Or scat porn.
[sub]Where, where, where do these things come from? My brain needs a traceroute function.[/sub]
I’ve always wanted to write a movie script based off the “How To Be An Evil Overlord” list, with Ryan Stiles as the Evil Overlord. It would follow the format of a “How-to” infomercial, but showing the hero trying to, say, sneak through an air conditioning duct that’s too small, or attempting to press the self-destruct button on the Doomsday Device, only to find that there isn’t one…
I’ve always thought that All Quiet on the Western Front could do well as anime.
Or a (live action) version of The White Mountains, or it’s sequels, that actually followed Christopher’s books. And I’d HAVE to get Wayne Barlowe to do the visual design.
I’m thinking of a Clockpunk/Steampunk remake of The Longest Day. With things like Dragon-rider cavalry coming ashore at Chesapeake Bay, Royal Marine gunships modeled after the classic, if somewhat cliched “flying barque slung under a gas bag” design, elves with muskets, and all that. A little weird, to be sure, but I think it could work with a little effort. Wes Studi would have to be signed for a cameo. Along with any number of fantasy authors.
A little book called Storming Intrepid might have made a good movie (if done well) about 10 years ago, but with the fall of the Soviet Union, anyone trying to adapt it to modern times would probably screw it up and have either an evil corporation or some hopelessly incompetent third world country be the adversary, or some such.
That’s all I can think of for now, hopefully more to follow.
Ooh, I’d also like to do a movie based on The Hammer of God and actually give the “Asteroid about to strike Earth” motif a little bit of respect (fuckin’ Armaggeddon…)
The First Man of Rome by Colleen McCullough. Not a movie, but an epic miniseries, to be followed in subsequent years, with the rest of the books
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, with Alex Kingston as Claire, to be followed etc etc.
And please, please, please, someone remake Mists of Avalon and wipe that godawful abortion on TBS from my memory.
Why oh why do execs try to squeeze a full, rich, sweeping epic into four hours? You cannot help but butcher it.
That’s my big pet peeve about mini-series based on a book. Unless it’s at least six hours, you ain’t gonna do it justice, so don’t even try.
My movie, which is based on reality, and not far removed from the truth at all, is set in Mexico in the seventies.
Mexico City, one of the biggest cities in the world, dumps all of its trash in one place, and thousands of poor families make a living digging salvageable junk out of the dump. They develop a fun subculture with a lot of drugs and free love and casual sex (90 % of a movie right there, if you ask me), but they’re still trash-pickers in a third-world country.
But then a charismatic leader, played by either John Cusack, Ed Norton or me, comes along and organizes them. He turns the trash-pickers into a major political force and becomes an extremely wealthy and powerful man with a lot of “wives.” The audience learns a lot of valuable lessons about how the little people can totally take over if they organize, and there’s a lot of fucking, hopefully involving Jamie-Lynn Sigler if I have the budget.
Then the Cacique, as they call him, gets murdered and the city starts dumping its trash more efficiently in a lot of different places. Ronald Reagan gets elected, everything turns to shit, and all the “wives” end up suing each other for their share of the trash-picking millions.
This all more or less really happened, except I’m not sure if the real life Cacique was as good-looking as me, Ed Norton or John Cusack. If I could only get this movie made, I would certainly use the profits to bring my second choice, “The Stars My Destination,” to the big screen.
I have a couple:
I would like to do a movie version of The Turner Diaries.
In my film, like the book, the government would be a tyrannical, gun grabbing, “Big Brother” type. The revolutionaries would be, like in the book, racists, anti-semites. However, in my movie the revolutionaries would not be viewed as good guys. The audience would be torn as to who to root for: The dictatorship or the jerks trying to overthrow it.
I would also like to write a script about police detectives who are investigating a series of bank robberies that occure with their medium sized city.
About 10 robberies take place within a very short period of time, and the robbers are always gone when the police arrive. some plot drama includes politics inside the department, and bank employees who are pissed at being investigated as “inside job” suspects. A power struggle also begins between the local cops and the FBI, who chastise them for slow response time, etc.
After about a week, the robberies stop…cold. After 12 million is stolen. Years go by, and the case is never solved.
The film ends with a shot of the police officers, now all retired, sitting around discussing how they’re going to spend the money without drawing attention to themselves. It was the local cops committing the robberies.
My wife loves the idea of Outlander… she’s read the first two books of the series and thinks Alex Kingston (British woman on “E.R.”) is a great choice. I read an Outlander-based short story by Gabaldon called (I think) “Surgical Steel” and also think it’s a good choice.
And yeah, Mists of Avalon is begging to be done well. I watched the TBS version in growing horror, as by the end of it they completely ruined the story and ignored any of the emotional center of the book. While Julianna Margulies and Angelica Huston were ideal for their roles, the script needed some serious work. And get a better Arthur!
One of the (many) movies I’ve dreamt of making is a really good Arthurian film. There has not yet been one made that meets my expectations. A good version of Mists would be a great idea, but my personal fantasy is to write and possibly direct a version of the Arthurian myth that tells the story of Arthur as a boy, and the way the world is changing around him as he grows, ending with him drawing the sword from the stone and gaining the kingship. Sort of a film version of T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone (first book of The Once and Future King), but more historically accurate and in-line with 5th Century British history. If given the option, I’d love to continue the saga as well, but doing that first film, about Arthur’s boyhood, is my true fantasy.
Another film/miniseries/film series I’ve longed to make is an adaptation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, which I think would make a compelling story in a visual medium. I’ve actually started writing scripts for each of the five books, but it’s a daunting task.
Someone mentioned Lovecraft… I’ve also often thought that At the Mountains of Madness would be a great film, if done well. The problem with most Lovecraft movies is that they’re made stupidly or badly. Staying true to the story could actually produce a good film. I’ve had several ideas of how to make a script for At the Mountains of Madness work.
I’ve actually started work on a script for “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” also by Lovecraft. Again, done well, that could be an excellent film.
I’ve long thought that Stephen King’s Rose Madder would be a great film, and I’ve 20 pages of a first draft screenplay written which (to me) prove the point. With only a few minor changes to the story, it could be one of the best King films ever, I think. Though I have to admit, gems like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me would be very hard to top. Blair Brown would be the ideal Rose; if you’ve heard her reading of the book on tape you know why. Besides which, I’d love to see Blair Brown in a movie again. 
I actually had about 50 pages done of a script version of Neil Gaiman’s original Books of Magic graphic novel complete before I learned (from Gaiman himself, no less) that there is already a script complete and Warner Brothers has purchased the rights for it (same house that made Harry Potter, interestingly). Another film I’ve dreamt of making ever since I read the story, but it’s already being done. Ah well.
I’ve a couple original ideas too (as in, not adaptations), but those aren’t nearly as well-developed.
I’ve seen only one good adaptation of Poe to film.
A Cask Of Amontillado It co-starred Renee Auborjonuuowu(Odo from DS9). The acting, costumes, and sets were of high quality. But the reason it was so well done is that they didn’t try to expand the story. The film ran under 30 minutes. Every other filming of Poe adds events and characters to get an hour or longer film. I like The Pit And The Pendulum with Vincent Price (quiet, loving man goes insane-without maniacal laughter, wild gestures, screaming, or scenery chewing). But the story it tells isn’t Poe’s. A good Poe film would feature several stories, possibly with a frame sequence involving Poe. The stories would be unembellished and not stretched for time.
Moby Dick I love this book. But, it’s difficult to film. A great deal of the book deals with psychological events. Is Ahab mad? if so, how and why? Why does the crew follow him? What is the nature of Ahab and Fedallah’s relationship? Of the many theories of what Moby Dick is, which if any is correct? Etc… TNT did a miniseries which was much clloser to the book and touched on these issues. But, I want more.
Thermonuclear Sex Bomb[sub]Yeah, yeah Band Name[/sub] This film would star-
Shakira
Tyra Banks
Rose McGowan
Grace Jones
Salma Hyek
Marina Sirtis
Vanessa Williams
And as the Elves
Kylie Minogue and Bjork
There would be no plot or characters. Just hour after hour of Sapphic love.
Cool! I’d love to see a really good Arthurian movie – whether fifth-century-accurate or not. Actually, I think a film version of The Once and Future King would be really cool, too, although it’s long enough that it might have to be two parts to do it justice.
The film project I dream about, though, is to do all eight of Shakespeare’s history plays – Richard II through Richard III – as a coherent sequence (I know Shakespeare didn’t write them that way, but bear with me). I salivate just thinking about that. “Sad stories of the death of kings…”
Doc Cathode – You’ve seen the TNT series, but did you see the 1950s movie? Script by Ray Bradbury and John Huston, who also directed(!!). If you ca’t get a good movie out of them, who can you get a good one out of?
I agree with getting a true version of Once and Future King. The movies Camelot and Sword in the Stone don’t count. Bt I agree that it would have to be multi-part movie of miniseries. But **The Lord of he Rings[/] is proving that you can finally get away with multi-part fantasy.