A Gift from the Culture – The First Culture Movie!?

[Solipsist Mercenary]

I know I'll go see it, or, more likely, have family send the DVD over once it comes out, but I suspect I'll spend most of my time screaming at the TV (a hobby of mine). I can think of very few books that have made good transitions to the big screen, and the SF movie scene is kind of a wasteland overall. When it's done well, it's great, but how many of the enjoyable SF movies started as books? 2001 was being written by Clarke as it was being filmed, that doesn't really count.

With A Gift from the Culture being only 18 pages long, I'm pretty sure that we can expect something with little or no resemblance to the story. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale had only the thinnest of connections to the movies that came from them, with AGfTC, I'm afraid we'll see something with a talking laser pistol. End of connection. Wroblick definitely won't be in a same sex relationship no matter how carefully it's explained that (s)he's not really a he, it'd just end up billed as Brokeback SF.

I dunno, I hope for the best, but the best I can see is an SF movie that's good enough that IMB doesn't pull his name off of it.

-pessimistic SM

[iamhanuman]

still can't wait to see it............

[Rackon]

When I was messing about with scriptwriting software, using CP as a test, I was constantly reminded that 1 page of script is about 1 minute of screen time. Lopping chunks out of a complex and verbose story without ruining it is an art, which is why editors get paid a lot of money, I presume.

Yes and no...editors are absolutely key in shaping the story, but first the one in is the screenwriter - you don't have a movie til you have a script; the editor has nothing to cut together until the director has shot from the script. The script is the spine from which the movie is made.

That's why screenplays go through so many revisions and take so long to fine tune. It's why subplots and great whacking chunks of novels never make it into scripts in the first place much less onto the screen - with only 2 or so hours to tell the tale anything that doesn't move the main story forward has got to go.

I have guarded optimism for this project, mainly because the fimmaker is an independent, and his previous work is strong and interesting. I suspect he won't automatically go for the lowest common denominator and that he'll have more on his mind than ray guns and space ships exploding. (For one thing, he's not going to have the budget for tons of explosions.)

Although at first A Gift To The Culture seems an odd choice, it actually makes sense. It's a set of characters, a situation and a background readymade to build a story around. It may alarm the purists, but this will no doubt be an "inspired by" type movie...which, since the original story is so slight, doesn't offend me as long as Murphy comes up with something interesting that doesn't totally violate the Culture universe. The story itself, when I first read it, struck me as a fragment from a longer work anyway.

Either Consider Phlebas or Player of Games seem like a natural for a Culture movie, but even though they're more straightforward than most Banks SF there's a lot in them to boil down into a film script. (It can be done, and has been done, but it would be a job.)

A Culture novel would also be a big budget enterprise. It will take a bankable director and/or producer with clout to get any of the Culture *novels* onto the big screen. I sometimes think an HBO mini-series might be a good route, as they are known to throw big dollars into production and hire high quality talent - although the scale of the books really does cry out for a big screen.

I can think of instances where a filmmaker took only a few elements from the source novel and made a good film: Aplphonso Cueron took only the names and basic premise from P D James' Children of Men but fashioned a brilliant film from it. The central idea of Jame's novel was the creative impetus for Cueron's own vision. In fact, although I read the book first, I thought the film much more compelling, even though it has litttle of the original novel in it. It stands on its own as a work of art... and as a *film*, a very different thing than a book.

Banks novels have three strikes against them from the start in regards to being made into movies: A) They're brainy; B) They're usually big, complex novels played out in epic scale i.e. expensive to make; and C) They're not huge in the US. The risk-averse studios would rather film another comic/superhero flick with what (they perceive) as a built in audience.

However, if Murphy is successful with this movie, then it considerably improves the chances of CP and PoG getting out of development hell. If it happens, I just pray it's a filmmaker with real passion for the books who will be true to the spirit of them.

[iamhanuman]

that is a very fine post!

[Big Orange]

They filmed the remake of The Prisoner in South Africa as well (it's been somewhat underwhelming entertainment wise, but the photography of the African landscape is incredible).

[charismatic megafauna]

Nice post Rackon. I agree that an independent filmmaker will probably have a more agreeable take on the Culture than would any Hollywood production. The number of special effects called for (at least by the written story) are minimal, so this should help the budget. Your take on why IMB's SF novels don't get made into movies is probably right on the mark. Why risk making a big budget SF movie from an author no one's heard of when you can make Batman 10 or Spiderman 6, etc, etc, etc. It's the kids (or at least young males) who make or break most movies. They don't want to be intellectually challenged at the movies, they just want a lot of stuff to blow up.

[Grit Savage]

Hi peeps

I'm new to this so be gentle.

I still think the ideal IMB movie would be based on events after Use Of Weapons. after Diziet Sma offers Mr Escoerea new legs and a job!
this way all the Culture novels will remain unsoiled/spoiled by money hungry movie execs.
I'm sure IMB could write/colaborate on a script for a Movie, something very new and interesting may arise.

[Solipsist Mercenary]

I still think the ideal IMB movie would be based on events after Use Of Weapons. after Diziet Sma offers Mr Escoerea new legs and a job!

I'm sure IMB could write/colaborate on a script for a Movie, something very new and interesting may arise.

Welcome!

Interesting idea, going for a movie from the get-go. There would still be a lot of explaining (to those not familiar with IMB) about the culture, might be hard to pull off convincingly in 90-120 minutes. Thinking about it that way though, there's some pretty sound reasoning behind AGFTC being the first movie out the gate, since the Culture only features slightly in the story, it wouldn't need to be fully and/or hurriedly developed.

Of course, it's late and I'm not sure if I'm thinking straight, so.....

-sm

[Grit Savage]

I'm just worried that they will screw up another movie as they did with Iain's Complicity, a great book and a rotten movie!
I remember feeling cheated after i saw it at the Inverness premier, I had such high expectations! I was so annoyed.

[Deep Black]

Really? I though Complicity was ok (though not great) saw it at the cinema along with about 4 other folk