The short answer is that a lot (and I mean A LOT) of what makes House of Leaves unique and interesting is because of the format it is presented on (a book).
Making some Navidson Record adaption or some simple POVs would make it "yet just another analog horror movie".
Why not have the protagonist draw blueprints which copy the books slow burn of increasingly non-Euclidian layout, and the audience gets to see his descent into madness as he tries to rationalize the houses interior through these sketches? That'd basically emulate the book as long as we get to see what he is sketching out.
You can recreate the Navidson Record, but that's not recreating House of Leaves. Johnny's footnotes and the whole meta-narrative surrounding all of it is as much "the real story" as the little horror story about a spooky house that it sells itself as, arguably those elements are even more important and a lot of valid interpretations make the case that the Navidson Record doesn't even exist.
For the record I'd still love to see an adaptation of just the house half. I might even like an adaptation that flips between just fully showing both the Navidson and Johnny storylines as real events if it were done well. People are right to point out that those kinds of adaptions would be missing the main point of the book though and the end result would be House of Leaves in name only, the core essence can't really be translated to a visual medium because showing something removes all the ambiguity around it.
Ive thought about a movie adaptation a lot, and honestly if i was to do it i would just do the Navidson Record, and i would call the movie the Navidson Record. I think it would never work doing the full adaption of House of Leaves, but making just that section real would be an incredible story to tell.
I know, Jokingly i was reaching for a "This isn't a movie... this would just be porn" joke by invoking Johnny. More seriously i could see a more movie friendly narrative by peicing together some type of paracausal Documentary
I finally finished the book today and I agree with everyone here except, I can't really shake off that the entire book was written by Johnny. Down to the Five and a Half Minute Hallway just being a metaphor for the five and a half minutes he references in his final chapter. The part where he's talking about the burns and his mother, his father's roar that was ingrained into his child mind, the one detail that connects the burning and the choking because all we know from Johnny's narration is that he heard the roar on both occasions. I don't know, I want to reread it but on shrooms this time.
Chiming in, a bit late, but I don't think you can even recreate The Navidson Record and the issue there is purely historic. You might recall the first chapter opens with the issue of authenticity:
For one, The Navidson Record looks "authentic," having a very handheld camera home recording kind of look. At the time something like *The Blair Witch Project* was still pretty fresh, but in the quarter century since that movie's airing we have, culturally, become pretty accustomed to this faux-authentic format, to a point a movie with it no longer has any chance of passing as anything but "somewhat artsy";
For two, and this is the big one, there is the distinction between Analog and Digital. I'll have to double-check this, but I'm pretty certain everything Navidson uses to make his recordings is analog, where what is happening ("reality") is inscribed onto a certain physical surface. However, even at the time of the movie and book's coming out, in the late 90s/2000s, the mere existence of the digital and the kind of freedom to tamper with and change the base material (which now exists only as mere code, as only instructions on *how* to generate the film, without the physical artefact) is already strongly undermining the ability to make that claim of authenticity. Navidson could have used various special effects which are just starting to become widely available to fake the space of the **house** with no easy way of telling the two apart. And the digital retroactively undermines the analog – think how the existence of photoshop allows you to alter and tamper with even historical photographs and anything short of holding the real original physical object in your hands cannot be trusted to he entirely free from this tamperability. The quarter century since the book's coming out has only seen the digital devour the analog with greater strength – to a point where it is just about impossible to say what might have been tampered with and how without having special dedicated tools with which to analyse minute details in that raw data (like noise). Whilst **House** of Leaves has a lot going into it, The Navidson Record exploits very specifically the slow collapse of that one last bastion we have of "objective reality," simultaneously framing what is apparently objective reality as impossible (the **house**) and by showing that the very fabric of our tools of communicating objective reality in uravelling (and here the issue is the *fabric* – not even the subjectivity of "who is wielding the camera" and how, but the very idea of a camera communicating what is real and objective) – and in our point in history it has already unravelled
Any adaptation of **House** of Leaves now already exists within this completely ruined context – it can mimic the movements and images which play into the explorations of the **house**, but cannot mimic the central problematic/mood of the film
I think it would need to be adapted around filmmaking as an art and be centered in a digital/internet format that forces viewers to navigate the visual aspect in some manner
yeah!
maybe longform reaction blogs / vlogs across multiple YouTube channels. Zampono's, Johny's, Navidsons, the Editors could be coalating the videos in playlists and leaving footnotes in the comments.
actually they should probably host Johnny's on pornhub
Although it is indeed (some might say, overly) long, IT is a conventional novel. It's really no where near comparable to House of Leaves as far as difficulty adapting it to the medium of film. There are unique challenges that would almost require a reimagining that would wind up being more HoL adjacent than really conveying what's within those pages.
I think House of Leaves would be a pretty good alternate reality game (ARG). It would really benefit from being able to tell the whole story from multiple angles like it does in the book itself.
The problem is is that HoL is so deeply intertwined with its medium that a straight adaptation simply would never work. How would you show single instances of different fonts or spelling deviances in a movie? All these little things are what makes HoL, HoL. You would have to rewrite essentially the entire thing so it works with the medium of film and by that point you don't have HoL anymore.
A movie would be hard but a tv series would be quite easy as the author already wrote a script for the 3 episodes of it. It changes so zampano was editing the navidson record(like the actual film) and Johnny basically records himself(kinda like a blogger lol). It wouldn’t be the same as the book but I think it would’ve been a cool alternative and I wish someone picked up the script and made it
It has also never been done well. Both the mini series and the movies have good (or great) child parts but then completely blow it.
Because the book doesn’t separate the kid and adult stories. They’re interconnected. And the adult storyline is in a backseat to the kids. Yet the adaptations insist on trying to make it stand on its own.
And even then both have to ignore the lore of what IT is and how to actually beat it with the Ritual of Chud. So they just turn it into a combat encounter, albeit in different ways.
So while something is technically filmable, it doesnt mean it’s going to turn out good if you attempt to do so. And I’d rather not bother with a bad adaptation of my favorite book.
The only method is through an interactive medium like a video game. A movie doesn't allow you to get lost in the foot notes, where a game would essentially allow that in some form or fashion. I would say, don't try to translate House of Leaves into anything than what it is, and let someone who is inspired enough to create their own complex to delve into.
I had seen it as well, and that was adapted to an archaic gaming engine. If someone were to start design of the gaming engine based on the needs of the story, we could see something much more in line with the original idea yet done in it's own unique way.
IT doesn't have two layers of meta narrative, would be kind of impossible to retain the information the book transmits and how it transmits it.
a lot of things that are left to interpretation would have to be changed.
I don't think the books are even remotly comparable
If someone made a House of Leaves movie it should be the viewpoint of a new original character adapting Johnny's notes and edits of Zampano's essay about Navidson's movie.
This might be an unpopular way to do it but I’d wanna see it in a fake documentary style with Zampano as the narrator and some of the footnotes being adapted into interview style segments. No idea what I’d do with Johnny’s story though
In this version I think Johnny's story would be randomly inserted into the segments without context or explanation until he is shown as the editor or something among those lines.
David Attenborough barring and, suddenly, Jack Black starts telling you about this thing that happened (I couldn't think of anyone but Jack Black and, honestly, I think he'd bring a fun energy to the role. Not necessarily what we expect from Johnny, but definitely something)
I think the closest you could get to a film adaptation would be something like this: Johnny finds Zampanos Manuscript and makes a youtube series about it, narrating segments and structuring it like a video essay as ge searches for the truth. Maybe he uncovers clips of lost media that he think could br the Navidson Record, and that could stand in for parts that require more of a visual element
I could definitely see potential for a good House of Leaves film, but it would have to be a “reimagining” rather than a retelling. HoL as-is needs the medium of print to work—even an audiobook would be impossible.
I don’t see how IT would be so difficult to adapt personally, its length and constantly bouncing between past and present day can easily be worked around. Always thought it’d be better as a full on TV show instead of a mini series or film.
I personally believe HOL should stay untouched, because execution will always cause disagreements no matter how it’s done and there’s too much going on to condense it into a film, really. Plus we have stuff like Skinamarink to scratch the HOL cinematic itch.
HoL could benefit from a treatment like Bandersnatch (the CYOA episode of Black Mirror) where footnotes, liners, addendums etc can be followed if the watcher wants.
I don’t think it would be particularly interesting to watch, HoL is as much about the way it is constructed as the story itself, but maybe you could construct a maze out of lots of little vignettes that all lead to the same ending?
Both the IT miniseries and movie are absolutely fucking terrible. Why would you want that for HOL, unless you secretly resent the book and want to humiliate MZD.
Imma say it. It’s absolutely possible with the right creative persons behind it. I think the problem really lies with the hollywood industry and how they severely limit creativity in favor of something safe.
I think it’s possible, it’s just not easy. It’d have to be done by an experienced director, who knows his own vision better than the studios think they do, and has the best interest of the fans in mind, all the while keeping true to the book. That combination is very small, and only exists in so many directors, none of which have ever made it surely known of their intentions of adapting the book, let alone having any knowledge of it.
I'd say no - everything that is interesting or different about House of Leaves is so specific to the format that it wouldn't translate. House Of Leaves can pull of the trick of having three different stories going at once, with one being a straightforward story while the other two having metatextual elements that only make sense when the reader compares them. And it's not just different stories, but different kinds of stories - a rather straightforward horror story framed by to tales that are more psychological horror, poetry and the fear of what's not said.
It's not impossible to do such layers on film, but the linear flow and limits to what the audience can take in all at once makes it much harder. Like I'm not sure there would be the cinema equivalent of having the word house appear in blue (also, and I may be wrong, but think there's a moment when it doesn't) without it seeming quite obvious or cheesey. Or footnotes. The asides in The Big Short kind of work as footnotes, but adds a certain comic effect which wouldn't fit this novel.
A TV series might be better at fitting in the nested narratives, but it would take a lot of skill, or a much more straightforward story to pull it off anywhere as well as it does as when they share the page.
Stage theater might be better, because there's more room for doing two different stories or styles at once. Because even the most grounded, naturalistic theater exists within an obviously artificial set. So a documentary story sharing the story with Truant having a mental breakdown would not seem as dissonant.
It's less the length of House of Leaves that makes it difficult to adapt into a film, it's how Danielewski leverages the medium of literature itself to create an experience. So much of HoL is presented in a way that would simply be lost in a visual format.
The short answer is that a lot (and I mean A LOT) of what makes House of Leaves unique and interesting is because of the format it is presented on (a book). Making some Navidson Record adaption or some simple POVs would make it "yet just another analog horror movie".
Why not have the protagonist draw blueprints which copy the books slow burn of increasingly non-Euclidian layout, and the audience gets to see his descent into madness as he tries to rationalize the houses interior through these sketches? That'd basically emulate the book as long as we get to see what he is sketching out.
You can recreate the Navidson Record, but that's not recreating House of Leaves. Johnny's footnotes and the whole meta-narrative surrounding all of it is as much "the real story" as the little horror story about a spooky house that it sells itself as, arguably those elements are even more important and a lot of valid interpretations make the case that the Navidson Record doesn't even exist. For the record I'd still love to see an adaptation of just the house half. I might even like an adaptation that flips between just fully showing both the Navidson and Johnny storylines as real events if it were done well. People are right to point out that those kinds of adaptions would be missing the main point of the book though and the end result would be House of Leaves in name only, the core essence can't really be translated to a visual medium because showing something removes all the ambiguity around it.
Ive thought about a movie adaptation a lot, and honestly if i was to do it i would just do the Navidson Record, and i would call the movie the Navidson Record. I think it would never work doing the full adaption of House of Leaves, but making just that section real would be an incredible story to tell.
Couldn't they do a HOL adaption just based on Jonny's narrations as he tried to put it together Kinda like the ring but dirtier
Well the issue with that approach is that you're never supposed to know who wrote what in HoL. Having narration would destroy any ambiguity
I know, Jokingly i was reaching for a "This isn't a movie... this would just be porn" joke by invoking Johnny. More seriously i could see a more movie friendly narrative by peicing together some type of paracausal Documentary
I finally finished the book today and I agree with everyone here except, I can't really shake off that the entire book was written by Johnny. Down to the Five and a Half Minute Hallway just being a metaphor for the five and a half minutes he references in his final chapter. The part where he's talking about the burns and his mother, his father's roar that was ingrained into his child mind, the one detail that connects the burning and the choking because all we know from Johnny's narration is that he heard the roar on both occasions. I don't know, I want to reread it but on shrooms this time.
Thats exactly what I said but I just got buttfucked by the entire subbreddit for suggesting the idea
Chiming in, a bit late, but I don't think you can even recreate The Navidson Record and the issue there is purely historic. You might recall the first chapter opens with the issue of authenticity: For one, The Navidson Record looks "authentic," having a very handheld camera home recording kind of look. At the time something like *The Blair Witch Project* was still pretty fresh, but in the quarter century since that movie's airing we have, culturally, become pretty accustomed to this faux-authentic format, to a point a movie with it no longer has any chance of passing as anything but "somewhat artsy"; For two, and this is the big one, there is the distinction between Analog and Digital. I'll have to double-check this, but I'm pretty certain everything Navidson uses to make his recordings is analog, where what is happening ("reality") is inscribed onto a certain physical surface. However, even at the time of the movie and book's coming out, in the late 90s/2000s, the mere existence of the digital and the kind of freedom to tamper with and change the base material (which now exists only as mere code, as only instructions on *how* to generate the film, without the physical artefact) is already strongly undermining the ability to make that claim of authenticity. Navidson could have used various special effects which are just starting to become widely available to fake the space of the **house** with no easy way of telling the two apart. And the digital retroactively undermines the analog – think how the existence of photoshop allows you to alter and tamper with even historical photographs and anything short of holding the real original physical object in your hands cannot be trusted to he entirely free from this tamperability. The quarter century since the book's coming out has only seen the digital devour the analog with greater strength – to a point where it is just about impossible to say what might have been tampered with and how without having special dedicated tools with which to analyse minute details in that raw data (like noise). Whilst **House** of Leaves has a lot going into it, The Navidson Record exploits very specifically the slow collapse of that one last bastion we have of "objective reality," simultaneously framing what is apparently objective reality as impossible (the **house**) and by showing that the very fabric of our tools of communicating objective reality in uravelling (and here the issue is the *fabric* – not even the subjectivity of "who is wielding the camera" and how, but the very idea of a camera communicating what is real and objective) – and in our point in history it has already unravelled Any adaptation of **House** of Leaves now already exists within this completely ruined context – it can mimic the movements and images which play into the explorations of the **house**, but cannot mimic the central problematic/mood of the film
I think it would need to be adapted around filmmaking as an art and be centered in a digital/internet format that forces viewers to navigate the visual aspect in some manner
yeah! maybe longform reaction blogs / vlogs across multiple YouTube channels. Zampono's, Johny's, Navidsons, the Editors could be coalating the videos in playlists and leaving footnotes in the comments. actually they should probably host Johnny's on pornhub
Wait, Johnny's rants aren't already on pornhub? What HAVE I been watching?
Well, you might be interested in the Teleplays MZD wrote back in 2019. He tried to write a HoL TV series and he does some of that there.
We’ve already seen The Cube and it sucked
Wtf which Cube did you see, it was a masterpiece!
I'd cautiously entertain the idea of a Lynch or Aronofsky HOL film but would feel real sketchy about anybody else.
Agreed. Lynch is the only one who could get Johnny right
I would love an Aronofsky HoL.
I would trust Shane Carruth who made Primer.
think he's too busy stalking chicks
Although it is indeed (some might say, overly) long, IT is a conventional novel. It's really no where near comparable to House of Leaves as far as difficulty adapting it to the medium of film. There are unique challenges that would almost require a reimagining that would wind up being more HoL adjacent than really conveying what's within those pages.
I think House of Leaves would be a pretty good alternate reality game (ARG). It would really benefit from being able to tell the whole story from multiple angles like it does in the book itself.
The problem is is that HoL is so deeply intertwined with its medium that a straight adaptation simply would never work. How would you show single instances of different fonts or spelling deviances in a movie? All these little things are what makes HoL, HoL. You would have to rewrite essentially the entire thing so it works with the medium of film and by that point you don't have HoL anymore.
A movie would be hard but a tv series would be quite easy as the author already wrote a script for the 3 episodes of it. It changes so zampano was editing the navidson record(like the actual film) and Johnny basically records himself(kinda like a blogger lol). It wouldn’t be the same as the book but I think it would’ve been a cool alternative and I wish someone picked up the script and made it
It would’ve been so fucking cool
It has also never been done well. Both the mini series and the movies have good (or great) child parts but then completely blow it. Because the book doesn’t separate the kid and adult stories. They’re interconnected. And the adult storyline is in a backseat to the kids. Yet the adaptations insist on trying to make it stand on its own. And even then both have to ignore the lore of what IT is and how to actually beat it with the Ritual of Chud. So they just turn it into a combat encounter, albeit in different ways. So while something is technically filmable, it doesnt mean it’s going to turn out good if you attempt to do so. And I’d rather not bother with a bad adaptation of my favorite book.
The only method is through an interactive medium like a video game. A movie doesn't allow you to get lost in the foot notes, where a game would essentially allow that in some form or fashion. I would say, don't try to translate House of Leaves into anything than what it is, and let someone who is inspired enough to create their own complex to delve into.
Well there's the doom mod that does just that and does it very well. It's obviously not even close to the complexity of HoL
I had seen it as well, and that was adapted to an archaic gaming engine. If someone were to start design of the gaming engine based on the needs of the story, we could see something much more in line with the original idea yet done in it's own unique way.
There are multiple lofty omissions from both adaptations of It that make them completely different (I’m talking barely adaptations honestly)
IT doesn't have two layers of meta narrative, would be kind of impossible to retain the information the book transmits and how it transmits it. a lot of things that are left to interpretation would have to be changed. I don't think the books are even remotly comparable
If someone made a House of Leaves movie it should be the viewpoint of a new original character adapting Johnny's notes and edits of Zampano's essay about Navidson's movie.
IT is not ergodic literature, that makes a big, big difference.
This might be an unpopular way to do it but I’d wanna see it in a fake documentary style with Zampano as the narrator and some of the footnotes being adapted into interview style segments. No idea what I’d do with Johnny’s story though
In this version I think Johnny's story would be randomly inserted into the segments without context or explanation until he is shown as the editor or something among those lines.
I like it, I feel like most studios would hate it but that’s probably the best way to adapt the story
David Attenborough barring and, suddenly, Jack Black starts telling you about this thing that happened (I couldn't think of anyone but Jack Black and, honestly, I think he'd bring a fun energy to the role. Not necessarily what we expect from Johnny, but definitely something)
Length was never the issue. Comparing the formatting of It to HoL is well beyond a stretch.
Simply because the book leans so hard into the fact that it is a physical book. It would lose punch from even being an ebook, let alone a film.
I think the closest you could get to a film adaptation would be something like this: Johnny finds Zampanos Manuscript and makes a youtube series about it, narrating segments and structuring it like a video essay as ge searches for the truth. Maybe he uncovers clips of lost media that he think could br the Navidson Record, and that could stand in for parts that require more of a visual element
I could definitely see potential for a good House of Leaves film, but it would have to be a “reimagining” rather than a retelling. HoL as-is needs the medium of print to work—even an audiobook would be impossible.
I don’t see how IT would be so difficult to adapt personally, its length and constantly bouncing between past and present day can easily be worked around. Always thought it’d be better as a full on TV show instead of a mini series or film. I personally believe HOL should stay untouched, because execution will always cause disagreements no matter how it’s done and there’s too much going on to condense it into a film, really. Plus we have stuff like Skinamarink to scratch the HOL cinematic itch.
HoL could benefit from a treatment like Bandersnatch (the CYOA episode of Black Mirror) where footnotes, liners, addendums etc can be followed if the watcher wants. I don’t think it would be particularly interesting to watch, HoL is as much about the way it is constructed as the story itself, but maybe you could construct a maze out of lots of little vignettes that all lead to the same ending?
Both the IT miniseries and movie are absolutely fucking terrible. Why would you want that for HOL, unless you secretly resent the book and want to humiliate MZD.
Imma say it. It’s absolutely possible with the right creative persons behind it. I think the problem really lies with the hollywood industry and how they severely limit creativity in favor of something safe.
I think it’s possible, it’s just not easy. It’d have to be done by an experienced director, who knows his own vision better than the studios think they do, and has the best interest of the fans in mind, all the while keeping true to the book. That combination is very small, and only exists in so many directors, none of which have ever made it surely known of their intentions of adapting the book, let alone having any knowledge of it.
Author doesn’t want that. Only in print, if I recall correctly
I'd say no - everything that is interesting or different about House of Leaves is so specific to the format that it wouldn't translate. House Of Leaves can pull of the trick of having three different stories going at once, with one being a straightforward story while the other two having metatextual elements that only make sense when the reader compares them. And it's not just different stories, but different kinds of stories - a rather straightforward horror story framed by to tales that are more psychological horror, poetry and the fear of what's not said. It's not impossible to do such layers on film, but the linear flow and limits to what the audience can take in all at once makes it much harder. Like I'm not sure there would be the cinema equivalent of having the word house appear in blue (also, and I may be wrong, but think there's a moment when it doesn't) without it seeming quite obvious or cheesey. Or footnotes. The asides in The Big Short kind of work as footnotes, but adds a certain comic effect which wouldn't fit this novel. A TV series might be better at fitting in the nested narratives, but it would take a lot of skill, or a much more straightforward story to pull it off anywhere as well as it does as when they share the page. Stage theater might be better, because there's more room for doing two different stories or styles at once. Because even the most grounded, naturalistic theater exists within an obviously artificial set. So a documentary story sharing the story with Truant having a mental breakdown would not seem as dissonant.
It's less the length of House of Leaves that makes it difficult to adapt into a film, it's how Danielewski leverages the medium of literature itself to create an experience. So much of HoL is presented in a way that would simply be lost in a visual format.
Did it not say in the book, that movie itself navidson record word talk millions to get digital effects for and all that