I haven’t read his autobiography since I was about eight years old. IIRC, he was in the infantry or cavalry and decided he didn’t like the mud. I ran into… Who? The top ace at the time. He got into flight school after that. I think what intrigues me is that in WWI there was still a sense of “honour and fairplay”. WWI seems to me to have been somewhat of an “accident”; that is, nobody really wanted it but it happened. And when it did, everyone thought it would be over quickly. There were no Nazis bent on World Domination. I think a film focusing on the life of Richtofen would be a good lesson about how we shouldn’t be too eager to go to war. (Something certain modern Americans should take note of.) It could get away from the “Germans Are Always The Bad Guy” stereotype. (Not that I think that the Germans were Good in either war; just that I think the situation in WWI is a little more complex than in WWII.)
Besides… The planes! It would be beautiful!
DreadCthulhu: It’s the visuals that get me. I loved the look of The Thing. The lost city would be great on film, and the creepiness of exploring it would be thrilling. I haven’t read the story in yonks. I’ll have to read it again once I get my books unpacked.
I liked the Puddy suggestion (“Uh…gotta support the team”), but if this Lyndhurst guy can act, I’d give it to him. I googled him and the first picture I got just LOOKED like Carrot the way I’ve always pictured him. Go Here
Oh, I agree that the planes would be beautiful, JLA. If it was halfway decent, I’d go see it just for that. And a WWI movie, geez, that hasn’t been done in ages.
You know, we were talking about the early days of cinema in my film class and I thought it would make a great movie. You have all kinds of competing formats, Edison sending goons to smash up competitors’ stuff, all kinds of hijinks between companies, not to mention a great turn-of-the-century setting.
Firstly, Greg Egan’s Permutation City Keanu is not invited to the audition, sorry. Every effort must be made to ensure that the film version avoids stupid Hollywood computer cliches as seen in movies like The Lawnmower Man.
I’d also like to do a proper film version of Weapon by Robert Mason - a movie called Solo (the name of the sequel book) has been made based loosely on both books, but they emphasised the fighting and explosions, whereas the book was about artificial intelligence.
I had this idea to remake The Maltese Falcon as a sequel to the Samuel Jackson version of Shaft. His uncle, the original Shaft, would be the Miles Archer part. The girl would be an innocent white chick, like Kirsten Dunst. Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) wouldn’t be quite so effiminant. I’m thinking Steve Buscemi (too easy?) or Mike Myers. The Kasper Gutman character, I think, would be an excellent opportunity to caste against stereotype. Kelsey Grammer or maybe Gary Oldman (again, too easy?) His name would be “Mr. White.” Wilmer would be played by an Eminem type. He probably wouldn’t do the role, but that type of kid.
Nebraska Public TV back in the 1980s did five excellent Twain adaptations. One of them was The Private History of a Campaign that Failed. Onto the end they tacked an adaptation of The War Prayer, performed by Edward Herrman. Well worth watching. It’s out on Video. (See the others, too – Life on the Mississippi, The Innocents Abroad, PuddinHead Wilson, The Mysterious Stranger.)
1: I want a good movie version of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Not much idea of casting; the boys would be the hardest bit overall. I’d like Christopher Walken not as Dark (hmm–Depp, mayhap), but his partner who got merry-go-rounded to death halfway through things.
I’m picturing M. Night Shyamalan directing–the ability to rack up tension when, technically, nothing’s actually happening, and the demonstrated knack of finding and/or wringing good-to-great performances out of child actors both being rather important factors.
2: A version of John Steakley’s Armor. Real difficult to actually do in a movie form, though, as part of the book’s impact is realizing how the two plots in it intersect and on who.
Ignoring original ideas for movies I’ve come up with, here are some other ideas:
Biopics of Marcel Duchamp and Hieronymus Bosch.
A film version of the legend of St. Urho, the Finnish-American response to St. Patrick.
A biopic of Leif Eiriksson, or maybe an adaptation of one of the Icelandic sagas. We’re due for a few good Viking movies.
An animated film synchronized to Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage.
We need a GOOD version of Catch-22.
We need versions, period, of Stranger in a Strange Land (and just to spite Adamcomic, I’m casting Jack Nicholson as Jubal Harshaw) and the Illuminatus Trilogy. If Stranger in a Strange Land falls through, the backup Heinlein plan will be The Door into Summer.
I always wanted to do a cheap, darkly moody black-and-white detective saga where all the dialogue would be the ingredients listed on shampoo bottles. It’d be called “Hydroxymethylcellulose”.
If I were directing, I would anticipate many retakes.
I read a short story by Jeffrey Archer a while ago that at the time I said, “Hey this visualizes like a film.”
Of course I have forgotten the title which is a big help.
But to make a long story a bit vague and confusing, it sort of has time travel in a Rip Van Winkle sort of way during the time and locale of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It also has a solid interacial love story (that spans about 150 years) mystic witch doctors and two different scenes of bad guys trying to hunt down the good guys (one in the 1800s and the other in the present day).
Anyway, as I was saying, it reads very much like a good film. And I think it could be.
As for actors - Well the lead would have to be someone who could play a young man who was not literate but definitely a plainsman in the 1800s and definitely out of place in the modern age. Brendan Frazier comes to mind, but only because he has played that roll so many times (at least three times that I can remember).
His love interest must look to be a young Plains Indian in the earlier incarnation and a little less Native American in the second. I’m not sure who could pull it off.
The main (modern) bad guy (a modern land barron in Montana and the father of the girl) could be played by any number of good actors and some not so good ones. For some reason while I was reading it, I kept seeing old television detective Mike Conners (I’m old, what can I tell you?). But I could see Ricard Gere doing the part really well.
There are a bunch of other rolls too that could be doubled with a bit of makeup with the actors playing one character in the 1800s and his great, great child today.
I have a couple movie ideas, but I have one that I really like.
Alright, its a LIVE-ACTION cartoon. Yup, a cartoon with people that aren’t animated. Not Space-Jam or Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but a real LIVE-ACTION cartoon.
I only have 2 characters and no real plot so far.
Char1 (I don’t have names either) - He will be the Bugs Bunny type character. A real bastard/a-hole with no redeaming qualities. But he’s the hero only because he does all the bad stuff we find cool. Drinking, smoking, stealing, sleeping around. The movie will mostly be about him.
Char2 - He’s more like the Daffy Duck character. He’s really jealous of Char1 for being liked so much dispite his vices. He tries to steal Char1’s spotlight, but he’s not an actual bad guy. His faults are not exactly worse then Char1’s, but are viewed as worse; jealousy, deciet, etc.
Thats all I have so far. But that’s not whats going to be cool about the movie. The characters (mostly Char2) will be shot, blown up, squashed many times over. He will not die or be hurt at all. He will acknowledge that it hurt and such, but he will be perfectly fine.
Now in cartoons, there is no blood or gore and stuff. But in this LIVE-ACTION cartoon, blood and things will splatter around. I won’t show any wounds, but you’ll see blood spray behind a character if he gets shot in the head, an arm or something if he gets blown up. Endless possibilities.
I see this movie as a comedy, and it will either be hailed as great for what it was, or it will die before its even born.
I’d like to do “Slave Girl of Gor” as an adult anime. I’d go with the folks who made “Dragon Pink” as my frist choice, though the folks who did Wordsworth would also do a good job.