New Podcast Episode: Ray Bradbury's October

Specially for October, here's a new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast. I discuss The October Country, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree.

I cover the origins of each of these classics, including the peculiar way that both Something Wicked and The Halloween Tree started off as film projects before turning into the books we know and love.

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 35 - Ray Bradbury's October

 

In the episode, I mention other places where I discuss these works. Here are are some handy links to those:

• The October Country: web page - YouTube video
• Something Wicked: web page - YouTube video

You might also want to check out this previous October-themed episode of the podcast!

 

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Ray and JFK

You may have seen this post on LitHub. It reproduces a 1962 letter that Ray Bradbury wrote to Arthur M. Schlesinger, the historian who was a special advisor to President Kennedy. Bradbury offers his services - whichever services the president might feel appropriate - in promoting the new space age.

This is another illustration of how Ray's book publication history fails to reflect his "real" interests.

By 1962 - when he wrote this letter - in the public eye he had move far beyond science fiction. He had published The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451 - and that was it for SF. Then he was on to Dandelion Wine, The October Country, The Golden Apples of the Sun, A Medicine for Melancholy - all quite far removed from SF. Plus he had been busily writing the screenplay for Moby Dick, episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and a bunch of one-act Irish plays.

 

But what wasn't visible to the public was that he was deeply involved in trying to get The Martian Chronicles filmed. He had worked on various script drafts since 1957, and in 1962 he seemed closest to getting the film made. What perfect timing this would have been for him, for The Martian Chronicles: The Movie to have been made just as Kennedy was launching the real space programme.

 

Despite all the claims that he didn't like being called a science fiction writer, you can see from this letter that he really did want to be known for his SF. The "space age" meant a lot to him. It was vindication of his "silly" childish fantasies about rocketships.

 

JFK replied to Bradbury, thanking him for the books he had gifted. But he didn't go so far as to invite Ray to become a space advisor. However, around that same time, Bradbury wrote a number of articles about space for Life and other publications. He was determined to be associated, in the public mind, with space. And, indeed, he eventually succeeded. See Jon Eller's Bradbury Beyond Apollo for a full account of Ray's space activities!

 

Alas, Kennedy's assassination the following year brought a big interruption to everything. In various interviews Ray talked about where he was the day Kennedy died: he was on his way into Hollywood for a script meeting about The Martian Chronicles. He knew that nobody would be able to concentrate on anything, so the meeting was cancelled and he returned home instead.

 

By 1965, The Martian Chronicles movie was cancelled. Ray had written at least two distinctly different scripts, and was working with the makers of the successful To Kill A Mockingbird. But they couldn't get the movie into a shape they were all happy with, and so the project died. (The 1980 Martian Chronicles TV miniseries was an unrelated attempt to adapt the book; Ray played no part in the scripting of that version.)

 

Arguably, the death of Kennedy brought a renewed determination to achieve the goal, by the end of the decade, of "putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth". And when it happened, Bradbury was prominent in media coverage - as was his science fiction friend and colleague Arthur C. Clarke. On the night of the Moon landing, Bradbury walked out of a British David Frost entertainment show (it was more concerned with showbiz than with celebrating humanity's setting foot on another world), but was also interviewed on national TV in the US.

Fahrenheit 451 50th Anniversary Screening

Last night was the special 50th Anniversary Screening of Fahrenheit 451 at Wolverhampton's Light House Cinema, and it was a well attended event.

I introduced the film, attempting to place it in a proper historical context. After the screening, I was joined by my colleague, film lecturer Eleanor Andrews, to discuss what we had seen, and to take comments and questions from the audience.

Some interesting observations emerged, both familiar and new. Eleanor was struck by the overall aesthetic of the film, which she compared to 1960s TV classics such as The Avengers and The Prisoner. Various people were taken by the boldness of the film's elimination of text (except for what we see in the prohibited books). And a number of people commented on the drug-taking, zombie-like characters who are shown to be the norm in Fahrenheit.

As so often when I screen this film, I was somewhat taken aback by viewers' willingness to overlook or forgive some of the technical weaknesses of the film, largely because of the strong ideas which the film manages (or struggles) to convey.We spent much of the time discussing the quality of the acting, the apparent consequences in the film of the loss of literacy (characters struggle to remember things, struggle to communicate, and struggle to manage their emotions), differences between book and film, and how the film relates to other works by Truffaut.

The last time I watched the film all the way through was with an audience at the Ray Bradbury on Screen event in Indiana, which I co-curated last year. Both audiences seem to have appreciated the film's ideas, but both audiences seem to have found the character relationships confusing or disturbing. One of the big debates is whether this is what the film is really about, or whether this is some reflection on its troubled production history. I have written before that the alienating effect is to a large extent deliberate, as is evidenced by Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard's screenplay - but that the actual performances add a layer of complication that is probably not fully intended. By this I'm referring to Oskar Werner's heavily-accented delivery, and Julie Christie's struggle to maintain any nuance of difference between the two characters she plays.

Going into this event, I had no idea what audience we might find. I half-expected to be talking to a mere handful of viewers, but the small venue was actually quite full. I'm told that the audience was much bigger than most of the introduced film screenings offered in last year's Artsfest.

After fifty years, Truffaut's film still holds up, particularly when considered as a reflection of the era in which it was made. But there are so many elements of Bradbury's novel that the 1966 film left to one side. Fingers crossed that the forthcoming HBO adaptation will give us a new screen version that is as challenging, and as relevant to present times.

Later this year, I have another Fahrenheit 451 project going public: the special issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review which I have been editing. This contains a number of articles considering the representation of books and texts in the film, some that consider the reception of the film by contemporary and modern audiences, and my own article on Ray Bradbury's responses to Truffaut's film. The issue is due out in October, but is available for pre-order now.

Dandelion Wine - on screen

RGI Productions has confirmed its intention to adapt Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine into a feature film.

Rodion Nahapetov is the author of the film's screenplay, and he will produce the film with Natasha Shliapnikoff, Agata Gotova and Albert Pocej. The screenplay was initially developed several years ago, and had Ray's blessing.

There is a Facebook page for the film, which currently includes some concept art, and photos of Rodion with Ray: www.facebook.com/dandelionwinemovie

There have been many announcements of Bradbury-based film projects in recent years. So far, nothing has resulted from the planned versions of Fahrenheit 451 or The Illustrated Man - and things have gone quiet on Something Wicked This Way Comes. But Rodion and Natasha are different: producers who had a close connection to Ray, and who have a strong commitment to Dandelion Wine. I think adapting Dandelion Wine could be really difficult, but I hope they manage to pull it off!

Bradbury's drafts

It's a good job that I like reading film scripts... I've lately been working through all of Ray Bradbury's script versions of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Although he didn't see it as such, this was a monster project, started as an outline for Gene Kelly in 1954, and then developed through at least five stages of work:

1. an almost full script c.1960;
2. re-writing it as the novel published in 1962;
3. writing an entirely new script based on the novel for Twentieth Century-Fox in 1973;
4. substantially revising and reducing the script for Jack Clayton in 1976;
5. re-working it again in 1981 for Disney, again with Jack Clayton.

When the film was finally made (and released in 1983) it was from Bradbury's screenplay, but with uncredited script doctoring by John Mortimer of Rumpole fame. After supposedly disastrous previews - I say "supposedly", because I never trust reports that a film did badly in previews - Disney went into damage-limitation and spent a year on re-editing and re-shooting.

The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies holds manuscripts of most of Bradbury's script work on this project. These are the folders for the 1973 and 1976 screenplays. The Bryna Company is Kirk Douglas's production company, which teamed up with Disney for the 1983 film.

(Photos by Phil Nichols, courtesy of the Bradbury Memorial Archive, Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.)

Ray Bradbury's favourite films (1993)

Ray Bradbury was in love with movies. He claimed to have vivid memories of the entire film of the Lon Chaney Hunchback of Notre Dame - from seeing it in a cinema with his mother when he was three years old in 1923.

Later in life he took to writing scripts for television and film, and actively tried to get his books and stories to leading film-makers, in the hope of collaborating with them. Among those he would approach were David Lean, Carol Reed, Akira Kurosawa and Steven Spielberg.

As an active member of the screenwriter's guild, in the 1950s he was instrumental in establishing and running a film club for screenwriters, a venture he undertook because he was astonished by the number of Hollywood screenwriters who were not well versed in the latest film releases.

In 1993, the American Film Institute ran a season of films selected from Bradbury's list of favourites. In the brochure for the event, they posted the full list. Here's what the Ray Bradbury of 1993 considered to be his favourites, listed "in the order in which he first saw them".

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
• The Thief of Baghdad (1924)
• The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
• The Lost World (1925)
• The Black Pirate (1926)
• The Mummy (1932)
• The Skeleton Dance (1929, short animated film)
• King Kong (1933)
• The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)
• The Old Mill (1937, short animated film)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
  
• The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
• The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
• Fantasia (1940)
  
• Pinocchio (1940)
• Rebecca (1940)
• Things to Come (1936)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
  
• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
  
• Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• The Third Man (1949)
  
• Some Like it Hot (1959)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Moby Dick (1956)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

As you can see, the films of his formative years hold most of the places in this list of favourites. And Bradbury somewhat immodestly includes three films (the last three) that he had connections with: he wrote the screenplay for Moby Dick and Something Wicked This Way Comes; and both Something Wicked and Fahrenheit 451 were based on novels by Bradbury. His inclusion of the latter two films is significant, as by the mid-2000s he would speak openly of his feeling of being betrayed by Jack Clayton in the making of Something Wicked, and would accuse Francois Truffaut of "ruining" Fahrenheit 451. His inclusion of the two films is a reminder that, for some time, he had genuine affection for them.

The AFI brochure includes a few comments from Bradbury on his selections. Of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he is quoted as saying "it caused me to walk strangely for months." The brochure goes on to say that Bradbury "sat through a whole program of films three time just to see [The Skeleton Dance] again and again."

As for Things to Come, Bradbury is quoted as saying it "so stunned me that I staggered forth to attack my typewriter, fearful that the Future would never come if I didn't make it." And of The Third Man: "If I were teaching cinema, The Third Man would be the first film I would screen to show students exquisite writing, casting, directing, composing and editing."

Finally, of the mighty King Kong, the AFI quotes Bradbury as follows: "When Kong fell off the Empire State he landed on me. Crawling out from under his carcass I carried on a lifelong love affair with that fifty-foot ape."

Ray Bradbury on THE HAUNTING (1963)

From The Times, 12 December 1998, Ray Bradbury gives a hearty recommendation to Robert Wise's classic understated horror movie The Haunting:

Something Wicked Turns Round and Comes Back for More

Deadline Hollywood is reporting that a new film is to be made based on Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. Disney has attached Seth Grahame-Smith to the project as director - his first feature film in this role - and he is due to produce a treatment, after which a writer will be assigned. The story is here.

Well, it IS the twenty-first century, that period in history when Hollywood is only interesting in re-treading old product (as this fascinating infographic makes plain).

Whenever I hear of a new Bradbury-based film, I always say two things.

First, don't hold your breath. The history of Hollywood is one of options being taken out, traded and dropped; of scripts being written, rejected, rewritten, thrown away and written again from scratch; and of change in management that make one day's hot property the next day's embarrassing liability. Whatever happened to the Frank Darabont Fahrenheit 451? The Zack Snyder Illustrated Man? That proposed version of Dandelion Wine?

And second, don't pre-judge. The history of SF and fantasy film is that, based purely on announcements and rumours prior to release, fans get up in arms about who is attached to a project (they will ruin it!), changes to the story (that's not in the book!) and changes to the characters (he wouldn't do that!). Sometimes the adaptation will work despite such misgivings, sometimes not. The only way to find out is to wait and see.

That said, who exactly is Seth Grahame-Smith, the neophyte film director who is being entrusted with this undertaking? None other than the creator, writer and director of the MTV sitcom The Hard Times of RJ Berger (2010-1), the screenwriter of Dark Shadows (2012), the author and screenwriter of novel and film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2010 & 2012 respectively), and writer of the book (and forthcoming film) of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009 & 2015 respectively). More information here.

On the plus side, an association with darker themes. On the minus side, someone whose entire cinematic oeuvre to date is dependent on re-tooling existing stories and characters in a "quirky" way.

Hmm. Let's wait and see.

Bradburyesque...

I recently saw the trailer for the forthcoming movie Gravity, directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón. All I know about the film is what I saw in the trailer and what I have read online. Two thoughts sprang immediately to mind as I watched the trailer:

1. "That's a Space Shuttle - so this film must be set in the past!"
2. Ray Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope"

The trailer (below) shows a calamity in Earth orbit, resulting in space-suited astronauts being flung into empty space. The synopsis on Wikipedia specifically mentions the astronauts being "stranded, alone in suits".

So I say again: Ray Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope"! This classic short story (and one-act play) features a crew of astronauts surviving the destruction of their spaceship, but being thrown in all different directions, so that each of them faces a slow, lonely and protracted death. Some look set to drift forever, while others find themselves being pulled by gravity towards a planet or the Sun.

I'm not saying that Gravity is based on the story, nor that it plagiarises the story - but it certainly seems Bradburyesque, for want of a better word. And nor would it be the first time that "Kaleidoscope" was echoed on screen: the low-budget space comedy Dark Star went there in 1974.

Klaatu Barada Nikto...

Everyone must surely know The Day The Earth Stood Still, the 1951 SF film. Directed by Robert Wise - the editor of Citizen Kane and future producer-director of both West Side Story and The Sound Of Music - it was one of the first serious Hollywood science fiction movies, and a significant contibution to that wave of near-paranoid cold war SF on the big screen. Forget the 2008 Keanu Reeves re-make; Michael Rennie remains the definitive Klaatu.

The 1951 film was scripted by Edmund H. North, and based on Harry Bates' short story "Return of the Master", a story which still reads well today.

But did you know that the early 1980s nearly saw the return of Klaatu, in a sequel written by Ray Bradbury?

Bradbury's screen treatment for Twentieth Century-Fox was entitled The Evening Of The Second Day, and was drafted in March 1981, with revisions completed in September 1981. Bradbury was initially opposed to the idea of such a sequel. According to Starlog magazine, he told the studio "Don't do it. The original film is so beautiful. Why don't you blow it up on larger film stock and re-release it, because nobody wants to see a sequel."

The studio bosses replied, "Yes, but we want you to do it."

Bradbury described his plot for the film like this:

The return of Klaatu. He comes back under refrigeration because he has been dead, semi-dead. His body is encased in ice so you wouldn't see him very well and we wouldn't have to change characters.

Klaatu's daughter brings him back and they land on Earth at Cape Canaveral on Christmas Eve. They signify their arrival, proving how powerful they are by lighting all the towers all the way down Cape Canaveral. Oh wow! I thought it would be terrific if we could show you all the towers lit like Christmas trees on Christmas Eve. They're offering a promise, aren't they? A gift to the world. They stay around for a while and at the story's end, on New Year's Eve, they take off for the universe. Of course, that's a celebration also - and along the way, there's the usual Bradbury optimism.

I liked some of the ideas I had. They were very visual. Of course, you have to out-metaphor the other film. And what is there left to do [laughs].

Starlog magazine, Sept 1981, p23

A few days ago I remarked that Bradbury wrote little that was related to Christmas, so this film would have been a notable exception. It's certainly typical of Bradbury that he would be seduced by a strong central image,  and curious that he should have chosen a Christmas setting for the return of Klaatu, especially since some critics have emphasised the Christ-like attributes and behaviour of the original  character.

Would Bradbury's treatment have made a good film? It is is difficult to tell. I have no idea which director (if any) was attached to the project, nor whether this would be a "major motion picture" or just a cheap cash-in sequel. In 1981 Hollywood was still trying to come to terms with the Star Wars phenomenon, with lots of attempts to cash in on George Lucas' unexpected box-office smash. For every Blade Runner or ET, there were a dozen cheap and embarrassing Star Wars knock-offs.

In any case, Bradbury's screen treatment didn't progress to a screenplay, and the project faded away. Just another Bradbury film project that might have been.

Amazing Storyteller

Illustrator Jeff Durham posted this "old illustration" of Ray Bradbury to his blog. It's a piece of artwork he did for a magazine c.2003, but which he had forgotten about. The full story is here.



Meanwhile, MGM has apparently announced an intention to film some of Bradbury's oldest stories. His 2002 novel From the Dust Returned is a composite novel, stitched together from numerous short stories about an odd fantasy family. You know them: Cecy, Uncle Einar and their relatives. The MGM announcement is all over the web. Here's one account of it. In mentioning this, I also have to issue that standard warning: just because someone says they're making a film, don't assume they will ever ACTUALLY make it. We're still waiting for Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man - other major Bradbury works which have been announced in recent years, but which are still lost somewhere in "development hell".

Storytelling, Stage and Movies

In October, Ray Bradbury's hometown will again play host to the Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival. I've never been to this annual event, but it sounds like fun. Full details of the current plans can be seen here.



Speaking of Festivals, summer (or what passes for summer in this cloud-shrouded UK) brings the Edinburgh Festival. Another event I've never been to...

This year, there is a Bradbury-inspired performance in Edinburgh, Steven Josephson's production of Ray Bradbury's 2116. Read the Scotsman article which quotes Bradbury here, and view the official website for the production here.

Here's Bradbury himself to explain the origin of this musical:





Finally, some audio. Here's Movies on the Radio: Ray Bradbury at the Movies, from WQXR in New York. David Garland presents soundtracks from Ray Bradbury-based movies such as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Illustrated Man, by composers Bernard Herrmann, Stanley Myers, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and others.

Rocket Summer

That excellent blog for all things Mars-related, Marooned - Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books on Mars, is embarking on a story-by-story exploration of the "new" materials in The Martian Chronicles: the complete edition, recently published by Subterranean and PS (and already sold out). It's something I should be doing for my own website, but alas I don't have time at the moment.

Marooned also alerts us to this LA Times blog post, which says that the film rights to The Martian Chronicles have been newly optioned. Of course, this doesn't mean there will actually be a new film. The Chronicles has been optioned countless times, and Bradbury himself has written at least four different screenplay versions over the years. There's no indication yet that this new option will be any different. Fingers crossed, though...

Film history - on the radio

From Brian Sibley comes news of an old but new radio series.

Old: it's from 1999. New: it's been revised and newly updated.

Starting on Tuesday 19th January at 10.30pm GMT on BBC Radio 2, David Puttnam's Century of Cinema is Lord Puttnam's and Brian's major series to mark one hundred years of cinema. I can't believe it's ten years since this was first broadcast - it seems like yesterday.

Some of the contributors/interviewees in the original programmes are now no longer with us, so we are fortunate that their testimony was captured while they were still around. The series will, apparently, bring us right up to date with new material to cover the last ten years.

The BBC information on the programme is here, and with any luck the shows will be available on the BBC iPlayer after broadcast. (Note for non-UK listeners: iPlayer audio content is available throughout the world!)

What has this to do with Ray Bradbury? Click on the Sibley tag below to find out about Brian's Bradbury connections!

Forthcoming Event

The Ray Bradbury Theatre and Film Foundation has announced the programme of events for the forthcoming Bradbury Theatre and Film Festival.

On the bill are screenings of short films from Chard Hayward (The Pedestrian) and Chris Willett (The Attic), and live performances and workshops. Below are some flyers giving fuller details (click on them to enlarge). It sounds like a great event for anyone within travelling distance of Ventura, California.



On the subject of forthcoming events, a reminder that Bradbury's hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, will be presenting the annual Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival this coming Friday, 30th October 2009. As usual, the event is held in the historic Genesee Theatre. Details of the event can be found at the Waukegan Public Library website.

The Flying Machine

A while ago I requested information about The Flying Machine, a short film from 1979 based on the Bradbury story. I still haven't seen the film, but have been given more detail by the film's writer-producer-director Bernard Selling.

Bernard tells me he produced the film on a budget of $20,000. It has a running time of 18 minutes, and was distributed on the educational market by Barr Films of Pasadena. The film was shot partly at the Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood, whose pagoda is claimed to be the oldest structure in California. Exteriors were shot in Malibu.

As well as James Hong, the film features Hong's nephew Craig Ngu. Michael Chan plays the Bird Man.

Bernard is currently investigating the possibility of a DVD release for the film. His website features this intriguing flyer (pun intended!):

Bradbury vs. Welles

I have blogged before on the question of the Father Mapple sermon from the 1956 film Moby Dick. This, you may recall, is a feature film directed by John Huston, for which Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay.

Bradbury had a protracted battle with Huston over the proper screenplay credit. Huston claimed a co-writing credit, Bradbury contested this. Bradbury won an adjudication in his favour from the Writer's Guild of America, but this was overturned on appeal, despite the lack of any new evidence to justify this.

Fifty years later, Bradbury exacted sweet revenge by publishing his original screenplay. Here, plain to see, are the major structural modifications Bradbury made to Melville's original tale, making a convincing case for Bradbury's authorship of the screenplay.

Meanwhile, in occasional interviews, Orson Welles had been claiming that he wrote his Father Mapple speech himself. This wouldn't be unusual - he claimed to have re-written many of his film roles.

Bradbury's published version of the Moby Dick screenplay didn't shed much light on the issue. The version of the sermon published there didn't bear much resemblance at all to the version in the finished film. This COULD imply that Welles' claim was correct. Alternatively, it could simply indicate that the scene was shot from a later draft of the screenplay than the one Bradbury chose to publish.

However, I now have a clear solution to the matter.

Here's the scene as it appears in the film:

And here's Orson Welles' stage version of Melville, his play Moby Dick - Rehearsed:


And here is the start of the Mapple speech:

It might be argued that Welles' stage version of the speech is just a condensed, selective version of what Melville wrote, which indeed it is. You can do the comparison quite easily by reading the original Melville at Project Gutenberg.

What's important, though, is that the selections from Melville are almost identical in Moby Dick - Rehearsed and the released version of the film. The sermon even begins and ends at the same points, although one section from the play doesn't make it into the film.

My conclusion is that Welles did indeed write the script for the Mapple sermon used in Huston's film. Sorry, Orson, for ever doubting you...

Here's the full version of what Mapple says in Moby Dick - Rehearsed. Why not set the YouTube clip running, and compare it for yourself?

Beloved shipmates, clinch the last chapter of the first verse of Jonah - "And God has prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah."

Shipmates, the sin of Jonah was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God. He found it a hard command; and God's command is hard, shipmates - for in obeying God, we must obey ourselves. But Jonah Still further flouts at God by seeking to flee from him. JOnah thinks that a ship, made by men, will carry him into countries where God does not reign! With slouching hat and guilty eye, prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas, at last, after much dodgin search, he finds a ship receiving the last items of her cargo. As he steps aboard the sailors mark the stranger's evil eye...."Point out my state-room," says Jonah. "I'm travel-weary; I need sleep." ..."Ye looks it," says the Captain, "there's your room." ...All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth.

He finds the ceiling almost resisting his forehead; the air is close, and Jonah gasps. In that contracted hole he feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.

And now the time of tide is come; the ship, careening, glides to sea. ...But soon the sea rebels. It will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on; the ship is like to break, the bo'sum calls all hands to lighten her; boxes, bales and jars are clattering overboard; the wind is shrieking; the men are yelling. "I fear the Lord!" cries Jonah. "The God of Heavens who hath made the sea and the dry land!" -

Again the sailors mark him. The God-fugitive is now too plainly known. And wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him overboard, - for he knew that for his sake this dreadful tempest was upon them.

"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea" - into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shuts - to all his ivory teeh like so many white bolts upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, shipmates. He doesn't weep and wail. He feels his punishment is just and leaves his deliverance to God.

Shipmates, sin not; but if ye do, take heed ye repent of it like Jonah.

And now - how gladly would I come down there and sit with you and listen while some one of you reads me the more awful lesson Jonah teaches me as a pilot of the living God. How, bidden by the Lord to preach unwelcome truths in the ears of the wicked, Jonah sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship. But God is everywhere; and even "out of the belly of hell" God heard him when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breaching up to the sun, and "vomited out Jonah" upon the dry land; and Jonah - bruised and beaten - his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean - Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? - To preach the truth to the face of Falsehood!

Shipmates, woe to him who seeks to pour oil on the troubled waters when God has brewed 'em into a gale! - Who seeks to please rather than to appal! Yea, woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness, and who - as the great Pilot Paul has it, - while preaching to others, is himself a castaway!

But oh, shipmates! Delight is to him - who, against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, stands forth, his own inexorable self! - who gives no quarter in the truth, and who destroys all sin though he poluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges! Delight - Top-gallant delight is to him who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to Heaven. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who, coming to lay him down can say - O Father! - mortal or immortal - here I die. I have striven to be Thine more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?

Bradbury in...Belgium!

I'm recently returned from Belgium, where I presented a paper at the "Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/Novelisation" conference. My paper, entitled "Adaptive Behaviours", was another in my series exploring ways in which Bradbury's prose fictions adapt to other media. This time I focused on the short story "A Sound of Thunder" and discussed key adaptations for TV and film, as well as various graphic adaptations. It was an elaboration of some ideas I first considered in this post.

Also presenting at the conference was Aristea Chryssohou of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who did an excellent analysis of Francois Truffaut's film version of Fahrenheit 451.

There were additional delights of being in Belgium, one of which was the opportunity to visit the iconic Atomium. Although this has no direct connection to Bradbury, there are certain thematic connections, which I hope to blog about soon.

More F451

It's been a good five years since the picture on the left was taken. It shows a meeting between Ray Bradbury and screenwriter-director Frank Darabont, when Darabont was delivering his screenplay for the proposed new film of Fahrenheit 451.

The wheels turn slowly in Hollywood, if they turn at all. IMDB stills lists Fahrenheit 451 as in development for 2010. The last news that came my way was a year ago, when Darabont announced with regret that he was looking for a leading man for the project, to replace Tom Hanks.

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, the Mystery Man On Film blog has recently posted an excellent article about Bradbury's original novel, Truffaut's 1966 film adaptation, and Darabont's as yet unfilmed screenplay. Read it here.

I have some pages of my own on various incarnations of Fahrenheit 451: you can read about the origin of the book here, and Bradbury's own stage play adaptation (British premiere) here.

Ripples

Ripples travel at their own speed, and those emanating in the US can take a while to cross the pond to the UK. Which is my excuse for not knowing sooner about The Ripple Effect, a literacy initiative in Richmond, Indiana. Earlier this month there was a staging of Bradbury's stage version of Fahrenheit 451, as this is one of the books Ripple Effect has chosen for its 2009 initiatives. Its website has a few useful links and articles about Bradbury, the role of dystopian fiction, and other related topics.

As a lecturer in film production, I was particularly interested in the "Visions of the Future" film competition which invites people to make their own utopian or dystopian film.

There is another competition inspired by F451 in Bradbury's home town: Waukegan Public Libraries is running its 25th Annual Ray Bradbury Contest. Previously a writing contest, this year the competition embraces mutlimedia submissions. Full details available here.

Speaking of F451, Kevin Cowherd of the Baltimore Sun suggests F451 as ideal winter reading. All those flames you see, guaranteed to melt away the snow and ice. Read his amusing and well informed article here.

And don't forget that the National Endowment for the Arts' "The Big Read" programme has a wealth of F451 resources, including a twenty-minute radio show about the book. The site also now features two versions of a superb film profiling Bradbury, directed by Lawrence Bridges. I first saw the short version previewed at the Eaton Conference in May 2008 - in this version Ray comes across as energetic, passionate, humorous. The longer version (approximately twenty minutes) gives a more detailed biography of Bradbury, but still entirely in Bradbury's own words. Bradbury's advancing age and declining health have sometimes diminished his persuasiveness as a speaker, but both versions of this film manage to restore him to his peak. I can't help thinking that Mr B must have been exhausted when the interviews were over. Direct access to the two versions of the film is here.

Nothing to do with F451, but relevant to the idea of "visions of the future": What does Ray Bradbury Theatre have in common with Blade Runner and Pushing Daisies? The answer is the Bradbury Building, an architectural icon which has found a remarkable life for itself in science fiction and fantasy film and television. Here is a superb illustrated article that catalogues all the major appearances of the building which, incidentally, is NOT named after Ray Bradbury.