A new web site, apparently by Liberty Girl and others.
We’ll see where this goes.
You know, since they’re doing a movie of Atlas Shrugged, it might be a good time for The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as well. I wonder if anyone’s optioned it?
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Tim Minear wrote a script for it, as yet unproduced. You can read it here.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would make a much better movie than Atlas Shrugged, IMO. Most Heinlein books would. Rand was excellent at identifying the problems inherent in political economy and the shortcomings of “not angels, but mere men” who vote and are invested with political power – but she lacked any real feeling for the positive and good motives within most of us. Heinlein had a much more complete understanding of humanity, and both his characters and stories were better for it.
“You know, since they’re doing a movie of Atlas Shrugged, it might be a good time for The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as well.”
Would you really want them to, seeing how “Starship Troopers” turned out?
Would you really want them to, seeing how “Starship Troopers” turned out?
Not if the same people do it, no.
Well if there’s a Starship Troopers type “shower scene” inserted then maybe Hollywood’s “Moon is a Harsh Mistress” might have some redeeming value.
Hollywood is incapable of making “Moon is a Harsh Mistress”
The computer would end up being HAL 2.
The problem with Starship Troopers was that the Hollyweird leftists saw JUST the background of the story as an excuse for movie f/x and CGI bugs.
I always thought it was shot from the aspect of, “see what happens of you join or believe in the military”.
They’ll never make the “Moon” movie. It’s about the little guys taking on. and beating, a controlling, corrupt gub’ment. Certainly they don’t want THAT idea floating around!! Not with the BOHICA in the WH, and Nanny Pelosi and Hairy (can’t) Read running Congress.
Thank you much for the link Jane. Now I am going to have to find the time to read it!!
I agree with the consensus that the ‘Moon’ would likely be ruined in the translation. but even so would be in favor of someone giving it a try so we could rail against where things went wrong. And they could even do a fair job of it. I took Starship Troopers for the visual effects show it was and would have given it a pass except for the really bad ending!
An easier movie to make, and one harder to ruin, would be Citizen of the Galaxy. It covers all the right bases in a fashion harder to screw around with.
I liked Citizen of the Galaxy the first time I read it when it was called “Kim” and written by Kipling [/snark]
Greetings, gospodin. we are Simon Jester. We are come to steal money from your bank account using sentient supercomputer. Not to be worrying, is in good cause. just order tee-shirt and give credit card number, da? Spaseba, cobber.
I have multiple copies of both “Atlas Shrugged” and “Moon is a Harsh Mistress” on the bookshelves. Give away copies as needed. Do the same with “Slide Rule.”
Strong lessons to be learned from all three.
Go, Simon!
Yes Jane, there are only a limited number of plots available.
Aleta, how do you get kids/young adults to actually read? I find they are very heavily oriented to the visual media, which is a good argument for making the movie I guess.
Jane and Mike, I read Citizen in about the seventh grade. And I read it before the Kipling. My elementary school had all of the other Heinlein juveniles except For ‘Tunnel in the Sky’ which I found in my early twenties. What good days those were!
At the time Citizen seemed so adult in comparison to the rest I had read except for The Man Who Sold the Moon.’ that my dad had on a rack in our attic. This was about 1962.
By now I have everything RAH ever published including his travelogue ‘Tramp Royale’ and his ‘Short Stories for Girls.’ I have purchased used hard covers of the early ones — from Amazon for the most part. Spyder Robinson said he would read the man’s grocery lists and I do not disagree.
Tim Minnear, one of the people behind the TV show /Firefly/, has written a screenplay for /The Moon is a Hars Mistress/ (The Moon is a Harsh Screenplay?) I have an electronic copy that someone posted somewhere up on the net (my memory fails me) and I’ll shoot you a copy once I get some internet connectivity (I’m writing this at my job as a security guard in Albuquerque and can’t connect my files to their computer).
Alas, I don’t know anything about the status of rights to make a movie. Bill Patterson, Heinlein’s biographer, would, and I’ll ask him and post the data.
It just occurs to me that ‘Kidnapped’ by R. L. Stevenson is also a variant of the same thyme. There have to be hundreds.
“Citizen” is “Kim” redone? Give me a break. Kipling was an unreconstructed Victorian Tory, and it shows in every line of “Kim.” Heinlein was as Whiggish as they come.
I mean, yeah, they both have waifs that get redeemed by good mentoring and inherent good sense. On that basis, should we throw “David Copperfield” in there, too? Maybe “Star Wars?” Yeedge.
We could get the people who made V for Vendetta for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. That could work. The Wachowski brothers have no beef with dark themes.
If we’re going to nominate Heinlein books to be made into movies, then, as much as I like Mistress, I’d have to ask for both Citizen of the Galaxy and Have Space-Suit Will Travel – the artistic peak of Heinlein’s juveniles and, along with Mistress, his best work overall.
I still need to rent the movie version of The Puppet Masters, though; I hear it’s heavily flawed but that Donald Sutherland is spot-on as the Old Man.
Just say no to anyone who had anything to do with V for Vendetta. I have not seen the movie, but I’ve read the book and the Wikipedia summary of the movie, and the two plots are VASTLY different.
TMIAHM should be produced by someone who will actually preserve the original plot.
I vote for Dirk Benedict as the voice for Mycroft Holmes.
I purchased a copy of Puppet Masters on VHS when it came out. Converted the tape to DVD a couple of years ago. A good try at doing Heinlein right.
The movie for the most part was true to the book. It starts out well and gets only a little lost in the end. I think it was done well enough that I would say go ahead and rent or buy. Truer by far to the original than Starship Troupers.
The first Heinlein made into a movie was Destination Moon. I have that and so I will comment on it now, years after the fact where hindsight starts getting good.
This was based on Rocket Ship Galileo, the first and to my mind worst of the juveniles. But even Heinlein’s bad ones much good. If you read the book and saw the movie I think it unlikely one would remind you of the other.
The film is dated now and I was too young when it came out to give testimony about how it was received. I think I saw it in the mid 50’s and it was par for the course for that time.
Heinlein never thought it was done right even though he was involved in the production. And he never got involved with another movie project in his lifetime. He was involved with some television but there must not have been enough money to keep him going.
So yeah! We can do more movies now but just imagine how baaaddd ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ would have been if made in 70 of 71. A horror story could be written about producing that movie.
Another good movie for the times would be Pournelle’s “Fallen Angel”
Very appropriate these days – just swap ice age for global warming …