"Brave New World" Fuck-Up in progress....
Calm down Ridley Scott has about 900 projects in development including two Alien prequels before he tackles that project. Add this to the fact that Ridley is old as fuck and you can rest assure that this film will probably never be made with the current names attached.
Erica, it’s been made once already. There could be worse people involved.
I hope so – I’m literally 12 minutes into my freakout ….. this whiskey probably isn’t helping…..
And it’s at least three years down the road, DiCaprio is set to play Hoover for Clint Eastwood as his next film.
Ridley Scott often gets a bad wrap because of his work in the ‘90s (piss poor) and his more recent ’lackluster’ films, but one should recognize his PHENOMENAL early work with one of the best debut films in recent memory, The Duellists, not to mention his incredible transition to sci-fi/horror with Alien (the best film of the series) and Blade Runner (not an accurate Philip K. Dick adaptation, and IMO, not even a great film, but a very high-quality “visual” film – plus anything with Rutger Hauer in it gets props from me). So, even though Scott hasn’t matched the quality of those early films since the ’80s, I think if done right, he might be able to put an interesting spin on the classic Brave New World.
Of course, I’d prefer it wasn’t adapted to screen at all, but if someone HAS to do it, I don’t see why Scott would be a problem (as long as it’s not Tony Scott, right?). What other filmmaker alive today could really do it justice (it would’ve been nice to have a filmmaker like Kubrick do it, but it’s a bit late for that now)? Scott needs to revisit sci-fi territory and as long as he just imitates himself (more or less) from Bladerunner, he shouldn’t have a problem with it. I feel your pain though, it could also be a disaster.
It wasn’t made on the scale that Scott has the capabilities of making it on though is the thing… but i’m going to take a hint from you two and calm down – hahahaha – fuckin tragic
One of the assumptions with great novels is this, Erica: It’s assumed that the smart people (that would be YOU) already know the novel and have absorbed its message.
Most filmizations of novels are designed to bring that story from the lofts of academe…. into the living rooms of Mom, Dad and the kids in Average-Palookaville.
aka this disaster
check out the Adaptations thread I just bumped up
I know David and that’s whats scary – it will totally be butchered in that case to appease puppets. It can go either way – two extremities: really epic or really fucking pathetic. I agree Deckard, I would rather it not be made at all. However, if it is going to be made, even though it will be a long while (thanks user de faux-fu yants & uli cain rewrote) I just hope it’s going to be a great enough film that will be challenging and as unapologetic as the novel and then maybe a shit-ton of people will really appreciate Huxley’s intent.
I read that Scott is going to wait until Feelies technology has been perfected before going into production on this.
hahahahaha!
I’d say the best Huxley adaptation, so far, is Russell’s The Devils. Sure, not a word-for-word adaptation, a lot of liberty was taken, but Russell captures the “insanity” so well. Wouldn’t it be great for there to be a “less obvious” Huxley adaptation such as Ape and Essence or Eyeless in Gaza?
under the right circumstances anything would be great, for instance – remaking Phantasm…. that would have great potential if Coscarelli went with Takashi Miike and was HIGHLY involved, but then it could be a disaster as well. It’s hit or miss – it’s just a lack of originality in mainstream… they need to recreate or “put a spin” on things. I could actually see “Eyeless in Gaza” being made into a really great movie as wierd as that sounds – but these situations are extremely delicate and more than likely feelings will be annihilated.
I need to get my mind off this – so on that note.
Good Night.
I’ve always heard people lump together Brave New World and 1984 as if Huxley and Orwell were talking about the same thing. I can’t believe such people have really read both books.
BNW seriously asks the question of what is wrong with a world with no war, or any violence, no poverty, no suffering, and no discomfort that lasts longer than it takes to find a pill. Now all of us not raised in such a world wouldn’t like and couldn’t fit in, but is that an argument against it?
So my concern is that a big budget Hollywood pic with big budget Hollywood stars would have to ditch this difficult question and replace it with, you know, action shots, some explosions, and a generally overloud soundtrack. So I would rather have this film made with a nice small budget by people who look back to the best indie sci-fi of yore and remember that, at the root, there is something philosophical at stake.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1wiMyX/www.egodialogues.com/words-language/huxley-orwell.php
Hey, thanks for putting that up. I remember reading that Neil Postman book, but I don’t remember the details of it all so clearly.
Postman’s gloss of what Orwell and Huxley worried about seems pretty good, but I think that Huxley sells his own book short. If you start with the conviction that the brave new world is bad, you have given away far too much. Is that world worse than ours?
A related question is, if you believe that we are in the process of “amusing ourselves to death” what price is worth paying to stop it from happening? If, as looks likely, humans will be re-engineering themselves, then I suspect the results will be something that the humans of 2010 would find revolting. And, if they still have history, we will be the barbarians that those “people” are glad they have escaped from. It is easy to see that we would want to avoid 1984 ever happening. But Huxley’s world is one of various tradeoffs. We have to think about what we value and why.
I often read your blog and always find it very interesting. Thought it was about time i let you know…Keep up the great work
Dunno. Like Erica, I have misgivings about Scott directing this (although I wouldn’t assume they are the same ones.) For a start, the book’s acerbic humour and its satirical outlook from which none of the characters is immune is not really Scott’s forte, as far as I’m aware. (But hey, prove me wrong.) It kind of smacks of ‘if you can do one dystopian/utopian vision in which the essential nature of what it is to be human is called into question’ you can do them all.
At least this news has made me want to read the book again – take some comfort in that, Erica!
On the topic of clunkers on a not dissimilar theme, how about Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451?
Blah. They’re always going to ruin books like this with movies. Nothing we can do about it.
It’s the money.
@ Mike
Yeah, the Feelies, who of course take their name from the Feelies (4-D MUBIS ) in Huxley’s novel, are one of the great semi-obscure bands of the ’80s. Crazy Rhythms is essential:
From what I remember of the book Brave New World, the people weren’t really medicating themselves with soma and feelies, wasn’t this all imposed upon them by society? They were conditioned from birth to think and act a certain way through hypnopedia and shock therapy. Not to mention their intelligence was altered while they were still in the bottle. To me it seems the citizens in Brave New World are equally helpless as those in 1984. If you don’t have a healthy sex life with pneumatic companions or you don’t engage in Obstacle Golf or other distractions you are ostracized from the community. I dunno, to me it seems the books have a lot in common.
Thanks to Jonathan Demme for using The Feelies music in some of his movies, and for having them appear as minor featured players in Something Wild. “Slow Down” sounds so good in The Truth About Charlie.
-he might be able to put an interesting spin on the classic Brave New World.-
I’d like to see a movie about it. I was 13 when I read this book, It’s still one of my favorites. Feelies, testtube babies, artificial insemination, cloning in 1963 were science fiction. Has there been a movie made already? I know I haven’t seen it but would like to, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a new one come out.
Erica Banks
So I was just looking at some films that are in pre-production and Ridley Scott is creating the film for “Brave New World” (the GREAT novel by Aldous Huxley). I’m literally crying out of frustration and so pissed because that is my favorite story and I’ve always felt that either a film should never be made OR it should be made by an absolute genius who carried in and nurtured it in their soul. Instead, Leonardo DiCaprio’s agent came to Scott with it. He didn’t even know the story – which is why it’s so hard for his team to even begin to write a brilliant script right now. And of course Leo is going to play the lead. I don’t know how to feel right now.
If anyone knows the feeling of having something sacred robbed by Hollywood and feeling the fear of something so awesome potentially ruined; you understand where I’m coming from. Total hater status right now – I’m not even going to lie! 3/4s of my anger is because he beat me to it. hahahahahaha!