The Illustrated Man - Podcast episode

 I always enjoy joining the gang from the podcast series Take Me To Your Reader - and today my latest appearance goes live. The discussion this time centres around Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man.

The Illustrated Man has a complex history. Bradbury first published a short story with that title, and shortly afterwards he published a short story collection with the same title... but the collection didn't include the short story! Instead, he took his tattoed-man character out for another stroll, and used him to provide a framing device for the other short stories in the book, using the conceit that each story dramatises one of the man's tattoos.


Many years later, the short story was incorporated into the book, but only in some editions.

In the early 1960s, Bradbury wanted to turn The Illustrated Man into a film, and wrote a full screenplay. Unfortunately, it became another of Bradbury's "lost films". But later in the decade, a completely different script was used for the film that was made. Starring Rod Steiger and his then wife Claire Bloom, the movie is a portmanteau film which adapts three of the short stories from the book - with Steiger and Bloom inexplicably playing different characters in each story.

You can find out what I think of the film by listening to the podcast:

http://pavementpodcast.com/podcast/tmtyr-episode-81-lighter-than-the-movie-the-illustrated-man-feat-dr-phil-nichols/

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN on Film

The Illustrated Man is one of Ray Bradbury's finest short story collections, first published in 1951. Bradbury wrote a number of screen adaptations based on the book, starting in 1960 - and ending in the mid 2000s. In each case, he selected a few of his short stories to make a portmanteau film - making the selection not just from The Illustrated Man book, but from across his whole body of short stories - and then wrote framing scenes involving the character of the tattooed man.

For various reasons, his own scripts were not filmed. But in 1969, Warner Bros released a feature film based on the book, written by somebody else (Howard Kreitsek) and starring Rod Steiger. The film is oddly incoherent, so much so that some reviewers have called it surreal. My own view is that they are mistaking incoherence for surrealism! Bradbury always maintained that the screenplay was written by a real estate agent, which might explain its incompetence.

Director Jack Smight probably did the best he could with the materials he had to hand, and managed to make the linking scenes with the tattooed Steiger moderately interesting, although they have little in common with the linking scenes in Bradbury's book.

Here is the programme/press book from the 1969 screening of the film. Click on the images to enlarge.

The Illustrated Man - revisited

It is with some trepidation that I read in The Hollywood Reporter that a new film of The Illustrated Man is in the works.

It's a great book, but I've always thought it a mistake to conceive of it as a single work suitable for screen adaptation. It is really just a short story collection with a bit of linking material, and the stories can stand perfectly well on their own.

The 1969 feature film, starring Rod Steiger, was a bit of a botched job. Some great moments, but definitely suffering from an ill-conceived script (by someone who Ray Bradbury described as a real estate agent rather than a screenwriter).

However, the new film is to be made under the direction of Zack Snyder of 300 fame. Although I consider 300 to be laughable in places, it was quite creatively done, so I am willing to trust in Mr Snyder for now. The screenplay will be by Alex Tse.

You can read the Hollywood Reporter story here, and a similar report at Variety.