Things started smoothly enough
September 13, 2024 5:12 PM Subscribe
Bradbury and Huston met at Romanoff’s restaurant on Rodeo Drive, a posh midcentury Beverly Hills establishment frequented by Hollywood’s elite. There, Bradbury, never afraid to wear his fannish affections on his sleeve, professed his admiration for Huston and his oeuvre. Indeed, he went even further, boldly proclaiming to Huston that he believed they were destined to work together. He had carted copies of his books along that night—Dark Carnival and The Martian Chronicles, as well as a prepublication copy of his latest collection, The Illustrated Man. Sliding them across the table, he told Huston: “If you love my books half as much as I love you, give me a call.” from I … Am Herman Melville! by Sam Weller [LARB]
“John,” he said, and Huston glanced over at him. “Fuck you.”
Huston was incredulous. “What?” he asked.
“John,” Bradbury said again. “Fuck you. Here you are in front of 10 people insulting my friends at dinner. Fuck you.”
Made me want to cheer, that did. Good on you, Ray.
posted by dragstroke at 5:50 PM on September 13 [5 favorites]
Huston was incredulous. “What?” he asked.
“John,” Bradbury said again. “Fuck you. Here you are in front of 10 people insulting my friends at dinner. Fuck you.”
Made me want to cheer, that did. Good on you, Ray.
posted by dragstroke at 5:50 PM on September 13 [5 favorites]
“There is no doubt in my mind it would make a great picture,” Huston opined. “I will try my best to get some studio to let me make your book.”
John Huston directing The Martian Chronicles? (swoon)
posted by doctornemo at 6:15 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]
John Huston directing The Martian Chronicles? (swoon)
posted by doctornemo at 6:15 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]
Related: Bradbury's radio play, Leviathan 99.
posted by doctornemo at 6:18 PM on September 13 [2 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 6:18 PM on September 13 [2 favorites]
Bradbury's Green Shadows, White Whale is well worth reading. (though it wasn't billed as a "novel" when I read it -- seems non-fiction to me) The title is a take on White Hunter, Black Heart, the movie/novel takedown of Huston's toxic masculinity. (Bradbury's Irish stories are worth reading, too.)
posted by CCBC at 6:33 PM on September 13 [3 favorites]
posted by CCBC at 6:33 PM on September 13 [3 favorites]
Not mentioned was Ray Bradbury's short story "Banshee" inspired by the experience which was later turned into an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater which can be seen here. Charles Martin Smith plays the Bradbury character, Peter O'Toole plays the Huston one.
posted by dannyboybell at 7:30 PM on September 13 [2 favorites]
posted by dannyboybell at 7:30 PM on September 13 [2 favorites]
Again, but harder:
“John,” he said, and Huston glanced over at him. “Fuck you.”
posted by the Real Dan at 8:31 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]
“John,” he said, and Huston glanced over at him. “Fuck you.”
posted by the Real Dan at 8:31 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]
So how is the movie? Is it a "Ray Bradbury"-style version of the story? It was always mentioned in the author's bio on the dust jacket of the Bradbury books in my school library, but that's the only place I ever heard of it.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:02 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:02 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]
The movie was okay, but it wasn't the book. It did not *ahem* go so deep. Also, Gregory Peck worked at just being obsessed (which is about all the depth the movie gives Ahab). A different actor could have worked on that good/evil thing, Righteousness vs. Wrong, and a really Good Actor could complicate that dichotomy. A really good actor like... Royal Dano! He worked with Huston on Red Badge of Courage and had his great death scene cut. Huston owed him. And he could be scary, psycho-religious scary, which is kind of (I think) what Huston wanted.
posted by CCBC at 11:53 PM on September 13 [4 favorites]
posted by CCBC at 11:53 PM on September 13 [4 favorites]
Bradbury was my literary hero growing up, but I feel like, despite his many scripts, he was not the greatest script writer. Which is ironic because he described his writing method as watching a movie in his head and then putting it to paper. What little I've seen of Moby Dick seems overwrought.
An adaption of The Martian Chronicles really should have been the metaphorical examination of American expansion and exceptionalism (in all of its moral ambiguity even for back then) in the US American psyche, but it was not to be. Instead we got that schmaltzy TV movie. I recall The Illustrated Man movie being ick, despite not having seen it for 40 years. Something Wicked was fine, but not one for the ages. Only Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 got a descent imagining for screen. That one is glorious but shaky. (I'm ashamed to admit it but I saw that movie half a dozen times before I realized Julie Christie play both female leads!)
I think Bradbury never got a director who could adapt his prose poetry into visual poetry, like the Clarke/Kubrick pairing for example. Too bad about Huston. Recently I did see an episode of the old Ray Bradbury Theater staring Jeff Goldblum that hits all the right notes: The Town Where No One Got Off.
posted by jabah at 12:55 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]
An adaption of The Martian Chronicles really should have been the metaphorical examination of American expansion and exceptionalism (in all of its moral ambiguity even for back then) in the US American psyche, but it was not to be. Instead we got that schmaltzy TV movie. I recall The Illustrated Man movie being ick, despite not having seen it for 40 years. Something Wicked was fine, but not one for the ages. Only Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 got a descent imagining for screen. That one is glorious but shaky. (I'm ashamed to admit it but I saw that movie half a dozen times before I realized Julie Christie play both female leads!)
I think Bradbury never got a director who could adapt his prose poetry into visual poetry, like the Clarke/Kubrick pairing for example. Too bad about Huston. Recently I did see an episode of the old Ray Bradbury Theater staring Jeff Goldblum that hits all the right notes: The Town Where No One Got Off.
posted by jabah at 12:55 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]
how is the movie?
spoiler alert: "some kind of visual storytelling that fit within the context of cold war politics" [Jamie Campomar (Columbia), in conversation with Robin Reid (Texas A&M) at the Newberry Library ~10:00]
posted by HearHere at 4:34 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
spoiler alert: "some kind of visual storytelling that fit within the context of cold war politics" [Jamie Campomar (Columbia), in conversation with Robin Reid (Texas A&M) at the Newberry Library ~10:00]
posted by HearHere at 4:34 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
My father used to tell me of how a newspaper he read gave short tag lines to describe movies to their readers. For Moby Dick it said: Gregory Peck in the title role.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:14 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:14 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]
I never noticed the hyphen.
posted by MtDewd at 7:00 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
posted by MtDewd at 7:00 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
Fun fact: All the letters in the name, "Ray", appear in the name, "Bradbury", in the same order.
I will post something more substantial after I actually read the link.
Carry on.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:28 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]
I will post something more substantial after I actually read the link.
Carry on.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:28 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]
I haven't read the book nor seen any of the adaptations, but I feel like I should because there are three (arguably four) Star Trek movies that are kinda-sorta based on it. (Also in Trek connections: Gregory Peck's grandson Ethan is now playing Spock in Strange New Worlds.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:16 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:16 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
So how is the movie?
Eh, not that good. and I say that as a fan of both Huston and especially Bradbury and Melville.
It's a simplified version of the book's incredible churn of ideas, which would be damned hard to film. (How to turn "The Whiteness of the Whale" into a visual sequence for a general audience? although Pip's journey to the seafloor would work with CGI...) There are some nice scenes, like Orson Welles' sermon or this attempt at the famous pasteboard mask passage. The effects are dated - see if the final scene works for you, with its models.
The novel is just so, so strange, and usually in a textual, not visual way, that make it hard to film.
posted by doctornemo at 11:33 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
Eh, not that good. and I say that as a fan of both Huston and especially Bradbury and Melville.
It's a simplified version of the book's incredible churn of ideas, which would be damned hard to film. (How to turn "The Whiteness of the Whale" into a visual sequence for a general audience? although Pip's journey to the seafloor would work with CGI...) There are some nice scenes, like Orson Welles' sermon or this attempt at the famous pasteboard mask passage. The effects are dated - see if the final scene works for you, with its models.
The novel is just so, so strange, and usually in a textual, not visual way, that make it hard to film.
posted by doctornemo at 11:33 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]
My love affair with Ray Bradbury has been a rocky one. I liked him sixty years ago when I was a child. But as I learned about his evolving political/cultural predilections, and as his prose became rather more purplish in my eyes, I moved on. However, when I read this piece a few days ago, I couldn't help but feel kindly disposed to the young Ray.
posted by kozad at 11:52 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]
posted by kozad at 11:52 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]
Born/raised in Illinois. So was Bradbury.
In the stories Bradbury wrote about (his youth in) small towns, he's got it absolutely nailed. Some of those stories are scary/spooky but others idyllic, or scary/spooky/idyllic combined; I know those people, I know those towns. He is reporting as much as writing.
DFW did this in Infinite Jest, any/all of his writing in that book that had anything to do with addiction, rehabs, AA and/or AA meetings -- it's the most accurate writing I've ever come across.
I had a real thing for Bradbury, admiration for sure, maybe love. I haven't read him in years now, aside from one AskMe I put up about one of his stories.
Anyways, thx for the post, been nice to learn more about Mr. Bradbury.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:37 PM on September 14 [2 favorites]
In the stories Bradbury wrote about (his youth in) small towns, he's got it absolutely nailed. Some of those stories are scary/spooky but others idyllic, or scary/spooky/idyllic combined; I know those people, I know those towns. He is reporting as much as writing.
DFW did this in Infinite Jest, any/all of his writing in that book that had anything to do with addiction, rehabs, AA and/or AA meetings -- it's the most accurate writing I've ever come across.
I had a real thing for Bradbury, admiration for sure, maybe love. I haven't read him in years now, aside from one AskMe I put up about one of his stories.
Anyways, thx for the post, been nice to learn more about Mr. Bradbury.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:37 PM on September 14 [2 favorites]
Love the book. Have read it again and again, despite the “too much information about the whales” part. Love most of John Huston’s films - Under the Volcano (also adapted from a ridiculously complicated but wonderful book) is perhaps my favorite film of all time. I did not care for his Moby Dick.
Complicated relationship with Ray Bradbury. I keep confusing him with Heinlein, which probably isn’t fair, but I was only a really big sci fi reader in my teen years, and have been very intermittent with the genre since, Roadside Picnic being a recent rare exception that I found fascinating.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:00 AM on September 15 [1 favorite]
Complicated relationship with Ray Bradbury. I keep confusing him with Heinlein, which probably isn’t fair, but I was only a really big sci fi reader in my teen years, and have been very intermittent with the genre since, Roadside Picnic being a recent rare exception that I found fascinating.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:00 AM on September 15 [1 favorite]
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i always do :)
posted by HearHere at 5:33 PM on September 13 [1 favorite]