The Challenge is my adaptation of my father’s bestselling/blockbusting My Uncle Jacinto. In my adaptation bullfighting becomes boxing; Madrid/La Quinta, Cape Town/Mandela Park, and white faces, colored or black. The script has been to IFFR/International Film Festival Rotterdam where I applied for production grants to produce the film in Cape Town with Tim Spring (Raw Target, Reason to Die, etc.) as director. They called it “a near miss”. The script is only available in English, though the first draft of a Spanish translation is underway.
This is a huge project - Odin, Vikings, adventures, terrorism, Islam, Swedish feminism, etc. - and its two first semi-presentable book-drafts are now seeing the light of day (in English and Swedish). These texts, I believe, sooner or later, will become movies, but as I, quite moronically, have been working in two languages simultaneously (thus producing more headaches than high quality finished text) the most pressing question is “Shall I proceed in English or Swedish?” These scripts I would not be capable to develop to the standard I would like without the assistance of a publisher/production company.
Senior, before leaving his homeland (Austro-Hungary), in order to save on the rent, took up residence in the famous Turkish Baths of Budapest (the "seal castle"). In this book, which is mainly a love story, we follow the protagonist - a good-looking actor, as an upper-class girl falls in love with him - against backstories taken from the lives of the girl and the other "seals" and their various survival-scams. I am weak on love-stories (yet even I can see that there is plenty of potentials), and though the ending is great, I need help to make it work cinematically. As 5 of 7 Senior-books, The Seal Castle is now for the first time available in English
Doña Juana must once have been a theater script, but the original score has been lost. What instead got published in Spanish was "a script dressed up as a novella" (Senior's Spanish publishers didn't publish theatre scripts). Senior worked as a stage manager and as a theater director in his youth, but I do not know whether Doña Juana was ever staged, but if so, it must have been back in the 1930s. However, as a mime, it has been performed by Marcel Marceau in the 1960s. I have had this text turned back into a readable script but I haven't given it the attention it deserves. As my Doña Juana agent, I want you to help see it developed, rehearsed, and staged. This is my pitch to have it staged.
Karl, a sculptor, escapes WW 2 to Tangiers (Morocco). One day he finds what obviously is his (3-4y old) son at his doorstep with a letter: You always wanted a son without a mother: here he is. Do not try to find out who I am. XXX. As the war end over the boy ask his father to find his mother. There are three possible women, and Kurt goes in search (if you are a producer/director and need to read more, you are the wrong person): Naples, Paris, and Avila. This is the first of my father’s three major novels and the only not to become a film. It has been very much improved (esp. as given the content editing it originally never received) as it was adapted for cine, and (for the first time) translated into English. I am contemplating working this book towards synopsis/scenario, but I need ideas as to the structure. A straight/traditional timeline is not an option, and I am looking for something "a la Tarantino" (see below). Mother Unknown was about to become a movie at Senior's demise, and there was a script that got lost, though I still retain Senior's synopsis.
Andres Laszlo Sr. wrote My Uncle Jacinto/Mi Tio Jacinto in 1955, and it immediately became a blockbuster movie (Ladislao Vajda produced, Pablito Calvo starred). Today the movie is a regular contender for the Spanish or Hispanic number (or top-five, or top-ten spot) "all-times" in film festivals. Considering how popular it was/is, it’s strange that nobody has asked me to let them turn it into an animated movie. I think of it as: One of the most popular children’s books/movies never to have been animated. I want an agent to find someone to turn My Uncle Jacinto into an animated movie.
Whereas the original book-text of Paco Never Fails emphasized the anthropological aspect and was a history-drama, the movie focused on (a strong, dark) the comedy aspect. The original (book) text came with crime-undertones, and one can feel how Senior was considering adding a murder-mystery dimension (a genre that was not as popular at the time as it is today). Even though some new producer(s) have been trying to buy the adaptation rights (and this could very well be on the cards), I have started (still early days) to re-adapt the original text into the murder mystery it originally nearly became, and I have some thoughts about setting the action in Mumbai or Goa; not because I spend the winters there but because it (esp. "Portuguese" Goa) would make a much better background than, as in the original, Madrid.
Paco Never Fails is originally set in Madrid in the early 1940s, just after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Here we meet Paco Garcia who makes his living by mating with young girls from the countryside: girls who have come to Madrid to make better lives for themselves as wet-nurses (after unwanted pregnancies) and sooner or later need to boost the milk flow. Though this impregnation is an occupation that seldom gets talked about, at the time (allegedly, it still is) it was a very real profession, and the impregnator most likely to succeed i.e. ‘who never failed,’ was the one highest in demand. However, Paco has failed once, so when his wife finally becomes pregnant, this father of thousands realizes… This impregnation was an occupation also in India, and since I stay in and around Mumbai (mainly in Goa that with its Portuguese influence probably is a better setting than Mumbai to make the story more dramatic, contrasting and believable)... I would like to develop/adapt a Goa-script for Bollywood, and I need expert assistance both anthropologically (for reality-check), and for "Bollywood style dramatization".
Finishing my own book-writing projects, as well as translating and making Senior’s texts more commercial is where I have slugged away for the last 10 years. This has resulted in a whole lot of texts intended for “further refinement towards the silver screen,” and I intend henceforth to (in principle) move stuff along: idea >> structure >> synopsis >> scenario >> treatment >> script. I was, of course, tempted to start at this point 10 years ago, and one reason I didn’t was that I figured I had better first get our texts in prepared-for-cine. Though there are three scripts at various stages of development, the main part of “scripts” is about ideas: old movies, short stories, and novels that have the potential to become new scripts.
Paco Never Fails (old movie), and Doña Juana (old theatre) have already started their journeys towards becoming scripts and are dealt with under the heading “SCRIPTS” below. Sin Uniforme (old movie) I have no plans for, and Marcel Marceau’s performance Dom Juan (mime-drama) I think of as a one-off. Read More
My Uncle Jacinto. The only old movie left is thus My Uncle Jacinto, my father’s blockbuster from 1955. Today the movie is often shown at film festivals where it is a regular contender for Best Spanish or Hispanic Film of All Times or a one-to-five spot. Considering how popular it was/is, it’s strange that nobody has sought to turn it into an animated movie. I think of it as one of the most popular children’s books/movies never to have been animated. Honestly, how many best-selling children's novels - that have been translated into nine languages and adapted into a blockbuster movie that has never been animated - do you know of? Well, I know of only one. This sounds like “great potential” but as I have never written an animated script, I will probably have to wait until an offer comes along. Read More One of Senior’s novels was about to become a movie at his demise (Mother Unknown), Senior’s French publishers recommended him to approach the Spanish film industry with another novel/novella/theatre-play (Doña Juana), his first published book also has movie potential (The Seal Castle), and Junior’s adventure series (The Caspian Connection) is designed to become cine.
Short stories - that often have been rewritten so as to read closer to treatments - are picked from the 49 short stories that make up The Tale of Two Knaves. There are at least a dozen stories that could be turned into scripts. Here are a couple: There are three scrips: Paco Never Fails that is just started but that, if it doesn’t get high-jacked on the way, has great potential; Doña Juana that just has been rewritten into the theatre script it once was and needs lots of work even before it can be staged, and The Challenge that at present is the only presentable script.
OLD MOVIES TO SCRIPT
NOVEL TO SCRIPT
SHORT STORY TO SCRIPT
SCRIPTS
(Project Laszlo & Laszlo contains a smaller but upgraded version of this article)
"Movies" are about the three movies that have been made from Andres Laszlo Senior's texts and scripts, and the lack of payment from the corporations that have broadcasted these movies (or, from the individuals/organizations that have sold to these broadcasting corporations the rights to do so, "forgetting" about my father and his rights to royalties as a writer/co-writer of original text and/or film-script). "Scripts" are about the possibility of new movies/scripts: a new adaptation of Paco Never Fails, a script for Mother Unknown, an animated version of My Uncle Jacinto, finding new script-ideas in The Laszlo & Laszlo Chronicles that contains 45 short stories, and the possibility of staging Dona Juana as a theatre play or operetta. Also, my The Challenge already exist as a script VIDEO
The Challenge is influenced by Andres Laszlo Sr.'s bestselling (and, as a movie, blockbusting) book My Uncle Jacinto. As a novel, it falls between adult and youth novel (a bit like The Little Prince with which the book shares many similarities). My father could "get away with this" - i.e. publishing in-between genres" - as he at the time was an established writer. My adaptation, The Challenge, also falls between genres, but as a movie, all those problems vanish and it falls firmly within the "Family Movie" category. Watch the VIDEO.