That movie was based on his cartoon characters. I’m talking about a movie about his experiences in WWII.
A long time ago, I started writing a WWII novel that I thought would make a good movie: A small unit of American GIs in Italy is sent on a suicide mission to take and hold a German strongpoint perched above a crossroads in the mountains, in preparation for a major offensive. They carry out the task, but realize at the end that they were sacrificed to act as a diversion from the main operation.
I eventually decided it was too derivative (too much like The Guns of Navarone) and shelved the idea.
If not based on them, Willie and Joe (and the book Up Front) reflected many of his experiences.
I’ve read it many, many times, that and the Brass Ring document his war years. The movie was disavowed by Maildin who never cashed the check, it is a slapstick comedy.
I can’t speak to that. I saw it only once, many years ago. I just know it exists.
Mauldin never fought in combat. He worked for the 45th Division News and Stars and Stripes. He had a jeep and was allowed to kind of travel around Europe during the war and crank out content. He didn’t just draw cartoons, he also did illustrations for stories. Patton hated him and complained about him to Eisenhower who set up a meeting between Patton and Mauldin to air their differences. It’s astounding that a 25 year old sargeant stood up to Patton. He was a professional smart ass.
You might like an anime called “Another”. One of the people in the class shouldn’t be there. This spirit/ entity is causing all the horribly bad luck that’s going on. Since the situation is already set up you have to follow the students attempts to find out who it is.
The second episode contains the most horrific scene I’ve ever watched
Lise Meitner fleeing Nazi Germany right after she figured out nuclear fission would make a great movie!
I have many.
Murder World: A sadistic alien forces a group of people to fight to the death for his amusement in a high tech maze.
Jack the Kaniff: An amateur serial killer partners up with an legendary killer who mentors him on the ins and outs of murder.
Cirque de Sade: A twisted circus devoted to depravity and carnage from another universe appears in a city.
Ghastly: An assassin is forced by his latest target to kill his employer in 24 hours or become her magic slave forever.
Pandemonium: A genie’s lamp appears in the middle of a war zone and is set upon by various parties across the moral spectrum
Sounds a lot like the Outer Limits episode “Fun and Games” from the original series. (Which, in turn, owes a lot to Fredric Brown’s story “Arena”)
Mike Benson, ex-boxer and small-time crook, and Laura Hanley, a divorcee, each emotionally wounded by life, are abducted at critical points in their lives by The Senator, a sporting alien representing the citizens of the planet Andera. The Anderans have overcome war, pestilence, avarice and envy, are no longer driven by wants and needs, and find that their lives have become quite stagnant; therefore, they replace their boredom with a constant supply of “fun & games”. Mike and Laura are “electroported” to an arena planet where they are to be pitted in mortal combat against two primitive aliens from the Calco galaxy for the entertainment of the jaded audience on Andera.
These seem very grisly. I admit I would not be in your target audience.
Okay, my takes:
There have been enough stories similar to this that I think it needs a unique twist to make it fresh. My suggestion: where they’re stranded there is no food or water except for a machine that dispenses enough each day to keep ONE person alive indefinitely. Split between all the people, it will only slow down how long it takes them to starve to death. Eventually they start getting really hungry…
There has to be an ironic twist. Maybe it’s that the legendary killer finally sets up the amateur for death himself; only the amateur is ready for it and turns the tables, because he’s already the protege of another master killer who set him the test of killing the first one.
You mean sort of like Hell Raiser combined with “Something Wicked This Way Comes”?
Is this a fantasy setting or magical realism?
My idea was that they have a day to kill each other until there is only one survivor. More than one survivor by the end of the day and they all die.
Yes.
It takes place in current day Los Angeles. The assassin didn’t know the target was a witch or that magic was real.
That’s the situation in Fredric Brown’s “Arena”, only without the machine that dispenses it. The hero’s under severe time restraint.
My idea for a movie:
A family starts experiencing supernatural/paranormal activities in their house - apparitions etc - and, consequently, call their local priest to help. The priest visits and sees some of the activities and lets them know that he/she will get back to them. Later, the priest happens to meet with a good friend who happens to be a physicist, and tells the physicist friend about the activities. The physicist is very intrigued as he/she is doing some very esoteric research on multiverse interactions. The movie continues from that point as a pseudo-documentary in which the physicist, plus an assembled team of researchers, set up residence in the house to conduct their research which culminates in the first solid evidence of a multiverse. The movie would have no sound-track, no stupid jump scares but it would basically be hard science-fiction in that scenario’s context.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a modern American haunted house tale, but it does with video what Dracula did with written letters. It’s almost Cosmic Horror and I adore it.
No idea how to stay true to the original while keeping it scary, but I am the Big Idea Guy. I’ll let the work-a-day office drones deal with all that grizzly shit, just get it done.
Oh, me too. The phrase above the MGM lion is Ars Gratia Artis, Art For Art’s Sake. Nothing in there at all about documentaries. If I wanted to watch our boring world I’d watch the news. Let’s see imagination on screen in all it’s forms for the love of god, I have popcorn here.
nevermind 