Our mission at SAW is to foster conversations about this thing we all love (or love to hate): film/TV. Many of our features are designed with you in mind. Your opinions, to be more to the point. You have ’em. We want to hear ’em.
Question of the Day (QOTD) is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a film/TV-related question that we put to you, the reader. The comments section below is like the feedback box at work; except, in this example, we actually read what you write and care about what you have to say.
With that out of the way, here’s your first QOTD:
What book or story would you like to see adapted to either the big screen or the small?
I’ll start things off with my own pick.
My last year of high school, the mom of one of my best friends–and my junior year biology teacher (poor woman)–loaned me a book called Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist. At the time, I knew precisely jack shit about folk tales and cared even less that I knew so little about them. Faerie Tale changed all that. Faerie Tale is not a well-known book and Feist is not a particularly well-known author outside of the high fantasy genre, and the novel isn’t groundbreaking in any way at all, but some combination of the setting, subject matter, well-paced plot, and Feist’s comfortable prose has brought me back to this simple horror novel again and again. So much so that I’m on my third copy of the book.
Faerie Tale plot synopses:
Phil Hastings was a lucky man–he had money, a growing reputation as a screenwriter, a happy, loving family with three kids, and he’d just moved into the house of his dreams in rural upstate New York. Life was wonderful, full of magic–and about to be altered irrevocably by a Magic more real than any he dared imagine.
For with the Magic came the Bad Thing, and the Faerie, and the Faerie, and then the fool . . . and the resurrection of a primordial war with a forgotten People–a war that not only the Hastings but the whole human race could lose.
Faerie Tale would make a terrific hour and a half, mid-range budget film. Keep the effects practical (think Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth), focus on the characters and the suspense, and Faerie Tale would make a terrific little film to release around Halloween. It wouldn’t make a billion dollars, and it’s not a franchise-starter, but it could be a successful little film in the hands of the right studio and director.
Well, that’s my pick, folks. Here’s where you tell us what story or novel you would choose to have adapted to film or TV. Tell us why you made your choice and whether you think it would be better suited to the big screen or the small. Tell us who should write, direct, and star in it if you want. Get crazy. Go wild!
See you in the trenches.
