If you had your druthers, what short story would you like to see turned into a film? My answer: Karl Edward Wagner's Sticks.

BLOT: (29 Jan 2014 - 09:08:02 PM)

If you had your druthers, what short story would you like to see turned into a film? My answer: Karl Edward Wagner's Sticks.

Let's pretend for a moment. You have been chosen by a film studio to recommend a new film from a short story of your choice. You will not be scriptwriter, but you will have a degree of feedback. You will not be director, but you will have enough general pull to keep a some clarity of vision for the project, but not so much that you can guarantee it will be your vision of the story.

What story do you choose?

Even though I'm a massive fanboy of several writers like Aickman, Barron, Ligotti, and Campbell, the story that first came to mind when I asked the question to myself was Karl Edward Wagner's "Sticks". Wagner's story is fairly simple. Pull up a chair and I'll spoil the main themes for you...

An artist, prior to World War 2, is out walking through the woods when he see these shapes and sigils made out of sticks all over the place. They lead him to an old house, where an old and dreadful thing lives. He flees. Later, post-War, he is hired to do some illustrations, and the images of the sticks come to mind. He submits them, they get published, go big, and then he realizes that he has been completing a long-term ritual that the sticks were fulfilling, and a certain evil cult couldn't be happier!

In a nutshell, you have enough of a story to hang several other elements, the war scenes and maybe some romance scenes and the PTSD soldier trying to recoup and the art aspect and flashbacks to what he saw in the woods and so forth. I think it could work quite well as a complete movie and, visually, weird and complex and numerous stick figures out in the woods is a cheap effect that still could be effective for setting the mood. The PKD-like twists of what he has really been doing can be played to nice paranoia-effect, while you could throw in some obligatory weird flashes of stuff as he gets further and further along on his project.

How about you, any stories that will never be turned into movies that you would if you could?

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: January 2014