FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
For the first time, I'm reading Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. I'm reading it because my friends Terry and Amy gave me a copy of the book, in its original French, when they returned from abroad earlier this year. I wanted to read it in English first and then see how much of my French I've retained (can recover) from youth.
As I read the novel, I'm struck by a singularly strong compulsion to adapt the story -- as literally as possible -- into a screenplay. More important, I want to make it into a movie that remains earnestly true to the source. No updates, no replacing middle-aged characters with self-absorbed teens, no anachronistic vernacular (Hey, dude, where's my satellite?), no MTV quick edits, no ironic re-imagineering, none of the bullshit Hollywood foists on us like we're stupid proles. Most importantly, no corrections to the science of 1865, which, through Verne's filter, is at once invigorating in its exactness, jarringly prescient, or just plain wrong. I just want to tell the story, executed with all its inherent local and international drama, as interpreted by a French fantasist observing post-Civil War America.
It's such a strong, uncluttered story. Perhaps because of the logistical simplicity that underlies its round ideas, I'm drawn to it as a project. George Melies, in 1902, produced and directed Le Voyage dans La Lune as a comic pastiche of both Verne's novel and H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon (1901). Aside from the influence of Verne's story on George Pal's groundbreaking sci-fi films of the mid 20th, I'm not aware of anyone who's expressed even an interest in making a period movie full of woefully outdated science, based on a novel that's 140 years old. Which is great news for me!
What could be more beautiful and exciting than seeing the construction of the Baltimore Gun Club's astonishing gun, its physically improbable barrel aimed at outer space? Or watching brilliant, driven, proud and provincial men arguing the merits, economics, and physics of a venture that was as fantastic in 1865 as it is mundane today? Lots of things, I suppose, which is why I'm not making pablum for the daydreaming movie audience.
More as this compulsion develops.
As I read the novel, I'm struck by a singularly strong compulsion to adapt the story -- as literally as possible -- into a screenplay. More important, I want to make it into a movie that remains earnestly true to the source. No updates, no replacing middle-aged characters with self-absorbed teens, no anachronistic vernacular (Hey, dude, where's my satellite?), no MTV quick edits, no ironic re-imagineering, none of the bullshit Hollywood foists on us like we're stupid proles. Most importantly, no corrections to the science of 1865, which, through Verne's filter, is at once invigorating in its exactness, jarringly prescient, or just plain wrong. I just want to tell the story, executed with all its inherent local and international drama, as interpreted by a French fantasist observing post-Civil War America.
It's such a strong, uncluttered story. Perhaps because of the logistical simplicity that underlies its round ideas, I'm drawn to it as a project. George Melies, in 1902, produced and directed Le Voyage dans La Lune as a comic pastiche of both Verne's novel and H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon (1901). Aside from the influence of Verne's story on George Pal's groundbreaking sci-fi films of the mid 20th, I'm not aware of anyone who's expressed even an interest in making a period movie full of woefully outdated science, based on a novel that's 140 years old. Which is great news for me!
What could be more beautiful and exciting than seeing the construction of the Baltimore Gun Club's astonishing gun, its physically improbable barrel aimed at outer space? Or watching brilliant, driven, proud and provincial men arguing the merits, economics, and physics of a venture that was as fantastic in 1865 as it is mundane today? Lots of things, I suppose, which is why I'm not making pablum for the daydreaming movie audience.
More as this compulsion develops.
posted by Andrew @ 5:47 PM
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