[blast from the past] I remember when they where talking of making Stranger in a Strange Land in the 70s, the talk was always of casting David Bowie as Valentin Michael Smith. I think a similar looking actor might be the ideal choice[/bftp]
Ooh! I just re-read TMIAHM, and I spent the whole damn adapting it into a movie in my head.
To me, the perfect Manny would be Benjamin Bratt. He’s a bit older than the book Manny, but I don’t see that as much of a problem. He’s the right racial type. He’s thin and lithe. And I just like him.
Wyoh spent most of the book (IIRC) made up as an “Afro.” So, cast a black woman. She can easily be made "white’ for the beginning part. I like Stacey Dash for the role. She’s not tall, but no matter. She, like Wyoh, is kind of ageless. You can’t tell how old she is by her looks.
I love the idea of Alec Baldwin as Adam Selene. I’d rather leave Mike as just a voice, but if it seemed necessary to give him a face…Jake Gyllenhall. He’s boyish enough to play the “childish” Mike, but will also be believable as the strategically savvy Mike.
Professor De La Paz–Linda Hunt. Is there any reason the Prof can’t be a woman? (Maybe there is–I don’t remember.) I think she’d be perfect. She positively crackles with a sharp intelligence.
As you can see, my cast consists of not-unknown, but not exactly household name actors.
I remember hearing that Nicholas Roeg started out with the intent to make Stranger in a Strange Land with David Bowie, but couldn’t secure the rights, so he went with Walter Tevis instead and made The Man Who Fell To Earth, which has some similar themes.
A couple of suggestions for Manny out of left field: John C. Reilly, and Will Ferrel.
Tom Hanks actually owned the rights to Stranger in a Strange Land for quite a while, and was trying to get it made. A younger Tom Hanks could have been a pretty good V.M. Smith. But he’s too old now, and I’m pretty sure the property is now in someone else’s control.
Another movie that would make a great Pixar animation would be “Have Space Suit - Will Travel”. I’d love to see a good Pixar ‘mother thing’ and a Wormface. And you could really get across the wonder of a kid from a small town travelling across the galaxy. It’s even got a plucky child in it for the kids. It’d be a great family movie.
Another one would be “Starman Jones”.
It’s not bad if you blow off one premise: the main character was a math wiz and became an astrogator because starships were piloted by people doing integral calculus in their heads because computers were too slow to do the math. OTOH, the book is a nice Hero’s Journey: the kid starts out as a bumpkin, ends up as a ship’s Captain through luck (good & bad) and talent.
I think you’re right about Have Spacesuit, it could be a pretty good rendered/3d creation for kids/family. Actually, thinking about the Trial at the end makes me picture a Jimmy Neutron-type show. 
He is too old for V.M. Smith, but he would make one hell of a Ben Caxton !
Put the crack pipe down, Sam.
Hmmm. the mindset of people raised in the 50/60/70s and the people raised in the 80/90 are entirely different when it comes down to it. How many people remember seeing that ‘countdown clock’ in school that somehow changed to reflect how close we were to an actual shooting war? It came from some scientific magazine from what I can really remember.
I was raised not just with school prayer, but the pledge of allegiance said every day.
We had civil defense alarm practice, just like fire alarm practice.
No matter what the SovBloc did, we had to outdo them, or stay ahead of them - be it biology, space, medicine, sports, military size… and there was damned little keeping them from ‘pressing the button’ to launch 1000 ICBMs with nuclear bombs other than Our Might
We barely acknowledged communist countries had an individual society, they were always portrayed as the Red Menace, large blocks of soldiers and weapons on May Day parade, or the Yellow Menace - hordes of little mao-book carrying drones with weapons or the 3d world menace - various identical lazy hispanics that would sell their country off to the highest bidder [us or USSR]. To be blunt about it, I have no idea if [frex] Till Lindemann, singer for Rammstein and more or less comtemporary to myself who was raised in East Germany even had a TV and saturday morning cartoons in say 1970 [i am pretty sure I was watching Scooby-doo in 1970=)] or his family went to church on sunday and had brunch with pancakes and eggs and bacon afterwards…
Later in the 80s we more or less started seeing them as individuals, not a faceless mass. We started actively trading with them, and ended up with the dissolution of the USSR as I grew up with it.
If you read Heinlein, many of his stories are vehemently american [as many of them were published in Boy’s Life and similar magazines for the american market.] It isnt that frex Moon is pro american, per se…but it is overwhelmingly patriotic. A small group of people holding out against a fairly communistic earth…a cautionary tale of what might be if the world became so unified and stringent. Face it, the moon was being used as a Botany Bay - a large prison system that was milked for money and resources. If you stop and think about how we percieved soviet era sattelite countries like Latvia or Poland, the USSR was essentially using the products of the more industrial countries to support the agricultural areas, and the ag products got taken and shipped to the urban areas, and everybody had quotas to meet. Just like in Moon.
see, that would be screwing with the book…so what if we know now there are no swamps on venus? it is in the blasted book that there are swamps on venus. make the movie follow the damned boko or you might as well let verhoeven have at it as well.
aruvqan, I’m followin you on some of this, but it really hasn’t been that long for some of the things you’re discussing.
I’d guess quite a few. You’re referring to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock. It’s still around, and was set to seven minutes to midnight as recently as 2002.
You do know that kids still recite the pledge…right?
Strangely enough, that was exactly the thought I’d had when I read that.
At least I didn’t say Danny DeVito.
That’s my favorite one by Heinlein. But whoa, there’s some stuff in that that would really freak out middle America. Nevertheless, I bet it would a lot of fun writing a screenplay for TEFL. It’s a story that would easily allow liberties to be taken. Although taking out most of the freaky parts would probably do more harm than good.
Looks like Another Heinlein movie on the way:
Very cool.
Hopefully it goes into production soon and will be given a budget and a good cast.
I’ll have to reread it soon. Good thing I’ve kept every Heinlein book.
Hell, a lot of that stuff freaked me out, as well. But taking it out would destroy the heart of the book, as the same stuff that freaks out the reader freaks out Lazarus, too – at first.
How about Christopher Plummer as Professor De La Paz? Not quite the right ethnicity, but he could probably pull the role off in his sleep.
The problem with Plummer seems to be that he’s always sleeping through his roles.
What is De La Paz’s ethnicity, anyway? I don’t remember.
And I ain’t too proud to beg–did anybody have any thoughts on my casting choices upthread?
Unspecified South American. He mentions being in Lima when he was arrested, IIRC.