2nd Witch: By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. [Knocking:] Open locks, Whoever knocks! [Enter Macbeth:] Macbeth: How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is't you do? (Macbeth Act 4, scene 1, 44–49)
Something Wicked This Way Comes- is the Title of a RAY BRADBURY Short Story concerning a Mid West 'Carnival'.
Bradbury was very into old Shakey's Works and would often use something in His Writings with an indirect reference to the Fictional Bard.
'Moby Dick' the 1956 Movie was Directed by JOHN HUSTON and had a Screenplay Written by Bradbury. This Movie was the [Visual] introduction for most People to the best known Work of America's greatest Writer HERMAN MELVILLE.
What folks seem to forget about Herman Melville's 1851 masterpiece Moby Dick is that it's a deeply strange work. There are two separate chapters devoted entirely to a description and discussion of the Sperm and Right whale's heads and a comparison of their capacities to the Heidelberg Tun. Most novels said to be unfilmable, like Ulysses or The Catcher in the Rye, rely on a distinct interiority, their narrative movement ensnared in their character's mental landscapes – their stories are about psychological states and tracking them as they develop, a tricky feat to represent onscreen – while Moby Dick features a notable lack of psychological interiority, especially in regards to its narrator, Ismael. It is a book where, for long stretches, literally nothing happens plot-wise, even in terms of the psychological landscape. Sections like the "whale's head" chapters have nothing to do with the narrative ontology of the book; their aim isn't to express something about any character's psychological state and they certainly don't move the plot forward.
To accurately imitate Moby Dick in a film, one would need to unexpectedly (almost randomly) splice in a two-part documentary about the cranial capacity of the world's largest mammal. Despite its undisputed prestige as an American Literary Treasure, Moby Dick is an unclassifiable curio; for all its odd asides and documentary digressions, I would hesitate to even label it a novel at all.
It is a deeply weird work even by the deeply weird standards of its sailor-turned-brilliant-novelist-turned-awful-poet-turned-postal-clerk author.
"Lover of big game hunting and guy who clearly doesn’t think things through" John Huston was an unsurprising choice to direct Hollywood’s definitive attempt at filming the unfilmable tale of a whale, but the relentlessly square Ray Bradbury's involvement as a screenwriter is a pairing of writer and material that never fails to feel incredibly "off."
Disappointingly, but inevitably, Bradbury’s script for Moby Dick doesn’t even attempt to recreate any of what makes the book such an original work. The film sticks more or less to the plot of the book and, in that regard, stays fairly faithful to the narrative action as outlined by Melville.
The entire problem, of course, is that narrative action comprises only a fraction of Melville’s book – the movie barely even attempts to touch on Melville’s circuitous, cynical, ironic ideas about racial identity, how religion and morality functions in a practical sense, the sheer stupditiy of Thoreau's love of nature and (sadly) the whale's head and its similarities to a 58,000 gallon wine vat in the basement of a German castle
Bradbury became obsessed with Melville and is quoted as once saying 'Shakespeare is talking through Melville...
“Shakespeare wrote Moby-Dick, using Melville as a Ouija board.”
― Ray Bradbury
However although the Movie has attained a certain fame it is not particularly accurate in many respects
'AHAB' attains a kind of 'Martyrhood'-something Melville never intended but emphasised by HUSTON via His imagery of 'HARPOONEERS CEREMONIAL' [ch36]complete with [the Miscast] GREGORY PECK trying His best not to look too much like ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ORSON WELLES Wrote a Theatre Version of the Movie called MOBY DICK-REHEARSED
there is controversy as to whether or not He tried to 'Re-Write' His ' FATHER MAPPLE' Part to better suit His ideas. So a miscast PECK a nutcase HUSTON an Ego-Tripper WELLES and an ageing RICHARD BASEHART trying to Play a much younger 'ISHMAEL' combine to make an inaccurate Movie which was Written originally by MELVILLE under the influence of 'HEMP'
[as documented by Me See My 'ONE IDIOT' POST]
[pic Wikipedia]-above Book is a fictionalised account of BRADBURY and HUSTON during the making of 'MOBY DICK' and arguments over 'Credits' etc of the 'Mostly Filmed in IRELAND' Epic..
HUSTON was a very complex Character and had been A Boxer in His youth.
Another Movie made by HUSTON was 'FAT CITY'[1972] - BRADBURY again 'Teamed up'to Write a Screenplay...based on a Novel by LEONARD GARDNER...
Originally MARLON BRANDO was considered for the Part of 'TULLY' Played by STACEY KEACH.. the Part of 'Ernie' was originally offered to BEAU BRIDGES.. but He felt He was a little old so suggested His Younger Brother JEFF 'MULLET' ...
[SHERRY makes an appearance too.. Actress SUSAN TYRELL Plays Sherry Drinker 'OMA' ] CANDY CLARK Plays a Pregnant Girlfriend of 'Ernie'...]
I wasn’t trying to be a professional boxer anymore, but I had a friend in Santa Barbara who lived near my ex-wife. A real tough guy, an ex-marine. He asked me to spar with him. And I thought, Well, I don’t have to demean myself. I just assumed we were friends. I’m a little guy compared to him. He has shoulders like this and a little waist. He would run fifteen miles just for the hell of it. He had a heavy bag hanging from the tree and he worked on that every day. He wasn’t actively boxing anymore, but he was one hell of an athlete. So we sparred and I can’t remember whether I went one round or two before he hit me with this shot.
I’ve never had a reaction quite like that to a punch. And I told him, “I got to stop for a minute.” There was this crack in reality where I looked at him and there was a crack in his face.
I looked out to the trees in his yard. The trees had this crack in them. And that crack in reality was the last straw for me.
I’d never read about that anywhere and I’d never heard of it, either. Ever. I always read The Ring magazine, I still read it and never once have I heard a guy say, After he nailed me, I saw a big crack in reality.
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