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Movies Made from My Books and Stories
COMMANDER
TOAD IN SPACE Churchill began with the right idea and a good heart, with a script for "Commander Toad and the Space Pirates" that followed the book pretty closely. Then ABC (I think it was) decided to rename the Star Warts as Stella. That should have been Clue 1. They insisted that Young Jake Skyjumper being a human boy, not a toad. That Old Doc Peeper be a Turtle. (Never mind the name now made no sense.) And. . .and. . it's a mess. Alas.
THE DEVIL'S
ARITHMETIC Based on my prize-winning Holocaust time travel novel, this film was finally made. It took ten years and five different companies optioning it. The winners--Dustin Hoffman's Punch Productions and Mimi Rogers company. Robert Avrech wrote a very strong and moving screenplay and Donna Deitch directed it brilliantly on a shoestring budget. For their work Robert won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Children's Special and Donna won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Special. The film also won "The Wilbur Award." This is given for outstanding communication of religious values in public media: print, film, video, broadcasting and cable. A really good production, though of course there are changes. Main change is that Hannah is three years older than in the book, because Kirsten Dunst was older. Shot in Lithuania and Montreal, on a small $3 million budget. Astonishing reviews. My husband and I got to go to the premiere where we were absolutely treated like royalty by Hoffman, Rogers, Deitch, and Kirsten Dunst who has me listed as her favorite author on her website. The video is now a Blockbuster staple. I expect Showtime will play it every Passover.
DRAGON'S
BLOOD Based on my book. Or rather they waved the book somewhere near a camera. The dragons have horns, the people have green skin, the city has a major skyline--and Heart's Blood is a male dragon. Still, I have heard from some kids who saw it that they went to find the book after.
MERLIN
AND THE DRAGONS This short animated film is narrated by the marvelous Kevin Kline and I got to spend eight hours in the studio with him! Only five years later did it finally become a book. Part of my Arthurian obsession (I have written a number of books about King Arthur), the story is based on the legends about Merlin as a boy. In this version, Merlin is an old man trying to help the young king Arthur, who can't sleep, by telling him a story, the story of another boy (young Merlin). There was a poster that was a smash hit with young boys, of the two clashing dragons. There is also a French version,"Merlin et les Dragons" and a short movie about the making of the film by Lightyear called "What's A Good Story: Merlin and the Dragons."
OWL MOON Using the actual pictures from the book but creating an aura of animation by moving in and out and around the illustrations; I do the narration.
Movies About Jane "The Children's Writer: Jane Yolen" A straight-forward conversation/interview with me in my home in Massachusetts about writing children's books. "Good Conversations: A Talk with Jane
Yolen" This is a delightful video interview of me in Scotland, as I take the camera crew and Tim Podell on a walkabout of St Andrews and read from a Scottish-set story of mine on a fifteenth century seawall overlooking Anstruther Harbor. It was nominated as best video of the year, 1998, by the American Library Association. |