Speaking of Fiction Into Film…in 2007 a young film student named Andrew Edmark asked if he could adapt one of my short stories. I told him no, absolutely not, but he did it anyway, and we’ve been locked in a vicious legal battle ever since.
It’s a story called Somos las Bolas, which I thought was pretty good, and he turned it into a short film. Recently, for whatever reason, he felt compelled to assemble a “Director’s Cut” and upload it to YouTube.
Since I wrote the source material I’m not going to run my mouth too much. If you like it, great. If you don’t, that’s great too. At some point I intend to make a collection of my short fiction available for a free download here, but I’ve run into a technical problem doing that, so that’s a story for another day.
The complete film is above. I haven’t watched it yet.
Hard to know what to make of this the first pass through. I have a feeling I’d like the story more than the film. But the film does have its strong points (the triangle-laden soundtrack not being one of them). You should watch it, just to see what you think.
I can fully attest the story is much better than the film. I must add, though, that I was 18 when I made it with no money. I, too, wish I could tone down the triangle, but when you get an entire soundtrack for free you take the good with the bad. The one thing I truly regret not having in the film, is the fight scene at the end, and the scene with Enrico and Beth in the coffee shop. Those two scenes were written and planned but were never shot because Enrico couldn’t remember his lines and Andy had a real-life nervous break down.
Fun times. Thanks for watching! You can read the short story in Phil’s collection of short stories titled “God Ran Out of Faces” which is probably available in a gas station restroom somewhere in Florida.
Andrew: If you’d like to write up a piece about the experience of adapting / filming this, I’d love to have it. Shoot me a message.
And nobody buy that book! I’ll be providing an expanded version for free here, once I get around some DRM nonsense.
Oh man, I just looked it up and I’m super-impressed that you got Jess Fink to do the illustrations! Will the expanded version retain those?
I’ll check with her to make sure she’s okay with that, but I assume she will be. (It’s not as though she was getting royalties or anything.) The added stories won’t have new ones, but if possible I’ll keep the ones she did for the original texts.
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She was great to work with. It’s kind of surprising how many talented people I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with over the years. It almost makes me wonder where I’d be if I’d stuck with anything, ever, at any point in my life!
This is the worst adaptation of Battletoads I’ve ever watched.
OK, watched a second time. Andrew, if you did that at 18, I imagine you have a lot of good films under your belt by now. I like the photography of the film, the camera angles and so on. The acting had its moments, Watching it again, I wonder if the source material was suitable for a short film…? The scene plotting comes off as kind of disjointed. Maybe that works in the original material; maybe no. I’d like to see the film again with all the intended scenes in it.
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To be honest, I’m not sure I’d like the story itself (sorry, Phil. One thing I know I object to is the title. The average American citizen is going to have to look it up to know what it means, but Spanish is not integral to the story in any way. It comes off like the kind of Halloween costume based on a pun that has to be explained to everyone. “Who are you?” “I’m a dick-tater!” or “I’m a Hairy Potter!”)
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In any event, thanks for sharing.
u bastard
Well, I was thinking about it later, and Enrico is from Barcelona, and since it’s he who says life is a game, you could look at the title as a clever retort to the Spick bastard–“yeah, but we’re the balls.” So you’re off the hook for that, at least.
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On a more serious note, my balls itch.