Buckaroo Banzai versus the Television Executives

The big news today in the geek-o-sphere are the reports that Kevin Smith is in the process of creating an Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai television series.

I meet this news with no small amount of trepidation.  I am a very old school fan of Buckaroo Banzai.  I was a fan of Buckaroo Banzai before the movie came out.  Not many people remember that Earl Mac Rauch's novelization of his script actually hit the bookstores about six months before the film did.  And I got a copy and read it several times before the film debuted.  Needless to say, it helped make sense of the movie too.

So the thought of a BB television series fills me with both dread and excitement.  On one hand it looks like it's going to be written and produced by Kevin Smith and he is the ubergeek's ubergeek.  If anyone will treat the original material in a way that fans will appreciate it is him.  On the other hand a lot of it is going to depend on which network or cable channel pics it up.  Heaven forfend the Fox Network gets their dirty little paws on it.  The subject matter is so bizarre they will no doubt treat it in such a manner that Firefly winds up looking like Gunsmoke.  And while things have been improving over at SyFy, I still don't trust them to treat original material well  I guess time will tell.

I do like Smith's idea of essentially remaking the film so that it is the story arc of the first season.  When you read the book there are a lot of ideas and subplots that didn't make it into the film that could easily fill out a whole season.  Though I am sad for whoever they cast as Rawhide.  Talk about doomed by canon.  Also the fact that Smith himself wants to play John Bigbooté (Bigboot-TAY!) is a bit worrisome.

And I really like his idea of doing the non-existent Against The World Crime League sequel for season two, if they get that far.  Again Rauch's novelization goes into a fair amount of detail about the WCL and it's leader Hanoi Xan that were not necessary for the film but are a great source of ideas for television episodes.

I think in the end I am cautiously optimistic.  Kevin Smith is a fan and he knows how to appeal to fans.  Buckaroo Banzai is a franchise with an already built in fan base.  The TV series could probably be made on a relatively constrained budget for genre TV since the original film was done on a shoe string and the fans won't expect the most cutting edge special effects.  In fact the cheesiness is part of the charm.

So I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and wait for an explanation of why that watermelon is there.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

The first preview video of the BBC's seven part adaptation of Susanna Clark's novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has been released.

It looks visually beautiful and I am looking forward to it being broadcast on this side of the pond.

Which is rather odd because I really detested the book.  When I first heard about it my thought was "Magic in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars?  Where do I sign up?"  But I have tried on three occasions to read the novel and don't think I've ever gotten farther than a hundred pages.  The problem, as far as I'm concerned is Ms. Clark wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as a pastiche of the novels of Jane Austen.  And I detest Jane Austen!

I couldn't get past the mimicked writing style.  There was a good story there, I could tell.  I just could not enjoy it.

That is why I'm looking forward to this adaptation.  While the dialogue appears to ape Jane Austen's (and hence Regency) style because it is a visual medium I won't get bogged down in various descriptions of people, places and things in Austenesque novels that I find so tedious and can sit back, watch what was previously, tediously described in words and enjoy the story.