“In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.”

– Ray Bradbury

So, the great Ray Bradbury died last week and that’s another bit of my past gone away. And yours too, even if you’ve never read a word of his massive body of work. Along with plenty of classic science fiction, fantasy and many other stories that had a beautiful flow to them many have copied (or more accurately, tried to copy and failed miserably at doing so), he wrote one of the best editorials on censorship that I’ve ever read.  I normally despise Sir Rupert Murdoch’s local opinions as fact-packed fish-wrapper, The New York Post, but they ran that column he wrote (mostly to justify their own “news” agenda) yesterday and I had to tip my hat their way for doing so…

Although I knew most of his work through books and the occasional film adaptation as a kid, I think it wasn’t until about 25 years or so back that I recall reading some old EC Comics reprints and being shocked to see Bradbury got the comics treatment as well and with some pretty nice art, to boot. I later found out that the first two stories printed weren’t exactly legally adapted, but Bradbury handled the matter in an interesting way that actually kept the adaptations going on, with some 27 tales eventually appearing in assorted EC Comics throughout the 1950’s. I thoroughly expect them not to be reprinted again unless a smart publisher such as IDW is on the case, as they’ve been with previous EC editions

Anyway, I’ve always found it quite funny (and a bit sad) that the man’s imagination and talent were so grand that with some exceptions Hollywood really couldn’t do his writing proper justice. There were some great old TV shows that adapted some of his works pretty well, but up until six seasons of The Ray Bradbury Theater series on HBO and later USA Network back from 1985 – 1992, you really didn’t get the man’s true talent if video was your only entertainment option. Then again, without a more hands-on approach and talent that could make words and worlds completely believable, it’s a bit of an insult to any decent writer to think that an over-rewritten script could properly convey everything accurately.

Even when longer production time (and many writers who weren’t Bradbury) got involved in attempts to rework his brilliance into something interesting, the results were still well below what the books instilled into many brains as excellence. I remember looking forward to The Martian Chronicles on NBC back in 1980, foolishly thinking it would be great TV and close to the books, given the hype, time and talent involved. Let’s just say I was either bored out of my mind or laughing my head off at the nonsense that ended up as the finished product. Let’s not even talk about those unlicensed works that tried to steal bits of Bradbury’s stories wholesale and present them as more accessible TV, films and plays. Ray outlasted and outclassed them, of course, but with him gone, it’s only a matter of time before the pillaging of his works starts making people more money.

As far as film and TV adaptations, there were many Bradbury worked on in one way or another plus some he didn’t, but his vision often outstripped the production budgets as well as the minds of those who needed to make what was on the page a reality. For my money, only another Ray (Harryhausen, another genius in his own field that needs to be remembered always) was able to bring something Bradbury wrote to being as he wrote it, but it wasn’t quite a direct adaptation of one of his works.That said, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (and the Rhedosaurus, named after the author) became classics to those who remember the film. Of course, It Came From Outer Space can’t be ignored, as it was one of the first 3-D movies to hit theaters, scaring a few folks of that era silly with its now primitive effects work.

I’ve always been a bit partial to the more flawed Bradbury films made in the 1960’s that tried to tackle more mature content. In both Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man, you can see how not only cinema, but the sensibilities of that period were changing. Yes, wooden and hard to comprehend Oskar Werner wasn’t the original choice for Montag, but whomever paired director Francois Truffaut with composer Bernard Herrmann was a genius. That and the film, while not true to the novel, manages to make an impact for the message it does deliver. It’s worth viewing as a reader of any book just to see if you can spot something you may have read during one of the burning scenes. That and the title sequence is still incredibly well done and effective.

The Illustrated Man is even more flawed, in my opinion, but Jerry Goldsmith’s offbeat score, Rod Steiger’s crazed performance and the outstanding “tattoo” makeup he had to go through were hard to take my eyes and ears away from. The film is problematic for quite a few reasons including the fact that adapting three of eighteen stories in the book meant only 1/6 of Bradbury’s book was going on screen. In actuality, it was a LOT less of Bradbury, as he had nothing to do with the screenplay and it shows. The film tries very, very hard to be something “hip” and in the vein of the changing culture on 1968-69, but in the end, it’s rough going if you’re expecting something close to the source material.

These days, I absolutely KNOW that any of Bradbury’s sci-fi stories could be done and look just as he wrote them down, but isn’t it damned awful that if and when that day happens, the man won’t be around to see the results? On that note, good night Ray. Let me stop writing here and go read something from my hardcover copy of 1990’s The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which happened to fall off a shelf a few days back as if to tell me something. Which story will I read, you ask? Well, I don’t know just yet, as I’ve got 884 pages to decide…