GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #940: I MEAN, REALLY?!?!?!?!?!

 I still can't wrap my head around it. Orson Welles was offered the role in Caligula? As in, Gore Vidal's Caligula? As in, in all reality, Bob Guccione's Caligula? That guy?

I can't be the only one struggling with this. I know Vidal was surprised. He described himself as "astonished" when he learned this. He rarely uses that word, so I know it made an impression.

All right. Let's go over it again. See if we can grasp this thing.

This guy:

*This* guy:

THIS GUY:

THIS FUCKIN' GUY:

*He* was supposed to play Caligula?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! He was supposed to be this guy:

The guy they went with in the movie? This guy:

See? *That* makes sense. They made the wise choice with Malcolm McDowell. But who on earth thought Orson Welles would be great at, say, fisting a Roman soldier? Could you imagine Welles doing the Little Boots dance? And what would Welles have looked like in those excessive love scenes between Caligula and his sister?

Welles, a puritan apparently, turned it down on moral grounds. That was a good decision. There's no way I would have been able to watch him in this role. I mean, I *could*, but instead of enjoying it as a nearly Shakespearean drama, I'd be guffawing with laughter at the absurdity of it.

Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?

MY THOUGHTS ON GORE VIDAL'S CALIGULA BY WILLIAM HOWARD

 

*sigh* I really wanted to say nothing about this book. I didn't post a review on Amazon, and I certainly won't put one on Goodreads. This book is not to be encouraged. To give you an idea, William Howard is a penname. The actual author is William Johnston. Not to be confused with William Johnstone, mind you. This Johnston was mostly known for writing novelizations of TV shows, especially Get Smart. It ranged from Dr. Kildare to Happy Days, so yeah, I wouldn't want my actual name on this book, either. And it's not for the reason you might think.

Before we go any further, it is worth noting that we really know nothing reliably about the real life Caligula. The only contemporary extant account of him was written by an enemy, so it's altogether possible that Caligula got a raw deal, that this guy just had a vendetta against him. Still unlikely but certainly possible.

That in mind, let's talk about being offensive. Many of you know how much I delight in being offensive, but I hope, aside from the childish tee-hee moments, that you don't think I go for the lowest common denominator. I put a lot of effort into being offensive. The delight of being offensive is getting creative with it.

Plain old offense is really fucking easy. White guys who use the n-word offend me. Child rapists offend me. The former president of this country deeply offended me. See how easy that is? I never want to go that route. I want giant space cocks destroying humanity. I want . . . well, you know. If you're reading this, chances are you've at least read one of my books. You get it.

I've loved the movie, CALIGULA, for many years. Much to my delight I got to watch the Forced Viewing crew sit through the X-rated version to do a podcast, and that version is really the only version you need. Forget the R-rated version. It doesn't go far enough. While the depravities of the movie are creative and glorious and shocking, even decades after it was unleashed, it doesn't go as far as the book, and that's a good thing.

The book goes too far. It crosses the line. In theory this book is based on Gore Vidal's screenplay, not the movie, but I have my doubts. Ever read a Vidal sex scene? It's as vanilla and brief as possible. Vidal might as well have been making scientific observations about the act. I find it hard to believe that he wrote these insane fuck scenes. And I have no objection to fuck scenes. God knows I've written many, and I've been paid by porn magazines for my fiction, both hetero and gay. I have no problem with any of that.

In the movie, yes, Caligula is in love with his sister, and they enjoy sex a lot. That's borderline for me. But it's nothing I haven't experienced before. As much as Robert A. Heinlein is remembered for great SF, he is not quite so remembered as a huge fan of incest and nudism. In one of his books he has his main character go back in time to fuck his own mom. For example. I give this brother-sister thing a pass because they're adults. It's gross, yes, but it's not William Howard-gross.

Because in the book he depicts their first mating as children. With great detail. And it describes how Caligula seduced another sister when he was 16 and she was 12, I think? Only to be surprised by his other younger sister, maybe 9, joining the act. That's pretty fucking disgusting.

Remember Tiberius's harem in the movie? His "little fishies"? They were very young, but not as young as they were in the book. These kids are barely into double-digits, age-wise. And then there's a horrible story about something Tiberius did with a newborn infant. Let's just say the word "pacifier" and leave it at that.

When I read these scenes I thought I should just stop reading even though the paperback cost me thirty bucks. But when I was very young and the Big Bang was only a few years old, I promised myself that I would finish any book I started no matter how bad it got. I got through it.

Some of the other sex scenes are great, like when Caligula meets Caesonia (played wonderfully by the ever-sexy Helen Mirren). Their sex scenes are delightful, even when they get the Greek actor involved. A lot of the movie glosses over Caligula being bisexual, and I found his sex scenes with men, in particular his Gaul servant, interesting. The ones involving slaves from Africa were very weird, but it seems that Caligula doesn't mind being a bottom to them even after they've fucked and whipped his sisters in an imitation of the Rape of the Sabine Women. (Howard calls it "a marvelous game for the children.")

But I found it disappointing that it left out a lot of the movie. The scene I'm thinking of mostly is the wedding of Proculus. In the movie and book Caligula exercises his right of prima nocta with the bride. In the book he does the same to Proculus. In the movie Caligula shoves his fist into a vat of lard and proceeds to fistfuck Proculus, which I think it much more depraved.

When the book gets to my kind of depravity, it hits on all cylinders. For example, Caligula declares war on Britain and the Germans. They get to the British Channel only to realize that he forgot to order boats. Instead they gathered a bunch of seashells as proof of their conquest. They then bribe a bunch of Gauls, change their hair color and teach them some German so they can pretend to be prisoners of war, thus proving Caligula to be the conquering hero of Rome! And he has them executed even though they're just acting! When he gets home, there is a delightful passage that's almost a throwaway moment. I picked it up, though. Here it is: "The common people of Rome turned out to the last man, woman and child. They wouldn't miss a parade for anything, particularly these days, when Caligula allowed so few of them. Several babies were born near the roadside, and a number of children wandered off and were eaten by wild dogs." Our modern minds couldn't conceive of something like that!

I didn't pick up a few things from the movie that were in the book, or if I did I didn't remember or was too drunk. One thing is ridiculously funny to me. What was the last straw for the senators to decide to assassinate their emperor? Was it that Caligula loved to charge them with treason just so he could seize their estates? Nope. Was it when he made his horse a senator? Nope. Was it even when he forced the senators' wives and daughters, and sometimes even the senators themselves, to prostitute themselves in the imperial brothel? Not even that.

It was when Caligula declared that the next day Rome would convert to Isis worship. Holy fuck, I know religion is stupid, but even this shocks my atheist's heart.

The other thing that got by me was how much the common people of Rome loved Caligula. I figured they were just terrified of him, but as it turns out it was the senators who feared him. Caligula gave the people what they wanted: bread and circuses. They got to watch bears attack lions at the Circus Maximus. Or maybe even tigers versus gladiators. And certainly gladiator against gladiator in death matches. Upon the birth of his daughter, Caligula gave every Roman citizen a gold piece. How could they not love him?

I know this is an awful thing to think, but maybe our senators don't fear the people they, in theory, serve enough. Would they be so quick to shoot down a $15 minimum wage if they feared for their lives? Would Ted Cruz have gleefully left a frozen and dying Texas for Cancun if he thought for a second that the people could rise up against him? It makes one think about the beatings that used to take place in the early days of Congress. Of the duels. Now that all of that is gone, do they have a reason to even respect their people?

Probably not.

Just a Caligula-ish thought.

Ultimately, even though this book disgusted me nearly from page one, I'm glad I stuck with it. I had a few new things to think about that I hadn't noticed before. It's just weird thinking that the guy who wrote this book also wrote novelizations for shows like The Munsters, The Brady Bunch and even F-Troop.

Caligula got this line from Tiberius, but yeah.

COOL SHIT 10-13-11

THE STAND: THE NIGHT HAS COME #3: I don’t bring this one up here enough. Honestly, I don’t think I need to. It’s just as good as the book, really. In fact, most of it is the book, Stephen King’s direct words. But the images really are spot on, way better than the TV mini-series. For this alone, you should really be reading this book. It brings THE STAND to life in a way no one else could do, certainly not a movie director. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so it’s abrupt in places, but it’s really a fine, dependable read. Give it a shot.

THE CAPE #2: What is this? A father/son edition of COOL SHIT? At first I was iffy on a sequel to Joe Hill’s THE CAPE. It was an excellent story that really stood on its own. But this new series is really good as we see Eric sink to all new lows. How can a guy who learns he has the ability to fly become such a douchebag? Christ, he’s willing to slit his own mother’s throat and set his brother on fire, simply because he’s jealous. And he’s supposed to be our protagonist? Yeesh.

JENNIFER BLOOD #5: A week can’t pass without me bringing up Garth Ennis. With this issue, we finally find out why Jennifer is killing all of her uncles. Apparently, she’s a daddy’s girl, and can you guess what her uncles did to her old man? To say they pulled a Julius Caesar on him is an understatement. Read this book and see the ugliest knifing you’ve ever seen. Even moreso, read this book to see the most brutal axe murder ever put to the page. Ennis keeps topping himself when it comes to savagery. Perhaps he should start writing CALIGULA after Lapham’s done . . . .

COOL SHIT 10-6-11

I feel stupid.  Something happened to my Cool Shit file, and the post I was going to make today was destroyed beyond all belief.  So . . . I'll wing it.

CALIGULA #4:  Remember how Felix, our protagonist, was buttfucked by a talking horse in the last issue?  Where exactly do you go from there?  And is it possible that he's actually starting to love Caligula?  Lapham's an absolute beast.  There's no telling what he'll do next.

THE WALKING DEAD #89:  It looks like this book is back on track.  For the past few issues, it's been in kind of a lull since they're between story arcs.  But now that people at the Community are threatening to murder Rick before things can get even more fucked up, things are picking up.  Bad news for Glenn:  he walked into the middle of the conspiracy, and now they want to kill him to keep him silent.  Guns come out, shit goes bad, and THE WALKING DEAD is back to being a clusterfuck.  Nice.

THE BOYS #59:  There are just two more story arcs left to this book.  If you want to get on board, now's the time.  It looks like the epic battle between the Seven and the Boys is off, excpet Jack from Jupiter seems to still think the Boys were responsible for releasing the incriminating sex video of him, thereby ruining his career as a supe.  As a result, the Boys suffer a major loss.  Butcher does not take this lightly, and he has visions of gory and terrible retribution in mind.  The conclusion of this issue is fucking ghastly.

THE AVATAR PANEL AT C2E2 2011

Well, this year they had a bigger room, but there still weren’t enough people in there. William Christiansen and Jacen Burrows presided over the panel this time around. Mike Wolfer was supposed to be there, too, but he’d lost his voice and was not able to attend.

The first bit of news was the release of the first issue of CALIGULA (I will have a review of this up before this C2E2 orgasm is done). David Lapham is “thrilling,” according to Christiansen, so he will be working for Avatar for quite a while. Garth Ennis loves his CROSSED stuff, which is a hell of a good sign.

Ah, CROSSED. It has been, according to Christiansen, an “insane success for us.” This has undoubtedly led to CROSSED going monthly! That’s right, when the “Psychopath” story arc is done, the monthly will begin with a new CROSSED tale from Ennis and Burrows. After that . . . JAMIE DELANO TAKES OVER! That’s right, the original HELLBLAZER writer will be taking the reins!


Also, Christiansen’s “personal albatross,” the CROSSED 3-D book is done except for the 3-D effects themselves. This has been going on for a long time, but he swears that it will be out soon, and “I’m not lying this time.”

I asked him about where the CROSSED movie stands, and he says that while Kevin Spacey’s production company still has it under option, he doesn’t think it will happen. I also asked him that if they still planned to have the horsecock character in it, and Burrows said that he saw the screenplay. The character is still there, but modified. Still, he doesn’t think Horsecock will disappoint hardcore fans. At this point, Christiansen joked about giving Horsecock a spin-off series. “You know I’d do it!” All things considered, he probably would, and I’d probably buy it.

On to Boundless news. Someone asked why they’d launched Boundless, and Christiansen said it was because Lady Death didn’t seem to fit with their other titles, so why not start a sister company? The next title, coming soon, is WAR GODDESS, written by Mike Wolfer. It will be kind of like the classic ‘Nineties bad girl books, but slightly less ridiculous. Pandora, Widow, Hellina, and the rest will be in the book (in fact, War Goddess herself is Pandora), but they don’t want to flood out their fan base. They want to keep Boundless small. “Slow and steady wins the race,” Christiansen said. There will be no silly, forced cross-overs, not like with, say, the JLA for example.


Someone said they had a question about Warren Ellis’ books. “No, you don’t,” Christiansen said, as if he knew what was coming. Sure enough, he was right. The audience member wanted to know what the deal was with Ellis’ late books, like DOCTOR SLEEPLESS. A fair question, and something I’d like to know, as well. What’s the hold up? “I have no fucking idea,” Christiansen said. The covers are done, but he simply doesn’t have scripts from Ellis. “He just never fuckin’ wrote ‘em.” There is a bunch of other new Ellis stuff waiting in the wings, but Christiansen says he wants to finish up old business before bringing out anything new.

Speaking of Ellis, there is a new GRAVEL project! Sadly, Ellis won’t have a hand in it, but writing duties will be taken over by Mike Wolfer, who was with the book since the very beginning. (Hm. It seems like Wolfer is writing just about everything for them these days . . . .) This new monthly will be more about the combat magician side of Gravel. There will be a lot of kick-ass military stuff, and 18 issues have already been plotted out. Christiansen also said that Legendary still had the series under option. We’ll see if that movie ever happens . . . .


Did I mention that they have a new LIVING DEAD series coming out? DEATH VALLEY #1 is already on the market. It’s the only license they seem to have held on to. (Remember when they had the rights to Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface? Or how about STARGATE SG-1?)


Christiansen also said that they’d be putting out more webcomics, like FREAKANGELS, in the future. He didn’t clarify, but he said that either “I’m retarded or a genius.” There can’t be a lot of money in it, but it certainly gets a lot of attention. I’m sure the FREAKANGELS merch goes pretty quickly, too.

The NEONOMICON trade will be released later this year. Burrows listened to a lot of Lovecraft stories on CD while working on this one. Alan Moore, who is notoriously difficult to please, is very happy with the artwork. Even though he’s very strict with his scripts, he let Burrows play fast and loose with the Deep One. They also confessed that this sequel was never planned, that when they did THE COURTYARD, they never considered returning to this world.


THE CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #6 is almost here . . . AND IT’S SUPER-SIZED! Not much else was said about this one, but it was enough to give me a woody.


Lastly, someone asked about variant covers. Avatar is well-known for having an insane amount of variants, but without them, Avatar wouldn’t be here. Christiansen said that the collectors are the ones who really keep them in business. It’s surprising how much of a difference they make. Burrows added that, as an artist, one can do a lot more with a variant cover that one usually couldn’t get away with on a straight-forward cover. Good to know. I’d been wondering about this, too.


To conclude, Christiansen said that they’re doing well, it’s just that they need to overcome a lot of lateness problems. Too true. But in this market, better late than never. You know I’ll be out there buying ‘em.

COOL SHIT 2-24-11

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #12:  After Stephen King left this title a while ago, the story has kind of lagged a little bit.  It never became unreadable, but at the same time it didn’t have much of an effect on me.  And then this issue came screaming down the pike.  Skinner Sweet, sadistic gunslinger turned American vampire, is in a nostalgic mood, so he goes to a Wild West Show.  Some of the performers are people he used to know in the old days, but they’re aged beyond recognition and sporting origin stories with more lies in ‘em than a penis enlargement commercial.  He’s so disappointed by this drivel that he starts to leave when he hears the owner say that one of the performers, Dolly (an ex-sweetheart of Skinner’s), actually turned her beloved in to the law.  This is news to Skinner, and he decides to bring the “good ol’ days” back in a rather gruesome way.

In an unrelated note, am I the only one excited about Avatar’s forthcoming CALIGULA?  Jesus Christ, I’m so fucking hard my erection’s holding up my gut.  Avatar is the ONLY company with the guts to do a book like this.  And the commander-in-chief, William Christensen, is smart enough not to give it to someone like Garth Ennis or Warren Ellis.  They are the finest writers in the industry, but they would put too much thought and philosophy into it.  David Lapham, who has been doing an absolutely hedonistic run on CROSSED, is the perfect choice to write this book.  He’s not afraid to get down and dirty with unacceptable amounts of sexual gore, and as far as I can tell, he does it only for the shock of it.  Normally, that would turn me off, but Lapham has recently been turning his work into roller coasters of meaningless obscenity.  Who else could perfectly write CALIGULA?  (And don’t say Gore Vidal.  He did a wonderful job, but remember that he was working for Penthouse.)  I can’t wait for this one to hit the shelves, and neither should you!  I’ll be at C2E2 this year, and I hope the Avatar booth has a preview!