Matt said:
Pish: ZMM isn't an epic, it's a thriller. David Fincher's your director.
Horse said:
Nah - it'd have to be Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson. The only ones with enough
vision to do it justice.
Jan-Anders said:
I would call John Waters to do it.
dmb says:
John Waters. That's hilarious. I wonder what Richard Linklater would do with
it. Maybe he'd use some toned-down version of that Waking Life animation style
to set each chatauqua apart the rest of the story.
It's fun to imagine what it might be if creative control were to remain in the
hands of somebody who appreciates the substance of the book and who intended to
serve that above all other considerations, such as money and ambition.
I imagine Lila could be used to inform the script for ZAMM but the first book
has some very gripping dramatic tension between Phaedrus and the narrator and
the resolution of this tension not only puts an end to the trouble Chris is
going through, it settles the question of whether or not Phaedrus' idea of
Quality is insane. Did he really go too far or is just that the narrator a
slanderous coward for saying that he did?
See, the resurrection and rehabilitation of Phaedrus is sort of parallel to the
resurrection and rehabilitation of the Sophists. Like them, Phaedrus has been
buried and forgotten and we only ever get to hear about what he thought from
the perspective of his enemies. Like them, much of what he said has been lost.
This creates a certain mystique about Phaedrus, a certain ambiguity that adds
to the drama. We finally get to hear what Phaedrus himself thinks until the
very end, when his son Chris asks, "Were you really insane?" and his dad says,
"no". That's what's been bugging Chris. On some level, Chris knows the narrator
is a fraud and he wants his real dad back. Like some helpless little Hamlet, he
knows there's a usurper on the throne and all is not well in the kingdom. That
ironic reversal is parallel to exposing reason and dialectic as the great
usurper and so that moment between father and son would be right next to a
scene about the philosophical version of this reversal,
so that the two triumphs are one. (please pass the hanky)
Wouldn't it be fun to add a little fantasy sequence wherein Phaedrus takes the
place of the Sophist in Plato's dialogue and he turns the tables on Socrates,
wherein he gives different answers, better answers and exposes Socrates as a
bully and a liar. This would happen in his imagination as he's sitting at that
large, cracked, wooden table at the University of Chicago.
I'm thinking Paul Giamatti would play the lead. Huge role. The actor would have
to be able to portray the brilliant intensity of Phaedrus, portray the spooked
and cautious narrator and the ability to dish up the chatauqua lectures. In
Hollywood, it is usually considered bad form, a kind of cheating, to employ the
voice-over narrator. And there are good reasons for this rule BUT it doesn't
apply in this case. There is no way to get rid of ZAMM's narrator without
totally restructuring the whole thing. Instead, it should just break that rule
to tiny pieces and just let the narrator function from beginning to end. I
think that by the end, when we do finally get out of his head, it'll feel
liberating. It'll be wall to wall narration and then fresh air, like when Chris
takes off his helmut and stands up for the first time.
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