Lost and Found

February 7, 2023 at 9:15 am

“You can buy anything you might desire from Gray Alys. But it is better not to.”

Those were the opening words of my short story “In the Lost Lands,” first published in the DAW anthology AMAZONS II in 1982. In the first decade or so of my career most of what I wrote was science fiction, set amidst the Thousand Worlds, the shared background of dozens of my stories and my first novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT. “In the Lost Lands” was a bit of a departure; a pure fantasy. (I loved fantasy just as much as SF, but back in the 70s and 80s there was not much of a market for fantasy shorts). It was meant to be the first in a series of stories about Gray Alys, a mysterious sorceress in a distant, magical realm, who provides her patrons with whatever they might wish… if they are foolish enough, to buy from her. You deal with Gray Alys at your peril.

I wanted to write six or eight or ten Gray Alys stories, then put them all together in a collection… or perhaps a “fix up” novel. That was a common approach back in those days. And one I used myself with another character, Haviland Tuf. I wrote a series of Tuf stories, then an interstitial to bridge them all together, and published them as TUF VOYAGING.

Alas, for whatever reason, I never wrote that second Gray Alys story. (I did begin one, long ago. Got two pages, I think, then set it aside, and never returned to it). Why? Damned if I know. It was a long time ago. I always liked the character, though.

That’s why it thrills me to announce that she will soon be appearing on the big screen. IN THE LOST LANDS, the movie, wrapped filming in Poland a few weeks ago! Paul W.S. Anderson, director of MONSTER HUNTER, EVENT HORIZON, and the RESIDENT EVIL series, helmed the picture. Milla Jovovich stars as Gray Alys, and Dave Bautista as Boyce. Constantin Werner (PAGAN QUEEN) served as writer and producer.

IMDB has information on the rest of the cast.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4419684/

We’ve just started the post production process, and there’s a lot of special effects and other work yet to do, so IN THE LOST LANDS likely won’t be appearing at your local cinema until some time in 2024. We are also hoping to do a tie-in graphic novel, which will include both my original story (quite short, at 6,000 words or so) and the larger, darker, more expansive world of the film. That’s still in early days, though.

And who knows? If the gods are good, and IN THE LOST LANDS turns out to be a hit, maybe we’ll get to tell the further adventures of Gray Alys after all. I have a sheet of ideas around here somewhere…

Current Mood: bouncy bouncy

Tags: films, writing

Fanboying

July 2, 2022 at 8:45 am

These past couple of years, what with covid and all, I have fallen way behind on my movie-going. Which is a shame, since I loved going to movies… in a movie theatre, ideally. Hell, I own a movie theatre. And we have the best popcorn in Santa Fe, still!

We did not have DR. STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, however. Elsewise I might have seen it sooner. Parris and I did finally catch it a few days ago, though, and…

I have to say, I loved it.

Sam Raimi has always been one of my favorite directors. And Dr. Strange has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters. And this version of Dr. Strange, slipping through portals into surreal dimensions full of floaty things and alternate realities, was the Doctor I fell in love with, way way way back when world was young (and so was I). They even gave us CLEA! I love Clea!

Seeing this movie brought back a cherished memory, of the day I attended the world’s first comicon, in 1964 in Greenwich Village. I was fifteen years old. The whole con was held in one small room in some sort of union hall, with hucksters selling old comics from cardboard boxes along one wall, and the speakers at a podium in the front. Fabulous Flo Steinberg turned up.. and so did Steve Ditko. It might well have been the only comicon he ever attended… but I got to talk to him, and tell him how much I loved his art. Especially on Dr. Strange. Ditko was reserved, maybe a bit shy, but genial enough. He told me that Dr. Strange was his favorite as well. Yes, even more than Spider-Man.

He’s still one of the best comic artists who ever picked up a pencil, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Anyway… MULTIVERSE woke the sleeping Marvel fanboy in me, and that was a joy.

So says a former member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

Current Mood: nerdy nerdy

Tags: comic books, films

The Cooters Are Coming!

August 24, 2021 at 7:14 pm

Howard Waldrop will be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal a few months hence. It’s well deserved. There has been no finer short story writer in all of science fiction and fantasy in the past half century than H’ard. No one else writes like Waldrop. And Howard never writes the same story twice.

His best story? Damned hard to say. So many classics.

But one of them, surely surely, is “Night of the Cooters,” a finalist for the Hugo Award and Locus Award (did not win either, alas), and the title story of his second short story collection. Inspired by H.G. Wells and WAR OF THE WORLDS, it is all about the time the Martians invaded Pachuco, Texas.

And now, I am thrilled to announce, the Cooters are coming to the big screen.

Or maybe the small screen. Or the medium-sized screen. But some kind of screen, anyway. Right here in Santa Fe, we have just wrapped principal photography for a brand new film version of the Waldrop classic. “Night of the Cooters” is a short story, and our version is going to be a short film. I’d guess it will come in somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, shot with a combination of live action and state-of-the-art animation. If you loved the story, we think you will love our movie.

Howard has been part of the project since the start, of course. (The start being some five/six years ago).

The screenplay was written by JOE LANSDALE, and who better? The Sage of Nacogdoches, Texas is a major writer in his own right, author of the Hap & Leonard series and about a zillion other books and stories, writer of thrillers, horror stories, science fiction, westerns, historicals, and all manner of other cool stuff.

Directing, and starring as Sheriff Lindley, is the one and only VINCENT D’ONOFRIO.

If you have seen any television or film in the past thirty years or so, you know the work of Vincent D’Onofrio. He was Detective Goren in LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. He was Private Pyle in FULL METAL JACKET. He was the young fisherman who gets jilted at the altar in MYSTIC PIZZA. He was the alien in MEN IN BLACK. He’s the Kingpin in Marvel’s DAREDEVIL series. And… probably my favorite of his roles… he was Robert E. Howard in THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD (a wonderful film that deserved a LOT more attention than it got). And more and more. You can check out the full list of his credits on IMDB. He’s simply an extraordinary actor, with a range second to no one, and it was such an honor to work with him.

He’s also a terrific director.

The supporting cast includes Hopper Penn as Sweets, Harrison Page as Luther, Martin Sensmeier as Leo Smith, Cristin McCleary as Atkins, Elias Gallegos as DeSpain, Luce Rains as Skip, Jazzy Kim O’Brien as Lil’ Chisum, and Darius Eteeyan as Billy Strother.

And what about the Cooters, you may ask?

The cooters will be supplied for us by Trioscope Studios. Check out their website at https://www.trioscopestudios.com/ for a smaple of their work… or watch their WWII film THE LIBERATORS on Netflix.

The producers of NIGHT OF THE COOOTERS — in no particular order — are Vincent D’Onofrio, Justin Duval, Joe Dean, Taylor Church, Martin Sensmeier, L.C. Crowly, Greg Jonkajtys, Elias Gallegos, Lenore Gallegos, Amy Filbeck, Joe Lansdale, and Howard Waldrop His Own Self.

And me… though I rather think I may credit myself as The Big Cooter.

When and where will you be able to see NIGHT OF THE COOTERS?

Well, that’s hard to say. We shot everything on green screen, so the post production process is going to be a lengthy one. The ball has now been passed to our friends at Trioscope, who will supply the backgrounds and special effects. We are thinking the final cut won’t be ready until early next year. And once the film is complete… well, alas, I doubt it will be showing at a multiplex near you. It’s a short film, as I said, and shorts just don’t get the distribution of full-length features. They hardly get any distribution at all, sad to say. I expect we will enter COOTERS in some film festivals here and there. Maybe some streamer will pick it up. Maybe we can release it on DVD or Blu-Ray. Maybe we can make a few more Waldrop movies and assemble them all into an anthology of sorts, like CREEPSHOW or TWILIGHT ZONE. One thing I can promise: we will be having a premiere somewhere down the line at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe.

Howard never made much money off his stories. I expect his film won’t make much money either. But that’s not point.

Some stories just need to be told. Some movies just need to be made. Call it a labor of love.

Tags: films, movies, television and film

Coming… Eventually… Maybe

March 11, 2021 at 9:39 am

The story about the adaptation of IN THE LOST LANDS broke a week or so back.

And now, hard on the heels of that, comes the announcement about another story of mine being developed as a movie.

“Sandkings” was the story I was best known for, before A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE came along. Originally published in OMNI, it went on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards (my only triple crown), and has been anthologized and reprinted more times than I can count. It was filmed once before as well, as the two-hour premiere episode of the revived OUTER LIMITS. Melinda Snodgrass did the adaptation; Beau Bridges starred, with his father and his son in supporting roles.

Now the story is in development once again… this time as a feature film rather than a television episode.

Gore Verbinski, the acclaimed director of RANGO, THE RING, PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN, and many other films, will helm the project. Dennis Kelly, creator of UTOPIA, is writing the script, which promises to be a closer adaptation than the OUTER LIMITS version. The new version will have a much bigger budget as well; the OUTER LIMITS simply did not have the money to do all the things that they wanted to do.

You can read all the details here:

https://collider.com/sandkings-movie-netflix-gore-verbinski-george-rr-martin/

or here:

Gore Verbinski to Direct Adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Sandkings

We are still in the early stages of development, to be sure. Dennis Kelly is only now writing the script. Many things are developed and only a few are ever filmed, so please remember that… it could be a year or two or three before this comes to Netflix, if indeed it ever does. But we have a great team on it, so I am hopeful. Cross your fingers and pray for Simon Kress. (Or don’t).

I am not quite sure why all these stories seem to be breaking now. The SANDKINGS project has been underway for more than a year (Covid obviously shut things down) and IN THE LOST LANDS for something like six years. We also have an animated feature of THE ICE DRAGON in development at Warner’s (as it happens I wrote “Sandkings” and “The Ice Dragon” within a couple weeks of each other, during a Christmas break from my job teaching college in Dubuque, Iowa — that was a good break).

And that’s just in the feature sphere. In television, as seen here, I am working with Kalinda Vazquez on a pilot for Roger Zelazny’s ROADMARKS, and I am part of the terrific team that is trying to bring Nnedi Okorafor’s WHO FEARS DEATH to series on HBO. I think we’re finally getting close on that one; we’ve been interviewing possible directors lately, and the last one was VERY impressive. Of course there’s HOUSE OF THE DRAGON at HBO, the GAME OF THRONES prequel series that Ryan and Miguel are helming, and maybe possibly some other stuff for HBO that I cannot tell you about (but it is very exciting), and also a new series for AMC that I also cannot tell you about… yet… (hint, hint).

Oh, and there’s FRIENDS FOREVER. Just a short film, maybe twenty minutes long. A labor of love, that I hope you’ll love as much as I do. That one will happen, if the pandemic ever allows it. If not for Covid, we would have shot it already. It is the first of four shorts that I hope to film, based on classic short stories by one of the most idiosyncratic writers our field has ever produced.

That’s what’s on my plate in television and film.

You all know what is on my plate in prose. I need to finish WINDS, and then maybe write another Dunk & Egg novella, and then get right into A DREAM OF SPRING, and in between edit some more Wild Cards books.

Once more into the breach, dear friends… Westeros beckons.

Current Mood: busy busy

Tags: films, television and film

Gray Alys on the Silver Screen

March 4, 2021 at 2:12 pm

I cannot seem to keep out of the news these days.

The latest story to break:

https://ew.com/movies/milla-jovovich-paul-w-s-anderson-in-the-lost-lands-dave-bautist a/

“In the Lost Lands” was one of my earliest fantasy stories (most of my work in the 70s was science fiction), the first tale of the mysterious Gray Alys, an enigmatic sorceress who would sell you anything you might desire… though her customers soon learned that you buy from her at your peril. No doubt my long-time fans all recall the twelve classic tales I wrote about Gray Alys and her customers, which were later collected in the….. WHOA, WHOA, wait a second. That’s all wrong. Another of those pesky alternate world memories. No, truth to tell, I meant to write a whole series of Gray Alys stories, I really did, I even began a second and penned a few of the opening pages… but one day I put it aside and I never got back to it. In the end I only wrote one Gray Alys story.

“In the Lost Lands.”

And now the story is coming to the big screen. Paul W.S. Anderson, director of Monster Hunter, Pompeii, and several Resident Evils, will helm the film. Milla Jovovich will star as Gray Alys, with Dave Bautista of Guardians of the Galaxy as Boyce, who leads her into the Lost Lands. German film director Constantin Werner, who first optioned the story and tried to get the film made for years, will be among the producers.

And who knows? If the movie is a big hit, maybe there will be sequels, and Gray Alys will finally get her series after all.

(So many years have passed, I no longer recall why I never finished that second story. I loved the character. Still do. And there were secrets I meant to reveal in those unwritten stories, and a whole complex backstory, and and and… sigh. Where do the years go?)

Current Mood: hopeful hopeful

Tags: films, writing

Bloggity Bloggity

May 25, 2020 at 8:00 am

History buffs, baseball fans, and Wild Carders alike will enjoy the newest post on the Wild Cards blog, John Jos. Miller’s “Annotated Long Night at the Palmer House,” touching on all the references, hidden and fictional, in his acclaimed LOW CHICAGO interstitial.

The Annotated “A Long Night At The Palmer House”

When he is not writing Wild Cards stories or watching the New York Mets, John is a huge fan of… ah… strange cinema. Of late he has been doing some fun blog posts for our friends over at BLACK GATE, talking about some of his odder favorites. Check it out at:

https://www.blackgate.com/2020/05/12/son-of-19-movies-the-good-the-bad-and-the-weird-edition/#more-427597

Current Mood: amused amused

Tags: films, movies, wild cards

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