New Bradbury 100 Podcast Episode: The Best Martian Chronicles NEVER Made!

Seasons Greetings!

It's time for a new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast. This time I explore some of the best movies never made, by looking at Ray Bradbury's multiple unfilmed screenplays for The Martian Chronicles.

The book came out in 1950, and The Martian Chronicles immediately became a mini sensation that same year, thanks to the radio drama series Dimension X, which dramatised several stories from the book. Ray knew that there was dramatic potential in his Martian tales, and the late 1950s saw him - by now an established screenwriter, thanks to Moby Dick and It Came From Outer Space - drawing up plans for a TV series to be called Report From Space.

Alas, the series didn't make it to air, and his attempts to develop The Martian Chronicles further for the big screen also came to nothing. But the scripts are pretty good, and allow us to play a game of what if:  

• What if Ray Bradbury's TV series came on air the same year as The Twilight Zone or Men Into Space?
• What if the producer-director/actor team from 1962's To Kill A Mockingbird had succeeded in making The Martian Chronicles before 2001: A Space Odyssey (or Star Trek) had come along?

To find out more... listen to the episode...!

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 28 - the best Martian Chronicles films never made

Now with added video: The Illustrated Man at Seventy

A week ago (or so) I put out a Bradbury 100  podcast episode containing the audio of my recent talk about The Illustrated Man. Well, now the University of Wolverhampton has released the full video recording of the talk, so you can now see me as well as hear me.

While that is certainly not a good reason to watch, there is a significant advantage in watching: it's a heavily illustrated talk. How appropriate is that?

Here it is:

New Bradbury 100 podcast episode: The Illustrated Man - at Seventy!

A few days ago, I gave a livestreamed talk on Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, a book which is seventy years old this year. The talk was given as part of the University of Wolverhampton's Artsfest Online.

A video recording of the event will be made available shortly, but in the meantime below is the audio from the talk, slightly edited so that it works without the illustrations. (Anyone who has seen any of my talks knows that I firmly believe in using illustrations!)

Thanks to everyone who attended the live version of the talk, which generated some interesting Q&A at the end. I've left the Q&A out of the podcast audio because it was poor quality, but it should be included in the video version when that is released.

One person asked me a tough question: was Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives influenced by Ray Bradbury's short story "Marionettes Inc"? You may recall that both of these works deal with robot replacement humans in a domestic environment. I admit to being stumped by that question - and I still am!

Levin and Bradbury were contemporaries (Bradbury was nine years older than Levin), and while Bradbury appears to have begun writing at an earlier age than Levin, they both started writing for television in the 1950s. Around the time Bradbury was writing for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Levin was writing for Lights Out and other TV shows. 

I've never seen anything that specifically connects the two writers, but given Levin's interest in dark subjects and fantastical story premises (not only Stepford but Rosemary's Baby, The Boys From Brazil, and others) it's hard to imagine that he wasn't aware of Bradbury's fiction. And "Marionettes Inc" was a story which was well known in the 1950s. It was adapted for radio more than once, and Bradbury adapted it for Hitchcock. It was also widely anthologised.

But short of reading a biography of Levin - which I now feel compelled to do! - I don't have an answer to that Stepford Wives question.

What I do know, however, is that Bradbury felt that Rosemary's Baby borrowed heavily from his classic short story "The Small Assassin". I think Bradbury was more bothered by the film version than Levin's book; and, of course, the only thing they have in common is the basic premise of an evil baby. But that's all I know of Bradbury versus Levin.

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 27 - The Illustrated Man at 70!

The Illustrated Man is seventy years old!

Ray Bradbury's seminal short story collection The Illustrated Man is seventy years old. To celebrate, I'm giving an illustrated online talk as part of the University of Wolverhampton's Artsfest. Please join me on 16th November (7pm UK time)!

It's free and open to all, but you have to register. Details here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ray-bradburys-the-illustrated-man-at-seventy-tickets-203217999507

 

October: Bradbury Season!

 Halloween is upon us once more, that most Bradburyan of seasons. 

By way of celebration, here's another chance to listen to the Bradbury 100 podcast episode I put out last Halloween, in which I discuss what October meant to Ray Bradbury, and interviewed the remarkable actor Bill Oberst Jr, the man dubbed "the King of Horror"!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 15 - with actor Bill Oberst Jr

New Bradbury 100 Episode: Revealed at Last - The Lonely One!

Time for a new episode of my podcast Bradbury 100. With this episode, I'm starting on an occasional series of shorter episodes. The topic is one which has previously brought thousands of visitors to this website:

The Lonely One.

The Lonely One is a fictional character in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I say "character", but he is really just a shadowy figure who never comes into focus, and never occupies the foreground.

But the Lonely One was also a real criminal in Ray's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. I exclusively revealed his true identity in 2009, and my blog post about him has had more "hits" than any other page on the whole of Bradburymedia. So I thought I would share my findings with the podcast audience.

Here's the podcast episode:

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 26 - Tracking Down THE LONELY ONE...

 

And to read my original 2009 blog post about the Lonely One - which includes a photo of this notorious petty criminal - click here.

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.

Bradbury 100 LIVE

On Saturday 21st August - the eve of Ray Bradury's 101st birthday - I took to the "airwaves" of Facebook with another live edition of Bradbury 100.

I was joined over Zoom by writer and former Hollywood animation producer Steven Paul Leiva. Steve knew Ray Bradbury well, having worked with him on the abortive Little Nemo In Slumberland film project, and having organised "Ray Bradbury Week" in Los Angeles in 2010. Steve was also the very first interview guest on the Bradbury 100 audio podcast about a year ago, and it was great to talk to him again.

The live show was recorded, and below you will find a slightly remastered version of the show. Highlights of the show:

• never-before-seen photos from Ray's 90th birthday party
• never-before-seen video from the same party
• Steve's inside scoop on what went wrong (and occasionally right) with Little Nemo in Slumberland
• discussion of Ray and his good friend, the animation legend Chuck Jones

You can find out more about Steven Paul Leiva on his blog, which also has information on his books, which I heartily recommend.

Bradbury 101!

Today would have been Ray Bradbury's 101st birthday - so what better way to celebrate than with a new episode of my Youtube series, Bradbury 101. This time, I look at The October Country. Scroll down to play it.

Thanks to everyone who joined me for yesterday's Bradbury 100 LIVE on Facebook. The recording is still there if you missed it and want to take a look. Or you can wait a few days, and I'll put a better quality version on here. (The live show was done through Zoom, which degrades the picture and sound quality terribly. But I also recorded it "locally", so I can put out a kind of re-mastered version!)

 

 

Bradbury 100 - new episode - AND Live Show

Phil 'n' Ray, back in the day...

 

Tomorrow (22nd August 2021) would have been Ray Bradbury's 101st birthday. That means that the "Bradbury centenary year" is drawing to a close. And so, to round out the centenary I offer you a new episode of the Bradbury 100 podcast as well as Bradbury 100 - LIVE!

The LIVE show will be streamed on Facebook, and I'll also post a recording of it here after the event. (Give me a couple of days - these things don't happen instantly!)

But the "standard", audio podcast is available now. Scroll down and click play, or of course pick the episode up on your podcast app.

In this end-of-centenary podcast episode, I turn the tables (or the microphone) on myself. Instead of interviewing a guest, I talk about my own experiences with Ray - the handful of times I met him, what we talked about, and so on. I'm a bit more brutal when editing myself than when editing interviewees, so this episode is a bit shorter than usual!

Among the things I talk about in the podcast:

• my various academic (and non-academic) writings on Ray
• the one chapter of my PhD thesis which has so far been published, which happens to be about Fahrenheit 451
• Leviathan '99
• Ray's 90th birthday party
  
• This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943)
• The BBC documentary Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man (1980)

 

Of course, now that the Bradbury Centenary is closing, you may be wondering what becomes of Bradbury 100. Well, I already have my sequel/spin-off, the Youtube channel Bradbury 101, but I'm not done with the audio podcast yet. Watch this space to see what happens next...

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 25 - with Phil Nichols...