"Hopefully one day it'll happen"

[John B.]

That is, that one day MZD will sell the film rights to HoL and, in a best-case scenario, will be intimately involved in the making of the film.

Most everyone who has wondered aloud on this forum about whether/when the novel will be filmed already knows of MZD's decision not to allow a film version of the novel, but to accept the wishes of the author whose work they profess to admire is something they seem unwilling to do. In the thread "screenplay?" some say, in effect, "Well, what if MZD were directing/writing/behind the camera/allowed to choose the menu for the caterers? Would THAT be enough to change his mind? Huh? Would it?" One post-er, in fact, speculates that MZD is employing this refusal as a means of raising interest in making the film, if not a way of increasing the bids for the purchase of the rights. It's strange, and certainly ironic: these post-ers obviously mean no offense with their nascent screenplays and treatments of the novel; they wish to honor, via another medium, the integrity of the author's creation. But some of those very people assume, if their tone is any indication, that every author has his price, artistic integrity be damned. Or, more darkly, if MZD won't sell out his stated intent for his work, by golly THEY'LL do it for him.

Or maybe THAT is too cynical on my part. Perhaps the oft-stated desire to see HoL turned into a film has its roots in a human preference for the visual over the textual. While I can understand that, and while I sometimes catch myself thinking, while reading certain novels, "Wow--what a great film this would make!" I still have to ask why these post-ers aren't content with MZD's wish not to see HoL filmed.

Ponder this quote from the "screenplay?" thread:

"The story itself has left much to the imagination, which always makes for a more enjoyable movie."

Why doesn't leaving much to the imagination make for a more enjoyable NOVEL? Why not see THAT as valuable in and of itself, and leave it be? Is a novel merely a kind of textual sneak preview for a Major Motion Picture? The thing about text is that, no matter how specifically detailed it is, there's always space that the thoughtful reader gets to fill in: the look of a room, the sound of a voice, the colors of the landscape, etc. The reader gets to assist in the realizing of the author's work (and, as I have suggested elsewhere, with this novel we get to do even more than we get to do with most other novels: we actually get to help write it). The thing about film, though, is that, no matter how "good" it is, it has already been envisioned for us. What film leaves to the imagination is visually hidden or unnarrated: fade-outs as lovers kiss; the sudden passage of days/weeks/years as indicated by jump cuts; etc. As viewers, we're not allowed imaginative play with the film-as-text. We know what people, interiors, landscapes look like. And even worse: if we should return to the novel version, many if not most viewers will find images from the film intruding into their reading.

In short, I'm puzzled by the recurrence of this "I-wish-this-were-a-movie" talk. It's as though those who raise it feel that their experience of the novel, if not the novel itself, is somehow deficient, that something besides the answers to questions of parentage and authorship of TNR is missing. I'd argue, though, that a film version would be seem even more deficient, too confined and limiting. It would not allow us to play the game of "always" (or was that "hallways"?).

[ August 20, 2003: Message edited by: John B. ]

[rynsect]

I most definitely do not want to see HoL made into a movie. There's no need for it, and trying to transfer the book into another medium would both do it an injustice and fail miserably at conveying the same effect. I'm relatively new here, and I'm more than a little surprised that anyone who has read the book would even suggest such a thing.

[verismo]

In many ways Hol already is a film. You know, going back to the other worn out questions. Why is house in blue? What is with the pacing? The crazy winding footnotes?

Cinematic literature.

[paramnesiac]

I thought the same thing about Lord of the Rings, until I saw what they did with it. It's true- a film is fundamentally different from a book. A HoL film would undoubtadly not be able to contain exactly the same message, due to the medium. But there are advantages to portraying something on film just as there are advantages to the written word. Directors like Christopher Nolan, Aronofsky, and Lynch have done amazing things with subtlety and symbolism in film. I think Danielewski would be able to transfer much of the book's mystery to the film medium. I respect the integrity of the novel. Most books are infinitely better than the film that was made from them (I can think of a couple exceptions). Still, there are quite a few books I would have never read if I hadn't seen the movie first (The Princess Bride, The Neverending Story, Fight Club, Girl Interrupted). And seeing those films didn't ruin the books themselves. A film would open up HoL, the book, to a wider audience (but no, we want to keep it for ourselves, we found it first!) The fact is that a story like this should be told through as many media as possible (napkins and envelopes? passed around on the internet? captured as an essence on a cd?... told as a campfire scary story, put into a film, etc). Yes, in each form, it takes on a little bit of a different texture. Art always creates something and always destroys something.

I'm not saying that if it is Danielewski's true intent to never transfer the story to film that I won't be completely happy. I just won't be disappointed if that's not his true intent.

[Ra-ra]

Perhaps such a wish is born from
the lack of truly twisted horror movies available at the moment. Or maybe it just comes from our insatiable desire to be scared silly, somehow hoping that by seeing MZD's masterpiece realised on the big screen will elevate our experience beyond that of what our puny imaginations can deliver. But instead we will embrace the puny imagination of some overly-ambitious directer. I can't see HoL ever being made into a movie, even 70 years from
now (or however long it is) for the simple reason that it's strongest appeal is fear of the unknown and these days its mostly blood and gore that wins seats in the cinemas. It would just end up another haunted house tale *shudder* [/ramble]

[Farehamer]

I have to agree - it's not something that I would like to see done (made into a film that is) - but you know if it was, you'd watch it and then curse at what had been done to the book.....I think the film is best left where it is - in people's heads.

[pwhite]

A good example of how (badly) films deal with elements that are uniquely 'literary' is the film version of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the novel, John Fowles introduces an authorial persona into the diegesis of the narrative, questioning his own motivation as author, and interrupting the story at key points, André Gide-style, to wonder aloud what he should do with his characters. In the film they attempted to parallel this literary trick by making the main narrative a film-within-the-film and following the 'actors' as they came out of character and went about their lives. Nice attempt, but it wasn't a patch on the novel.

quote:

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Originally posted by John B.:
The thing about film, though, is that, no matter how "good" it is, it has already been envisioned for us.

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However true this is, it is also true that film can do things literature can't. Film can operate at a surface level in a way that the novel cannot, however transparent and Hemingwayesque the prose may pretend to be. Film shows you things, novels mediate through descriptive language , dialogue, etc. A film like Jacob's Ladder, (for example, because I watched it the other day) would have been nowhere near as effective in written form. How would you narrate the abrupt shifts between different dream-states? Film is just much better at the sjuzet-fabula thing.

Having said all that, I tend to think that making a film of HoL is an unutterably awful idea.

[ August 22, 2003: Message edited by: pwhite ]

[malakite]

well, i tend to agree that a move would be a bad idea, im less confident in this response than i once was.

this has nothing to do with MZD or his wishes. im thinking purely in terms of how well, or poorly, it could translate to film. but.

i can't honestly say that i imagine a HoL movie translating well to cinema, but, to draw on a frequent topic here, if all i knew was the book, i would certainly say the same thing about 'the neverending story', and the general consensus here seems to be that it translated rather well into film.

of course, that comparison doesn't work on all levels. on one level it works, because both are stopries about a person being drawn into a book. on another level is the film aspect of HoL, which is absent in TNS.

i don't know. im not thinking at all about MZD up there, but if he doesn't think it would work as a movie, well, he probably knows better than i do, so i'll trust him on it.

[ThE_sLeEpLeSs_OnE]

The main problem with a movie is exactly how John B. put it

quote

The thing about text is that, no matter how specifically detailed it is, there's always space that the thoughtful reader gets to fill in: the look of a room, the sound of a voice, the colors of the landscape, etc. The reader gets to assist in the realizing of the author's work (and, as I have suggested elsewhere, with this novel we get to do even more than we get to do with most other novels: we actually get to help write it). The thing about film, though, is that, no matter how "good" it is, it has already been envisioned for us.

While a movie may appeal to a larger overall audience, the joy of one's personal dreams or views about how Character's truly look, or act, and how the scene is... is utterly lost. We've all seen it before, one of your favorite characters in the book was played by a good actor in the movie, but your mind's eye view of that character is destroyed. Too much personalization would be lost in turning HoL into a movie.

[verismo]

Also, to me, this is one of those books that the way it is told is as important to the presentation as what is told.

That can't be done on screen. That was the purpose of the layout I gather.

It would have to ba a movie about the characters writing Hol...it would rather than be a movie of what is in Hol, a movie showing them make the book.

Hey...hold on...that isn't bad....

::Runs of to write shitty screenplay::

[ August 20, 2003: Message edited by: verismo ]

[Kelly J Pendergrast]

quote:

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Originally posted by pwhite:
[QB] Film is just much better at the sjuzet-fabula thing.
QB]

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Russian formalism eh? La-de-da, Mr Continental...
but i think you're right.

Verismo... maybe it could be a film about MZD trying to write about the characters writing HoL and MZD's finding it difficult...
And maybe Nicholas Cage could play him...
Oh no, wait, that's Adaptation...

[DanSRose]

No, no no.
A film won't happen because it won't be scary. Go try and figure out how turn the sheer terror you felt while reading page 26-27. "I didn't look. Of course I looked." No moving can do that type of horror- that is all over-active imagination working on you. I know I looked and if you are staring at the screen, you won't know what you are seeing out of the corner of your eye.
And exactly how can a viewer see JT's story and TNR and Pelafina's letters and Z.'s tale? There is too much in HoL- it's literaly bursting. And to pick and choose what goes will take away the connections. I didn't know what the check mark on p. 97 meant until I eventually got to the Whalestoe Letters.

[ass_shaped_smile]

If they were to make a House of Leaves movie I think they should do it as two seperate films. One would chronicle the events that took place in the Navidson Record and the other movie would chronicle Johnny Truants descent into madness as he pieces together the Navidson Record and remenisces about Pelafina. I actually think a movie wouldnt be all that bad. I dont think it would hurt my enjoyement of the book or make me lose my imagination in any way. As long as they load it with lots of unneccesary sex and goofy sidekicks it will kickass.

[Themnoria]

quote:

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Originally posted by ass_shaped_smile:
As long as they load it with lots of unneccesary sex and goofy sidekicks it will kickass.

---

...oh please. [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

[ass_shaped_smile]

quote:

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Originally posted by Themnoria:


...oh please. [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

---

Seems like you missed out on sarcasm when you were developing a sense of humor.

[malakite]

no, i think she understood. thats what the face was for.

personally, i think it needs motorcycle chases. and, of course, ninjas.

[lazysmurff]

i cannot honestly say i wouldnt go see an HoL movie. i would be quite interested and curious to see how the director approached such a daunting task. the book does lend itself well to screenplay. however several of the more "fun" elements would be lost. how do you put into film pelafinas codes, the textual layout and all that mess that makes the book so much more intriguing?

its been said before that the navidson record would make a great movie, and that JTs story would make another great movie. this may very well be true. however i feel and incredably important part of the novel would be lost in screen play.

we, the readers, become ingrossed in the NR, trying to follow the rambling words and the textual layout. trying to piece together which footnote goes where, and trying to fill in the blanks that got burned or inked out. in this way we take on the role of JT, and the novel becomes personal to us. i do not believe, no matter how good the director, that that feeling could ever be accuratly portrayed on the screen.

perhaps the movie would please those who have never read the book, but i do not feel those of us who have read it would be very impressed with any film made, though i do not deny that i would be in line to see it. im just that curious.

[John B.]

quote:

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Originally posted by malakite:
personally, i think it needs motorcycle chases. and, of course, ninjas.

---

Of course.

Thanks for the dialogue here. I just have some brief comments to make.

Re Verismo's comment that HoL is "cinematic literature": Yes. Another member of this forum once told me about reading where MZD had tried to create, in certain sections of TNR, the illusion that we are moving as rapidly in the book as if we were watching the same scene depicted in film. So, yes: this novel about a film itself owes more than a little to film, or at least film theory.

Re paramnesiac's mention of the Lord of the Rings films. I'm not a Hobbit-head (though I've read the books), but I must say that to my mind the two so far are extraordinary films, not just in terms of spectacle but also in their attention to the worlds described in the novels. Crowd-pleasing AND faithful to Tolkien's vision: imagine that. But just because LOTR seems to have survived the transfer to celluloid doesn't mean that HoL would. For one thing, they are very different kinds of books. LOTR, detailed as its world is, is still focused on the telling of a story. It is that story that propels the novel--and the films--forward, always forward. But HoL, as we all know, goes to great lengths to DEFER resolution, something against the nature of film, it seems to me. Also, for me HoL's intrigues are ultimately more text-based than image based, as lazysmurf notes.

Someone else suggested making two separate films, one of TNR, one of Johnny's (mis)adventures. But as veterans and newbies here alike know, one of the things that makes this book play with our heads is the fact that those two narratives are subtly interconnected in various ways. How does one depict in discrete films the interconnectedness of two stories? And what about Pelafina's letters?

[rynsect]

My biggest argument against trying to make a film out of HoL is simple logistics. The embedded narratives are an extremely large part of the book's cumulative effect, and there's little chance of portraying that in the same way on film. Sure, you could have a number of stories running next to each other--that's been old hat since before Pulp Fiction, and mainstream afterwards--but you couldn't do all that at once in the way MZD does in the book. Reading a footnote isn't like viewing a cut-scene, simple as that. And then there's the issue of the appendices, the index, the cover . . .

As for making a movie just of TNR or of Truant's story, well--that wouldn't really be an HoL movie, now, would it? Furthermore, you couldn't tell JT's story without going into Z's manuscript, and you couldn't go into the manuscript without going into TNR, and so we're back to the original problem. Lastly, I just don't think TNR would be as good on film as it is on paper, barring the extremely unlikely scenario in which it's presented exactly as described--which aside from being nearly impossible would render the point of doing it moot. Translation to film is like any other translation: there are necessary changes in the material. I find it hard to believe anything could be added to the experience of the book by trying to make it into a film, only lost.


But yes, of course I'd go to see it, if it came to that. ::smirk::

[Stencil]

quote:

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Originally posted by rynsect:
Translation to film is like any other translation: there are necessary changes in the material. I find it hard to believe anything could be added to the experience of the book by trying to make it into a film, only lost.

---

With you there on that; a lot of material would have to be elided. I mean, how long does it take to read HoL aloud without stopping? Six hours? At least. Even taking into account some of the time saved by showing action scenes, there's still loads to be boiled down to something that will be inferior. Plus, you're going to have sections where it's just Truant or Pelafina sitting at a desk writting with (spit) voiceover all over it. Also, the film would have to decide some major ambiguities for the viewer: for instance, all those 'Is Johnny Pelafina/Zampano/Lude/Navidson/Mallory?' questions would totally go out of the window once you had different actors playing the different roles.

But there'd be great opportunities for movie soundtracks. For instance, one scene with Johnny, toothless and alone, shaking with fear and gently pissing the bed while staring wide-eyed at the door. Playing in the background? Aerosmith, pitch-shifted low:

Don't wanna close my eyes
Don't wanna fall asleep
'Cause I miss you babe
An' I don' wanna miss a thing

In fact, yeah, get Randy Newman on the soundtrack. I think footage of Exploration#5 will really be lifted by the inclusion of 'Left foot, Right foot.'

Anyway, what's with this talk of film? Has Danielewski said anything about TV rights? Right then, we make a TV series. Except it won't be a series: instead have a set of programmes, documentaries more specifically. One will be about Will Navidson, which'll be mostly an account of his photography career and make mention at the end of a film he made back in the early nineties; perhaps some footage, but not enough. One will be about an inmate of a mental institution, or perhaps about the insitution itself, and accusations of abuse by staff (though the accused will argue against it, basically relying on their accussers being delusional: see, abusing their memories, their trust, their reliablity and making reference to Freud's early conduct). The final one will be about the director of the first two, who is revealed to be a delusional fan of a two-penny horror novel written by some hack. Obviously, these shows won't be shown week-by-week, primetime. They'll be shown late at night (perhaps billed as repeats) with a month gap between them. In each, one of the interviewees will have a bookcase behind them, House of Leaves conspiciously visible amongst the rest.

Then, three months after that, a repeat showing of a Spainish film, The Twin Record.

By the way, I'm not saying this should happen, I'm just saying if I was given the task of translating the novel to screen, that's how I'd like it to be done. Subtle. With a Bon Jovi soundtrack.

[ August 22, 2003: Message edited by: Stencil ]