1. John Scalzi’s AMC column is about the long odds against any book being adapted into a movie. He couches it as bad news, but I don’t see it that way. In my feckless youth, I pined for my favorite books to be adapted into movies; now (principally after the Dune adaptations, but also thinking of the Jackson LotR and the TV version of Earthsea) I fear that they may be.
2. It looks like there’s going to be a “new” Tolkien book: The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. I’d be psyched, except that it seems to be a verse narrative. I don’t think Tolkien was at his best in those.
3. Josh Marshall of TPM.com name-checks my favorite Roman philosopher, Seneca. It’s just the old line about “The Fates lead the willing but drag the unwilling,” which is really a translation from Cleanthes anyway. Still, that makes this a banner day.
4. Hence: this. (See what I did there?)
4. Yes. You are cunning. Cool graphic, by the way, although it makes it look more sneaksy than I anticipate.
2. I plan to stop writing when I’m dead. I trust my son to be too interested in other things to tie puppet strings to my rotted hands.
1. My hope is not to have a novel make it to the big screen. My hope is to have a novel optioned. Then I want them to take a good, long time deciding not to make it into a movie. (When I read Battlefield Earth twentysome years ago, the cover said, “Soon to be a major motion picture,” so I guess it’d be okay for them to decide soonish.)
I gotta disagree with you over Jackson’s LotR, though. I’d be jaw-droppingly amazed if anyone took that much care with something I wrote. People often wonder about authors’ reactions to iffy movies based on their books. I figure best for them to be happy the checks cleared and don’t sweat the rest.
–Jeff Stehman
4. It’s true that there’s nothing more obvious than me trying to be cunning… Morlock does sneak around a little in part 4 of Blood of Ambrose, though.
2. I’ve enjoyed lots of Tolkien’s literary afterlife, but I think I hear a barrel’s bottom being scraped on this one.
I thought the Jackson LotR was crazy-beautiful, but I also think he made some really bad storytelling decisions. I didn’t mind it when he left stuff out; he was pretty judicious about that. My problems mostly arose when he added stuff that wasn’t in the books. (Gandalf’s smacking-around of Denethor, complete with 3-Stooges sound effects, for instance, or the part where Faramir acts more like Boromir.)
Nice banner!
Thanks! I suppose I should put it up at my
dormant shrine to my own egowebsite.Yes, you should put it there, definitely. And it is time your site came out of hibernation.
That’s true. But if I took the time to do that, when would I watch TV, chew my nails, stare at the wall, etc.? These things have to be done!
It’s true. If your nails grew too long, you’d start to scare young children.