The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft

[j. d. worthington]

M-P: The thing is, we've had that sort of thing already, and quite a lot of it, ranging from the good, to the bad, to the indifferent, to the simply godawful. Why simply add another piece of "Lovecraftian" cinema that really isn't, when you get down to it, Lovecraftian? And this one is touting having taken HPL's life as a basis for at least part of the story. Great... except it's also taking complete liberties (from the description given in various places) which makes it nothing more than pure fantasy... yet still it makes that biographical basis one of its big selling points, and that's a big part of what bugs me. It's going to perpetuate bs pseudomyths about what this person was truly like, and I've had quite enough of that, thank you. It's time to have a more thoughtful presentation of the person H. P. Lovecraft, if you're going to present him as a character in your story.

And there's no reason why a faithful (not slavish) adaptation of Lovecraft need be boring. Yes, it's a different medium, but a truly good adaptation can be made without completely screwing over either the spirit or the letter of HPL's work -- let alone the man himself. After all, we have seen some good, thoughtful, and subtle films in the horror/weird fantasy genre, which did rather well (del Toro's work strongly comes to mind here, not to mention numerous Asian films), so there's no reason the same can't be done with Lovecraft. It's about time we started seeing some genuine nuanced handlings of him, at least, considering he's the one who created the material they're so touting to begin with....

[j. d. worthington]

Sorry for the double post, but I had to dash earlier, or I'd have been late to work. At any rate, my point is that, from the description and the sample pages, this simply looks like the same tired old tropes, storylines, images, and ideas that we've seen a thousand times over in the weird fantasy/horror field; and frankly, I don't think we really need a new installment of The Hardy Boys in Conan Meets Cthulhu....

On the other hand, one can quite easily do an intelligent, insightful, sensitive, and informed film with HPL by blending his real life with his dreams, fragments of his work and letters, and so on -- and make it a damned entertaining film, to boot. It just wouldn't be on the infantile level we've seen all-too-often when it comes to this sort of material.

Just for the heck of it, here's an example or two:

We open on a child wandering through a field late at night. He is obviously frightened, lost, and confused, but at the moment there is no apparent threat -- yet the sky is ominously dark and there is an air of something hovering (this could be attained by simple use of lighting, filters, and color-shift of the film stock).

Suddenly, we hear the sound of webbed wings beating, and the child is snatched up into the air, borne along by figures we can only dimly see. His screams go unheard, his struggles are rewarded by pinchings and ticklings by the beings, which snatch away his breath.

Eventually, he is carried out away from all known lands, and over a gigantic range of mountains with incredibly sharp, pointed, needle-like peaks. We have periodic close-ups of the child's terrified face, medium-shots of his struggles, and long-range shots of the figures and their burden and the higher parts of the mountains. Finally, the moon breaks through, and we see the things have no face. Just as the child draws breath for yet another scream, they let go, and he plunges toward the peaks of those mountains. As he nears them, we flash-cut to the child awaking in bed, bathed in perspiration, his heart racing, but safe in his own room.

Or is he? In the distance, we hear a faint fluttering as of webbed wings....

Now, this is based on a recurring nightmare of HPL's about his night-gaunts, figures which haunted his dreams from the time of his grandmother's death when he was six onward (though less and less frequently as he grew older). As a result, they appeared in his fiction and poetry as well, though by that time, he had apparently gained a certain amount of affection for them, so they finally (in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath) come to be allies of his fictional counterpart, Randolph Carter, in his quest for the castle of the gods of Earth's dreamland on Unknown Kadath.

From that opening sequence, we could follow HPL's life, blending some of his experiences with the nightmares and dreams that were influenced by them, and even capturing moments of his fiction which were evolved from them. One could make a quite accurate (if compressed) biographical film on one level, while nonetheless blending it with the imaginative side of his personality -- how he blended genuine experience with his love of the strange, fantastic, and eerie, not to mention of antiquity and abstract truth.

(As an alternate possibility, we could cut from the dream to the adult Lovecraft awaking in much the same state, and follow his development of such things into the tales which earned him the reputation he has today.)

There are plenty of things one can take from his letters, fragments, poetry, tales, etc., and blend in with the genuine events of his life, to create an enthralling story which, while remaining true to Lovecraft's life and personality, nonetheless evokes genuine eeriness, a "sense of adventurous expectancy" (to use one of his favorite phrases), awe, and wonder. And one can take either the approach of setting up the dichotomy (a common theme in his work) between his real life and his dream-life -- which is most often given the air of (to use Donald Burleson's wonderful phrase) "oneiric objectivism", that is, a state of reality as a different plane of existence; or exploring the nightmarish worlds he created from his experiences (think, for instance, of the chilling effect of having a depiction of his walk with friends along the East Side in New York, and the sight of the crowds suddenly (seen through his eyes) taking on the fantastic, horrific, and menacing shapes and adumbrations that they do in one of the most infamous passages of his letters, where the inhabitants become something horrific, much like the alienage of the inhabitants of Innsmouth (one could make good use of CG here). And one could even, later in the film, draw upon that connection when it comes to dealing with his evolving that particular story as well.

Another bit that could be used: his visit to Vermont, blending the real experience with the nightmarish vision he developed from it; say, having him (during a walk through the woods) hear the voices of the fungi from Yuggoth -- the dream/fantasy state being suggested by a subtle shift in color and lighting with the film (rather than, say, the hackneyed use of extreme filters or processing).

Or there's the account he gives of an extremely detailed dream he had, which he woke from, only to eventually realize that he was once again in his childhood home and looking at a view which no longer existed; at which point he woke up, only to eventually realize very little (though some) had chaned; at which point he woke up, to go about normal activities, only to realize he was still dreaming, at which point he woke up... and so on, until he finally really did wake up... but with that unease that one has that perhaps they have not woken up yet, but are still trapped in a dream within a dream within a dream....

Depending on whether you take the whole of his life, or simply a fragment of it, the film could develop the idea mentioned above, including Lovecraft's materialistic mechanistic approach to life being constantly pitted against the possibility that these realms he dreams of do have some sort of reality apart from their creator, and even (just as a suggestion) reinforce that by ending with the marker for his grave while a voice over delivers certain lines from Clark Ashton Smith's poetic tribute to him; lines which suggest that, in leaving this life he has indeed traveled to and become a part of that world of dreams of which he wrote so vividly. Alternately, one could quote lines from his own final Fungi sonnet ("Continuities"), which provide a key for understanding the man, his work, and his dreams.

The point is, that there are any number of approaches to a film dealing with Lovecraft which could indeed use the fantastic, horrific, and dreamlike elements of his work and life, and do so both entertainingly and intelligently, and still remain an honest depiction of what the man was really like. You could even include those tentacles M-P mentions in his post (though frankly I think Stuart Gordon took that about as far as one can take it without becoming completely ludicrous, in Dagon).

All it takes to do such is what any writer is supposed to do when dealing with an historicl figure or subject:

1.) RESEARCH THE DAMNED SUBJECT SO YOU KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!!

and

2.) combine that with intelligent use of imagination.....

[Lobolover]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

1.) RESEARCH THE DAMNED SUBJECT SO YOU KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!!

An aproach all to rare nowadays, I have to say . At least, touside of independant film making .

[AE35Unit]

Originally Posted by MontyCircus

Geez people......re-laaax...

Panicking about the perhaps horrible results of an unmade movie based on an unread story...what the hell's going on?

I thought Cinderella Man and A Beautiful Mind were great. Didn't care for Da Vinci Code, but the subject matter didn't appeal to me anyway...

I don't see the point in freaking out because Hollywood is going to pump some money into a Lovecraftian movie. Isn't that what you guys sit around waiting for news of?

after all, you dont have to watch it!

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by AE35Unit

after all, you dont have to watch it!

No, but neither do I have to sit back and watch Hollywood screw over HPL yet again without lodging a loud complaint -- and, as I've said, from the description and sample pages, this is exactly what would be going on here.

They want to do another "forbidden (usually Asian) cult menace swallows writer and immense action sequence ensues" story using Lovecraftian elements -- fine. But drop the use of Lovecraft himself unless you bleeding know what you're talking about with dealing with the person.

You can put Lovecraft (as a character) into any sort of fantastic situation, yes. For fictional purposes, that's fine... as long as you treat him as H. P. Lovecraft, not a comic-book version of someone's distorted myth of what HPL was like. As I said, it's the responsibility of any writer, when dealing with a genuine historical person, to research that person before using them as a character. Othewise, they're simply not doing their job as a writer. Period. In that, it's no different than seriously presenting, say, Napoleon as having helped conquer the American West.....

[Lobolover]

Well, but can you be sure he didn't ? There are people around, who believe the earth is flat ,as the "researcher" discusing his "work" that I've linked you people to awhile back and people saying that the years 614 to 911 never happened and were hoaxes created in the later Middle Ages . Phantom time hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . In a nutshell he "concludes that the entire Carolingian period, including the person of Charlemagne, is a forgery of medieval chroniclers" . Mentioning the Phelps clans claims that every disaster that happens is proof how god hates the world and that only their comunity are chosen to be saved, etc would be just tacking the tip of the Everest .

So with this much stupidity going around claiming to be oh so academic and quite dogmaticaly at that, I am sure there are more then a handfull of people who could earnstly defend such a "theory" and even supply "evidence" .

[j. d. worthington]

Yes, though any evidence which would seem to be at all valid would turn out to be faked; all the rest would be quite easily and quickly blown out of the water as soon as they presented it.

The thing is, if you're attempting to use a figure (in this case, HPL), it is the writer's obligation to research that figure until they have at least a fairly good understanding of what they were really like, rather than taking the lazy out of going with any of the numerous myths or urban legends about that person -- which does a disservice to the very person they are supposedly paying homage to.

As I've said numerous times here, that does not mean you can't tell a fictional story using a genuine person -- you just have to do the work to make it plausible with events (if it is a realistic tale, such as an historical romance for instance), or at least with the character of the person you're writing about (as in a fantasy/weird piece, as here). To have HPL involved with the sort of occult activities in the way he is apparently (again, from all the information we have on this) presented here, is as false a presentation of the man as it would be to have a depiction of Aleister Crowley as an ardent supporter of the Anglican Church, or of J. R. R. Tolkien as a devout Satanist. It's shoddy workmanship, from the word go. It's a caricature.

On the other hand, you can have him get caught up in such things, but only if you present his reactions to them as they would most likely have been given the evidence we have on his views and reactions to this and other things (which is actually quite massive). This would in no way keep one from telling a good, exciting, entertaining tale, but it would require them to actually do some work at the writing, rather than taking the easy outs which seem to be the case here -- I mean, from the things given, there isn't an original or fresh idea or handling of anything in the bunch! All I'm seeing in the sample pages are bad comic book rehashes of Howardian rehashes of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu given a Cthulhuvian spin or two... something which might -- with genius direction and editing -- be mildly entertaining, but in the end is likely to be utterly forgettable, and is at best trite. It is all the things Lovecraft carped about when it came to movies handling such themes, as long ago as the nineteen-teens! And we've seen it all before....

How about actually doing something memorable with Lovecraft for a change, if they're going to be spending all that money on it? Something that both entertains and challenges, something that can appeal to both someone unfamiliar with Lovecraft's work and to those who know it chapter and verse. Such is certainly not impossible, as Out of Mind proved from its continued popularity both as an original television broadcast and the fact that it keeps receiving praise from people both in and out of the Lovecraft camp over ten years down the line. Get someone with the insight and storytelling skill of del Toro (again, as an obvious example) to handle such a subject, and you'd almost be guaranteed of both a commercial and critical success... and you'd not be falsifying the character of Lovecraft, into the bargain....

[Lobolover]

But they wouldn't recognise the judgment of any authority in the whole world, they would simply say that all these " "proofs" " were faked, and were fabricated on the orders of some ******** world governing Zionistic conspiracy or whatever . You cannot prove to them that anything is wrong, because they will attack not your results, but the very basis of you wanting to prove them wrong as proof of your incredubility . They will then be flatered into believing they are persecuted for spreading "truth" and that they are "martyrs" .

Sorry to get a litle offtopic .

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Lobolover

But they wouldn't recognise the judgment of any authority in the whole world, they would simply say that all these " "proofs" " were faked, and were fabricated on the orders of some ******** world governing Zionistic conspiracy or whatever . You cannot prove to them that anything is wrong, because they will attack not your results, but the very basis of you wanting to prove them wrong as proof of your incredubility . They will then be flatered into believing they are persecuted for spreading "truth" and that they are "martyrs" .

Sorry to get a litle offtopic .

LOL... yes, we have drifted more than a bit, haven't we?

However, what you say above is, of course, true with anything whatsoever in human knowledge. There are always crackpots who believe anything, and refuse to be bothered with evidence or, for that matter, truth. That's because such a believe provides a "security blanket" of emotional comfort for them, and anything that disturbs or in any way questions that belief -- no matter how daft, nonsensical, illogical, irrational, or completely loony said belief is -- is completely beside the point. The same tactic is taken by faith-healers, fake psychics (if you'll pardon the oxymoron), con artists, and paranoiacs, and is based on either a rejection of at least that aspect of reality or a deliberate obfuscation of the facts of reality to bolster some advantage they wish to maintain over others (as in the first three categories named). This results in a marginalization of these same people, one which (with the exception of those who are paranoid because of a medical condition) they have brought upon themselves. Such deserve no consideration when it comes to dealing with what is objective reality or (for the purposes of this thread) depicting the reality of an historical personage's character. It's a complete non-issue and deserves nothing but the complete silence of being ignored.

Incidentally, this isn't quite as off-topic as you might think, as Lovecraft was also an intense skeptic who would have a field day dissecting such beliefs (and often did in his letters). Such letters varied between amusement (or perhaps bemusement at the idiocies thus displayed might be a better term) to outright vicious vituperation, depending on which approach seemed warranted by the circumstances. In between these was the tactic he most often took: a calm, reasoned examination of the subject, searching out the faults and strengths, and dealing with it accordingly.

This was an immense part of his personality, and it would very much behoove anyone wishing to write Lovecraft into a fantasy or weird tale to keep that in mind when dealing with his contacts, interactions, and reactions to such a phenomena or situation....

[Lobolover]

So let's just hope we have a Hollywood producer in our midst to take all that in .

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Lobolover

So let's just hope we have a Hollywood producer in our midst to take all that in .

If that happens, you may just hear a loud "Hosanna!" from Texas....

[Lobolover]

If so, could you please vent yourself in another direction ? Im a light sleeper, bug China both the PR and the Republic Of) instead .

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Lobolover

If so, could you please vent yourself in another direction ? Im a light sleeper, bug China both the PR and the Republic Of) instead .

LOL... Will do....

[pablo]

In case anyone's curious about the comic we talked about at the beginning here, the first issue should now be in stores.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by pablo

In case anyone's curious about the comic we talked about at the beginning here, the first issue should now be in stores.

Pablo: Thank you for putting up with my lengthy comments above. I hope I'm proven wrong where this film is concerned, but only time will tell on that.

As for the comic... I'm not much inclined at this point, given the description/sample pages (the artwork I don't object to; it's the story that I'm perceiving here that I reject); but if I hear from someone who is a knowledgeable Lovecraftian that it really is worthwhile, I'd be willing to give it a go....