Addressing a BFI forum as part of Blade Runner Day, Ridley Scott reminisced about how film-making has changed since his earliest works in the 1970s. Before digital cameras and CG effects, it was a lot more down and dirty. Especially when he was filming the iconic monster moments of 1979's Alien:

Ridley said: "From all those years of commercials, I knew I was going to use blood, KY Jelly and back light and all the segments were going to work out.

"I kept the monster away from all the actors. There was so much blood on the set that you had to do a take, wrap and come back in a week when it had all been cleaned up with alcohol.

"Roger [Christian - production designer] came in with the little demon in a shopping bag. We had an artificial chest screwed to the table. John [Hurt] was underneath, so it was an illusion that his neck was attached to that body.

"I had to cut through the chest with a razor blade as it wouldn't burst. And when it happened there was total silence. I think Yaphet [Kotto, who played Parker] started to shriek with laughter. We never went back. It was one take.

"People were saying the footage was gross and I didn't know whether that was a compliment or not. One of the studio guys had his daughter in watching the rushes and she was nine. He said it was over the top, and I said, 'You pay me for this. We're doing a film that's completely over the top'."

Scott's still getting his hands dirty, mucking around in the desert making his epic Robin Hood. But it sounds like he's going ultra-high-tech for Forever War, and he's largely influenced by James Cameron's motion-capture extravaganza Avatar, even though we still haven't seen any of it:

He said: "I'm filming a book by Joe Haldeman called Forever War. I've got a good writer doing it. I've seen some of James Cameron's work, and I've got to go 3D. It's going to be phenomenal."

Scott is one of the few classic directors who's still blowing me away - American Gangster, though flawed, was still one of the most memorable films I saw in 2007. So let's hope his desire to imitate Cameron doesn't get in the way of his drive to get down and dirty. [Wharf via Slashfilm]

The blog A Subtle Echo dug up an interview with Adams from the early 80s about his Forever War designs. Adams says the book's Egg suits posed a particular challenge, and his first design was more form-fitting. Gordon looked at this and said, "Well, if you can't do it..." Chastened, Adams went back to the drawing board, "rethought the egg principle" and figured out the necessary arm and leg movement. The only drawback: you couldn't twist your torso in one of them.

With a budget of only $3 million (up from $1 million originally) creating the Taurans posed another challenge. Adams accepted the "man in a suit" look, but tried to distort it by using extra-tall basketball-player figures, with extensions on the hands to make them look even more angular. "Subtly altering body movements, and perhaps changing the eyes, would convey an eerie, alien quality," Adams said.

A third challenge: the spaceships had to evolve, starting with a group of Saturn rockets strapped together. "Each generation of spacecraft got bigger and more fanciful," Adams explained. Sadly, he concluded the interview by saying "I think The Forever War has a good chance of being made" with Gordon as director.

If only. So what went wrong? Haldeman explains on his website:

The Forever War had been optioned by the Chicago public television station, who proposed to do it as a four-part miniseries. I had a few meetings with Stuart Gordon, the director, and it looked pretty exciting: the production was going to be lavish; it was the number-one budget item for the next couple of years.

Then Reagan got elected, and public (or at least political) support for the arts was slashed. The station, its annual budget halved, had to drop the miniseries. But Stuart Gordon didn't want to drop The Forever War. In the course of outlining how to break up the story into four parts, I'd told him that the last part would be the simplest to shoot — you could almost do it as a stage play, with two or three sets.

It turned out that Stuart was also director of the Organic Theater Company, and he tossed down a gauntlet: you write the last part as a stage play, and I'll have it produced.

The stage play was moderately successful, making back its big budget over a six-week run, including the $75,000 spent on special effects. And then two years later, Gordon hired Haldeman to write Robot Jox, which turned into another weird ordeal when Gordon tried to replace Haldeman as scriptwriter halfway through. (The movie's producers eventually sided with Haldeman and brought him back in for emergency rewrites on set.)

Given how great the PBS version of Ursula LeGuin's Lathe Of Heaven was, around that same time, I'm incredibly bummed that we didn't get to see the PBS Forever War. (Especially with mega-genius Gordon involved.) But hopefully the Ridley Scott version will ease the sadness somewhat. More pics and info at the link. [A Subtle Echo]

Haldeman has already blogged about one possibility for Forever War's star. He wonders "if Scott would want to use his buddy Russell Crowe. At 44, he's a bit old for the part as written, though that's why they call it 'acting.'" And he already has a pretty good idea about what might constitute a sequel to the new movie:

I suspect that if the movie is made and is successful, they'll use the rest of the book in a sequel, which will be called Forever Peace. (They've optioned the title to that book, but not the story, so the intent is pretty clear.) I won't complain. It's an honor just to be nominated, as the actor said on the way to the bank.

I'm really hoping that someone with clout will pick up the phone and say, "Dolores, see if this guy Haldeman wrote some other book we might pick up cheap." I've got a couple of dozen of them.

He sure does, and he's not going to turn down the color green in these times:

(A couple of years ago I asked my Hollywood agent whether he could put together a package deal: All of Haldeman's books except TFW for $X million, X being a number big enough to support me and Gay for the rest of our lives. He said no.)

We compare Haldeman's blog notes with our own takes on his adaptable oeuvre:

Tool Of The Trade.
Haldeman's Take: "The most conventionally cinematic is Tool of the Trade," he opines, "which even has a kind of a car chase."
We Say: Tough to find and never recognized on the level with his hard-SF work, Tool of the Trade makes the Jason Bourne series look like Rachel Getting Married. If Haldeman submitted the book to publishing houses today it would be a smash thriller. The problem you have in adapting old spy novels is outdated technology, but there's no such problem with near future espionage tales. Haldeman's characters are rarely all-powerful — he carefully considers the most entertaining reasons and situations in which a person would control another's mind, and outdoes your expectations for what can be done with a familiar concept.

The Hemingway Hoax
Haldeman's Take: "I've always thought The Hemingway Hoax would be a good low-budget film, made-for-teevee," says the author.
We Say: Haldeman is hit or miss in the short form, as he openly acknowledging devoting less time to less lucrative projects. If the idea he's preoccupied with is worthy, the story usually works, and boy does it work here. Easily his most famous shorter work at about the size of a novella, The Hemingway Hoax ranks with Jack Finney and H.G. Wells for best use of time travel, and an affinity for similar subject matter would result in 2007's return to form after a few mediocre novels in The Accidental Time Machine. Truly a must-read if you've never gotten to it.

All My Sins Remembered
Haldeman's Take: Joe recognizes the problem inherent in this three part novel's composition: 1977's All My Sins Remembered is cinematic but has the drawback that the male lead keeps dramatically changing his appearance. Maybe Eddie Murphy could do it."
We Say: Before he tries to cast Richard Pryor, it's important to understand just how awesome All My Sins Remembered is. The man character is perfect for Sacha Baron Cohen: Otto McGavin is a Prime Operator who can assume any disguise — kind of like the prototye for Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs character from Altered Carbon. In three novella-length assignments, McGavin variously takes on the disguise of an overweight alien sociologist, a swarthy feudal duellist, and a questionably intentioned Man of God. Each of these concepts could easily be a feature, and feudal society of the middle part would make perfect material for a series.

"Seasons"
Haldeman's Take: His 1985 epistolatory novella set in the same universe as All My Sins Remembered is called "Seasons." He doesn't mention it in the post, but he chose it to lead off his remarkable short story collection/light autobiography Dealing in Futures.
We Say: The concept revolves around a series of diary entries of an anthropological expedition to a sexless group of aliens that completely changes personality during seasonal depression, it's an action-packed merciless narrative with a harrowing last act. And since it's a longshot that this ever gets filmed, my plan is to trick Haldeman into selling me the rights through light gunplay and begging.

Mindbridge
Haldeman's Take: Joe can't let it rest without putting in a good word for the rare novel from his output in the 1970s that didn't age well, Mindbridge. "Mindbridge would be good," he says, but "it's under a kind of option, stalled."
We Say: One of the early books that burnished his reputation, Mindbridge hasn't aged as well as Haldeman's other universes. The plot now reads like one of the filler episodes of Babylon 5, and the approach to telepathy in this 1976 Nebula-winning novel comes across as a little hokier than we'd expect in a similar story today. At the time it made its author $100,000, and a stern word from critic Leonard Michaels not to waste his "talents on this commercial crap."

The Worlds trilogy
Haldeman's Take: In that particular blog post, Joe doesn't mention his Worlds trilogy, but he's previously acknowledged that it is a work dear to his heart.
We Say: A strong heroine and a ravaged Planet Earth are the highlights of the trilogy, and although the third book Worlds Enough and Time released in 1992, kinda goes to sleep on you, it's a worthy ride. If the Ridley Scott Forever War does well, look for TV to give this series a hard look. It's the perfect eight-hour miniseries and it could capture the curiosity of the Twilight crowd by presenting an accessible heroine in an apocalyptic American setting. At the very least put it in the mail to Angelina Jolie.

Forever Peace
Haldeman's Take: He doesn't even pay lip service to the idea of adapting his spiritual but not actual sequel to The Forever War, Forever Peace.
We Say: That reluctance is more a reflection of the steep hill any screenwriter would face into making this story about the violence of humanity and its continuing evolution a film. The story is both extremely internalized and outwardly action-packed, making it one of the best of Haldeman's novels, but the least likely to ever hit Blu-Ray. The Forever War finally got a true sequel in 1999's Forever Free, but the movie version is unlikely to take it on either because it's so different from the original in plot and setting.

Whatever happens with Haldeman's other works, we encourage Ridley Scott not to toss away the details of The Forever War too lightly. Although he pretends to be at peace with minimal involvement in the production, Joe will fume away on his blog if he doesn't like what he hears — the book is naturally close to his heart.
Joe Haldeman's lecture at MIT this year [The Craft of Science Fiction]