I spent about the last year or so writing this novelization of the very unusual and disturbing movie SPLICE. A friend recommended me to the guys at Encyclopocalypse Publications who specialize in both new and reissued movie novelizations. I didn’t even know if anyone still made them! But I remember them fondly from my youth because I got to read the details of movies my parents wouldn’t let me watch. I told the publisher my thoughts on SPLICE and we bonded over our shared nostalgia for specifically the CHILD’S PLAY 2 novelization, and then I spent the next ~12 months writing a book. It was a really intense process; besides just having to transcribe the movie (which is never exactly like a screenplay), I had to figure out how to name all the objects and processes that are only established visually on the screen, and of course you have to figure out how to convincingly say what it’s like to be the people in the movie, which is both a physical and emotional thing. If your movie is good, you don’t tell the audience everything in explicit detail, but a book becomes sort of an inner monologue that the reader is having, and you have to give them a little bit more if you want them to relate to what you’re describing–especially if you’re describing something really weird. Anyway the gif above is so evocative to me not just because I’ve seen the movie a thousand times now, but because I put a lot of work into this scene where the scientists are working in their lab for some untold amount of time; you see them eating a few different forms of cold takeout, and it gave me such a powerful memory of like being in college and doing all your work in a marathon and your skin is tight and your joints hurt and you’re dehydrated from salt and caffeine and alcohol and you really need to shower and change your clothes and sleep, but if you stop working you will die. I see that image of Adrien Brody chomping on that cold pizza and I remember the scene like it happened to me!
So I haven’t heard from my editor yet, but Vincenzo Natali wrote me an extremely nice and encouraging message about my draft, so now I’m feeling really confident that whatever shape it takes before it hits the shelves, it’s going to be pretty good.
