(LOST) BOYS N the 'HOOD

40 years ago, Hollywood came to Santa Cruz

Forty years ago, this month, when Hollywood came to town to shoot a teenage vampire movie, nobody had any idea that The Lost Boys would become a cult phenomenon.

 

Sure, we locals loved it. The production crew was here for a couple of weeks, pouring Hollywood revenue into our hotels and restaurants, and employing hundreds of locals as extras. We loved seeing landmarks like Pogonip, the Boardwalk, and the train trestle over the river mouth up on the big screen.

 

What nobody could have predicted, was (fittingly enough, for a vampire movie) the extensive afterlife the movie would have beyond its original theatrical release — from midnight shows, revivals, and the advent of streaming, with its 24/7 access, all the way to Broadway, where an original stage musical adaptation just won four Tony Awards.

 

Little did we know, back in June 1986, when the movie was shot, what a cultural touchpoint it would become, not only in the annals of both vampire and teen angst movie genres, but as a snapshot of a very particular sort of hip 80s vibe. In which respect, director Joel Schumacher, cinematographer Michael Chapman, and production designer Bo Welch discovered that Santa Cruz was so ready for her close-up.

 

In the story, a recently divorced mom and her two teenage sons move from urban Phoenix to a sleepy California beach town to start a new life. Restless, 17-year-old Michael falls for a girl who runs with a seductive, yet sinister crowd of (literally) drop-dead cool kids who haunt the beachfront Boardwalk at night — and who turn out to be vampires. 14-year-old Sam starts hanging out at the local comic book store, where the owners' two tween sons try to convince him that vampires are running amok in the town, and enlist his aid in stamping out the bloodsucking menace.

 

Although the town is called Santa Carla in the movie, it taps into our early-'70s reputation as the "Murder Capital of the World," and the program of plastering the faces of missing children on milk cartons, to create a sense of real danger beneath the movie's teen comedy overtones. The plot turns on the scheming of glamorous alpha vampire, David, to induct Michael into their biker gang. The tagline — "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." — references Peter Pan, from which the movie gets its title. 

 

And if David is the Peter Pan figure in the movie, Santa Cruz is the Neverland.

 

From the first montage of Mom and the boys driving into town, with "People Are Strange," on the soundtrack, the fabled weirdness of our little burgh is on full display — drummers, dancers, street musicians, at least one snake-handler, surfers, punks, Goths, spikey Mohawks, and a panorama of jeans, leather, wetsuits, granny dresses, combat boots, and other items of trashy gypsy hipster chic. For a pivotal scene during a nighttime rock concert at the bandstand on the beach, the hundreds of locals hired as extras didn't even have to go through wardrobe and makeup — they already looked perfect!

 

Night scenes on the Boardwalk are shot around rippling tongues of flame, as if  bonfires were lit just out of camera range. Life in Santa Carla is one long, non-stop party, framed in torchlight and neon, and powered by jangly calliope music and scorching rock 'n' roll.

 

One particular thing the filmmakers loved about shooting in Santa Cruz was they didn't have to build a comic bookshop from scratch. Enter Atlantis Fantasyworld, operated by co-owners Joe Ferrara and my Art Boy, James Aschbacher. Their original, pre-quake building on Lower Pacific was cavernous; it had been a grocery store in the 1920s, with solid wood plank floors and a two-story high ceiling. When the crew folded back the giant accordion doors out front, they could roll the klieg lights right inside. The huge, freestanding shelving units in the middle of the room could be rolled aside to accommodate the lights, camera, and action of dozens of crew members loitering around the periphery on any given shot. 

 

The only problem was that Atlantis was not actually located on the Boardwalk, as the store in the movie is supposed to be. The solution was to build a replica section of the Boardwalk on the sidewalk in front of Atlantis, a plywood tunnel painted faded Boardwalk yellow, and complete with green benches, and the uber-eerie Laughing Sal automaton chortling right outside the door. When Schumacher decided there should be some graffiti on the wall outside the shop, he wielded the spray can himself. On the first day of shooting in the shop, production designer Welch marveled, "This is a monumental set to put up. You wouldn't even do this in TV!"

For three consecutive weekends, the faux Boardwalk facade was erected out on the sidewalk while the crew shot interiors inside the store. James and Joe auditioned to play the shop proprietors, but they didn't get the parts; Schumacher wanted a burnt-out hippie couple who slumped in front of the TV all day, instead of, you know, actually running the shop. But the two of them do appear in the movie for about six seconds, playing pinball in the background as Sam walks into the store. And the three of us got to hang out on set all three weekends, to discourage people from standing or walking on, or rolling equipment over the merchandise — and also ring up sales to crew members, who spend most of their time on movie sets waiting around to set up the next shot.

 

Forty years on, watching the movie again, I was surprised at  how short it is (89 minutes), how remarkably uncomplicated by any multiple plot threads, and what a conventional horror-movie finale it has — especially if you buy into the subtext of youth yearning to make community with their found tribe. Still, it captures as  evocative moment when Santa Cruz was (or was pereceived as) a fun and funky little beach town Neverland, with no delusions of metropolitan glamour. Those were the days, all right.

 

 

 

Above, upper right: Lost Boys call sheet

 

Above, left: Joe and James in Atlantis, with faux Boardwalk set visible outside the front door

 

Above: James and Joe at work, you know, running the shop, between takes 

 Right: 2 random onlookers fooling around on the set

GOOD COMPANY

Okay, there's no ocean anywhere near Phoenix, Arizona. And yet, James Hook's voyage of world domination continues!

A friend directed my attention to this summer reading book display at a Barnes & Noble in the Desert Ridge Marketplace in Phoenix.

Notice the prominent position of Alias Hook! The idea is, they are pairing up classic books and authors with their suggestions for "great modern" retellings or updates!

For my part, I'm thrilled to be sharing valuable tabletop space with such good company as Jane Austen and Alexander Dumas! (Along with J. M. Barrie, of course!)

And speaking of which, see the paperback of Peter Pan at the lower right, wedged in between the "Go" game and The Count of Monte Cristo? The cover image is by none other than Roy Best! It's the same image of Pan that's on the cover of that 1931 storybook that was gifted to me last week.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that my book keeps finding its way back into the public eye. Occupy Bookstores, that's my motto!

STORY(BOOK) TIME

So this happened this week:




A friend helping her mom move unearthed this vintage storybook edition of Peter Pan. For some strange reason, she thought of me!


It's an oversized volume called The Picture Story Book of Peter Pan, published in 1931, and illustrated in voluptuous watercolors by Roy Best.


Obsessed as I am with depictions of Captain Hook in all media (to see how they stack up with my James Hook in Alias Hook), I couldn't wait to dive in!


This Hook arrives in full comic-opera regalia, complete with luxuriant, long black Charles II curls. And the red coat, which is standard in Hook depictions probably as far back as the original stage play in 1904. (And immortalized in the 1953 Disney cartoon.)


I do approve of the elaborate headgear here; my James Hook has an absolute fetish for extravagant hats.

But while J. M. Barrie makes a big deal of Hook's icy blue eyes, I find it a little bizarre that illustrator Best tints Hook's entire eyeball (what we usually think of as the "white") a fetching shade of powder blue.


Meanwhile, Best's version of Pan is much younger and way more cherubic than mine. In these illustrations, he's practically a toddler.

Which I guess makes a kind of sense, since the Pan in my book, is going through an eternal case of the Terrible Twos.


But I do love Best's  va-va-voom Tinker Bell. Just look at her, so saucily perched on her little vase, scantily-clad, and vamping like a mini Jean Harlow! Or a chorus girl in a 1930s Busby Berkeley musical.


It's plain to see why this artist was best known for his calendar girl pin-ups!


None of these images remotely resemble the characters as I see them in Alias Hook. But I'm such a sucker for vintage illustration, this one is definitely going on the "keeper" pile!

MORE BEASTLY NEWS

It's Happy Dance time!

Yesterday, I received the email that every author longs to hear from her editor:

"Lisa!!! I think this is perfection! Truly! I have no further tweaks to suggest."

This came after one week (not counting the 3-day holiday) of wrangling between Editor Kaylan, from Candlewick, and moi over the Author's Note, to go in the back of the Beast book. 

We went five rounds in four days, cutting, pasting, snipping, and shaping. But it's good that we're both so detail-oriented, because the result is — well, perfection!

So, yay! We're done!

The final ms has been copyedited, accepted, and approved. The Author's Note and jacket copy are finalized, and the cover design is almost done. Oh, and we now have a new title:

How I spent my July 4 weekend.

Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge

This title, and the scrupulously-edited Author's Note, are meant to signify to readers that my book is NOT the Disney version of the tale — no more than Alias Hook was the Disney version of Peter Pan.

But you all knew that, right?

(Speaking of which, the live-action adaptation of Disney's Beauty and the Beast is coming to a movie theatre near you in March, 2017, right around the time my Beast is hitting the bookshelves. Looks like it's going to be a Beastly spring!)

Anyway, my rough Beast's hour has come round at last, as he slouches now toward Candlewick to be born!

Stay tuned!

NEVER MIND

A cool images from "Pan," but it comes at the very end

All flash, no fun, in shipwrecked 'Pan'

Full disclosure: I went to see Pan with extreme prejudice. As someone who has cheerfully adulterated J. M. Barrie's classic for her own devices, I'm leery of anyone else trying to do the same. And I'm very possessive of the way "my" characters (let alone Barrie's) are portrayed onscreen.

I wish I could say I was pleasantly surprised by Pan. But it's even worse than I imagined, in every way that matters: a story that makes any kind of sense on its own terms, characters we're invested in who share a sense of camaraderie, fresh dialogue, and, you know, fun. Pan comes up goose eggs in every department, opting instead for insanely huge and irrelevant CGI effects that pummel the fun right out of it.

Director Joe Wright can do literary adaptations (the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice; Atonement). But Jason Fuchs' script is an ill-conceived origin story that makes hash out of the original's time frame and sensibility. Not that Barrie's world of perverse feral children isn't ripe for a little tweaking, but Fuchs' revision is a clumsy, derivative mashup that steals from other, better sources, like Oliver Twist and Star Wars.

Neverland tribes: don't call them native Americans

12-year-old Peter (wide-eyed newcomer Levi Miller) grows up in a London orphanage run by ferocious nuns. One night, during World War II, while the Nazis are bombing the city, Peter and some other boys are snatched up into a flying pirate ship that whisks them away to Neverland. There, they join the ranks of captive child slave laborers mining the caverns for "pixium" (ie: pixie dust), which pirate captain Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) has been using to rejuvenate himself for the past 220 years.

It's not much of a life for a pirate—no women, no plunder, and nothing to spend it on, so why he wants to sustain it eternally is just one of the many things that doesn't add up. Tipping on a precipice one day, Peter astounds everyone, including himself, by flying across the gorge; turns out there's a prophecy that Blackbeard will be defeated by a boy who can fly. This is big news to the native tribes that live in the lush greenbelt over the hill from the mine, who need to stop the pirates before they despoil the entire island.

Indiana Hook and the kid. Before it all went wrong

There was much ado in the media when Rooney Mara was cast as native princess Tiger Lily. But it's clear in the film that the tribes are not Native Americans, just a bunch of mixed-race exotics speaking in vaguely British accents.

Not so James Hook (Garrett Hedlund); in this version, Barrie's well-spoken Etonian is a blond American  laboring in the mine, spouting a line of trite, patently "cocky" dialogue that would make Han Solo cringe. He befriends Peter (Hook calls him "kid"), and they steal an extra pirate ship that happens to be floating around and fly off to join the princess in her fight against oppression.

Did I mention there's an entire flotilla of flying pirate ships hovering above the island? Why do they fly? Who knows, but evidently that's not what they're using the pixie dust for. But if every ship is airborne anyway, what's the big deal that Peter can fly?

Jackman: Darth Blackbeard

 The story of Peter's birth might have had some resonance, but it's told in a confusing underwater animation sequence that's too murky to understand. And the only reason for bumping up the time frame to the 1940s (from the turn-of-the-century original) is so one of the flying pirate ships can have a dogfight with the Luftwaffe. No, I'm not kidding.

You know a movie is in trouble when not even Hugh Jackman, stomping around in black leather as a sort of steampunk Darth Blackbeard, can liven things up. He cruises around in a flying ship whose figurehead is a massive sculpture of his own head in its pompadour wig, which is a funny image for a couple of frames, but the script never gives Jackman—or anyone else—an actual character to play.

Who is this movie is aimed at? Wright says he made it for his son, but it's hardly magical enough to enthrall kids (and it's way creepy when the pirate ships blast through the Fairy Kingdom with flamethrowers), while adults will feel bored and/or bludgeoned (often at the same time). The wheezy plot won't interest young hipsters—not even (especially) in 3D. It's a shipwrecked extravaganza for an audience that doesn't exist.