<![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I enjoy post-nuke books and films, and liked The Road very much--beautiful and sad. In a strange way it made me think of an obscure novel I read about 20 years ago, another post apocalypse tale that was called "Flan". It was was written by a member of the band King Missile, the guitarist Dogbowl. Very similar to the Road, except that instead of a Father and Son, there is a guy named Flan who carries around a fish that talks and walks. Truly bizarre. There are cannibals and lots of extreme gross-out violence, and similar to The Road, there is no plot, just these two characters trying to get across the country, along a wrecked suburban railroad track. The sky is full of soot, everything is burned, and there is ash falling from the air like snow through the whole book. And really insane things pop up out of nowhere, like dogs with heads of people, giant eyeballs that float, crazy hallucinogenic imagery that reminded me of Hieronymus Bosh--but also silly and funny and juvenile. My friends who also read it either loved it or hated it because some of the things in the book were disgusting and horrible and disturbing, but also hilarious in a wacky way. Not like anything else I'd read before or since in post apocalyptic literature. I thought at the time it was really sick, but after reading The Road I wish I still had my copy to compare. I think my ex-girlfriend threw it out--it was one of "those" books.

GiantBlueLocust

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I was extremely nervous about hearing about this adaptation, but was buoyed by the attachment of John Hillcoat. But the Theron thing doesn't sound right to me. I agree that her involvement might force an expansion of the backstory.

filmsnack

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @92BuickLeSabre: Well Blindness actually has a great director attached, so I'm not too worried. I've loved Haruki since a Wild Sheep Chase, and After the Quake might be my favorite set of short stories sans Flannery and Carver.

PVIII

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @drmaybe: To reference myself (my favorite source), Jose Saramago is the other author (besides Murakami and McCarthy) that had that effect on me.

If you haven't read Blindness (which is actually unlike a lot of his other books in some ways), read it before they butcher it in movie form as well.

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Cormac McCarthy is so great at the vague. His books are as nightmarish and weird as a reader is willing to put into it. Also, adding to the cannibal/zombie confusion, Pittsburgh is where Romero shoots his films.

pinafore

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Sounds like at least some of the commenters haven't read the book. 'The Road' was the first McCarthy book I read, and the brilliance of his prose sent me out to read as much by him as I could find. The only thing that slowed me down is the darkness of his plots; eventually I had to take a break (or slit my wrists!).

In any case, the first writer I've come across since Haruki Marukami that sent me off on a one-author binge! Hope they don't blow the movie... if the first announced casting is for the almost invisible wife, I'm nervous...

drmaybe

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Forget the tree of dead babies. How about the camp they find when the boy sees the baby on a spit.

Slubber

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @jinchoung: Cormac McCarthy is one of the most celebrated American writers living today, up there with Pynchon and Roth. The man's won the Pulitzer, and the National Book Award, and lets not forget that All the Pretty Horses, his most celebrated novel, is NOT a GENRE piece (but it was turned into a turd of a movie).

PVIII

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @Sam: Why the quotes? Literature is a quality independent of violence, and Blood Meridian is most certainly literature.

I've no idea how they'll translate either of the books to film properly, between the prose and the extreme violence. Blood Meridian, in particular, has next to no "plot." It is buoyed entirely by the beauty of its writing, and as a novel, that works beautifully. Jesus, it's violent, though.

I wonder if Ridley Scott will include the scene where the characters come upon a tree full of dead babies?

Tardigrade

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> It's intentionally unknown what caused the disaster because the father and son don't know what caused the disaster. Whatever it was, it destroyed any commentary that would explain it. At least that's what I picked up on the Oprah Message board.

Jimmy Dare

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @aubreyAubrey: I disagree, as I can count all the good pg-13 movies I have ever seen on one hand. It sounds like to do this book justice, the R is necessary.

Gann

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Nuclear holocaust, meteor, whatever. The point of The Road to me is that the child remains a better example of humanity than all of civilization, including the father. It doesn't matter how the world got that way. The author doesn't say, so no one can definitively give an answer. I just hope this movie gets made as a PG-13, or else all the R-rated visuals are going to be too gut wrenching to watch.

aubreyAubrey

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Pittsburgh marketing campaign is...

"Pittsburgh... We're cheaper than Canada."

Emilia

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Stripped of its horrifying "literary" prose, Blood Meridian is an extremely simple story with a lot of violence in it. I suspect the same is true of The Road, from what I'm reading here. Filming either should be no problem.

Sam

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I watched I Am Legend last night and afterwards swore off any more Hollywood botch jobs based off good books.

Hollywood doesn't obviously READ the books. They just read the back cover, see the Oprah stamp and then write their version with included explosions, alternate dramatic endings and other crap.

Jim

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Pittsburgh as the post-apocalypse aside...

...Kevin Smith is also filming in Pittsburgh. Who knew Pittsburgh had become such a key film location?

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> What is that image from? Is there a graphic novel for The Road?

WithaK

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> And they are filming in Pittsburgh.

[www.post-gazette.com]

""What we found was Pennsylvania, and the Pittsburgh area in particular, offered the most diverse set of looks," Butan said. It's a road movie, with characters walking for days on end, and filming will take place in suburban areas along with coal mines, forests and an unused freeway a couple of hours away."

Some areas do have that post-apocalyptic feel. Mostly because sections already had their own apocalypse when the steel mills closed.

Emilia

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Dudes, I had no idea what "Gone, Baby, Gone" was about until tonite..

EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy: Oh, about 25 years after False Dawn, give or take a year or two.

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> meh. i think 'the road' is overrated as "high literature"... i haven't read NCFOM but the movie version seemed like an intelligent telling of what a real-life RAMBO might be like. genre conventions are all there - the vet, the crime syndicate, the hit man (lose the money, make threats he can't carry out, get killed himself, get everyone he cares about killed, etc.).... McCarthy's gift seems to be lending respectability to GENRE stories - or having a different angle on it - like tarantino - putting focus on something other than what a conventional hollywood film would focus on.
/
and the road is just run of the mill post apocalypse. ya got your cannibals, you got your road warrior rapists.... very run of the mill. slap on lonewolf and cub and you got a genre pizza pie that's being offered a heckuva lot of credibility. it's well written and affecting for sure but it's not unfilmable or so literarily pristine that heathen hands should not touch for heaven's sake. i saw clive owen in the role myself but guy pearce would be great too... heck christian bale would be great but he'd have to lose a lot of weight again and i don't want to see him DIE.
\
yeah, mom was a self centered, narcissistic, nihilistic bitch in the book. charlize (or any hollywood actress) could pull that off without breaking a sweat but i fear we're in for a revisionist bend in the story... ack.

jinchoung

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Charlize Theron isn't a high-calibre actress; if she were, we wouldn't have the steaming pile of doo called 'Aeon Flux'.

El_Bandito

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @zeppelined: When was "The Road" writ?

EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @magic_minox: Thank God and Einstein it's 2008!

EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Sounds a bit similiar to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's False Dawn. One of my favorite post-apoc novels.

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> Hello everyone. The catastrophe in "The Road" is the result of large meteor striking the Earth. The flame trail in the sky, followed by the "concussive" blast in the far distance is the single event that sets the events in motion. The blast is enough to kick up enough debris to obscure the sun for many years, thus the death of plant life and later animal life.

The book contains passages describing melted cities and roads (with the corpses of refugees embedded in the asphalt) , and forests lost to out of control, burning heat. A large celestial impact would produce tremendous firestorms in the upper atmosphere, obliterating anything at higher elevations around the world. There was a great NOVA about it a couple of years ago, if I remember correctly.

What the book does not contain is any mention of radioactivity or fallout. The ash in the story isn't toxic, it's just ash. The father and the boy are never worried about exposure to any radiation in the environment or tainted food.

Also, aspiringexpatriate, they aren't zombies or mutants. They are just people who have lost their humanity as the world has come to an end. They are hungry animals, and there is nothing to eat except other survivors.

magic_minox

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @iamtehawesome: Try Blood Meridian.

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @SteveWilson: Yes, a nuclear winter killed all the plant life. When ash fills the sky for years on end, there's no sun light, and temperatures drop...plants aren't gonna grow.

MConnor

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I've been listening to the audio book version of Hamilton's "The Federalist Papers"--in the context of modern times, it has a nice sci-fi flavor to it, check 'em out!

EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> The Road is next up on my read list. I'm still working through the truly excellent Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, which I highly recommend. I did leaf through The Road the last time I was at the store, but opted for the reader featuring the likes of King, McDevitt, & R.R. Martin.

doubledumbassonyou

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @SteveWilson:
The scenery, with all the gray ash that fills the sky and covers the ground sounds like a nuclear winter.

I hope they don't screw this up, The Road is the novel that turned me on to McCarthy.
I just read Child of God...Woah.

Iamtehawesome

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @Koreanish: Apparently, I'm with you :D

EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @mumblingmynah: I'm with you!

Koreanish

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I don't think it was a nuclear war. From my reading of the book it seems that there was some kind of explosion though ... my theory was that something happened to kill all plant life.

SteveWilson

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> How weird, I just picked up "The Road"...

Tommmcatt

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I wish they'd do an animated film based on that sweet Tomer Hanuka illustration. That looks perfect.

mumblingmynah

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @MConnor: Good. Just have to deal with the redundancy of "flesh-eating" and "cannibals."

aspiringexpatriate

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> 1) If you read between the lines, a nuclear war is implied. In the scene where the father fills up the bathtub with water while the pregnant wife watches, white flashes in the distance are described and the power goes out. Sounds like a nuclear blast and follow on EMP to me. Besides, the environment the father and boy walk through sounds exactly like the result of a nuclear winter.

2) They're flesh eating cannibals. No walking dead.

MConnor

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @extracrispy: Unless said actress is a huge fan of the book.

Are they flesh-eating cannibals? or flesh eating zombies? Cause cannibals I can deal with. What with no food and all. Also, isn't that a bit redundant?

aspiringexpatriate

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> This works out nicely alongside Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo starring in the adaptation of (another one of my favorite books) Blindness.

And by "nicely," I, of course, mean "WTF".

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> I hope McCarthy is getting lots of money for film rights and then not worrying too much about the poor films that are made from his stories.

MilesFromNowhere

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> @extracrispy: Some things are just the way they've always been.

JoeyTheHobo

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> This is not a good sign. The only way a high-caliber actress like Charlize Theron would sign up for this is if they beefed up the role of the mother... who had maybe a few passages in the entire book. It would be a shame if they detracted from the father/son relationship.

Also, I don't believe it's ever stated in the book that there was a nuclear incident. I suspect McCarthy wanted you to formulate your own idea of what happened.

Why does Hollywood suck?

extracrispy

]]> <![CDATA[Post-Apocalyptic Lit Becomes Movie With Pretty People]]> "She'll be joined by either Guy Pearce or Viggo Mortensen as the father."

and i'm sold, when can i see?

tetracycloide

]]>