Lost and Found

Here's an unusual little item, a supposedly "lost" interview with Ray Bradbury. I say "lost" because it seems absurd to suggest that Bradbury - one of the most widely interviewed and media-friendly writers of his generation - could possibly have done an interview that contained anything so unique that its loss would be significant. There are whole BOOKS of interviews with Bradbury out there, and he was profiled for interview-based documentaries at least four times across his career.

Anyway, reservations about the title apart, The Lost Interview of Ray Bradbury does give us a nice glimpse of Ray and his thoughts from about twenty years ago. At this point he was in his early 70s, a time when most people would have long since retired, but not our Ray. Instead, he was writing scripts for his long-running TV series, putting together the short story collection Quicker Than The Eye, and launching his novel Green Shadows, White Whale. I think this is what they call a third act... The film ends with Ray reading his poem "Doing is Being", which alone makes it worth watching.

The Lost Interview of Ray Bradbury - twenty-year-old footage blended with stock footage and (in my view) rather unnecessary visual enhancements - is directed by Harry Hall, and can be viewed in three episodes on Vimeo:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

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Meanwhile, the Ventura County Star reports that Michael O'Kelly's documentary about Bradbury - Live Forever: the Ray Bradbury Odyssey - has been screened, and that O'Kelly is now looking for a distribution deal to get the film released to TV and/or DVD. The report recaps much of the story of the making of the film during the last three years or so of Bradbury's life, and also recaps the highlights of Bradbury's life and career. The report is here.

Live Forever Trailer

Michael O'Kelly's documentary Live Forever: the Ray Bradbury Odyssey moves closer to completion, with an intended release due at the end of 2012. Here's the latest trailer, featuring Joe Mantegna (who hosts and narrates) and Edward James Olmos (interviewee).

Why Mantegna and Olmos? They were, of course, key cast members in Stuart Gordon's film version of The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, which Bradbury scripted based on his own short story.

Live Forever... again!

I blogged recently about Michael O'Kelly's submission of a short film Live Forever! to a festival. Well, now there's more to add to the story. According to the Ventura County Star, there's a full-length documentary in the works, based around the interviews O'Kelly and his son have been conducting with Ray Bradbury over the last five years or so. Joe Mantegna is to narrate, and in fact recorded for the film on Wednesday of this week. Also featured is Malcolm McDowell. The full story is here.

O'Kelly's fifteen minute teaser film is now on Youtube, and for you convenience I am embedding it here.

Miscellaneous

In the US, the NEA's "Big Read" programme continues, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is again a popular book for communities of readers to gather around. LA-based Bradbury would probably be pleased to hear that nearby West Hollywood will play host to a number of events linked to F451. Details are here.



Illustrator Gary Gianni - whose artwork has accompanied the words of Melville, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others - has created illustrations for a new chapbook, The Nefertiti-Tut Express: a Story in Screenplay. The text is taken from a previously unpublished Bradbury screen treatment dating originally from the mid 1970s. Originally due to appear in 2011, I hear that the book will be out during 2012. More details on the curious history of Bradbury's text can be found on Gianni's website.



Last year, Michael O'Kelly staged Live Forever, a play about Ray Bradbury's life. Now, he has a short film which is being entered into a film festival, and which is intended to be part of a much longer DVD study of the author. More details in this story from the Ventura County Star.



If you happen to be in Denver, Colorado, in April you can see a production of Bradbury's stage play version of Fahrenheit 451. Details are here.

Live Forever!

There has been a lot of information bouncing around the web about Michael O'Kelly's recent stage production Live Forever: the Ray Bradbury Odyssey. Whereas a number of Bradbury's own books and plays have autobiographical elements, this seems to be the first attempt to present an outwardly biographical play about Bradbury himself, albeit with a fantastical treatment.

The most interesting article I have seen so far is this one from the Ventura County Reporter, which also mentions film director David Zucker and his stated aim of getting a film version of the play off the ground.




Audio update: Colonial's Martian Chronicles audio adaptation now has a release date - 7 June 2011 - and is available for pre-order from Amazon.