Fire From Heaven
Thursday, 3 June 2004 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spqrbluesI think I've told this story already. Eventually, I'll get it right, and will be able to stop.
My Latin and History teacher in junior high, Mary Ann Niven, handed me a copy of Mary Renault's Fire From Heaven to read.
No, not today; in junior high; so, about a kabillion years ago.
I liked it muchly. I read it so quickly, the pages fell out, and I had to glue the book back together and hope she wouldn't notice. I ran out to buy The Persian Boy, the next book in the sequence. I worshipped it entirely. I vowed that, someday, I would make a film of that book, although Fire From Heaven would make the better title, I decided. I plotted, during my university days of student filmmaking, how I could make a scaled-down version of The Persian Boy with the resources we had there, but was not so much successful at convincing my cadre of friends to believe in the project (though I did convince a nice looking Alexander-size blond fellow to dress up in an Alexander the Great costume to lead a spring fair parade). The cadre and I created a wide variety of peculiar film and public-access television projects, but the Renault story remained at the back of my mind (back where I keep the skeery lemon poundcake and internet-savvy Amish people), waiting for the day when (I was sure) I'd be a successful filmmaker with the power to produce whichever projects I wished. Bwah ha ha!
For those who are unfamiliar with Mary Renault's book, but familiar with the recent movie "Troy," the title character of The Persian Boy is Alexander's cousin. Cousin.
I've been avoiding reading about the Alexander movie(s) currently in the works, but as the buzz grows it's becoming difficult to avoid, particularly since many of my friends know about my one-time obsession with all things Alexander and are eager to keep me updated. Whenever a movie appears, my outside food and I will be there to review it. Until then, I intend to sit neck-deep in my own self-bashing mediocrity and sulk about my non-filmmaking life, and it's very comfortable in here, so don't make me leave. All right, so it's not so much comfortable as painful, but at least it's familiar.
Movie? What movie? Never even heard of this Alexa-who fellow. If you need me, I'll be out seeing Van Helsing.
My Latin and History teacher in junior high, Mary Ann Niven, handed me a copy of Mary Renault's Fire From Heaven to read.
No, not today; in junior high; so, about a kabillion years ago.
I liked it muchly. I read it so quickly, the pages fell out, and I had to glue the book back together and hope she wouldn't notice. I ran out to buy The Persian Boy, the next book in the sequence. I worshipped it entirely. I vowed that, someday, I would make a film of that book, although Fire From Heaven would make the better title, I decided. I plotted, during my university days of student filmmaking, how I could make a scaled-down version of The Persian Boy with the resources we had there, but was not so much successful at convincing my cadre of friends to believe in the project (though I did convince a nice looking Alexander-size blond fellow to dress up in an Alexander the Great costume to lead a spring fair parade). The cadre and I created a wide variety of peculiar film and public-access television projects, but the Renault story remained at the back of my mind (back where I keep the skeery lemon poundcake and internet-savvy Amish people), waiting for the day when (I was sure) I'd be a successful filmmaker with the power to produce whichever projects I wished. Bwah ha ha!
For those who are unfamiliar with Mary Renault's book, but familiar with the recent movie "Troy," the title character of The Persian Boy is Alexander's cousin. Cousin.
I've been avoiding reading about the Alexander movie(s) currently in the works, but as the buzz grows it's becoming difficult to avoid, particularly since many of my friends know about my one-time obsession with all things Alexander and are eager to keep me updated. Whenever a movie appears, my outside food and I will be there to review it. Until then, I intend to sit neck-deep in my own self-bashing mediocrity and sulk about my non-filmmaking life, and it's very comfortable in here, so don't make me leave. All right, so it's not so much comfortable as painful, but at least it's familiar.
Movie? What movie? Never even heard of this Alexa-who fellow. If you need me, I'll be out seeing Van Helsing.
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Date: 2004-06-03 09:12 pm (UTC)Did I ever tell you about the VCR Elaine gave me when one of mine broke down? It had been her mom's, and her mom had lost the remote, so it couldn't be programmed or have the time set or anything - I mostly just used it to copy tapes. Since there were so many things it couldn't do, I named it... Bagoas. [veg]
Bagoas!
Date: 2004-06-04 12:27 pm (UTC)I related my tale of movie-making woe to a nice fellow at fencing (we had 17 people last night, and fenced in a pudding of muddy backyard, and enjoyed ourselves enormously, yay!verily). Nice fellow made all sorts of encouraging noises about how it's never too late to become a feared and powerful filmmaker, and between that and hitting people with swords I began to feel a bit less angsty.
Maybe I can make my Alexander the Great epic as a streaming internet movie... or in Flash... or something.... :-)
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Date: 2004-06-09 09:47 pm (UTC)It is my ambition to write a book like "The Persian Boy"--one richly detailed without being histrionic, swift-paced without glossing over events, that tells a definite story from beginning to end without boring the reader to tears. It is, in my opinion, the best book Mary Renault ever wrote, with "Funeral Games" and "Fire From Heaven" a close second and third. The entire trilogy brings me to tears.
I think you should definitely go ahead and make that movie. Do an animated version. This way you don't have to go out and get some overmuscled surfer-dude-worshipping moron to play Alexander and twitch whenever he has to kiss Hephaistion or Bagoas. I could pity Oliver Stone, but instead I think I'll sit back and laugh when his "Alexander" lands with a thud at the box office . . . "cousins," my foot.
--Kris