“James, I was so excited to see the Wheel of Time as a cable TV series. Then I saw it, and I don’t think it is anything like Robert Jordan would have imagined it. I don’t know if Tolkien got to see The Lord of the Rings—maybe the animated stuff. But I’d like you to be able to see one of your books made into a movie. So, what would be your first pick. I could do A Hoodrat Halloween as an audio book, because I can do all three accents. But casting it with actors at my level would be very difficult.”
-Incognegro, by phone, 11/30/21
...
That is a shame about Robert Jordan. However, unless Ridley Scott makes one of your books better then you write it, the fate of the author is to have the worst kind of story teller, the screenwriter, convert his story into a lowest-common-denominator script that must first appeal to teenage girls and secondly to sissy young men who have no chance to have sex with those teenage girls.
Even Dungeons and Dragons has been ruined by this. I play with two young boys and the game is great for them compared to video games—but is fated to be a video game—as they are pouring over pages of texts for stat blocks and back story and such. But, the video game and comic book influence in modern life is so strong and the incentive to sell more player manuals and options results in godlike characters that can essentially exhale and wipe out bad guys. Spank a giant before breakfast and kill a dragon after lunch. We cannot overemphasize the influence movies have on American psychology and that movies have been colonized by comics and for boys replaced by video games. It was once okay for the hero to win a hard fight. Now he must beat up ten men without breaking a sweat.
I say this, because all of my fiction is realistic, even the stuff about a pot smoking rabbit advising a young boy on dealing with bullies. My treatment of violence and the relative power of the protagonist in regard to the setting is realistic, which will cause problems in converting it to acceptable media.
Essentially, any movie made from a work of science-fiction or fantasy will be written as if it were a Marvel Comic. I imagine, that the screen writers have taken the most mature work of fantasy from the late 20th century and turned it into a video game with female action heroes replacing the nuanced and empathetic female magic-weavers of Jordan. I will do an article on Jordan and other writers of his Era. [0]
As for my work.
-Menthol Rampage is much better than Falling Down and more entertaining than Deathwish. This could be Ethan Hawk’s swan song role as J.J. Brooks, the twerp carpenter with an extreme allergy to second hand smoke.
-Buzz Bunny would be a great low budget movie using your unpaid children as caste members and Erique as the adult Tamar and you as Doctor Gupta—could make you Doctor Mombassa, maybe.
-Send Dave Chappelle A Hoodrat Halloween and see if he will back it. Caste Lennox Lewis as Regimon Thom, with Michael Ore and Ray Rice as the other two hobos.
-Seriously, Michael Jai White should be contacted about starring in Poet, a made for BET extravaganza. The fat white cop I envisioned as a cross between Carol O’Connor and Jackie Gleason.
-My pick for low budget British movie would be Ire and Ice. It is set in ancient Britain and Ireland with Roman soldiers as the cast and in a Greek diner in Baltimore. There is tons of Roman equipment and military reinactors in Britain.
-For a high budget animated movie I would want The Jericho Bone, historical horror set in Egypt during the famine of 1201.
-For low budget, small cast movie, Yusef of the Dusk would be good. No scene has more than three actors.
-For an animated children’s film I like Animal Control [a 7 chapter story in Thunderbird] that has minimal violence—other then the accidental killing of L.L. Koon Jay and Cooter Boone—as rapper and dear hunter in which their transmigration into the bodies of a raccoon and deer respectively set the stage for an animal uprising against mankind...
-For a video game I like Thunderbird, in which 40 Mohawk warriors and four crazy Lumbee Indians use a chinook as a time machine to get from 1676 Harper’s Ferry to 2020s Baltimore and try to wipe the city out in a single night. The most violent shit I have ever written.
-For low budget horror, Wake from Your Dream Place, about a black man teaching at a community college who has a sleep episode that transforms his entire life, would be easy to cast and film as it is all set inside residential buildings by day and adjacent streets by night. There is just one shot outside a community college and one in a bar. The cast in each scene is small, with only Luther Watts and the redheaded white woman repeating appearances. This might be the easiest of my stories for you to cast. If you just put your beautiful lady in a red wig and white face, I’d be pleased. That will work.
-For a made for Scy-Fy Channel move, I can think of nothing better than Planet Buzzkill. It is the most realistic alien invasion story ever written, and the entire movie takes place in a Baltimore County apartment, on a Baltimore MTA bus, with one scene in front of the Franklin Square E.R., another at a strip mall liquor store, one at a bus stop at Sinclair and Frankford, and one at Sensei Steve’s house in Hamilton. I literally cast this with the people that were on the #55 Bus the Sunday morning after I had the nightmare that inspired it.
-For a high budget movie staring Karl Urban or Ray Stevenson, I think Organa would be perfect.
-My only possible offering for a Hallmark Movie would be This Design is Called Paisley, though you need to replace the characters introduced in the last scene with a college rugby team and coach.
-Little Feet Going Nowhere is an alien invasion story of a mere 12 scenes in which the protagonist is a gigolo who alone is immune from the alien mind control due to his unique mega-dosing on pineapple juice and Viagra. This would be a good Scy-Fy channel movie.
I really think that the key to not having your writing ruined by a screenwriter, is to sell short stories and novelettes, nothing over 15 chapters. The best Phillip K. Dick movies, Blade Runner [1], the Adjustment Burough, [can’t spell this frog word for shit, tried 7 spellings and punted], Total Recall [2] and Minority Report, were three mere 20 page short stories and one a thin short novel. [1]
I would make a rule that any short novel over 17,000 words will be ruined by the screen writing process.
…
Notes
-0. The Keel of Time
-1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
-2. We Will Remember it for You Wholesale
Robert Jordan wheel of time! I read up to book 7ish back in the 90s when it was all the rage. Funny, every book was the same. Heroes confront/defeat said "ultimate evil" in the last chapter, except said ultimate evil" is just an under boss. Better luck next time. I enjoyed the books to a fault and gave up because of the same story every single time. I wonder if a early life check will show Robert Jordan is a Wej.
Nope,war hero.
Early life
Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He went to Clemson University after high school, but dropped out after one year and enlisted in the U.S. Army.[4] He served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War as a helicopter gunner.[5] He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm.[6]
After returning from Vietnam in 1970, Jordan studied physics at The Citadel. He graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree and began working for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer.[7] He began writing in 1977.
Anyways, I 'll check out 1-2 episodes. If is woke, FiretrUCK that.
POET—All day and every day! If Mike white doesn't want to do it, somebody get ahold of Weley Snipes' agent!
Then there's that other one about the last honest cop. Only George Clooney, Chris Pine or Brad Pitt could do justice to the starring role.
So I checked out analzone primal episode uno of Woke of times. 10 min is all I could stand. Yeti dies right off the bat to an 60+ AWFL and her crew. Washed up elfy from LotR is looking for said Yetis to save with slant eye #2. Bunch of POC (Progressive Oppressive Communists) females is all I saw.