NOV
30
1 years

Ray Bradbury working on 6-hour miniseries

6:07 AM PST 11/30/2010 by James Hibberd

Literary sci-fi god Ray Bradbury is set to shop a six-hour miniseries to networks as part of new production agreement with newly formed company White Oak Films.

The mini will feature six of Bradbury’s classic short stories directed by six different directors. It’s not yet known which stories will get adapted since the directors will get to select their favorite titles.

The 89-year-old Bradbury is the author of "Fahrenheit 451" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

White Oak partner John Dayton has a longtime association with Bradbury and will executive produce the project along with the author.

"My partners and I see this series as an homage to a man who has inspired us all," Dayton said. 

Here's the opening of "451" (about firefighters paid to burn illegal books). The man wrote this rock star first page, and the entire book, at a coin-operated typewriter at the UCLA library:

IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN

IT was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.


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