Moby-Dick, the movie, sort of
As any sentient English-reading American knows, Moby-Dick is the greatest novel ever written. It begs to be made into a great feature film.
It, so far, has not.
In 1930, they shot a version with John Barrymore where Ahab kills the whale and is happily re-united with his patient, long-suffering wife. In 1956, John Huston shot the most famous version with considerable cinematic flair but with Gregory Peck tragically miscast as Ahab. By 1998, there was a TV-movie version with Patrick Stewart as Ahab, which I have not seen, but which was made for TV.
As I’ve noted before, there’s something about great literature that resists film, no matter how “cinematic” the literature seems to be. The Godfather is a great movie from a pulpy page-turner. So are Jaws and Silence of the Lambs and Gone With the Wind. The Great Gatsy, however, I think is doomed to ever-diminishing returns.
Moby-Dick is doomed, I think, for four reasons.
1. It’s period, which makes it expensive
2. It’s about whaling, and 19th-century whaling at that, which no one cares about
3. It’s based on a work of “famous literature,” which makes people want to go see Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man’s Chest instead
4. It’s called Moby-Dick
Now then. What does make Moby-Dick a great idea for a movie?
1. Deathless, universal themes of leadership, manhood, adventure, madness, obsession
2. A terrific, flawless, inexorable plot
3. Indelible, time-tested characters
So, to make Moby-Dick into a movie, the thought occurs to me, as it does to any screenwriter, “Well, let’s just stick with the stuff that works and throw out the rest.”
That is to say, keep those themes, keep those characters, keep that plot, but throw out the title, the reputation, the period setting, and most important, the whaling.
What is the plot of Moby-Dick? The plot of Moby-Dick is that a crazy, obsessive leader goes “off the res” and gets the men in his care tangled up in a dangerous mission of revenge that can only end in death and ruin.
The first person who springs to mind, of course, is George W. Bush. But no one is going to develop that movie any time soon.
It could be almost anything. It could be thieves, it could be spies, it could be an office, it could be a school, it could be merceneries.
So here’s the question: what is the 21st-century equivalent to 19th-century whaling?
Ahab is a crazy captain, but his employers let him be crazy because he produces results. Christ, isn’t that the protagonist of every police drama made in the past 40 years? And that would make Ishmael the rookie cop who gets drawn into the shady side of undercover work. The cliches write themselves!
But Ahab is not in the employ of the government, he is in the employ of the investors of The Pequod. Part of the drama of Moby-Dick is that Ahab isn’t just fulfilling a personal vendetta, it’s that he’s doing it with someone else’s ship and with men who don’t share his sense of outrage and vengeance. The voyage of the Pequod is a commercial venture. Ahab is not only asking his men to give up their lives, he’s asking them to give up their stake in a lucrative commercial venture.
Whaling, as Melville describes it, is a hugely profitable but also derided profession. Even in 1851, apparently, whaling was seen as a necessary but ugly economic truth. One might use whaling products every day, but one did not wish to hang out with whalers. Whaling was seen as an adventurous, dangerous but low-class thing to do with one’s life.
So who are today’s whalers? Our mercenaries in Iraq seem to be a good point of comparison. But maybe it’s someone in the drilling or mining profession instead. Maybe it’s drug-runners, maybe its firefighters, maybe it’s paramedics, maybe it’s cops after all.
Or maybe it’s a heist movie. If Danny Ocean took Elliott Gould’s money for the casino job and then said to Matt Damon and his crew, “You know, I’ve got a better idea, let’s rob Fort Knox instead,” is that Moby-Dick?
But the gold in Fort Knox is dead. It’s a metal, it’s not alive. Moby-Dick, the great white whale, is alive, natural, unplaceable and unknowable. Ahab is asking his crew to join him in a mission to know the unknowable. And that makes it tricky.
You know it’s got to be a heist movie in outer space. Space has the great benefit of retaining the isolation of the ships. (I was thinking a few month back of how one could retrofit Treasure Island into other settings, and modern city life just didn’t seem to work.
If someone manages to force a whole crew into stealing something where the point isn’t the loot itself, it’s defeating the security (or infuriating the owner) you might be able to work the personal revenge aspects into it that way — the gold promised to the gang turns out not to be there after all, but Ahab presses on, bent on stealing something of no monetary value?
Hmm. What about a political hit squad? Bound together in secrecy, their isolation is informational instead of physical. The leader has sworn to take down candidate X, even though those funding him have lost interest or even think he’s really going after candidate Y.
My first instinct was a political hit squad. Imagine Robert DeNiro is the leader of a black-ops squadron, and he’s been given the assignment to take down a specific guy, but he gets his men together and goes to the place and then reveals his true goal, which is to kill some completely other guy.
The only problem is the unknowable thing. It’s not impossible to know the guy that you’re going to kill.
The space idea might be better.
I was actually thinking more in terms of killing politically rather than literally. More Karl Rove than Dick Cheney.
Is it neccessary for the target to be unknowable to Ahab as well as the crew? Probably.
(I have read the book, but it’s been a long time.)
Well now that’s interesting, making it even less literal. Although it starts to become less commercial as well.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily less commercial — they could be the dark(er) side of lobbyists. They’re almost certainly using corporate funds, in any case.
I’d love to pitch that: “It’s Thank You For Smoking — as a tragedy!”
It’s Thank You For Smoking meets Apocalypse Now — on a ship!
No wait! A spaceship!
It’s Mission Impossible meets Free Willy — in space!
No wait — It’s Ronin meets Orca — but in space!
I can pitch that.
But seriously, it occurs to me that if you take Alien, and make the robot the protagonist, this is probably close to what we’re talking about.
Alien – Nostromo – Conrad – Heart of Darkness – Apocalypse Now. It all makes sense now.
The synthetic as Ahab? Except that he not only had the backing of the company , but he also had a sort of love for the critter. He’s almost an anti-Ahab in that sense. Come to think of it, Orca itself is a kind of inverted Moby Dick, especially if you consider the whale as the protagonist.
What the synthetic is really lusting after there is the perfection of the creature’s design. That perspective gives him a certain amount of tragedy, although it then would be more appropriate if the alien had gotten him as he’s trying to study it. Since this is also the motivation for the Borg, we get the tragic tale of their constant striving for perfection, which must always be out of reach.
But it is completely possible to not really know who your employer is… for instance what if Politico A hires the crew to demolish his opposition: “Party B.” But here’s the catch; A is actually a member of Party B the crew has been hired to demolish! Maybe he had some crisis of conscience, or was a saboteur from the start… but halfway through the movie the crew faces some level of discovery of this fact.
So now, in order to kill their whale they have to blow whatever their advance payment was in order to get the big bounty.
Except there won’t be a payoff – the agent offering the bounty is part of the organization to be destroyed… so how do you hitch the crew into not running off with the advance payment, abondoning the mission?
Probably by having DeNiro fervantly believing in his goal and convincing everybody else to go along with it. That’s what’s wonderful about politics, I guess… some people actually believe that strongly about things.
And, now that I think of it, it’s possible to not really know who it is you’re killing. That is, if DeNiro’s team is sent after one guy, but DeNiro decides to go after a bigger, more powerful guy, but in fact the first guy was the bigger, more powerful guy all along and DeNiro has made everything worse by making this decision…
Which is precisely why DeNiro should go all Travis Bickle on their asses and kill everybody! Indiscriminate killing ensures that there is no bigger target.
Uh…you don’t work for the current U.S. administration, do you? 😉
Err… I always forget that tongue-in-cheek replies don’t always translate so well to text…
… but to answer your question: no. I turned down my opportunity to be a CIA spook a long time ago.
Indeed. Our tonal quality is restricted to our font.
Well, this is actually an interesting idea. If DeNiro is Ahab and he’s after something which cannot be obtained and he’s not sure who he’s working for, it would naturally follow that he would, at some point, think that he had to kill off his own men in order to ensure the “success” of his mission. That is very, very interesting.
And not often thought of – there were expeditions where the captain or leader or big man on campus destroyed either the ships or the supplies or something vital to prevent a mutinous fleeing-for-home.
I agree about setting it in space. Bounty hunting, for example, is a far sexier profession when it’s set in space (Cowboy Bebop, Boba Fett from Star Wars). If the whales were turned into some sort of alien creature with an interesting physical composition, then the public at large would be more interested. And of course in this day and age, there would need to be an animal rights angle tossed in.
By the way, Disney recently made Treasure Planet, which is Treasure Island in space, so you’re right on the mark with that assessment.
On the subject of adaptation, pulp novels (or other simply structured works) give a story more freedom when it’s being turned into a movie. (I’m sure that you know that, Todd, since you’re adapting The Giver, unless IMDb is off its mark.) A great novel usually has several sprawling, complex storylines that intersect each other as the author sees fit. Scriptwriters often do not have that option, as it would make the story too hard to follow in a filmic form. After all, you can’t turn back a few pages in a movie (at least not until it’s on VHS/DVD) to reread something. So when a great novel is turned into a movie script, many of the “extraneous” storylines and characters that contributed to the novel’s greatness are consolidated, changed to fit into the story, or are cut entirely. Since intermissions during films are no longer an option, films really can’t go longer than 3 1/2 hours (and that’s in the most extreme cases). If they do, they spill over into a sequel, which leaves two movies that are not complete stories on their own and do not stand alone.
Gone With the Wind (which is too long for a pulp novel, IMO – it’s an epic novel that isn’t taken seriously by some because it is a love story at heart) would not be made as a single film today, if it could even be made at all. The beauty of that movie is that it still works as a great film, even with some of the extraneous storylines from the novel cut out. It was able to survive the simplifying process. But most well-loved novels can’t. Is there a way for Moby-Dick to survive? Perhaps…but it’s unlikely that it could do so in a faithful adaptation.
Love Cowboy Bebop. I was up for the gig writing the movie. Wrote a really good treatment. Turned out there was a problem with the rights.
Unfortunately, Treasure Planet was a huge bomb that got their 2D animation studio shut down. So best not to pitch that part of it.
It’s not impossible, but films do tend to be about one protagonist, and studios feel weird about stepping outside that paradigm.
Someone, I don’t remember who, said that the function of film is to turn literature into anecdote.
A mentor of mine pointed out to me once that certain storytelling forms tend to do specific things well. A novel, he said, is good for getting inside the thoughts and feelings of characters, a play is good for showing people talking in a room, and a movie is good for showing car chases and exploding buildings. A more forgiving way to put it is that novels are good at capturing thought, plays are good at capturing speech and movies are good at capturing action, or behavior at least.
When I stopped writing plays and started writing screenplays the first thing I noticed was that the importance to dialogue and action were almost reversed. In a play, the dialogue was of paramount importance and action was as minimal as possible, in a screenplay the action takes precedence and the dialogue must be as minimal as possible. Great dialogue is a plus for any script, but if there’s too much of it the script bogs down and becomes “talky.”
Hence our discussion today.
Love Cowboy Bebop. I was up for the gig writing the movie. Wrote a really good treatment. Turned out there was a problem with the rights.
Aww, that would’ve been amazing to see!
Unfortunately, Treasure Planet was a huge bomb that got their 2D animation studio shut down. So best not to pitch that part of it.
That’s quite true. I was merely using it as an example conceptually. After all, just because one script doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean that the basic concept is flawed (though that also works in reverse – just because a script works, it doesn’t mean that the concept isn’t flawed).
It’s not impossible, but films do tend to be about one protagonist, and studios feel weird about stepping outside that paradigm.
And rightfully so, since multiple protagonists eat each others’ screen time in their quest to become more fully-developed characters. One (or more) of them is/are bound to become the sidekick(s), just to fit the balance.
A mentor of mine pointed out to me once that certain storytelling forms tend to do specific things well. A novel, he said, is good for getting inside the thoughts and feelings of characters, a play is good for showing people talking in a room, and a movie is good for showing car chases and exploding buildings. A more forgiving way to put it is that novels are good at capturing thought, plays are good at capturing speech and movies are good at capturing action, or behavior at least.
That’s it exactly! And actions are generally more interesting to watch than behaviors, simply because behavior is usually more subtle or involves more talking heads. That sort of thing is more accepted in independent films, which are expected to focus on behavior rather than action, simply because there isn’t a budget for exciting action on a large scale.
Until it becomes financially viable to give “talky” films larger budgets without heightening the audience’s expectations, the “Hollywood” film and the independent film will remain separate entities. After all, big budget films that are dialogue-heavy tend to bomb. The audience they’re pitched to just doesn’t want to see a combination like that.
There are, however, a few ground rules in pitch meetings. With rare exceptions (that is, movies that are highly regarded bombs), one never compares one’s project to one that lost money. This includes all Coen Bros. movies for some reason, no matter how profitable they are. (I once suggested that a character in my pitch resembled George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty and actually saw the interest go out of my pitchee’s eyes.)
However, because of the camera’s ability to get in close, drama and meaning can hinge on the tiniest flickers of expression. A blink, a shift of the eyes, a clenching of the jaw, they all indicate shades of meaning in dialogue scenes. So perhaps what we should say is that a novel is good for capturing the way people think, plays are good for capturing the way people speak, and movies are good for capturing the things people do (or, in the case of movies these days, things people never actually do but are able to, given the miracle of special effects).
Well, “talky” movies used to be a mainstay of Hollywood production. Spectacle has always been what film excels in, but, as Hitchcock noted sixty-odd years ago, most movies are still “pictures of people talking.” That’s not a very good use of the medium, but it’s still good for conveying drama.
I once pitched some comic-book ideas to an editor at DC, and she stopped me at a certain point and said “I don’t see why any of these ideas need to be comics.” What she meant was that comics, like films and novels and plays, have things that they do well and things they do poorly. If your story involves people in rooms talking, there’s no particular reason that needs to be a comic book. It would probably just as easily be a play, or a TV show.
That’s partly the reason why comics have developed the way they have: the form lends itself to larger-than-life characters with strange powers in ridiculous outfits. Superman would be ludicrous in real life but takes on mythic resonance in the comics for some reason.
There are, however, a few ground rules in pitch meetings. With rare exceptions (that is, movies that are highly regarded bombs), one never compares one’s project to one that lost money.
Yep, a good guideline to have. It’s all in the marketing, since most people don’t want to consider anything complicated (“well, this character was in a picture that lost money, but the script was SOLID…”).
So perhaps what we should say is that a novel is good for capturing the way people think, plays are good for capturing the way people speak, and movies are good for capturing the things people do (or, in the case of movies these days, things people never actually do but are able to, given the miracle of special effects).
Perhaps this is another reason why special effects movies are so prevalent: not everyone has friends who speak the way characters in plays speak and reading a book character’s thoughts is the closest we can ever hope to come to being inside another person’s head. But we can see people doing things everywhere around us. So why pay $9 to see people doing things that we can see for free in our own lives?
Well, “talky” movies used to be a mainstay of Hollywood production.
Damn straight they were. Unfortunately, it’s easier to write a few choice quips in between explosions than it is to maintain scene upon scene of banter, like in the old screwball comedies. Very few people bother doing that nowadays.
comics, like films and novels and plays, have things that they do well and things they do poorly. If your story involves people in rooms talking, there’s no particular reason that needs to be a comic book. It would probably just as easily be a play, or a TV show.
*nods in agreement* I know several people who were unhappy that Spiderman 2 was too talky, citing similar reasons.
That’s partly the reason why comics have developed the way they have: the form lends itself to larger-than-life characters with strange powers in ridiculous outfits. Superman would be ludicrous in real life but takes on mythic resonance in the comics for some reason.
It’s all in how people approach the genre and what their expectations are like.
Now this prompts an interesting idea….going back to the Moby-Dick discussion, what would happen if the epic larger-than-life characters became superheroes? There’s not much that’s scarier than a superhero who’s gone mad and physically can’t be stopped by anyone.
Err….no capes, though.
Damn, that’s a GREAT idea! It would be like the darkest episode of Justice League ever! Superman becomes obsessed with destroying some space alien and takes down the entire Justice League with him, leaving only Martian Manhunter left to tell their story.
Hey, you’re good.
Damn, that’s a GREAT idea! It would be like the darkest episode of Justice League ever! Superman becomes obsessed with destroying some space alien and takes down the entire Justice League with him, leaving only Martian Manhunter left to tell their story.
Exactly! And supervillains don’t even have to enter the picture – the space alien could be the last viable threat out there, which would explain why Superman would be so obsessed with defeating it. After all, if there’s no one left to fight on Earth, who needs superheroes?
Hey, you’re good.
Why thank you. 😀
Except Martian Manhunter would have to be Queequeg.
Flash could be Ishmael. Young and relatively inexperienced, but fast enough to survive.
Well, if we made it Justice League Unlimited, it could be almost anybody. Booster Gold, for instance.
True. He does love telling stories about himself.
I’m always fascinated by the small books to good movies equation. I was happy to see the Series of Unfortunate Events being made into a movie, because I figured that was about the right scale — then they mashed three books together, apparently just so they could cut out a lot of stuff.
I did know about Treasure Planet, and want to speak ill of it, but I haven’t seen it, so I won’t. Both Josie and the Pussycats and Gilligan’s Island (animated) eventually went into space, so maybe everything goes into space eventually. (Even Highlander!) But then there were some Star Trek episodes that remind me of Moby Dick, notably Obsession and Balance of Terror. (Although the latter may be more of a remake of Run Silent, Run Deep.)
Are intermissions really unworkable these days? I seem to recall Dances With Wolves had one. But that’s the most recently produced movie I can think of. And also, Titanic wasn’t 3.5 hours, it was officially two hours and seventy-four minutes long.
Are intermissions really unworkable these days? I seem to recall Dances With Wolves had one. But that’s the most recently produced movie I can think of.
It’s certainly a lot more work on the theaters’ end, not to mention that even fewer films can be shown in a theater if a single movie plays in it for a longer period of time. Unfortunately, that’s a larger problem today than it used to be. Not to mention that most people aren’t patient enough to sit through movies that long all at once or without a pause button.
And also, Titanic wasn’t 3.5 hours, it was officially two hours and seventy-four minutes long.
Laugh, it only felt like 3.5 hours then. 🙂 Clever marketing strategy, though. The longer the movie, the less people will feel like sitting through it. Never mind that the plot is obvious to some of us – there are a lot of people out there who wouldn’t bother doing the math.
Hey – wasn’t there an element of Danny Ocean’s intent that really was Ahab-esque? As is pointed out to him – and I can only speak of the most recent version of “Ocean’s 11” as I have not seen the original, my apologies – they weren’t going to be able to divvy up the girl fairly. George wanted to, but the rest of them didn’t sign on for Julia, or for vengeance over Andy.
It has been awhile – does Ahab “ask” his crew? I recall that it wasn’t a request – but then, “all work and no coffee makes Kathy a dull girl”.
The mercenaries are apt, undoubtedly. How often DON’T we approach a poorly understood culture with fear and anger? And a need to wipe it out?
How about Area 51? Aliens and UFO’s? If we see it and don’t get it, let’s kill it!
I started to respond to you on a vaguely related subject. Did you ever see “…and God Created Great Whales”, the Rinde Eckert piece that was playing at Bleecker St. in 2000 (and I believe it toured a bit)? The man suffering from some debilitating mental illness, trying to write a musical version of Moby Dick… fighting his own white whale….it was incredibly beautiful.
I didn’t see the Rinde Eckert thing, but I heard it was transformative and wonderful.
I can only say that I am a harsh critic, theatrically (damn that directing voice) – and I was holding my breath during it’s final notes, this lovely aria duet, after which I broke down sobbing and couldn’t speak in complete sentences for a half hour.
Trust me – that takes some doing. I saw “Crave” at Axis theatre the same year and all I can remember from THAT was that Deborah Harry was smokin’ at 52 (or however old she was at the time), and I could only hope to look that good at 38.
So…maybe illness could be a white whale?
Absolutely. It could be a movie about people researching a cure for AIDS in the African jungle. Or it could be about a think-tank of physicists who are studying particle acceleration. And in both cases, their leaders’ desire for revenge and conquest lead to everyone in their care (except Matt Dam — er, Ishmael) to be killed.
This is true. But Ocean’s 11 is a comedy. To be an adaptation of Moby-Dick, the jolly heist would have to end with everyone but Matt Damon getting killed.
He does not ask them, but he certainly talks them into it. It’s one of the greatest scenes in the book, Ahab talking his crew into doing something that, at the very least, is going to be dangerous and wasteful and stupid, and at most will probably kill them. And not only does he talk them into it, they will never go back to thinking another way about it. It’s like they signed on to be whalers, but Ahab is offering them a chance to know God. What he does not say is that the only way to know God is to die.
This is making me think of the TV show Heist, which I quite liked but only 5 episodes made it to air before it was cancelled. It was gradually revealed that the main motive of the guy leading the heist was not greed but revenge, and when his crew found out he had to talk them back into it.
>This is true. But Ocean’s 11 is a comedy. To be an adaptation of Moby-Dick, the jolly heist would have to end with everyone but Matt Damon getting killed.
That would qualify as tragedy, indeed. We need the decoy argument with balloons between Affleck and Woods! We need George in a tux! A contrary Matt Damon with balloons and a tux just isn’t satisfying enough.
Thank you for the “Alcott’s Notes” on Moby Dick. Haven’t read it since I was an adolescent (and yes – I did read the actual, and not some Reader’s Digest milquetoast version). What’s odd is that that scene, as you describe, is only too reminiscent of speeches forced upon me (and the rest of the company) from my first artistic director (he was filled with a little grandiosity, if I may use an oxymoron)….
A movie centered on a theatre company, perhaps?
God, no. That’s all we need.
Also a perfectly workable premise. A director has a vision for staging, say, a stage production of Moby-Dick. And because of his reputation for greatness, he gets everyone to sign on for a project that can’t help but be a disaster. It wouldn’t have to end with everyone getting killed, but it could certainly end with everyone’s careers ruined.
Ever read Orson Welles’s stage adaptation Moby-Dick Rehearsed? Might be interesting as research. Kinda like Moby-Dick meets Vanya on 42nd Street.
The conceit is that a young actor wants to do the book as a play (and perform as Ishmael) and convinces the members of the rep company he’s in to come in on their day off and read the book aloud in the empty theatre (including the grand actor-manager of the company, written by Welles as a self-parodic figure, who plays Father Mapple and Ahab). As they read the book and talk about it, gradually the “rehearsal” becomes a full-out performance of the book, albeit with rehearsal clothes and props.
If you can find it, it’s a great read, and was I believe quite a success for Welles in England (Patrick McGoohan played the central young actor, I think).
I’ve heard of it but I’ve never read it.
Welles, of course, played Father Mapple for John Huston.
Just make sure to get Melville’s great-great-grandnephew to do the score.
Funny story: Herman Melville lived in Bronson Alcott’s house for a while when he was broke and miserable. If I ever meet Moby I plan to ask him for back rent.
Moby Dick just seems to me to be one of those books that you can’t adapt into a movie. I did see the one with Patrick Stewart and it was okay (I was six when I saw it however and didn’t read Moby-Dick for a year or two afterwards).
An adaption of it set in modern times I would like to see done on stage however.
Well, I’ve written a stage version of it if anyone is interested.
Where at?
Currently, in my drawer. It was never staged. I did do a reading of it, starring Stephen “Dr. Orpheus” Rattazzi as Ahab. I like it a lot. I boiled the novel down as much as I could, got the play down to about 70 minutes. I’m still not sure how I thought I would pull off stage directions like “The whale destroys the boat.”
I’m enjoying imagining Dr. Orpheus reading lines such as:
Which then leads me to further imagine an episode of Venture Bros. “Call me Hank (And I’m Dean!) Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my… pocket, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would hover about a little and see the watery part of the world.”. And, of course, Starbrock.
>>>I’m still not sure how I thought I would pull off stage directions like “The whale destroys the boat.”
By keeping it totally offstage? Seriously, I could see this being done – I’d like to see how you pulled it off. I don’t think it would be possible to write an adaptation of Moby Dick that caputures all the themes, just because a novel is so much more information dense than a script. Look at LotR and how much was left out from the book, and a lot of that only worked because the basic story of Good vs Evil is so simplistic it didn’t take any effort for the audience to understand. So it would not only be impossible, but pointless. If you picked one theme and made that paramount, though, it would work. Focus on the crew’s relationship with Ahab, maybe, and keep the actual whaling stuff suggestions? Plays are so minimalist compared to movies, and also more intimate because you’re seeing real, breathing people, just suggesting what’s going on and letting imagination fill in the rest has way more impact than 80 million dollars of CGI whale ever could. Like you implied, I don’t think the usual goal of a blockbuster type film is deep introspection, and the goal of plays shouldn’t be spectacle. Just my opinion. That’s why pulpy novels work so well as movies, they were never very deep to begin with. And isn’t JAWS just Moby Dick writ light?
Or hell, you can make it a musical and have the whale portrayed by a giant puppet.
Nah.
I’ve been trying to write a viable screenplay for Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and I kind of feel your pain. Almost no dialog, and getting around the fact your main character spends his entire time as a large cockroach. It’s an interesting challenge.
Not to drive you more crazy, but I’ve been developing Metamorphosis for a few years now — as a comedy.
Well, I didn’t pull it off. The idea that I had was the stage would be the ship’s deck, but then there would be a separate puppet stage that would contain the action scenes, of which there are many. I don’t know if it ever would have worked.
For the stage play, what I did with Moby-Dick is cut out everything that did not remind me of my relationship with my father. I knew that it was pointless to try to get the whole novel onto the stage, and besides no one needs that, least of all Melville.
Ah well, you’d probably do Metamorphosis better than I would anyways, and have more chance of getting it filmed. “Developing”. That sounds so professional. Much better than “hacking away at off and on”.
Speaking of Melville, did you happen to see the recent movie of “Bartleby”, with Crispin Glover? I thought they did a really excellent job of adapting what is basically very short, internal story, although some of the added comedy business went on too long.
Hmm, does seem a bit difficult. How could you pull off the whale itself?
Just out of curiousity, but does Stephen “Dr. Orpheus” Rattazzi sound like Dr. Orpheus in real life? I’ve been wondering that since I first saw the Venture Bros.
Only more so. It’s a little alarming at times.
I’d like to read it, if you’re so inclined. Let me know – I’ll send you my email.
You know what would be amazing? A straight up serious [but Disneyishly drawn- a la Lion King] animated version of Moby Dick. Every scene could be operatic [like the better non-gargoyle parts of Hunchback of Notre Dame] and the result more marketable than a live action version. You may have a little weight as the man who wrote Pixar’s first rival movie, and the people at Pixar ARE looking for a way to start up thier division. What better way than Moby Dick.
Or you can sell it to DC or Marvel as a comic about ‘God Hunters’ in the future or something like that… voyaging through Lovecraftian world to catch a creature of Titanic weight.
And if all else fails– Poke’mon Manga. About Professor Oak going mad… trying to catch the great… white Wailord [http://www.pokemonelite2000.com/pictures/anime/anime321.jpg]. Oh yes. If it was 1999 I would be freaking out at that idea.
I always thought an animated Les Mis movie would be glorious… roaring out.
Like Atlantis: the Lost Empire, sans explosions.
Only with characters of any depth.
Animated Les Mis
They actually came out with that. It was incredible, and actually fell with Les Miserables actual story line. Check it out on youtube
Though I might have taken the challenge a bit literally….
How about poachers in Africa? You can change the whale to a lion or an elephant or whatever. Of course, I suppose poaching is barely above whaling, but I just wanted to get the idea out there.
Well, poachers are just vile. There’s no legitimate reason why we “need” poachers in the world. We would spend the whole movie waiting for the lions to eat them.
This reminds me of The Ghost and the Darkness, from a few years back, where Michael Douglass and Val Kilmer are hunting lions with super-powers in colonial Africa. The great screenwriter William Goldman tried really hard to endow the lions with mythical resonance, and I wanted to go with it, but by the end of the movie all I could think was “So, this is a movie about how a couple of white guys are hired to make Africa safe — from lions. As though, yeah, that’s the trouble with colonial Africa, the lions.
“Well, poachers are just vile. There’s no legitimate reason why we “need” poachers in the world. We would spend the whole movie waiting for the lions to eat them.”
No legitimate reason we need poachers? Then where am I supposed to get my elephant-skin shoes? Surely you yourself have atleast a few ivory ashtrays? Lion mane fur coat for the missus? Ivory toothpicks?
But I digress. I hear that there’s an Orson Welles film floating around somewhere (never used in any official showings though because it was never edited – though I understand that some organization has done that recently) adapted, directed, and starring himself (as every character). Done without props too, on an empty set, as I hear it. Might be interesting to find.
Peck as Ahab
I can’t agree that Peck is miscast. I think, rather, that the part, like Hamlet, cannot be played by a single person. Peck missed the “heart-stricken moose” aspect of Ahab, but he NAILED the thunder-and-hell.
Moby Dick-better a book than a film
The point about Moby Dick being a tough road to hoe for successful translation to the screen is a correct one.
The television version of Moby Dick was an earnest failure with Patrick Stewart demonstrating that miscasting isn’t confined to the big screen and the whale looking like something that flunked the physical exam for the Macy’s Day Parade.
Re: Peck. Robert Ryan’s daughter told me the one role her Father craved about others was as Ahab in the 1956 version. I suppose John Huston had to go for the star power with Peck who was game, but unsuitable. Anyone who watches Ryan as Master at Arms Claggert in BILLY BUDD knows what an opportunity was lost.
Great blog.
Alan K. Rode
http://www.alanrode.com
Wow that whale makes me horny
Moby Dick as Fork Knox?
Hadn’t thought of that metaphor, wish I would have 🙂
http://www.stevehops.com/Screenplays/fortknox.pdf
MobyDick
Having just finished reading the novel, I am struck at just how well done the Huston version is made considering the limitations of special effects in 1956. Also, Ray Bradbury’s screenplay was masterful, I would argue his ending was more meaningful and more satisfying than Melville’s. As to a more modernized version, wouldn’t you say “Jaws” might be nearly equivalent?
Moby-Dick…whatever.
You say that the novel, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville is “the greatest novel ever written”. I, for one, would have to disagree. It had some minor themes that could have made the book great, but all deep subjects merely scratched the surface. There was probably at least 350 pages worth of pretty-looking word embellishments.
Did you know that in Melville’s first draft, everyone on the Pequod, including Ishmael, died. You have to wonder what Melville’s true intention was for this book, then.
It was basically split up into three sections-together but separate-the “personal narrative of Ishmael”, “dramatic fall of the Pequod’s Captain Ahab”, and an “expository discourse of the art and science of whaling”. If you read the book, you would know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.
Anyways, I don’t think I would really want to see Moby Dick as a movie…AGAIN. It just gives another short-cut so you don’t actually have to read the book.
I’ve got it!
Unfortunately they’ve already made this movie, and it’s called Wall Street. The whaling industry is to the 19th century what the financial industry is to the 21st.
To be honest, I’ve never read Moby Dick and only know it from how fundamental it is in American culture (and I read the wikipedia article recently).
Replace the Pequod with a mergers and acquisitions firm. Ahab a la Gordon Gecko is obsessed with some company (possibly a hedge fund management firm) that he is unable to buy a commanding share in or the SEC won’t OK the acquisition or something like that. Perhaps he used to be a high up executive who was unfairly blamed for his superiors big screw up, got fired, and now obsesses over the money he should have made in the ensuing years what with the hedge fund bubble.
The best part is, you barely need to change some of the dialog. Rants about “the whale” can still be used, Elijah’s lines about souls can stay, etc.