, I hope that you too can make a list of things that you learned other than the details of the Electoral College.  How to make quick pasta sauce with canned tomatoes How to make instant oatmeal How to make creamed spinach Basic ASL Basic Inkscape Video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/Webex/Meet/Jitsi How to make ink-jet Shrinky Dinks Basic screencasting with Screen-Cast-O-Matic and Camtasia Online training creation with Niche Academy Online playlist transfer with Soundiiz Mask making Cuttlebone casting Intermediate Tinkercad Slide digitization Basic

WOMEN IN, ON AND AROUND FILM

Over at the Bitch Blog , they were talking about female movie directors, so I had to make sure psychotronic faves like Stephanie Rothman and Doris Wishman were given their due. I hadn't known that one of my favorite female badasses, the Kill-Bill -influencing Dag from Bury Me An Angel (introduced to me by Dr. S ), was also a woman director's creation (should've known). Then I put in a word for the woman who started me on my movie-obsessed path, the fabulous Pauline Kael . She taught me to own my loves and hates and call 'em as I see 'em. Maybe some people wouldn't consider her a feminist icon because she didn't always like the "right" movies, but read her review of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for some keen feminist insight. She totally terrified those guys in the movie boys' club. I mean, George Lucas named the villain in Willow after her! Here's Kael on the New Testament: Pasolini's The Gospel According To St. Mathew