Writing Outside the Lines

In a post in October, I mentioned that I discovered that James Clavell of Shogun fame wrote the screenplay for The Fly with Vincent Price and I got to thinking about some other movies I knew with screenplays written by authors better known for other works.

After suffering an heart attack in 1964, Ian Fleming decided to try his hand at writing a children's spy story. Originally published as three separate books, they were later published together as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In 1968 the movie musical was released (and now you can see stage musical based on the movie). The movie boasts music and lyrics by the Sherman brothers Robert and Richard, the same team that Disney used on many projects and movies including Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book.

I found the book to be dreadfully boring. Perhaps that is because I read it as an adult, and after seeing the movie numerous times (it used to be a Thanksgiving Day afternoon broadcast tradition of sorts). The screenplay was co-written by Roald Dahl, author such children's classics as James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and Chocolate Factory (1964), The Witches (1983), and Matilda (1988). The movie actually feels more like one of Dahl's stories then Flemings', with a dark humor, and role reversals between children and adults.

Interestingly, Dahl also worked on the screenplay for for the Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967).

Michael Crichton, known for books like The Andromeda Strain (1969), The Great Train Robbery (1975), and Jurassic Park (1990) that were made into movies and television shows, also wrote screenplays for movies such as Westworld (1975) and Twister (1996) and episodes of television's ER (1994-2008). He also was involved in many of these projects as director and/or producer.

Earlier this year my son and I watched all five movies in the Planet of the Apes cycle (and the Tim Burton movie remake). The first one from 1968, which was based on Pierre Boulle's book Planet of the Apes (1963) actually has held up pretty well for being 40 years old. (Much better then the subsequent four that had lofty ideas but degenerated in quality and diverted more and more from the original source material.)

The book is more of social commentary like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1926), and less of an action adventure story that the movie is. While it has it's own twist ending, it is different then the movies. Once you realize that Rod Serling, writer Twilight Zone in print and on television, was involved with the screenplay, the atmosphere and ending of the movie falls right into place.

I would love to add more to this list. Let me know if you know of other screenplays for movies or television shows that were written by authors who may be better known for their work in other media or genres.

Danny Elfman

(It started taking me forever to complete each post as I was including links for every book, DVD, CD, etc. and my links to the Davis County Library system weren't working so I held off to decide how I wanted to continue. This explains the gap between postings. For the time being I am not going to set up as many links and I hope the posts are still as useful without the links.)

When it comes to music done for movies based on, or inspired by, classic and well known stories, I think you would be hard pressed to find a composer who has done more than Danny Elfman.

His portfolio of movies based on books for which he composed the soundtracks, or at least developed the main themes for, includes:

Scrooged (1988) – an updated version of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol
Black Beauty (1994)
Sleepy Hollow (1999) – a decidedly different interpretation of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Planet of the Apes (2001) – which version was even more removed from the Pierre Boulle’s original book than the 1968 version
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Charlotte’s Web (2006)

If you allowed a couple of more contemporary author’s works in to this list, these would also count:

Meet the Robinsons (2007) – based on William Joyce’s children’s book A Day with Wilbur Robinson
Dolores Claiborne (1995) – from a Stephen King novel

Then, if you were to include well known comic book characters, the list grows with:

Batman (1989)
Dick Tracy (1990)
The Flash (1990) – actually a TV series that Elfman did the theme music for
Batman Returns (1992)
Spider-man (2002)
Hulk (2003)
Spider-man 2 (2004)

And while this doesn’t even complete his musicography, he did these movies which are also based on stories that originated in comics – Darkman (1990), Men in Black (1997), Men in Black II (2002) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).

Edward Scissorhands (1990) and The Corpse Bride (2005), are two movies which could just as easily be included in this list as the first has shades of Frankenstein, and Beauty and the Beast, and the second is loosely based on a Russian-Jewish folktale.

Lastly, if you wanted to stretch this list you could add the theme for The Simpsons TV series (1989+), which after 20 seasons and a movie is on its way to becoming an institution of its own (besides, The Simpsons has probably spoofed more classic and well-known books, movies and fictional characters then any other current series.)