On my recent journey to Hollywood Land, I was abducted by Moriarty at my hotel. He took me to what I can only call his buddy's DR EVIL's chain of Big Boy restaurants and stuffed gargantuan amounts of ground cow into me. MMmmmmm Ground Cow. Then he threw me into the trunk of his Souped-up Tucker Hearse. The third eye beam cutting through the brown smog like a gas-lit lantern in the cobblestone streets of London. Moriarty hasn't come as far as he thought. From time to time I still hear his cackling in my mind, and this time, here's what the voice said...
Hey, Head Geek...
"Moriarty" here.
It recently occurred to me that the reason all my henchmen are so bloody
stupid (aside from the fact that I'm comparing their intellect to that
of myself, an Evil Genius), is because their brains don't work. In an
effort to fix the problem, I have been doing my best to genetically
create a strain of henchmen that come without heads, thereby eliminating
the whole brain problem.
Oddly enough, while I was in the middle of beta testing one of these new
Headless Henchmen (all rights reserved, patent pending), someone
delivered the script to Tim Burton's new SLEEPY HOLLOW project to my
doorstep. Being a Burton fan from FRANKENWEENIE on, I had to
immediately rip through the entire thing.
As we all know by now, VARIETY has reported that Johnny Depp will play
Ichabod Crane. It also stated that Christina Ricci was likely to play
Katrina Van Tassel. In their initial reports, they went on to describe
Ichabod as a schoolteacher who battles Brom Bones for Katrina's hand.
Um... no.
That plot summary works for the original Washington Irving story, but it
has nothing to do with the new film. The script was written by Andrew
Kevin Walker (SE7EN), based on a story by Walker with Kevin Yeagher.
For those of you who don't know Yeagher, he's a makeup FX artist turned
director. He was one of the contributors to HELLRAISER: BLOODLINES. It
reads to me like this script was written for Yeagher to direct. Trouble
is, it also reads like a $75 million film. A damn good one.
I must say -- it's a marvelous read, edgy and intoxicating. It's a
full-fledged horror film. There is indeed a Headless Horseman, and he's
been haunting Sleepy Hollow, having claimed three heads already.
Ichabod Crane is a constable in New York City. The year is 1788.
Ichabod is disgusted by what passes as "justice" and "police work." He
sees his fellow cops beat and torture false confessions out of
prisoners. He believes that science can be applied to turn police work
into something that is precise, based on logic, deduction. Although
Ichabod's ideas aren't original, they are damn near heretical. He is
given the Sleepy Hollow job because his superiors want him out of New
York, out of their sight. They tell him to solve (and stop) the
beheadings using his "science," or not to come back.
What unfolds is a genuinely freaky and scary horror rollercoaster, with
a heck of a likable hero at the heart of it. I'm going to go on record
and say that this will finally be Johnny Depp's first big, big, BIG
commercial hit. The Headless Horseman is a fantastic villain, the
Terminator from Hell (literally), with a great backstory. He's not the
main villain, though, since we learn early on that he's under the
control of someone from Sleepy Hollow. The question of who is the
film's main focus. Yes, that's right, the film is a mystery, one that
actually challenges the viewer to keep guessing. It's also blatantly
supernatural.
Katrina Van Tassel and Brom Bones are both in the film, but their roles
are profoundly different than in Irving's story. This will no doubt
shock and offend some purists, but let me assure you -- it's a great
story on its own, and it is a case of radical revisionism resulting in
something exciting and new. Anyone who's looking for the famous
midnight ride should go ahead and start kicking and screaming now. This
is not going to give you what you expect. What it will give you is a
unique new chapter in Tim's filmography. Personally, I am very, very
excited about this project and am thrilled he's doing it instead of
SUPERMAN. I'll be there first show.
Right now, though, one of my even-more-retarded Headless Henchmen is
trying to work his way through the whole hat conundrum, thereby
obligating me to go take care of him. Until next time...
"Moriarty" out.
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