![\"PaperCuts-web\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/PaperCuts-web.jpg?resize=468%2C60\")
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Hey y\u2019all. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n
Back in August I posted up a list of three literary works (two novels and a short story) that I think are ripe for film or television adaptation. You can click over to that article<\/a> and check it out, along with a quick rationale behind why I like adaptations, for the most part.<\/p>\n This month\u2019s article was originally going to be about something different, but that idea has now become so research intensive that it\u2019s threatening to become a two-parter.<\/p>\n I was reminded to run another \u201cOption This!\u201d column last week when I saw a post on author Jeremy Robert Johnson\u2019s Facebook page: Skullcrack City<\/em>, one of the books I recommended that Hollywood jump on last time, is inching closer to actually becoming a movie.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m not saying my last article has anything to do with interest in turning the book into a film. It was a great book that the author and publisher (Lazy Fascist Books) did a good job getting the word out about.\u00a0 What I am<\/em> saying is: I can pick\u2019em, mofos.<\/p>\n So enough with the preamble, let\u2019s get to the armchair movie-making:<\/p>\n What\u2019s it about?<\/strong> A couple of years ago, on my way to BizarroCon in Portland, my plane hit a patch of turbulence. The worst I\u2019ve ever experienced, actually. At the time I was reading Barron\u2019s short story \u201cBlackwood\u2019s Baby\u201d and the combination of the dread-packed story of tough guys on an ill-fated hunting trip and getting tossed around at 30,000 feet had me completely convinced that I was going to die.<\/p>\n Barron\u2019s novella X\u2019s For Eyes <\/em>is nothing like that story. Had I been reading X\u2019s For Eyes <\/em>during that flight I would have cherished the adventure provided by a battered 747.<\/p>\n Well, that doesn\u2019t really answer what the book is about. It\u2019s the story of two teenage brothers, heirs to a decidedly evil multi-national corporation, and their liquor-soaked Jonny Quest<\/em>-ish misadventures kicked off by the discovery of a downed space probe that could hold correspondences with an other-worldly (or other dimensional) intelligence.<\/p>\n Most of Barron\u2019s stories carry a thin, velvety lining of dark humor, but X\u2019s For Eyes<\/em> is funny, propulsive and absurd end-to-end.<\/p>\n Why a movie again?<\/strong> For the first time in the column, I\u2019m going to break my format. I don\u2019t think it should be a movie. The Tooms brothers are probably best suited for the small screen. Cliffhangers, flashbacks to their sinister school days: we\u2019d watch this stuff every week and love it.<\/p>\n What would change?<\/strong> As weird as X\u2019s For Eyes<\/em> is, in a world where Amazon has found a hit in the expensive-looking (and high genre concept) Man in the High Castle,<\/em>\u00a0probably not much would need to change. With increasingly diversified distribution methods and widespread success of stuff that, on paper, sounds overwhelmingly niche, X\u2019s For Eyes<\/em> is just weird enough. Lovecraft junkies will love the cosmic element (the marrow\u2019s been sucked out of Cthulhu\u2019s bones, which tends to happen once you get turned into plush toys and knee socks), and the comic con crowd would cosplay the shit out of two badass adolescents dressed in \u201950s adventurer chic.<\/p>\n Who would direct? <\/strong>Great TV, the art of long-form storytelling, is about three things (I <\/em>think): pace, character, and tone.<\/p>\n And no one in recent memory (outside of Mad Men<\/em>\u2019s Matt Wiener, but this probably isn\u2019t his thing…) has proven to have a better handle on these three elements than Fargo<\/em> showrunner Noah Hawley.<\/p>\n In lesser hands an adaptation of X\u2019s For Eyes<\/em> could skew too close to a Venture Brothers<\/em>-style parody, but there needs to be a defter control of tone (menace that is fully menacing but characters who are still larger than life).<\/p>\n Fargo<\/em>\u2019s second season is 10 hours of sublime Coen brothers fan-fiction, so successful that it transcends homage and becomes something funny, thrilling and endearing that stands completely on its own as capital-G Great.<\/p>\n Fargo<\/em> S2 also has spaceships. X\u2019s For Eyes<\/em> has spaceships…\u00a0 Make it happen, Hollywood.<\/p>\n What\u2019s it about?<\/strong> Zombies are so done.<\/p>\n I mean, for me<\/em> zombies are done. Clearly everyone else in the country can\u2019t seem to get enough. The majority of zombie fiction\/film\/TV released in the last 10 years bores me. Probably because I hold Dawn of the Dead<\/em> on a (possibly over-high) golden pedestal and a lot of this new stuff doesn\u2019t come close.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been years since I read The Missing<\/em> (I guess I\u2019m due for a re-visit), but Langan\u2019s novel is a \u201ckinda-zombie\u201d story that uses a very literate voice to tell one family\u2019s personal apocalypse against the backdrop of a more widespread viral outbreak.<\/p>\n Why a movie, again?<\/strong> Because the closest we\u2019ve gotten to a wide-release cinematic zombie re-invention was Danny Boyle\u2019s 28 Days Later<\/em>.<\/p>\n Days<\/em> is a movie that proved that vitality, urgency, and brains (of the thinking kind, not the eating kind) are the real tenets of the sub-genre, not the \u201crules\u201d of the creatures themselves.<\/p>\n Like Boyle\u2019s film, the \u201cinfected\u201d in The Missing<\/em> also play fast and loose with the \u201cRomero rules\u201d but they do so with an eye towards inflicting maximum emotional (rather than physical, but there\u2019s plenty of that) damage on our characters.<\/p>\n And adapt The Missing<\/em> because there\u2019s a chance here to make a statement movie within the sub-genre again, not a melodrama, meta-comedy, or nihilist survival story.<\/p>\n What would change?<\/strong> Aside from some scaling back of the story (which is fairly panoramic, encompassing the fall of a small Maine town… but don\u2019t let \u201csmall Maine town\u201d scare you off from reading it), you could film The Missing <\/em>as is. But it\u2019s crucial that the \u201cscaling back\u201d is done in the right areas. The key to doing the book justice is investing us in these characters and their pre-infection lives. You need to set the audience up if you want them knocked flat later.<\/p>\n Who would direct?<\/strong> Langan is married to an accomplished genre filmmaker, J.T. Petty (reality-bending docu-thriller S&Man<\/em> and old west creature feature The Burrowers<\/em>), but if we wanted to avoid the nepotism bid, my choice to direct The Missing<\/em> would be Leigh Janiak.<\/p>\n Janiak\u2019s debut feature, Honeymoon<\/em>, is one of the most emotionally effecting (read: emotionally brutal) horror films of the last few years. I\u2019d love to see her apply that same sensibility (which plays out on a very limited canvas in Honeymoon<\/em>, just a few actors and one location for the majority of the film) applied to a bigger movie.<\/p>\n What\u2019s it about?<\/strong> Jones\u2019s novella (novelette? don\u2019t know its word count)\u00a0 appears in the collection Three Miles Past<\/em>. The story centers on William, a dude who already seems troubled before it\u2019s revealed that he\u2019s a serial killer roving the interstates, stashing the remains of his victims inside dead dogs so that the human body parts become indistinguishable from animal road kill.<\/p>\n You could say it\u2019s the makings of the next great family film.<\/p>\n Why a movie, again?<\/strong> Because serial killer movies are tough to get right. Go too outlandish and it seems like the film is glorifying repugnant real-world acts of violence; too dour and the films stop being films and just become atrocity bingo.<\/p>\n SGJ already did 90% of the legwork for the filmmakers by creating a character and scenario that is unlike what\u2019s been done before with the genre.<\/p>\n What would change? <\/strong>Not much could<\/em> change and still keep the story intact, which is what makes Interstate Love Affair<\/em> the most challenging adaptation on this list. Never mind the fact that it would be difficult to communicate William\u2019s back story and inner turmoil without the close-third person narration of the book: the premise requires that our protagonist threaten (and follow-through with) violence to animals.<\/p>\n That\u2019s usually a big no-no with audiences. Which automatically makes this a smaller, less-commercial movie. But that\u2019s not saying it couldn\u2019t be great, the kind of film that does well in festivals and ends up on “year-end” lists written by schmucks like me.<\/p>\n Who would direct? <\/strong>2002\u2019s Dahmer<\/em> is one of the very few \u201ctrue life\u201d serial killer movies to successfully walk the line between exploitation and abjectly depressing. And its writer\/director, David Jacobson, hasn\u2019t made a movie in a couple of years. This could be it, man!<\/p>\n Or:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know it for a fact, but I\u2019m willing to bet that Jones (who still finds time to blog about film in between being one of the most prolific\/best horror authors out there) is a fan of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer<\/em> (1986). Henry <\/em>director John McNaughton made a recent return to genre territory with The Harvest<\/em>. Maybe he wants to dip his toe back in again?<\/p>\n There we have it.<\/p>\n High-powered agents and super producers: you\u2019re welcome, another month of me not making 15%.<\/p>\n Readers and cinephiles: time to read these books and then yell at me in the comments about how much you disagree with my choices for hypothetical director.<\/p>\n See you next month for more book- and movie-talk.<\/p>\n *Fun fact: probably the only good piece of fiction to ever take its title from a Night Ranger song.<\/strong><\/p>\n Adam Cesare is a New Yorker who lives in Philadelphia. His numerous books include\u00a0<\/em>Mercy House,\u00a0Video Night, The First One You Expect,\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Tribesmen. None of them have been made into films. Which is a crime.\u00a0He has an oft-neglected\u00a0<\/em>website<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and tweets as\u00a0<\/em>@Adam_Cesare<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"cover](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/cover-Xs.jpg?resize=267%2C400\")
X\u2019s For Eyes<\/a><\/em> by Laird Barron<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"missing](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/missing-cover.jpg?resize=309%2C499\")
The Missing<\/a><\/em> by Sarah Langan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"three](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/three-miles-cover.jpg?resize=297%2C475\")
Interstate Love Affair<\/a><\/em>* by Stephen Graham Jones<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n