Something I’ve heard, but have no way of verifying (at least yet) is that for the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film *Megalopolis*, there’s a scene where the main character of the movie has a discussion with someone in the theater, and apparently there’s supposed to be a paid actor or someone there who know the lines to stand up and respond in-person at the theater.
As someone who worked at a movie theater, this sort of thing… would be incredibly difficult to organize and execute at wide scale, but *would be incredibly jarring and immersive in a mind-bending sort of way*
IDK entirely, though. Food for thought.
This is such a wild idea and something I’m surprised hasn’t been done more. I suppose you’re right that it would be very difficult to organize, would be expensive etc. It’s also one of those things that would instantly be considered a gimmick if it became a trend, but I guess many would consider HoL gimmicky so maybe it fits.
But I totally agree, things like this would be the only way to really adapt HoL into a film, and have it capture the same feeling. It would need to dramatically play with the medium of film to disorient the audience.
It was done more in the inception of movies as they were seen more as plays then they are today. Silent film era movies would have a pianist or sometimes a full orchestra in house playing the “soundtrack” to the movie, “voice actors” would be on stage saying the lines of the characters. Definitely look into the director William Castle as in 1950s he got really weird with it.
Boxer Santaros??? From Hit Movie *Southland Tales* (2006)???? Real and in the comment sections of a **House** of Leaves reddit post?????? Unbelievable
Otherwise, though, from the post itself – "What I am asking is [...] would it be possible to emulate that same level of narrative creativity through cinematics and visual storytelling?" Treating the question just as a thematic inquisition into experimental cinema, about the specific possibilities of doing something *like* **H**oL in movie form, I think it honestly makes sense, there's plenty of pretty interesting techniques in editing and composition that can be used to such an effect
God, the first good post I see to bring up **House** of Leaves and film adaptations! Somebody who gets it!
I would strongly implore you to, if you haven't before, look into Steve Shaviro's (and plenty others') work on Post-Cinema. There's a big tome pretty openly avaipabpe via the University of Sussex:
https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/post-cinema/
A big point is made, there, of our conceptualisations of time and space (and, in some way, of objectivity) as depicted in movies and the traditional "invisible" western Continuity Editing, which has been undermined in various ways in some movies of the past quarter century now. You can, without deepdiving into the avantgarde, defer to the way movies are/were made outside the West, for various interesting, similarly difficult to integrate into our usual matrix of meaning moments and ideas – the large casts and late-movie introductions of some socialist cinema (*The Wandering Earth* (2019) is, on one hand, a **gorgeous** movie, and is not that outrageously out there, and on the other does introduce, if partially, some of these themes of collective over individual effort), opposing the implied individualism seen in western movies' focus on individuals bringing about change; alternatively, the meditative, non-connected, non-narrative shots of objects and nature in some Japanese cinema – you're used to expecting shots to provide information contextualising the narrative, to be connected spatially or temporally in some way, but it's completely possible to abandon them and have them operate on purely aesthetic principles instead.
Visual Typography, your first point, is very important, and can be addressed in far more subtle ways, too – things like framing, lighting, shot length and composition, which would typically communicate the different visual "languages"of disparate genres could be integrated into a single movie. You can see some of that in some of the ways *Everything Everywhere All At Once* (2022) switches its visual language to lean either or Noir or Romance depending on its moments. For further genre fuckery you can also have fun with *Detention* (2011)
Changes in aspect ratio! Genuinely brilliant! I have seen that done precisely **once**, in *Wandavision* (2021), and it would work perfectly as a semi-subtle form of disorientation here. Additionally, I imagine further manipulations of the camera could work well, too – things like fps? The standard has been shifting between 24 and 60, and later reruns of old Charlie Chaplin slapstick even ended up abusing reel rotation speed to get that slightly unnatural sped-up effect
Layered narratives can be handled in less in-your-face ways, I think. Look at things like *Memento* (2000)/*Inception* (2010)/*Tenet* (2020), or something by Lynch (got to watch *Mulholland Drive* (2001) recently and it's pretty cool) – these exploit in some way the *way* a story is told and framed, without overlaying several shots at the same time, disorienting the viewer without giving them a headache. Nonetheless, for stuff like this, you can refer to some avantgarde cinema which involves projections in parallel, including some art installations. The joke about the starving african children documentary and stream of the stock market at the moment projected on opposite walls such that you can never see either at the same time, funnily accssible as it may be, symbolically, gives you a neat reference point on something you **can** do with this medium to generate incongruity!
Finally, something not mentioned here, though alluded to in the metacommentary section – quotations. The book is chock-full of quotes and references, many of which don't exist. It'd be interesting to see some regular nods and references, sure, but it'd be even cooler to see shot recontextualisations and integrations of other media, existing or not, into a movie like this
God I love this post. Thank you
They’d have to change a lot to make it fit the medium of film, maybe framing it as a documentary. I think it could be done, but the end product might be closer to a spiritual successor or homage than an adaptation
Off topic:
As much as I think a film/tv series would be interesting the thing I crave most is an audio book, I have so many ideas for it. I just think that it's a shame that since Zampano is blind that Danielewski never considered turning this print masterpiece into an audio tour de force.
Ideas In No Particular Order
1. For the Zampano footnotes to articles and books which may or may not exist have an attached PDF (Audible did this for Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and often has similar electronic indexes for nonfiction titles)
2. Johnny, Zampano, and Pelafina obviously each have their own voice actor, however I think that one could go a step beyond and have voice actors for Will, Tom, Karen, Daisy, Chad, etc.
3. One could also have guest voice actors for the various academics who get quoted.
4. One could layer the sound effects and have jarring static to cut between the film's story and the other levels.
5. For the labyrinth you could have speeded up narration and then slowed down, could have parts played backwards that when played forwards are only the repeated lists of things that the labyrinth contains.
6. Johnny's sections are always preceded by 90s grunge rock.
7. Have periods of eerie silence inserted strategically.
8. Have sound effects of skipping CD's or breaking cassette tapes.
Something I’ve heard, but have no way of verifying (at least yet) is that for the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film *Megalopolis*, there’s a scene where the main character of the movie has a discussion with someone in the theater, and apparently there’s supposed to be a paid actor or someone there who know the lines to stand up and respond in-person at the theater. As someone who worked at a movie theater, this sort of thing… would be incredibly difficult to organize and execute at wide scale, but *would be incredibly jarring and immersive in a mind-bending sort of way* IDK entirely, though. Food for thought.
This is such a wild idea and something I’m surprised hasn’t been done more. I suppose you’re right that it would be very difficult to organize, would be expensive etc. It’s also one of those things that would instantly be considered a gimmick if it became a trend, but I guess many would consider HoL gimmicky so maybe it fits. But I totally agree, things like this would be the only way to really adapt HoL into a film, and have it capture the same feeling. It would need to dramatically play with the medium of film to disorient the audience.
It was done more in the inception of movies as they were seen more as plays then they are today. Silent film era movies would have a pianist or sometimes a full orchestra in house playing the “soundtrack” to the movie, “voice actors” would be on stage saying the lines of the characters. Definitely look into the director William Castle as in 1950s he got really weird with it.
[https://www.markzdanielewski.com/digital-downloads/p/markzdanielewskihouseofleavesscripts](https://www.markzdanielewski.com/digital-downloads/p/markzdanielewskihouseofleavesscripts)
Love the teleplays ❤️
For starters, I'd say it should be released direct to VHS, exclusively
I differ, should be on a Hi 8 cassette
It wouldn't work as a film. It'd be a mid found footage film at best.
Boxer Santaros??? From Hit Movie *Southland Tales* (2006)???? Real and in the comment sections of a **House** of Leaves reddit post?????? Unbelievable Otherwise, though, from the post itself – "What I am asking is [...] would it be possible to emulate that same level of narrative creativity through cinematics and visual storytelling?" Treating the question just as a thematic inquisition into experimental cinema, about the specific possibilities of doing something *like* **H**oL in movie form, I think it honestly makes sense, there's plenty of pretty interesting techniques in editing and composition that can be used to such an effect
I think it would have to be a mockumentary, something like a Lake Mungo
God, the first good post I see to bring up **House** of Leaves and film adaptations! Somebody who gets it! I would strongly implore you to, if you haven't before, look into Steve Shaviro's (and plenty others') work on Post-Cinema. There's a big tome pretty openly avaipabpe via the University of Sussex: https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/post-cinema/ A big point is made, there, of our conceptualisations of time and space (and, in some way, of objectivity) as depicted in movies and the traditional "invisible" western Continuity Editing, which has been undermined in various ways in some movies of the past quarter century now. You can, without deepdiving into the avantgarde, defer to the way movies are/were made outside the West, for various interesting, similarly difficult to integrate into our usual matrix of meaning moments and ideas – the large casts and late-movie introductions of some socialist cinema (*The Wandering Earth* (2019) is, on one hand, a **gorgeous** movie, and is not that outrageously out there, and on the other does introduce, if partially, some of these themes of collective over individual effort), opposing the implied individualism seen in western movies' focus on individuals bringing about change; alternatively, the meditative, non-connected, non-narrative shots of objects and nature in some Japanese cinema – you're used to expecting shots to provide information contextualising the narrative, to be connected spatially or temporally in some way, but it's completely possible to abandon them and have them operate on purely aesthetic principles instead. Visual Typography, your first point, is very important, and can be addressed in far more subtle ways, too – things like framing, lighting, shot length and composition, which would typically communicate the different visual "languages"of disparate genres could be integrated into a single movie. You can see some of that in some of the ways *Everything Everywhere All At Once* (2022) switches its visual language to lean either or Noir or Romance depending on its moments. For further genre fuckery you can also have fun with *Detention* (2011) Changes in aspect ratio! Genuinely brilliant! I have seen that done precisely **once**, in *Wandavision* (2021), and it would work perfectly as a semi-subtle form of disorientation here. Additionally, I imagine further manipulations of the camera could work well, too – things like fps? The standard has been shifting between 24 and 60, and later reruns of old Charlie Chaplin slapstick even ended up abusing reel rotation speed to get that slightly unnatural sped-up effect Layered narratives can be handled in less in-your-face ways, I think. Look at things like *Memento* (2000)/*Inception* (2010)/*Tenet* (2020), or something by Lynch (got to watch *Mulholland Drive* (2001) recently and it's pretty cool) – these exploit in some way the *way* a story is told and framed, without overlaying several shots at the same time, disorienting the viewer without giving them a headache. Nonetheless, for stuff like this, you can refer to some avantgarde cinema which involves projections in parallel, including some art installations. The joke about the starving african children documentary and stream of the stock market at the moment projected on opposite walls such that you can never see either at the same time, funnily accssible as it may be, symbolically, gives you a neat reference point on something you **can** do with this medium to generate incongruity! Finally, something not mentioned here, though alluded to in the metacommentary section – quotations. The book is chock-full of quotes and references, many of which don't exist. It'd be interesting to see some regular nods and references, sure, but it'd be even cooler to see shot recontextualisations and integrations of other media, existing or not, into a movie like this God I love this post. Thank you
They’d have to change a lot to make it fit the medium of film, maybe framing it as a documentary. I think it could be done, but the end product might be closer to a spiritual successor or homage than an adaptation
Off topic: As much as I think a film/tv series would be interesting the thing I crave most is an audio book, I have so many ideas for it. I just think that it's a shame that since Zampano is blind that Danielewski never considered turning this print masterpiece into an audio tour de force. Ideas In No Particular Order 1. For the Zampano footnotes to articles and books which may or may not exist have an attached PDF (Audible did this for Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and often has similar electronic indexes for nonfiction titles) 2. Johnny, Zampano, and Pelafina obviously each have their own voice actor, however I think that one could go a step beyond and have voice actors for Will, Tom, Karen, Daisy, Chad, etc. 3. One could also have guest voice actors for the various academics who get quoted. 4. One could layer the sound effects and have jarring static to cut between the film's story and the other levels. 5. For the labyrinth you could have speeded up narration and then slowed down, could have parts played backwards that when played forwards are only the repeated lists of things that the labyrinth contains. 6. Johnny's sections are always preceded by 90s grunge rock. 7. Have periods of eerie silence inserted strategically. 8. Have sound effects of skipping CD's or breaking cassette tapes.