Posted by Dan Gunter on June 03, 1999 at 23:21:08:
In Reply to: Re: Honorable mention posted by Mick Scannell on May 06, 1999 at 07:46:38:
:
: : >I'll even eschew projects by other Vance aficionados. Not all labors of love are beautiful...
: : You'll eschew but--while you do--a production company feckless of consequences will have gutted a Vance book; lifted its spinal action up from the flesh of luminous being; then blathered, slathered it to mediocrity, no bucks going to the Vance estate.
: : It'll happen. Just you wait.
:
: If I understand correctly, 'Ports of Call' did pretty well in the States. Imagine, if you will, the result if Dreamworks got their schmaltzy mitts on the film rights. Leonardo Di Caprio as Myron, Meryl Streep as his Aunt, Robin Williams or Steve Martin as Moncrief, and the Spice Girls as Flook, Pook, and Snook. Chilling stuff : I shalln't sleep well tonight .... .
: Mick
You have all missed my point: no matter who does a Vance film, it will be bad. Lucas, Spielberg, Merchant/Ivory: any would fail. Cast whomever you like as the leads: the backgrounds will be horrible, the alien creatures laughable at best.
The pleasures of reading Vance are immense. Why not enjoy those truly Vancean pleasures? Do you think that Vance would be better on screen than on the page? Isn't that the argument of the "Let's Make a Vance Film!" crowd?\
Do you love Vance? Then read Vance. Don't ask that his works be bastardized. If you want to watch great movies, then watch great movies.
The same advice goes for the people who want to read Vancean fiction. If you want Vancean fiction, read Vance. Except for Vance, any writer worth anything will not be Vancean: that writer will be, for instance, Weltian (i.e., Eudora Welty), McCarthyan (Cormac, that is; not Eugene), Dunsanian (the Lord, and none other), Smithian (Clark Ashton) . . . Anyone who sets out to write like Vance will be bad. A good writer will write like himself or herself. And unless that writer is John Holbrook Vance, b. 1916 or thereabouts, that writer will not write like John Holbrook Vance, b. 1916 or thereabouts.
And if the "writer" is a director, then the director will create, not a "Vancean" film, but a film in his or her own style.
I'm being a bit harsh; but reality therapy is sometimes the only therapy available.