Saturday, January 24, 2009

Ripe for the Picking: STRAY TOASTERS

Often when I read, I’m on the lookout for ways to adapt it. What would this comic look like as a puppet show? What would this novel be like as a play? You know this collection of short essays would be a wonderful dance concert! (Seriously, I have had that thought.)

Unfortunately theater is dead, and everyone is waiting for Hollywood to come knocking with a million dollar option. So while I have bookshelves filled with titles I would love to adapt I know that I don’t have the finances or the clout to secure the rights.


With that in mind, let’s take a look at my bookshelf and see what is "Ripe for the Picking."



I am wary of venturing away from the theater and into movie adaptations, but for me this is a special case. Welcome to the Hollywood edition of Ripe for the Picking. Today’s subject is the 1988 comic book mini-series Stray Toasters.

Written and illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, Stray Toasters concerns criminal psychologist Egon Rustemagik’s investigation of a series of murders of young boys. His search leads him into another series of murders involving women whose bodies have been mutilated into bizarre science projects.

Back on March 22, 2004 Variety was reporting on story that the comic had been picked up by an effects company known as The Orphanage for a film adaptation. It was also reported that a screenplay for the movie had already been written by Sienkiewicz and Jeff Renfroe and Marteinn Thorsson. And that was it. Five years later and I can find no further information about the movies development.

One of the debates that I’ve always heard surrounding adaptations is: Should an author adapt their own work? There are arguments to be made for either way. In the case of Stray Toasters, I wonder if one of the problems in developing the material is the involvement of the creator Bill Sienkiewicz.

For me the comic is something that I have dipped into every few years ever since its publication twenty years ago. And I have to tell you the comic doesn’t make a lick of sense. Sienkiewicz work contains some great visuals, and a cast of characters that I really enjoy, but his writing comes up short. I always believed that he needed to embrace the classic noir aspects of his story. The comic told from an omniscient point of view contains pages of monologues from every character: the killer, a devil named Phil on vacation in the city, and autistic child, everyone. This diffuses the mysteries in the comic, and fractures the story needlessly. For any adaptation to be successful one of the choices that would need to be made is to focus the story on Egon Rustemagik. Egon is a great character burnt out and just released from a high security mental institution. A detective film told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator is a wonderful idea.

In my head I have always seen the movie as a low budget affair with practical effects as opposed to an elaborate and CGI heavy affair. My movie adaptation had more of a Robocop aesthetic than say a sleek film like I, Robot.

Here’s hoping that I get to see Stray Toasters in the movies someday.

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