AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
By
GUILLERMO DEL TORO AND MATTHEW ROBBINS
106 pages
Oye mira!
El Mayimbe here! Happy New Year y para los Latinos out there who celebrate it Feliz Dia De Los Reyes!
Being Dia De Los Reyes and we being Latinoreview, we like to start off the New Year on the Latin tip. Last year for Los Reyes, we did the script review for El Cantante and in my opinion that trailer is super hot! For salsa fans like myself, just seeing Marc singing Hectors songs in his own voice and seeing Fania come to life, El Cantante is high up on my must see list for the year. Aint missing that for the world. I dont care if critics are hating on it calling it the Marc and J-lo movie. Para el carajo con los haters!
Anyways, in keeping up with last years tradition, January is el mes de los reyes for us here at Latinoreview in 2007. This month I will review scripts from two prominent Latino filmmakers and also cover scripts that deal with Latino figures.
One of the historical Latino figures got two scripts being made about him this year!
Can you guess which one?
The other Latino figure was one of the most ruthless criminals of the last century and the director of that movie got a smoking movie coming out at the end of the month. Can you also guess which one that is? Five scripts for this month about Latinos or written by Latinos. I think it is safe to say that us brown folks are coming along quite nicely.
First off, to start the New Year? None other than Guillermo Del Toro. He has been making the rounds promoting the excellent Pans Labyrinth and it looks like his passion project is a go after Hellboy 2 the ****ing excellent adaptation of H.P. Lovecrafts AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS!
Man does it get me excited to start the New Year off by reading a dope script!
Folks, off the bat, Guillermo and his writing partner ****ing nailed it! It there is anyone who can adapt Lovecraft and even have a shot of doing it successfully it would be Guillermo. I read ATMOM back in High School and this is the project Guillermo was born to do. It will be his crowning masterpiece.
The script has got action, it has got adventure, it has got science fiction, its got monsters, and of course it got horror in spades. Unless the callsheet dont have monsters, Guillermo doesnt show up. That is what he said on Charlie Rose. The script also has atmosphere. I read this in the dark and it was creeping the **** out of me as I read it. A script hasnt done that to me in a while.
This is the script Guillermo needs to do next. If monsters are your thing then this script is for you. Imagine the monsters from John Carpenters THE THING, but on steroids. Imagine a nasty shapeshifter sprouting eyes and tentacles from absolutely everywhere.
Gordo, if you are reading this, do we really need yet another translation of el jodido Tarzan?! Tarzan has been done to death already. Lets see Lovecraft finally get his justice on screen. The script for Tarzan isnt even written yet and you got a masterpiece sitting in your drawer. Para el carajo con Tarzan Chico! Drop the chalupa and Tarzan and let Cheetah deal with him!
Just to see the shoggoths, the old ones, the monoliths, the 8 ft albino penguins, the ruins, that ****ing gigantic city in the Antarctic, the bone collection, the titan CTHULHU and most of all, to see Ron Pearlman play **** kicker Larsen?!
Are you kidding me?!
To the studio - Are you guys *****es?! Do you realize the blockbuster you are sitting on? Who cares if there is no love story or supposed happy ending?! You got a horror and science fiction masterpiece collecting dust at the studio! Trust me, the horror crowd will come out in droves to see this! All those horror geeks will bring their girlfriends. Use those cartel drug dealer profits that Transformers is going to make at the box office and make this!
The structure is there; those creepy beats are there, the flashbacks work brilliantly in this.
You can see the craft and work in Guillermos writing that went into this. Hence why I think it took a couple of years. The hardest obstacle he had was the structure and me being the structure fanatic that I am it is all there. Like I said before, it is there and works perfectly.
Ok, so lite on the spoilers, lets take a quick look and sneak peak at Act 1.
October, 1939, Hobart, Tasmania
Australian fishermen out at see find a derelict whaler The Arkham!
They board the ship, which looks abandoned, and find all kinds of weird ****. A LIEUTENANT COMMANDER examines a shelf stacked with 35mm film cans.
It says, MISKATONIC UNIVERISTY, ANTARTIC EXPEDITION, 1930.
The Australians make it to the storeroom which is locked from inside. They break the lock down and enter inside and find
THE MADMAN
Panting, wild-eyed, a crouching old man stares madly at them! A survivor!
When the Australians try to mess with him, he brandishes a rusty fire ax and goes ape ****!
They shoot him. The madman drops to his knees, his grimace exposing hideous, broken teeth. His wild hair is yellow gray, and a long, scraggy beard conceals gaunt features. His bulging terrified eyes are pale blue.
In the next scene we meet ALAN STARKWEATHER, a no nonsense ruddy faced veteran in Hobart. He is briefed and we get some exposition that the Arkham was lost a decade ago along with her sister ship, the Miskatonic.
Starkweather and his consul arrive at the hospital where the madman is being hospitalized. Starkweather goes into his room where the madman is shackled. Starkweather is getting ready for a trip to the Antarctic. When the madman hears this, he grabs Starkweather by the arm and warns him not to go to Antarctica.
We find out that our madman is named WILLIAM DYER. Adjunct Professor. The Miskatonic University expedition.
He was 25 years old when he left the university for the expedition and he flashbacks to the Miskatonic campus as he narrates the tale.
Dyer was handpicked for the voyage by Dr. Gilman Lake, chairman of the biology department. We meet ATWOOD, PABODIE, FOWLER and WALTER DANFORTH Dyers best friend and fellow geologist.
We also meet BOB GEDNEY the cameraman, and his little brother PIP, 17.
Lakes trip will be one of discovery. Antarctica promises rich fossil records and with them, important clues to the origin of all species.
We also meet Dyers pregnant wife Anne, who doesnt want William to go on the expedition. The refusal of the call scene.
The next scene is the acceptance of the call scene where Lake in his office shows Dyer a fossil of a monstrous creature recovered from Antarctica.
Next we are out at sea with the two whalers reinforced for ice conditions, The Arkham and the Miskatonic. It is 1930.
We meet dog handler IAN LARSEN a muscled, tattooed Canadian brawler who is dressed lightly despite the cold and his partner JAN GUNNARSON, a lanky blond Dane.
Eventually, they reach Finisterre: the edge of the world. Dyer has his dream in which he encounters THE DARK MAN.
He awakens from his nightmare to a real one when the Arkham crashes onto the ice and the crew of the Arkham arrives
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
A dreamlike range of mountains surrounds them. Sharp, imperial peaks recede in jagged ranks, bathed in low, slanting sunbeams. Two distant volcanoes send smoke into a vault of purplish sky glowing with ice clouds.
Dyer tells us that the mountains before them surpassed anything in imagination. At 36,000 feet they put Everest out of the running. Pre-Cambrian slate, with plain signs of many other up heaved strata. But at the very top, through the clouds they could make out bizarre structures. Unnatural, almost symmetrical. Buildings? Impossible.
What could have built them? What could have lived in such a cold dead place?
The answer will become evident soon enough.
Nothing human.
Nothing human at all!
We end Act 1 and our little preview at Guillermos masterpiece. What a killer read and what a killer way to start off the New Year.
Guillermo is most definitely un rey (a king) and we celebrate los reyes all month long at here at Latinoreview.
Coming up next week in a couple of days, we look at another rey and perhaps the most consistent and prolific Latino filmmaker working in Hollywood today.
HASTA EL PROXIMO CAPITULO
YO SOY EL MAYIMBE!
the idea alone sounds brilliant,stupid studios
)
