Barry Hannah’s Yonder Stands Your Orphan, directed by David Lynch, maybe.
A somewhat obscure novel entitled CITY OF NIGHT (1963) by John Rechy, the autobiographical story of a gay hustler who travels around the U.S. to find himself. Ideal to direct would be Gus van Sant or Todd Haynes. I wrote a script for it years ago, with the idea of John Schlesinger directing (the serious version of MIDNIGHT COWBOY), but it didn’t pan out.
The opening lines epitomize Rechy’s neo-beat writing style:
“Later I would think of America as one vast City of Night stretching gaudily from Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard—jukebox-winking, rock-n-roll-moaning: America at night fusing its darkcities into the unmistakable shape of loneliness.
Remember Pershing Square and the apathetic palm trees, Central Park and the frantic shadows. Movie theaters in the angry morning-hours. And Chicago’s wounded streets…Horrormovie courtyards in the French Quarter…Tawdry Mardi Gras floats with clowns tossing out glass beads, passing dumbly like life itself….Remember rock-n-roll sexmusic blasting from jukeboxes leering obscenely, blinking manycolored along the streets of America, strung like a cheap necklace from 42nd Street to Market Square, San Francisco..
One-night sex and cigarette smoke and rooms squashed in by loneliness.
And I would remember lives lived out darkly in that vast City of Night, from all-night movies to Beverly Hills mansions…."
Gus Van Sant doing Eggers’ 2009 nonfiction work, Zeitoun
Gus Van Sant doing Eggers’ 2009 nonfiction work, Zeitoun
I’d love to see Gus Van Sant’s interpretation of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.
James Baldwin’s ’Another Country
Directed by Charles Burnett
Wait Until Spring, Bandini or Ask the Dust – John Fante
Directed by John Cassavetes.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Jean-Luc Godard at his most idiosyncratic. Possibly Lynch also.
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.
I’ll do it.
[and if the studio fights… well, maybe I’ll let Terry Gilliam take over]
Gerard Lawrence’s The De Vil Code – dir. Tim Burton
Salman Rushdie’s Satanic verses – dir. Doug Liman
Dan Brown’s The lost symbol – dir. Michael Bay
Zhou Weihui’s Shangai Baby directed by WKW
Geek Love- Katherine Dunn (it’s about a traveling carnival who begin to breed their own freak show when business gets bad) directed by David Lynch
Survivor- Chuck Paulaniuk- Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night” with Eric Rohmer directing.
Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (2006) by James L. Swanson
I think Paul Greengrass would be great for this material with Johnny Depp or James McAvoy as John Wilkes Booth.
Apparently HBO is working on an adaptation with David Simon (The Wire) and Tom Fontana (Oz) involved.
Child of God (McCarthy) directed by… I really don’t know, I didn’t want to suggest the Coen brothers because there’s already No Country for Old Men, but… Who else??
Crime and Punishment directed by Mike Leigh
Frankenstein directed twice, once By David Lynch and again by Wes Anderson.
Cronenberg might find something interesting to do with Frankenstein.
Damn you double post!
Interesting thread here….I still have not decided which director should I pick for Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, but I am leaning towards Ridley Scott on this. I miss the atomsphere of Blade Runner.
Batman: Hush
Directed By Christopher Nolan
Batman/Bruce Wayne – Christian Bale
Alfred – Michael Caine
Thomas Elliott – Edward Norton
Joker – Heath Ledger (clever editing and lighting of the scene)
Two-Face/Harvey Dent – Guy Pearse
The Riddler – Sam Rockwell
Poison Ivy – Marion Cotillard
Superman/Clark Kent – Brandon Routh
Killer Croc – CGI, Voiced by Vin Diesel
Oracle/Barbara Gordon – Scarlett Johansson
Jim Gordon – Gary Oldman
Snow Crash- David Cronenberg
Since Ive been recently reading William Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy, it would be intriguing to see that adapted to film. Also since the trilogy itself spawned out of a proposed film collaborated between Gibson himself and Sogo Ishii, might as well go with that.
Vollman’s The Royal Family- Carlos Reygadas
Nabokov’s Pale Fire- Vincent Gallo
Drew Barrymore’s Little Girl Lost- Abel Ferrara
Seven Professors of the Far North-Terry Gilliam
The Wind-up Bird Chronicles (Murakami)
Directed by David Lynch
“The Garden of Eden” by Ernest Hemmingway
Directed by R.W. Fassbinder
Jean Renoir should do Musil’s “Man Without Qualities.” (Or perhaps he did and called it “The Rules of the Game.”)
Charlie Kauffman would do a fascinating and lucid “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
And I would like to see “A Confederacy of Dunces” with Philip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Wes Anderson.
Blood Meridian
directed by Terrence Malick
The Man in the Hight Castle by Philip K. Dick Directed by PT Anderson
@ Grey Daisies: I know it was a month ago, but I must make a comment that I can’t imagine a more perfect director for ‘The Dharma Bums’- This NEEDS to happen
@Tony San- Malick and anything by McCarthy would be great, but ‘Blood Meridian’ is screaming to be made!
My picks:
William S. Burroughs’ ‘Queer’- Todd Haynes
Walker Percy’s ‘The Moviegoer’- David Gordon Green
James Baldwin’s ‘Go Tell it On the Mountain’- Charles Burnett
--------
Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums directed by Kelly Reichardt.
Werner Herzog’s Vom Gehen im Eis directed by Werner Herzog, ha!