"THe Blue Max"

Aerowallah · 22 August 2005, 07:19 AM

Jawohl! mein guter Herr...

http://monsterhunter.coldfusionvideo...eCannibal2.jpg

http://www.scifilm.org/images/slavecannibalgod3.jpg

The final picture is only for aging (at least over 40 years old) posters to WW1 sites who have drunk from a bottle of Moet whose neck was shattered by a French bullet, have changed their underwear at 20,000 feet, and are veterans of at least one of Anthony Fokker's orgies and are, therefore, not easily offended...

Tuch weg!

http://www.cinemasirens.com/can05.jpg

Zum Wohl!

Aerowallah · 22 August 2005, 08:47 AM

Mein Herr, Ich bin hoechste erfreut! I have the trailer gefunden! Several seconds of the scene in question! Don't blame me if you cannot sleep tonight. Just pretend it is German West Afrika and they are on a mission to recruit these savage cannibals to turn loose in No Man's Land....

http://www.horrorvideo.com/movies/th...nnibal_god.asp

Aerowallah · 22 August 2005, 10:34 AM

http://www.celebsmovies-online.com/U...a-Andress.html

P.S. Remind me to do something productive today...

buzz1941 · 6 September 2005, 06:18 PM

A month or so ago, when the 'net was abuzz with spec that Peter Jackson might consider refilming "The Blue Max," I sat down and reread the novel, plus the two sequels, "Blood Order" and "Tin Cravet," with the specific lookout of whether the works hang together as a whole and were filmable in a long form, like a miniseries or a movie trilogy.
The short answer — 'twould be easier to do than "Lord of the Rings."
Short question with obvious answer — as popular? No.
I was also struck by the changes made to "Blue Max" to make it into a film. A novel is not a movie, and the storytelling styles are different. A kind of visual shorthand exists in film that would seem heavyhanded in a novel, and a novel is too subtle for a straight adaptation. And the "Blue Max" is a real novel, with a dynamic character arc that wouldn't work well on screen. Given that, I thought the filmmakers did OK pulling the bare essentials from the book and constructing something quite different. Given the morality of the period, the film also had to wrap up the story and put a lid on it. Amoral Germans can't survive!
If "The Blue Max" is a meditation on character, then "Blood Order" is a social landscape and "Tin Cravet" an espionage thriller. Of the three books, I was most drawn into "Blood Order," with its shifting mazes of loyalties and conflicts in interwar Germany. It's also the most filmic and character-rich of the three.
"Tim Cravet" seems almost like an afterthought, and the weakest of the three, and, ironically, the book easiest to translate into film, with it's emphasis on action and scope. It also has a curiously open ending that could be rewritten into a slambang finale.
Besides Stachel, the books all have continuing characters that exist over the length of the three works, and a love story that is pretty wrenching.
Yeah, the whole thing could become a decent larger filmic work, particularly if an iron-fisted story and continuity editor were on board and the whole thing is thought of as one big story. Although aviation is prominent in each book, it is not the focus.
It could be a fimed trilogy. But if I were a producer and wanted to do the works properly and maximize my return — and amortize production costs — I'd shoot for a 10 or 12 hour limited series on HBO or FX, with a sweetheart coop deal with the BBC, and keep the content adult.
If Peter Jackson really wants to film a WWI epic, there are plenty of other works out there. Try any Derek Robinson for starters, or "Warbirds — Diary of an Unknown Aviator," or "Gods of Yesterday," or "Sagittarius Rising," or even "High Adventure."
The great one would be "Flying Fury," though.
Bankrolling will be easier when "Flyboys" gets into the black — which may have already happened, on paper at least.

Hans Jaeger · 7 September 2005, 06:38 PM

Dear Buzz:

I was quite impressed with your recent posting on the Aerodrome Forum re the “Blue Max” Trilogy. You are among a tiny few literary critics and film industry cognoscenti who, over the 45 years of dissection undergone by my works, have actually caught the essence of the whole and have suggested a proper film treatment.

You might be interested to know that your analysis resonates very closely to that of my late friend, George Peppard. George had great enthusiasm for the trilogy (he felt “The Blood Order” was, as he said, “made for him”). George and I, for all our mutual respect and long-distance camaraderie, never talked money. But my agent told me George was ready to nail down the film rights to “The Blood Order” with his own money and then pitch it to the suits at several majors other than 20th-Fox, with whom he apparently had extremely strained relations at the time. Neither he nor my agent ever filled me in on the details, but my impression was that certain forces combined to thwart him: (1) the discovery that 20th-Fox had a contractual two-week right to meet or top any non-Fox sequel offering, which, George seemed to think, put Fox in a position to pull the rug on any move he tried to make; (2) other studios’ decisions that the implicit budget would be astronomical at a time when money and interest rates were very tight, and (3) the suits’ consensus that “The Blue Max”was a flash in the pan that would never enjoy any longevity, either as a book or a movie, and thus would not be worth such a heavy investment.

In any event, I was much taken with the fact that your evaluation read as if some parts had been written by George himself. He, like you, saw clearly what I had tried to do with “The Blue Max” and told me in a moment of unguarded vexation that he wished only that he could have played Stachel the way I’d written him. But it was different time – a different lifetime, actually – and, since World War II and Hitler Nazism were still a rawness in most of the world’s minds, the then-filmmakers decided that Stachel was a naughty German who had to pay for his naughtiness. Get dead, and stay dead, Bruno-baby.

I’m glad I caught your Aerodrome posting. I visit the site frequently but have not until now entered the discussions here. I suppose I fear too many attacks from those irked, lusty participants who would hold me responsible for Ursula’s magically unmoving towel!

Thanks again for your thoughtful commentary.

Jack Hunter

buzz1941 · 7 September 2005, 09:07 PM

Herr Hunter:

Oddly, I met George Peppard several years ago at one of Tony Curtis's many art showings -- no comment -- and we briefly discussed "The Blue Max." All he really let on was that he REALLY wanted to do the sequel. After reading the book, I can see why. "Blood Order" is quite brilliant at paralleling the inner conflicts of Germany in that period as played out in the prickly travails of Stachel. "Blood Order" is a terrific book and the clear centerpiece of the series.
After blowing smoke up your keester with that, I'll say that "Blue Max" is occasionally overwrought and digressive, and "Tin Cravet" is fun but programmatic. By that point the female characters are more interesting than the male ones. Blah blah blah. You've heard all that before. (Didn't keep anyone from turning those pages, though!)
It's way open-ended, too. Was there a fourth book in mind? Or just in case?
It was interesting watching "Blue Max" very closely after reading the book. Peppard seemed to be trying to hint at Stachel's alcoholism and obsessive class-consciousness without billboarding it. These subtle things worked under the viewer's radar. The character is also interestingly unsettled by emotional stability in others, which is a fascinating idea.
I neglected to mention that the "trilogy" or whatever it would be could easily be filmed in New Zealand. The exteriors are right for Austria/Bavaria.
Peppard is so identified with the role it's difficult to think of a young actor today who could carry it off. Maybe Nick Stahl.
Carps about writing technique notwithstanding, the characters presented in the books are vivid and memorable and have empathy, and if you can carry that off, the audience will follow you anywhere. That's true of both books and films. In my own books, plot is secondary to character, I hope.
Question -- what's the film rights status of the works, if that can be told?
One of the things about Hollyweird is that they can option off the rights to the screenplay of the "Blue Max" and not the actual book! Or they can simply sell the title only!
And thanks for the thrill of an author's reponse.

Hans Jaeger · 8 September 2005, 04:47 PM

Dear Buzz

To answer your question: All rights to all my books, but for one exception, remain exclusively mine. The exception is “One of Us Works for Them,” one of my espionage thrillers, whose film rights were bought, cash-on the barrel head, by Frank Sinatra. Frank died before he ever got around to making the picture, and the rights are still held by his survivors.

As you suggest, that two-week right-of-first-refusal on prequels and sequels in the “Max” contract with 20th-Fox can be dealt with readily and easily. George was the only one spooked by it, and I suspect his edginess was due to some arcane and byzantine unpleasantness solely between him and certain studio “players.”

Leo Opdyke put me onto the Peter Jackson scuttlebutt, and that’s when I looked in on The Aerodrome to see what all the fuss was about. At the time, Leo and quite a few others were apparently convinced that Jackson’s intentions toward a wooing of -- and a second marriage for --“The Blue Max” were serious and honorable. And for a brief moment the prospect was exciting, since Jackson is no klutz and would be virtually guaranteed to make a winner. But my years of exposure to the ruthless, often cruel and capricious folkways of the publishing and moom pitchah worlds have, alas, made me quite jaded, and, after that magical second, cynical amusement took over. “Yeah, sure,” I thought. “And he’s going to ask me to play the starring role.”

A friend who was privy to all this agreed with my view that, if Jackson were to make a World War I aviation movie, he’d be almost certain to dive into something new – regardless of the success or failure of his “Kong” remake. “So why,” -- I paraphrase my friend here -- “don’t you send him a copy of ‘The Flying Cross’?” He pointed out that that novel is “different as hell” -- a character study, laid against a murder mystery, wrapped in an espionage caper, all leading up to and resolving during the climactic American aviation action at St. Mihiel in the autumn of 1918. So, with this kind of prodding and the sense of nothing to lose but a signed copy, I checked Leo for the address and off went the book to New Zealand, or wherever it is Jackson hangs out. There has been no response, and my jadedness remains intact.

What also remains is my astonishment over the longevity of “The Blue Max.” It was turned down by eight publishers, the consensus being that the American public was in no mood to read about a bunch of grungy Germans in a war nobody remembered. The ninth took it on, expecting to lose its money investment but hoping to gain by adding to their stable an author they felt “showed much promise.” Happily the New York Times agreed, and the “Max” received a major approving review on its op-ed page, which caught Darryl Zanuck’s attention. It was he personally, I understand, who read the novel, then instructed his suits at Fox to make a movie of it. The book seemed to take on a life of its own and has since sold more than a million copies in all its hard-bound, soft-cover, and audio versions worldwide, and continues to sell in these forms as we speak.

Predictably, the novel, with its depiction of incipient Nazism, was banned in Germany, but Hollyweird “softened things” sufficiently to permit the film’s distribution and exhibition there. Shades of political things to come, eh?

I hope this answers most of your questions. In any event, I’m most happy to make your acquaintance.

Hals und Beinbruch!

Hansel

buzz1941 · 8 September 2005, 05:57 PM

Yeah, there are certain shadings in the trilogy, particularly "Blood Order," that come into high relief in today's ruthlessly paranoid political climate. Everything old is new again.
And yeah, giving these guys your work is like tossing coal down a black hole. I once, in an effort to spark interest in the Pacific War, sent Robert Ballard at Woods Hole a copy of my history book "Advance Force Pearl Harbor." Never heard a single word back. But a year later, in a documentary on the subject, Ballard went on and on about how they had consulted the most authoritative sources — while waving around a copy of my book on camera!