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Life in Hell

I'm on vacation, so I'm taking a break from writing. Saw Austin Powers in Goldmember last Monday. It's a serious disappointment, Mike Myers needs to do something else. I've been reading a few scripts. Dreamcatcher is one bizarre screenplay, not sure if I liked it or not. Hollyfeld brings us his thoughts on the Hellboy script and you have my memoirs of my evening with The Simpsons.

Hellboy Script Review

"Guillermo del Toro has fast become the most promising horror directors of the new century, and I myself have fast become a big, big fan. His tragic, personal vampire story Cronos ranks alongside Nadja and Interview with a Vampire as one of my favorite vampire movies of the 1990s, and his under-rated thriller Mimic is a wonderfully entertaining film whose detractors, though seemingly out there somewhere, I have yet to meet. (Sadly, I have yet to see his acclaimed recent film, The Devil's Backbone.) This last year, he released the hit sequel, Blade 2, a gutsy and guts-filled adaptation of the Marvel comic book, which contained more adrenaline and testosterone than any non-surgical procedural film released this year. Now, he is slated to direct an adaptation of another comic book, Mike Mignola's Hellboy - a modern cult classic which takes its cue from popular cult and pulp classics from the first half of the century.

I myself am a fan of Hellboy, but a self-confessed recent one, and to date I have not read many installments in Mignola's series. As such, I review this very early draft of del Toro's script for Hellboy with even more trepidation than is customary: not only is this draft a full three years old (it is dated March, 1999 and is noted as an internal first draft, revised), and therefore, potentially completely unlike the script with which they are working today, but I am also not completely familiar with the mythology of the character, and must be very careful when judging how del Toro, who presumably knows much more about Hellboy than I do, has adapted the series. At best, this review can serve as a preliminary judgment on the quality of the first draft, which is quite excellent, and as such bodes quite well for the eventual finished product.

This draft of Hellboy loosely follows the plotline for the character's first mini-series, Seeds of Destruction. But whereas that tale was a Lovecraftian affair of dark rituals, old gods, family secrets, aquatic monsters, rotting architecture and scholars gone mad, the screenplay takes an understandable turn towards the adventurous. Most of the Hellboy stories I have read have involved him being informed of a horrific mystery of some kind and then essentially waltzing in and solving it through magic and his gigantic stone fist, and while these make for generally entertaining reads, they would also make for decidedly one-dimensional movies. Guillermo del Toro wisely expands his focus on events that the mini-series quickly brushes aside, upping the action ante accordingly, and incorporates certain Indiana Jones and X-Files-ish elements to the proceedings, which to his credit never feel completely tacked on. (And the inclusion of these influences is after all appropriate, since these series and their off-shoots are the pulp and cult classics of our own generation.)

Like Seeds of Destruction, Hellboy begins with the "birth" of the red giant that will come to save the world a whole bunch of times. It is the end of the Second World War, and Adolf Hitler has, as is historically documented and already toyed with in Raiders of the Lost Ark, amongst other stories, taken to the supernatural in order to end the war victoriously. To this end, he has charged the dark magician Grigori to bring forth the OGDRU JAHAD, six sleeping elder gods awaiting their return to our dimension. But where the comic book had a quirk of magic, fate and clairvoyance deliver the result of Grigori's dark ritual into a handful of soldiers, psychics and occultists (including Hellboy's "father," Bruttenholm... naturally pronounced "Broom"), here the handful of soldiers are eschewed in favor of a full army regiment, and the group of intellectuals dovetailed solely into Broom. An obvious but exciting-sounding battle ensues between the Allies and Nazis present, resulting in the disappearances of key figures in the Nazi's ritual, including Grigori, his Aryan disciple Ilsa, the decrepit Von Krupt and the be-gas masked Kroenen. The ritual is halted before it began... or at least, that was the idea, before the Allies find a red, tailed, horned baby with a stone right hand "cowering between a gargoyle and a stone saint." (Cute metaphor, huh?)

55 years later (in 1999... the age will no doubt be different in the final draft), Hellboy has not only become America's premiere paranormal investigator, but also a secret one, much to the fascination of conspiracy nuts everywhere. The script is littered with interviews with people who claim to have seen Hellboy, who have pictures taken of him, or who think he's a complete load of malarkey. Hellboy lives in the privacy and security of the basement in the FBI's Bureau of Paranormal Defense, behind a series of metal doors which would make Maxwell Smart envious. The seclusion, and his lifelong pampering by the FBI and his surrogate father, Broom, has made him a difficult man to love: spoiled but repressed, heroic but familiar with horrors that would make most men fall to the depths of insanity. He is Hellboy, a pissed-off son of a bitch whose only purpose in life seems to be to kick demon ass.

Or is it? Though simplified here, the origin of Hellboy is nonetheless a mystery. Why would a ritual whose purpose was to revive ancient, evil gods result instead in the birth of a horned child (well, he shaves his horns with a belt sander, but you get the idea)? Grigori, who once had the more famous nom de plume, Rasputin, has awoken and re-united with Ilsa, Kroenen, and the ancient demon Sammael. They alone know the purpose of Hellboy's existence, and they intend to use our hero to finish the dark ritual they started so many years ago.

(I would like to thank Rob Knotts and "The Prankster" for correcting some Hellboy continuity problems the rest of this review once contained. As I had not read Mike Mignola's Wake the Devil at the time of its writing, the previous draft of this review was flawed. I apologize to Guillermo del Toro, Mike Mignola, and any Hellboy fans who may have noticed the error. The following was re-written for accuracy's sake.)

Now this purpose, along with that of his stone hand, was kept from Hellboy's readers over a reasonable course of time, but even though it is now more or less understood, the resolution seems to come a little too easily in this draft of the script. Hellboy's reason for being is outlined and pretty much resolved in a fairly anti-climactic six pages, with too concrete an ending for my taste (and also involving a sequence a little too reminiscent of Alien: Resurrection for its own good). At the end of Hellboy, the screenplay, love is found, mysteries are solved, and the super-imposed words "The End" have no question mark following them; happy ending and good times, which comes across as very out of the ordinary for the characters.

While the urge to end the film with a distinct, undeniable conclusion is understandable, it doesn't effectively gel with the rest of the screenplay which, though occasionally a little straight-forward (like setting up Hellboy to go to Russia by simply placing a piece of paper torn in half at "the scene of the crime"; although, if this kind of plotting can be considered a flaw, and I'm not saying it necessarily is, it is a crime the comic book often commits as well), is also pretty gutsy in nature. This isn't an action-adventure-horror film which shies away from disturbing imagery, like eggs being laid in Hellboy's skin, or the sudden, unintentional murder of an entire hospital by Hellboy's pyrokinetic love-interest Liz, or even storytelling oddities like the disappearance of popular aquatic supporting character Abe Sapiens until the end of the final credits. Like del Toro's other previous action-thrillers Blade 2 and Mimic, these organic but uncommon occurrences on celluloid play off well (like when he allowed the kid sidekicks in Mimic to be murdered, or filled Blade 2 with demonically sexual imagery) - but if there were a problem with those two films, as well as Hellboy, it is that the Hollywood-styled endings come across as too simplistic for an otherwise daring narrative. This seems to something of a leitmotif in this stage of Guillermo del Toro's career, however - the difficult give and take between making gutsy, independent-minded horror films while trying to follow the existing, expected, and crowd-pleasing rules of his chosen genre.

Even at the very early stage represented by this draft, Hellboy seems ready to take audiences into a dark but entertaining world of the magic, mystery and the macabre, with a little gunplay thrown in for good measure. Like its source material, it's a straight-forward, action-horror adventure with unexpected but uncomplicated twists and turns that entertained me as much as any script I've read in a long time. If this draft fails to change too drastically before the film starts shooting, all of us Hellboy fans (and most of you non-Hellboy fans) are due for some happy theater-going times ahead. And if this really is the launch pad for a far different script to come, then knowing del Toro we can only expect an improvement (and if anyone would actually like to send me that new draft, I encourage you get in touch with me. Please?)."

(Review submitted by Hollyfeld)

An Evening with The Simpsons

Last Friday, I had the wonderful pleasure of enjoying an evening with my favorite TV family, The Simpsons. It was part of the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival. The show was called: The Simpsons in The Flesh. My sister Alexandra and my friend Patrick tagged along for the special night. The show is divided into two parts: a script reading followed by a Q & A session.

Matt Groening came out to introduce the spectacle. He told us that Homer Simpson is Canadian. Matt based Homer on his father who was born in Canada. That went over huge with the crowd. They showed some clips from the TV show and Matt introduced Al Jean, executive producer of the show. He spoke a few words in French and presented the cast. Everyone was there except for Harry Shearer (a huge disappointment) and Julie Kavner. Their replacement voice actors were there instead. They weren't great but you can't blame them. They read the script to the infamous NRA episode in which Homer buys a gun and joins the NRA after a soccer riot.

It was amazing. It's hard to describe how it was. The cast is hilarious. Dan Castellaneta, who voices Homer, Barney, Krusty, Mayor Quimby and Grandpa Simpson, was the highlight. He doesn't look anything like Homer and his real voice isn't similar either but there's nothing funnier then seeing that man turn into Homer Simpson. It was well worth the price of admission. During the Q & A session, Dan came across as an intellectual actually. He's miles away from the character that will forever be tagged alongside his name. Hank Azaria was great. He switched back and forth between numerous characters and stole the show. His Snake, the criminal character, probably got the biggest reception of the night. The Comic Book Guy too. The ladies did a good job. Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson herself) and Yeardley Smith did a good job. Smith, who only does Lisa and naturally speaks like her, is a bit strange. She did give one of the weirdest answers during the Q & A. When asked if Fox owned their voices she replied 'yes'. She's legally not allowed to take her voice to another show or voice a character that resembles Lisa Simpson's persona. Wow. That's creepy.

The Q & A session was a mess. It was a catastrophe. There are too many Simpsons geeks in this world. Some guy pitched his Treehouse of Horror script. Another asked why there were some strange lyrics in a song in a specific episode. Two over zealous kids got thrown out because they kept asking their childish questions and yelling. My friend Pat asked a good question but got booed off by the nasty crowd. The mike on our side wasn't working so he went to the stage. He was nervous and his question came out all wrong. Groening changed his question around a bit and never truly answered it. It was: 'How come there's never been an hour long episode of The Simpsons?' Later, Groening became tired of answering questions and you could see his true self: a self-centered rich bastard. You could see he was 'above all of this'. It concluded our evening. The Q & A did leave a sour after-taste but it was still a superb evening.

Stay tuned...

That's all folks...

Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)

Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org

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Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.