Saturn Over Sunset

The excitement (and apprehension) I experienced when hearing that they were making a film based on The Preacher petered out when when I read that it was more just wish fulfillment from Sam Mendes, who is just putting it out there that he is open to a good script. I was a huge fan of the comic during its initial run, although I felt, with a lot of Garth Ennis' otherwise creative writing, that it was often shocking just for shocking's sake -- a trend that seems to resonate a lot with modern young audiences who seem to react more to the "torture porn" trend in thrillers rather than what I consider real horror, or real drama. If they make it, please wait for a good script, even if Ennis has to write it himself. And although I agree that it serves the story better as a mini-series, or maybe a regular series on HBO, I could picture The Preacher as a one-shot film just as easily. I guess I feel the dynamic of the story -- of a faithless yet patriotic minister with a powerfully persuasive voice searching to confront the God who abandoned him -- has the kind of through-line that works for at least a 3-hour movie. The mini-series would focus on all the other stories that occurred along the way with the kind of detail that Lost provides its viewers, but done right, I think as a film it could work just as well.

Another comic, ironically one that also tips its hat to Garth Ennis (the protagonist Yorick Brown even has a cigarette lighter that says "Fuck Communism", just like the Preacher's) whose film rights has also been greenlit, Y: The Last Man still seems to be languishing in pre-production, with purported lead actor Shia LaBeouf still not confirmed. This article projects the release to be around 2010, which by then science probably will have brought about the principle destruction of every Y chromosome on earth, and I don't know if I wanna live in a world without Vance DeGeneres. In this case, however, I do think that this movie should be moved to a mini-series format, because although a film could work in theory, the concept of a world run by women who have been suddenly thrust into survival mode due to the immediate, instantaneous loss of every male on the planet is too rich not to mine for all it's worth. Despite the fact that the story is ostensibly about Yorick and his pet male monkey, the last two "men" on earth, I was always more fascinated with the digressing storylines of the women of the world -- the former model turned garbage lady, the prostitutes who wear beards for their new female clientele, the distaff theater troupe trying to bring art to a community that longs for a diversion from their grief of losing husbands, sons, fathers -- how can one not explore these ideas, considering that it really has never been done on such a broad scale in television? I would love to see it go that route, although at this point I'm willing to see it happen either way. And that they don't royally fuck it up.