Even though the story takes Cayce on a continent-spanning journey, I think Pattern Recognition is a very intimate book.

So I think it depends how the film is handled, especially location shots. For example you could shoot London, Tokyo and Moscow in a claustrophobic way, or alternatively use helicopter and crane shots.

Having produced esoteric films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, obviously Steve Golin has the credentials to handle PR.

It's not the producer I'm concerned about, it's the choice of director which bothers me.

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It's not the producer I'm concerned about, it's the choice of director which bothers me.

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agreed.

what about the stink google will surely bring up?
......... Do You YAHOO?..........

hopefully the work was optioned with the intent that no one fuck it up by attempting to translate words into a succesion of pictures.

"talking about music is like dancing about archetechture."

Gomi boy, I agree there is a certain intimacy in PR, the idea of filming it as a series of interiors brings me uncomfortably back to New Rose hotel. Although Mr Gibson was happy with that adaptation, think it could have done with some 'opening up'

As for the helecopter shot thing (my favourte such sequence is in Ridley Scott's someone o watch over me with his Manhattan Night overfly), Yeah... but I'd like something more streetlevel. Move engaging with the urban space at a personal level.

I doubt Weir will want to do all of the locations, I think Moscow is most likely to be cut. Filming in the US is expensive so the shoot could be divided between London and Tokyo.

New York might be only reprsented in brief flashbacks using stock footage CGI and Toronto to substitute.

To think of it, Tokyo is also expensive so one of the new Chinese Special Economic Zone cities might stand in as a substitute.


boogerhead, I would that you were right, but once they start talking to a director it generally means their intentions are serious (this has no bearing on whether he film actually will be made, only luck will determine that).

The latest from Hollywood

It looks like WG is going to be in LA this weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Sunday April, 25
1 PM - William Gibson and Bruce Wagner: A Conversation about 21st Century Hollywood and Beyond
Schoenberg Hall - PANEL CODE: 2033
North Signing Area - Line C
· William Gibson
· Bruce Wagner
· Moderator – Mark Rozzo

Hmmm....I wonder what else he'll be doing in Hollywood that weekend?

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Although Mr Gibson was happy with that adaptation, think it could have done with some 'opening up'

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[New Rose Hotel]

I think it could have done with some 'directing'.

Sunday, hmm.... I don't think I can drive down to LA this weekend... certainly not on Sunday. Any word on appearances elsewhere?

I really didn't like that movie. It struck me as an excuse for Dafoe to surround himself with naked girls. Unhappy.

Thanks fashionpolice, very interesting.

jaydee

Q: Who's writing? Who's funding?

A: Peter Weir and David Arata. Warner Bros.

Source: Variety.com

I do believe that PR could definitely make it as a film- without all the cyberpunk stuff thrown in for flavor. I mean, hell, it's even got a Hollywood ending, doesn't it- practically screams "and they lived happily ever after." If there can be talk of turning one of Dan Brown's books ("Angels & Demons", I believe was suggested), then why not PR?

Plenty of opportunity for product placement. Plenty of intrigue. Enough action to get by. High-tech enough to be palletable. Nice narrative style. Lots of opportunity to get "artsy fartsy" with it- and the 9/11 scenes can be done faithfully AND without sensationalizing it. Lots of location shots (NY, London, Tokyo, Russia). Interesting characters: Dorotia, Cayce, Damien, Bigend, Parkaboy, Boone Chu (who'd play? Yun Fat? Jet Li?), Magda, Taki, Stonestreet, Voytek, Ngemi and Hobbs- lotsa flora and fauna to flaunt.

I can't think of a single scene in the book which wouldn't translate well to screen except, maybe, the emails- but some of those, particularly between CP and PB, can be dealt with as phone conversations and others can either be narrated or insinuated.

The entire story is contemporary and easy enough to follow- and the added bonus is that it's about as scifi as kitchen water (except for a certain street which has been accidentally renamed. ).

There's absolutely no reason it couldn't make it to film. And well.

I think Tommy would be glad to be in there even with Cayce's allergies. Any publicity is good publicity, right? A friend told me after reading Glamorama, he wanted to go all high fashion even though the book is a sendup of that whole culture.
But the really hard thing, the maybe impossible thing, would be to do justice to the footage. How could they possibly fill in that lovely central emptiness? I wouldn't want to try, myself. it's one of those best-in-your-imagination things that're so great about books.

re: the difficulty of reproducing the footage

Honestly, I think that'd be the easiest thing of all. First, they're incredibly short. Second, they're silent. Third, we only would actually see one or two clips (unless they decide to grace us with the "Maurice Edit" that Cayce watches just after she's gotten that Blue Ant laptop). Fourth, the costume design would be bland and generic enough to be done with a fair amount of ease. Fifth, there's a lot of still-frames which are prominent in the story. Sixth, each clip that we DO see has been described so completely that just about any director could reproduce it accurately.

Doing the footage would be a cinch. Making the footage look interesting or flashy would be an inaccurate portrayal of the footage- even Cayce admits to herself that, stylistically, there isn't really much TO the footage, but its style isn't the draw. The draw of the footage, for the footageheads, is the mystery and absolute blandness of it. I think it would be vital to maintain that air of simplicity and anachronistic so-so-ness. That's part of what the footage IS.

The right director, with the right sense of "washed-out jitteriness" could do it. Small private secret: there are scenes from Speilberg's "Saving Private Ryan" which strike me, cinematically, as being very footage-like. Dunno why.

If the director REALLY wants to be faithful to it, though, he'd follow the same process that Nora Volkova went through. Speaking of the Volkova's, is it just me or would anyone else agree that Natascha MacElhone would make a superb Stella/Nora?

Fashionpolice

once again, on the ball.

Bravo!

jaydee

OK, here are Writer David Arata's credits

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0033153/

And here is an old interview with him.

http://www.screentalk.biz/int010.htm

From his credits he seems like a very ... serious young man.


jaydee

NightShadow

I was being ironic about the cyberpunk stuff.

I agree, no single scene presents any narrative problems for visual translation. (except for the 9/11 thing, I am still not sure where enough time has passed that a film would be accepted with those riffs in it) My question goes to the structure of the thing. There is a deep underlying oddness which underlies all of Mr. Gibsons work, it is this that has eluded earlier adaptors of his work and it is this that I feel may again just get 'lost in translation'.

jaydee

Ever see "The Truth About Charlie"? Or "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood"? Two stories which, in book form, were both extremely quirky AND adaptable. And both made it just fine to film. Granted, Truth... didn't quite smash the box office, but it didn't completely flop, either. And the "Royal Tannenbaums", as odd a story as one can imagine, did superbly.

The only real bone of contention I see is people allowing the 9/11 element to scare us. And, frankly, I don't really see that as a problem: we, as the American culture, have been anesthetized to it by CNN and every other news agency with a TV presence. People might bitch just for the sake of bitching, but anyone with a grain of sense can just point at the news agencies and ask the complainers, "So where were you when THOSE folks were airing that footage again and again and again? Are they better or worse? We humanize the trauma, from one victim's viewpoint whereas THEY did their best to dehumanize it. Where were your complaints then?"

I think people are ready to see 9/11 in a movie. The full on descriptions of it that we're starting to see in books are a step into it. I've noticed that people are starting to make jokes about it too - there's a South Park clip online that has a long joke about it - so, it's time for the movie version. This is the movie to do it, too, with 9/11 playing an important role in a larger complex story that's about what one's relationship to the world is now.

And re: footage again, NightShadow. I disagree! It'll be lame if it's just some kind of simple vagueness. It has to give a sense of possibility that it offers to Cayce and all the others, stand in total contrast to the rest of the film and world.

If the footage, movie-ized, is supposed to stand in total contrast to the rest of the film and world, then it would absolutely be the most antiseptic and bland thing to set eyes upon. The world is dynamic, media-driven and sensational; the footage itself is quite the opposite- and it lacks branding (kinda like the cinematic version of Muji) as well as any concerted notion of marketing. The footage is the anti-conviviate.

There is something inexplicably captivating about it. That comes across very strongly in the book bc, since the book is made of words, the characters and narrator can simply say, "there's something inexplicably captivating about it!" In a movie, of course, that quality has to come across in pictures. The brandlessness, yes, that's easy to get across but how it makes them feel the way it does, is not.

It's always dangerous, in movies, to show the special something that inspires the characters. "American Beauty" a few years ago had the male protagonist describe the flight of a plastic bag throught the air as evidence of how film can transform a detail of daily life into something beautiful. It was believable when he said it but, when they actually showed it, it became ridiculous. That's the danger for PR. The footage is so fundamentally important to the characters and to the plot that it would have to be done really subtly and well for it not to be ridiculous.