More On 'Ender' Film From Orson Scott Card

dschuetz writes: "On January 14, 2001, I had the opportunity to attend a book signing event by Orson Scott Card, at Bailey's Crossroads, in northern Virginia. This was the last stop on his tour to promote Shadow of the Hegemon, and, unfortunately (for us), his last book tour, ever. Just like the last time I saw him, though, it was a terrific time, and we all learned all kinds of things about his upcoming projects. Since discussion of Ender's Game seems to be popular here, I thought I'd write up some notes I took during the event and share them with Slashdot." Read more below about what Card had to say about his plans for an Ender movie (perhaps you can make your younger brother a famous child actor), and about his other work both recent and upcoming. Huge thanks to dschuetz for taking these detailed notes for those not lucky enough to be near a book-tour stop.

Ender's Game Movie

The movie is, as OSC said, the same place it was five years ago: Looking for money. Well, maybe not exactly the same place -- they're still working and re-working the script. In short, OSC said that Ender's Game is a scary movie -- not for filmgoers, but for filmmakers. Because its stars are all children, and young children at that, it's a real challenge for anyone to make well enough to be financially successful, and that scares the heck out of the studios. So, OSC's challenge is to come up with a script that keeps the emotion and "truth" of the story intact, while also reducing the fear that studio execs feel while considering how to make a movie out of it.

Despite what you might think, OSC said Ender's Game is tough to make into a movie -- as most of the important stuff happens inside Ender's head. Hard to go there in a film. Card's brought in Richard LaGravense, who wrote The Fisher King, to help with some of the problems, and one of the first things he suggested was that Card should combine Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. The idea there would be to help remove the need to have Peter and Valentine in the movie, eliminating some complications, and to help add some story elements surrounding the "bonds of brotherhood" between Ender and Bean, and also some more of the rivalry between them. Card loved the idea, and he's working with that in mind now. He also wanted us to remember that "I have absolute power over the film. Why? Because I've taken no money." So, any major change that you don't like, he said, is probably his idea. He's very aware of how important keeping the film as close as possible to the published stories is to his fans, but he's also very much more aware of how difficult it is to get a film made, and how much more difficult it is to make a great film. So he's willing to make some sacrifices in order to get the story told, and told well. But he's not going to hurt the story itself -- some changes will happen (for example, he's considering revealing halfway through the film that Gaff is really Mazar Rackham), but they won't hurt the story as a whole. And, since he's still in control, they'll be done "right."

Anyway, he's still looking for money, still looking for a director, still looking for an actor. The right actor for Ender is probably about 6 years old right now, so it won't be anyone we know -- not Jake Lloyd, not Haley Joel Osmond. Both would have been great if they could have made the film 3 or 4 years ago, but now they're both too old.

Other Film Projects

When I last saw OSC (for the Ender's Shadow book tour), he spoke of some other film projects. I asked him yesterday what was up with those. A TV pilot, Bordertown, that he'd been getting filmed in Mexico, just didn't work. Apparently, the crews they had simply weren't that good, and they didn't get enough usable film to make any good cut of the pilot. He hopes to go back to Mexico with a U.S. crew, rather than Mexican, and try again. He hopes to start this fall on Homebody, an adaptation of his 1998 novel. He's hoping to work soon on a script for Enchantment, which he described as his "favorite novel." The animated mini-series adaptation of Treason is still waiting for a good script, which Card hasn't been able to get to yet. And, finally, his "most anthologized short story," a cyberpunk attempt called "Dogwalker," is in the scripting stage, and he hopes to shoot that in New Orleans.

The Shadow Series

Originally, Card had hoped to have three books in the "Shadow" series (for which he still doesn't have a good overall name to reference it by). But somewhere while writing Shadow of the Hegemon, he realized that he needed to write another (like that's ever happened to a Card series before!) So, there will be an additional two novels in the series. In the afterward of SoH, Card talks about possible titles for the next one, centering on the 23rd Psalm ("The valley of the shadow of death") But his publisher told him that books with "death" in the title sell half what their predecessor sold, so he's changing the title. Currently, his favorite title is Shadow Puppets. After that will come Shadow of the Giant, referring primarily to Bean, but he's considering whether to connect, in some way, to the Giant's Drink from Ender's videogame in Battle School. He was also asked why he changed from "Buggers" to "Formics," and Card had a two-word answer: "Starship Troopers." Actually, it was far longer than two words, but centered around wanting to make sure that nobody who saw a preview for Ender's Game thought of Starship Troopers. And, in retrospect, he says he likes "Formics" much better, anyway.

Also, the copy of SoH currently on the market is, in Card's words, "defective." They printed the wrong draft. Someone pointed out that Ender didn't actually grow up in Greensboro, but that his parents moved there after Ender went to battle school. So an entire scene got rewritten. There'll be a second edition coming out soon, but until then, you can get the "patches" from OSCs web site. Other Forthcoming Books

He still has to write Crystal City, the next (#6) book in the Alvin Maker series. He said that from the beginning, Alvin Maker was meant to be an allegorical retelling of the story of Joseph Smith, but partway through he realized, "I?m adding magic to America. American history couldn't possibly come out the same." So, it became a sort of alternate history series as well, and grew from the original envisioned 3-volume set into a 7-volume series.

Rasputin (the next book in the Mayflower series, where a sentient cat is sent to kill Lovelock) is still exactly where it was two years ago -- stuck on Chapter 7. Card and Kathy Kidd are alternating chapters, like on the last book, and guess who's assigned #7? Actually, he said that there's "something just not right" about the book, and he hasn't been able to figure that one out yet.

He still has two Pastwatch books he wants to write -- the Flood (of Noah), and Eden (about Adam and Eve), and two books in the Women of Genesis series -- Rebecca, and Rachel and Leah.

Finally, Card is working on a project called Slow Leak, about magic "erupting" in Baldwin Hills. He's been hounded by a friend about not having a credible black hero in any of his stories, and Card's stumbling block has been that he's been deathly afraid of venturing into depicting a culture of which he knows nothing. So this will be an attempt at such a novel, and, just as Enchantment was vetted by experts in Russian folk literature, he'll have all kinds of help making sure that this story is true to the community he's trying to depict.

Other Information

As always, the talk before the signing was interesting and informative. It was amazing to see how many people were there (the cafe was packed, standing room only), and great to see so many young people there, as well. There's a lot more to be seen on Card's Web site, and I urge anyone interested in further information to check it out. You might also want to check out a transcript of an online chat with Barnes and Noble.

I'm not sure what OSC's plans are for the future, with no further big tours on the horizon, but hopefully he'll stay in touch through the web site. Maybe we can get him for a /. interview sometime ...

Note: That interview sounds like a good idea, we'll see what we can do :)

Comments

A big resounding "NO" on the movie, please!

[Masem]

Ender's Game is an awesome books as well as the sequels (I've not yet read the side-quels about Bean, but that's on my list).

I hope I'm not the only one that feels that a movie on EG would be a BAD idea, however not just because we know exactly how Hollywood would mangle it for things like Ender's thoughts, etc, and would focus more on action scenes rather than plot and character. My more worrisome concern is that there's a certain mystique about the visuals in the book; beyond certain key descriptions such as how the academy looks and the zero-g room so that the plot works in flawlessly, we don't have much about what Ender's like, what Peter, Valentine, Bean, and other key characters are beyond 'they're kids'. We only have vague descriptions of the looks of the school from the inside, of how the computer systems work, etc. I want to kept that mystique, because Ender's Game works on the premise that you don't need to know this stuff, and knowing it would distract from the key elements of the book.

The other, somewhat important issue, is that you are going to need to find not only about a dozen *talented* child actors of the right ageset, but also about 50 to 100 more that are sufficiently serious to fill the rest of the school and do some of the stunts you'd need to adequetely do the zero-g room. And one thing with child actors that are keyed for certain parts is that they have a limited shelf life before they're too old. The 6th Sense kid, for example, or McCulley Culkin (sp) -- if you tried to film for more than a year, you'd have serious aging problems. It might not matter too much in EG, since you're looking about about a timeframe of 3 to 4 years for the bulk of the book, but it still can proof challenging.

A Solitary Voice of Dissent

[IronChef]

I love SF and I have read all the classics, and as much modern stuff as I have time for. But man, I just could NOT get into Ender's Game. Mod me down, but there it is -- I didn't like the book. Couldn't even finish the sequel. I know this is high treason on /., but I gotta be me.

I don't think a movie adaptation is a good idea. It's rare enough to find one kid who can act, let alone a whole gaggle of them. It will probably be painful to watch if it's ever made. Imagine a dozen Anakin Skywalkers. Ack.

I think I'll go read some Larry Niven now. Some OLD Niven... his latest books haven't been so hot. (Speaking of movies that shouldn't be made... Ringworld. What a great book; what a terrible movie it will probably make. I hear Phil Tippet is the director, and Chow yun-Fat may play Louis Wu. They have a hard road ahead.)

Oh, off-topic public service message: Avoid "Teranesia" by Greg Egan. How could the guy who wrote "Quarantine," and that GREAT short story "Luminous" turn out this trash?

In closing, let me say, "... and I would have done it, too, if it weren't for you MEDDLING KIDS!"

A funny thing happened between Speaker...

[localroger]

...and Hegemon. As it happens I was there to see it, and it was illuminating.

A friend of mine hated Ender's game; she said it was the worst novel she'd ever read from its sappy tearjerking to its queasy morality to the blatant justification of genocide at the end. She refused to ever read another Card book. I didn't feel as strongly as she did, found the book readable, but I took her point.

At the time she was a SFWA member so she got a free copy of Speaker. Since she didn't want it, she gave it to me. When I read it I got back to her and said, "you're not going to believe this, he escapes to a planet copied from Brazil."

I gave her back the book, and next thing I know she is drawing up a tremendous list of coincidences, at least 75, between Ender's life and upbringing and that of one A. Hitler. This turned into a meticulously researched article -- I saw the doc package, which was an inch and a half thick -- which was published in the final issue of Science Fiction Review,. That article was titled Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman? by Elaine Radford.

SFR is no longer with us but the article and Card's rebuttal were republished by Literary Review, so it's probably there in your meatspace library if you're curious. I don't think the article is online anywhere.

While it was startling to see just how closely Ender parallels Hitler, even more startling was Card's reaction. He seemed to be completely unaware of many of the key passages in the book which Radford cited. This is clear from his rebuttal, which was amazingly lame and ignorant (several times stating bluntly that passages didn't exist which Radford had documented). It was obvious to me that he couldn't have written the book, at least not in anything finer than general outline.

At the time it was expected that Card would sweep the Hugos and Nebulas for a third time in a row with the sequel to Speaker. Instead it took him, what, four or five years to get around to writing it. I am convinced that Superman had a lot to do with it. He pulled a mammoth con job off on the SF community and almost got away with it. For the most part he still has, but he did blink.

Now, back to my copy of The Martians...