Ray Bradbury & Fahrenheit 451 - The Untold Story

hi guys it's mark Zeke we mr. Syfy also mark secret Space Command and a number of other things including unfortunately today marks agree of the stolen car yes I woke up and my car was gone oh no police report insurance company all that stuff so if you've got a wonderful car that you just like to give mr. sci-fi send in my way but that's not what we are here to talk about we're here to talk about a different kind of theft the theft of human Liberty we're gonna be talking about Fahrenheit 451 first of all many of you know that HBO just released a new movie of Fahrenheit 451 and we're gonna be talking about that it stars Michael Shannon late of shape of water and Michael B Jordan who is wonderful in Black Panther and many other things but sadly it's not the best version of Fahrenheit 451 or perhaps just the way things go and so we'll talk about the new movie we'll talk about all the former iterations and some of you know not all of you know that Ray Bradbury was a dear friend and mentor of mine for over 10 years I'd go once a month to Ray's house and we would talk about life and art and career and all manner of things he was a dear dear friend and great mentor and we talked about his work in great detail including Fahrenheit 451 and I will get into that as well and by the way here is a selfie I don't know if you can see that a selfie that I took of myself and Ray when we were at his house together and he signed it to me and it adorns my wall proudly it's one of my prized possessions and he was just an incredible guy so let's get into this ray of course grew up in Waukegan Illinois and then when he was 13 the family moved to Arizona and thence to Los Angeles and from then on he was LA based and he was an amazing man he started writing at age 12 on a toy typewriter the first thing he wrote was a sequel to John Carter of Mars because he couldn't wait for the next one to come out and and then every day from then on he wrote and he said it took ten years before he wrote a single thing they thought was worth anything that was that was uniquely his it was a short story called the lake and he said it took two years after that writing every day to write another story that was uniquely his then he got better and better at doing the stories that were uniquely his and all of us who've read bradbury know what that is and I once said to him I know what business you're in it's not writer it's the Ray Bradbury business you're in the Ray Bradbury business because there's no one else who can do Ray Bradbury but you and he said yes that's exactly right so his first book came out in the late 40s it was dark carnival in fact I think let's see here's the here's the hunk here's the the British edition of that a signed first edition and this by the way for those who don't know this is the British first edition of the Martian Chronicles this is it's called the silver locust in England interestingly enough a different title so um but that's not what we're here talking about we're talking about Fahrenheit 451 so Marshall Chronicles came out in 1950 it was thanks to Christopher Isherwood reviewing it it got literary notice and did very very well and established Ray as a writer of great worth and merit and but it was mainly a collection of short stories about the colonization of Mars linked together and sort of a phone novel it's one of my favorite books but it wasn't really structured as a novel it was it was very episodic and wonderful but but ray really hadn't written a novel per se so but this was during the era of McCarthy and Ray was very very of course opposed to McCarthyism and enemy and remembered the book burnings the Nazis had done in the in World War two and prior to that and so he was very worried about totality rien ism and the crushing of the individual and Ray was a huge lover of books he when his family were traveling across from Waukegan to LA he and during the depths of the depression they didn't have the money to buy a lot of books so every small town they stopped at would have a Carnegie Library Carnegie the the the the robber baron of the 19th century had basically when he retired he spent money building libraries over a thousand libraries in all these small towns across the US and where he thought that was an astonishing and wonderful thing for Carnegie to have done Andrew Carnegie and so he would stop at all these Carnegie libraries and see what books they had there weren't at the other libraries and he would read these books he would devour them and so so then he sat down and he at that point he didn't yet have his office separate from his house and so this was the the early 1950s and he started getting an idea he was writing stories short stories about repression political repression repression of thought and another short stories about that and those are collected together in a book called the pleasure to burn which is we came out recently and it was and I've got it in the bookcase here and it it sort of republishes all of those embryonic stories that led to Fahrenheit 451 but but finally one day ray went at Royce library at UCLA in the basement back then you could rent typewriters I think was a dime for a half-hour was on a timer and so Ray went to UCLA and over a course of just a little over a week I think was nine days he wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 and in fact I think it cost nine dollars and dimes something like that and and it was an amazing amazing feat of brilliance to write this novel so quickly and in fact there's a plaque in the basement at Royce hall that commemorates this in this spot Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 and Ray actually gave me a photo of that and signed it to me and but the first iteration of Fahrenheit 4.51 was shorter and different from the final novel that emerged and this is actually the first publication of Fahrenheit 451 in any form this is galaxy galaxy magazine and Ray signed this to me in the interior page and and so it came out first as this issue of galaxy magazine and then Ray felt it needed expansion it needed more depth and so he reworked it made it longer and then it was published in a new magazine that was just starting out out of Chicago called Playboy so I was actually serialized I think in three issues of Playboy and then they wanted to publish it as a book of course and so but the interesting thing was there and and if you ever come across the first edition of Fahrenheit 451 you'll find something intriguing about that that's different from all the later editions and they're in the first edition of Fahrenheit 4-5-1 there's the novel but then it's followed by two novellas of other stories by Ray and you say well what the hell is that about he told me here's what's going on ray had published of the Martian Chronicles with it with us with a certain publisher and he owed them his second book but at the same time Ian ballantine who was a very great book editor and publisher had an idea for a new a new line of books called ballantine books a new science fiction line and because the dilemma was that if you wanted to get book reviews you had to publish and hard and cover that was the ritzy they is the esteemed way of publishing the literary way of publishing but but hardcovers did not sell as well as paperbacks and generally the hardcover would come out then you'd wait for a year for the paperback edition and then it would come out and it would be it would sell well hopefully and you would get most of your money from that but for writers it wasn't great because it was sort of a lost leader to get those reviews and then you waited year yeah and then whatever however many month that matter of months it took the publisher to send you your royalties before you would actually see reasonable money but Ballantine Ian ballantine had this brilliant idea which was publishing the hardcover and paperback editions simultaneously so the hardcover would get the reviews the paperback would sell well and get the writers their money so so very very much wanted to try this experiment as did his agent on Congdon and but they but the next book was owed to the other publisher stayed a brilliant idea they said well Fahrenheit 451 is a short novel anyway so why don't we group that pair that with two other stories publish it as a short story collection or a collection of stories let us say and then we can kind of slip it by that contractual agreement and so that's what they did so and and and in terms of cover artists Ray had a great cover artist named John Mulaney who was a phenomenal artist and J Brand actually seen a painting in an art gallery when his younger a young writer just starting out and it was of a train heading along a track to nowhere a bridge across a bridge it's a wonderful painting and an r/a couldn't afford it so he waited breathlessly for the the art show to end and then when the gallery show ended that painting thankfully didn't sell any contact with the arts directly because the gallery took a 50% cut so ray knew he could get it for half price directly the artist and and he actually had to pay that out in installments - but but but when he and I were friends when he was in his 80s and 90s he actually took me into his living room and showed me that wonderful painting which he still had it was phenomenal but but but Joe Mannino became his artist his throughout his career and illustrated the Martian Chronicles and illustrated the Halloween dream many other things and and he Illustrated this fabulous cover this is the first paperback edition of Fahrenheit 451 signed to me by Ray of course and you can see it's a fireman in a suit of armor made of pages book pages whose burning and there's Ray's picture on the back a young writer he was in his 30s when he wrote Fahrenheit 451 and this is the first edition hardcover there it is and you can see it has a different but similar illustration by Joe Mullaney and then here's again the picture of Ray and here is first page and there's Ray's signature you can see it there to me and and it's great just as one of my great treasures and you can see here's the title page and it says table of contents Fahrenheit 451 the playground and the rock cried out so there's three stories and each of these is illustrated by Joe mignon II so there's this wonderful pen and ink drawing of the fireman so this is a fabulous fabulous treasure and I'm so glad to have it and but so but so ray told me a lot a lot of things about Fahrenheit four or five one among them that the title he was trying to think of a temperature and he's thinking about the temperature book paper burned out and he just couldn't find it anywhere he was he called you know all these different you know sources that should be should have known and they didn't know the library it said for the research you know research librarian and all of that and finally had a brainstorm he said well I'll call the fire station who better would know what temperature it burns at so called fire chief of the local fire station they said write in a book what temperature does paper burn at and the the fire chief said well hold on a second I'll check and he went away for a moment and came back and he said uh 451 degrees Fahrenheit and Ray said thank you very much now where he told me that you didn't know if the guy had just you know taken a moment away from phone you know kind of pulled it out of his ass and come back and just making up a number which is probable but but ray made it you know 451 degrees Fahrenheit that the temperature which paper burns but but 400 you know 451 Fahrenheit didn't seem a good title so he just flipped it made it Fahrenheit 451 that seemed a lot more punchy and interestingly enough in foreign editions it's still called Fahrenheit 451 even in countries where the U centigrade because centigrade wouldn't make sense as the title so it's it's Fahrenheit four five one everywhere and and it was it was a huge success it's it's a magnificent book if you haven't read it I urge you to read it in fact if you go on audible.com they have Ray Bradbury reading Fahrenheit 451 now Ray was elderly at that point he had had a stroke so he speaks a little haltingly but it's still wonderful to hear him read this spectacular book and and it's um you know he has he has Clarice McLellan this 17 year old girl walking with Montague the fireman who burns books in a future dystopic society where books are outlawed and I think he may have even written that scene where Clarice talks to Montague for the first time as the first scene because he said he wrote down the scene with Clarice and Montague and he just met Montague and Montague was a fireman who didn't want to be burning books anymore and he just took that journey with Montague to see where I would go and interestingly some of the names he used were names of pens and papers and pencils that were that were popular at the time so Montague was one of those Faber is one of those they're there a number of them in in the book and and and interestingly enough Clarisse McClelland in the various movie versions is always played by an adult and Ray always wished that they would cast a teenager to play her because again it would be accurate to the character into the book but that never sadly happened and but interestingly enough in 1966 they made a film if they finally made a film of Fahrenheit for 5-1 as I mentioned the book came out in 1953 now also funnily enough when the book came out my dad before I was born my dad was a fan of science fiction and when he read that for you know Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature which books burned he put a book in the oven turned it up to 451 it may have even been Fahrenheit 451 the book and he was very disappointing so it didn't burn at that temperature so I told this to Ray when we were when we become friends and Ray said well that was because he didn't based it oh great and I told my dad that my dad was very tickled but but so so in 1966 and movie came out of Fahrenheit 451 and this is the movie tie-in paperback of that Minh you can see Julie Christie and Oscar Verner the stars and Julie Christie plays two roles she plays Clarice McLellan as a short-haired woman and she plays Linda Montag's wife as a long-haired woman and and in the in the book that character named Millie and but in the movie she's named Linda and that's a I think good change and Ray told me also that there was one change in the movie that he wish he had thought of when he wrote the book which was that that in the in the movie Clarice McLellan appears at the end and she kind of helps the Midwife Montag into the this alternate society that that the book protesters have created and and he wishes that he had come up with that idea in the book cuz that is that's something that the movie did but the book did not even though we come upon that that alternate culture but in the in the book as well but Clarice is not part of that that that that scene so but but it's really interesting because it was the the film was directed by Francois Truffaut who was a French director did great films he had been a film write or writer about films a film critic before that and he wrote it he did a great book called Hitchcock Truffaut where I interviewed Hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock about his entire career I highly recommend it's a great book it was the template for the book that I did with Guillermo del Toro we both agreed we wanted our book to be like a conversation between the two of us like a Hitchcock Truffaut and that's ultimately what it turned out to be Guillermo del Toro's cabinet of curiosities you can buy that on Amazon and it's a wonderful book I'm very proud of it but but back to Fahrenheit 451 so Oscar Verner Julie Christie now Julie Christie was a big movie star at the time Oscar Verner had been in Truffaut films previously so he was he was in Jules and Jim which was a very successful film that Truffaut did in French of Oscar Verner was German and interestingly enough he had been in the ver mocked in Hitler's army in World War two sweet very well understood what it was like to be in a totalitarian society what it was like to be serving a totalitarian society not wanting to and so he was perfect for the role of Montag he deeply understood it and and there's a great melancholic from a great emotional and intellectual sensitivity and the book is very much about the and the film is very much about the love of books which permeates raise novel and it really I liked the film very much as did ray and the reason Julie Christie plays dual roles is because she was she was a big movie star at the time she done Doctor Zhivago things like that and and but there wasn't strong enough female role in Fahrenheit four five one to attract a big movie star so they said well why don't we give her both roles and that'll in the aggregate will be enough to attract her to star and that's what it did but the problem of course was they thought that just having her have a different hair color and different manner would be sufficient to make it seem like two people and that they thought well maybe if it seems so similar that idea would be two sides of you know femininity or or the better you know the the angel and the devil on Montag shoulder or whatever and but I remember when I was a kid I saw the movie when it came out I was a little kid and I was so confused I thought well doesn't he recognize that his wife his wife and just short hair when he leaves leaves at home and then he runs our indoor after he gets off the monorail why doesn't he recognize this is wife pretending to be someone else so I was totally confused by that by that when I was a kid and but so but I recommend Truffaut Fahrenheit 451 if you want to know who Truffaut is or what he looks like if you've ever seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind Francois Truffaut plays the French scientist in that movie and interestingly enough about Bob Balaban who plays his translator in that film didn't speak French and then the audition he pretended he did and then had to kind of fake it through the movie and which he does very persuasively but again I knew Bob Balaban from my gym interestingly enough and we had that conversation as well but the Truffaut is very effective in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and he was a wonderful director in Fahrenheit 451 is a wonderful movie it's got most great score by Bernard Herrmann who interestingly enough was you know the composer on Twilight Zone for which Ray Bradbury also wrote and buts what so if you haven't seen that film it's well worth your time and cyril cusack was a terrific actor british actor plays Beatty the fire chief who is the the dark the Dark Angel confronting Montague and the one who is sort of the the dark side of the of the firemen and and just wonderfully acted wonderfully written both in race book and in in the movie now subsequently ray wrote a play of Fahrenheit 451 and and I saw it and he expanded the role of Beatty in the play and in the play Beatty keeps a secret library and it's and he shows it to Montag and the library is just filled floor-to-ceiling with books and Montag is astonished and Beatty says it's not illegal to have books it's illegal to read them and he says I don't read them missus temptation put in front of me that I deliberately set it up that way so I can stay strong and it's a very good play it's it's one of rays better place I actually saw a very good production of it starring a young actor that I then cast in the radio play of magic time which Skye bought media has just recently released so but I met him when he played Montag and I said hey you want to be in magic time he said yeah and so he was one of my actors as well David Paulson and so so you know ray loved all of these different things he loved books TV shows movies radio old radio there's also two radio versions of Fahrenheit four or five one there's one that the CBC did and there's the one that the BBC did and you can probably find those on the internet a lot of that stuff is now on YouTube and so forth and even though the radio plays there's you can track them down I'm sure and they're they're very good they're there they're fun and entertaining but I think Oscar for me Oscar Varner is the best performance of Montag because he really gets into the the love of books books the addiction to books the the intellectual stimulation of books and rape you know predicted two things you know people talk about science fiction writers predicting the future and I'm very predicted not only wall screen televisions and this is back in 1953 and I wrote the book in 52 so back then TVs were about this big the screens 12-inch was a big screen but he had walls wall sighs televisions and he had VR where you'd have you'd have four walls with the television so the image would surround you and he also had what he called seashells that you were put in your ear and you could make phone calls and and that was of course you know like a bluetooth earpiece and so again Ray was being very predictive of the future but in terms of this does this topic future it was very interesting because another thing ray said to me was that 90 that often people think that this is a dystopian novel that this is dark pessimist novel Fahrenheit four or five one along lines of 1984 and he said no not at all 1984 was pessimistic and Fahrenheit 451 is optimistic because in 1984 the protagonist is destroyed by the state destroyed by by the forces of repression whereas in Fahrenheit four or five when there's hope and another element that's very interesting in Fahrenheit 45 one is the atomic bomb and the threat of nuclear war which is kind of always in the background and that was something that he was also very much living through as we all were during that period and so so if you haven't read Fahrenheit four or five one I urge you to it's it's one of the great novels of the 20th century just a spectacular piece of work and very great was always worried about sustaining a longer length in a short story because he wrote one short story a week for year after year after year you know 50 short stories a year and sold all of them are almost all of them and but with Fahrenheit for 5-1 he was able to sustain a novel brilliantly so and his prose style is spectacular and Montag is he really gets into the head set of that one thing that's never been dramatized is the mechanical hound which is one of Ray's great creations in that book but back in 66 they didn't have the technology now they would but sadly it's not in the new version of Fahrenheit 451 now there was another version of Fahrenheit for 5-1 that sadly never got made which I think would have been quite a good movie had had been made I was friends with Frank Darabont at one point and this is around when he was doing the Green Mile and he'd already done Shawshank Redemption which was a wonderful film again I recommend that if you haven't seen it but Frank was had written a draft of a movie version of Fahrenheit for five when I've read it and it's a very good draft it's a very very good script and in fact the librarian I suspect is based on Harlan Ellison the great science fiction writer of Star Trek in Outer Limits and many short stories and novels and because he talks exactly like Harlan there's a lot of idiosyncrasies to Harlan's way of talking and I know that Frank must know Harlan I never was able to run that by Frank and ask was this Harlan Ellison I think it was but but the actor that Frank wanted to play a Montague and he would have been spectacular as Montague was Matt Damon and Matt Damon wasn't available for two years he would have had to wait two years to to get Matt Damon and so he didn't he didn't you know lock him down and so sadly the movie never got made I I think he should have waited the two years and just shot the movie because I think it would have been a classic and and that script had the mechanical hound it actually had really loved that draft he thought it was a really really good script so now we finally get to this one pair and I for five one HBO Michael B Jordan Michael Shannon okey doke so talented actors very talented actors and Michael Shannon is a very good choice as Beatty and he has the melancholy and he has the anger and he has the sadness and he has the intellectual heft and he's he quotes books and he knows things and it clearly he's well-read even though books are illegal and this is again echoing Ray's book how Beatty is in the book there's by the way a great scene in true foes version where a woman they come upon a house full of books and there's an elderly woman and she she quotes a very interesting quotation and which Beatty knows and and then you know that's something horrendous which I which when you see the movie you'll know absolutely what that is they recreate that scene in the new version but not as effectively not nearly as effectively so let me just talk for a few minutes about the the new version it's directed by the the writer I believe the writer director of 99 homes which was another Michael Shannon film which is very very good sadly this is not as good this is not as good as the novel not as good as the Oscar van der film it strays from from the source material and in one way it had to because now we've got the computers now we've got the Internet physically burning books wouldn't remove books from our world because you could have literally thousands of books on a jump drive so the question then becomes well how do you obliterate that and so basically it had it has to deal with that and it does you know they're tracking down computers they're destroying them they're stopping the flow of books on the Internet all of that stuff but it's just kind of simplistic and heavy-handed there's twists and turns that are really well friends for instance they way the way they deal with Clarice McLellan she's played a sort of romantic interest for Montag really not needed you know he doesn't have a wife in this version he lives alone he his dad he's got back history with his dad a backstory with his dad that isn't in the book which isn't needed at all he and he's not really reading many books I mean they basically have him like like take one book which he maybe reads a few sentences of a few pages of whereas in in the book and in the movie that Truffaut did you know once he starts reading Montag just reads voraciously he's reading David Copperfield he's reading every book he can get his hands on it's growing and growing and growing to where his wife is just totally alarmed and pushed away and and it's the life of the mind it's the life of a mind ignited whereas in them in the new version he's barely being books at all he's like he's with Clarisse McClellan and she gives him a harmonica to play what the hell's our Monica this is a future that doesn't allow harmonicas and you know it's like and you get the feeling that the love of books that clearly Ray had and clearly Truffaut had that the the people who've made this new version they don't have that love of books and whether that's true or not I don't know but the character of Montag doesn't seem to be to have the love of books the writer of the script the write the director co-wrote it and and just they don't seem to have the love the love the love of books and and also whenever you see a hidden library in the Truffaut film the hidden libraries are impressive amazing and and in the in the in the in in this version it's a it's a few rock walls of shelves and the books are kind of higgledy-piggledy and stacked every which way and you know really realistically you know someone loves books and if they if they've treasures you know they would be cared for you see I mean even in my books I put the books face out that I was covers I love you know they're they're not all you know a slant and askew you know treated badly they're treated with respect and you know so so it just seems like even the set dressers don't love books don't understand the love of books and and then you know there's there's just the sense of it being dissonant the the the pieces don't quite add up and and it's just and at one point the book people have a test of Montag where they tell him to kill a fireman and again this is not in the source material this is not in the Truffaut film and it is antithetical to who these guys are and what they stand for and what they're standing against because a lack of sensitivity to life is is part of the oppressor and shouldn't be part of the oppressed should not be that shouldn't be the test he's given to kill someone so again for me you know and also as although I've seen Michael B Jordan and other roles where he's been had great sensitivity including Black Panther in this he just doesn't seem to quite have the sensitivity and this he doesn't quite seem to lock into the role with and it may be the problems of the script or the director but he just doesn't seem to have the emotional sensitivity that Oscar Verna had in the other version and again the Union you may see Fahrenheit for fun when I suspect if you saw for the the new movie version of Fahrenheit four or five without seeing the other versions without reading the book you probably would like it better than if you had read the book because the deviations are always seem like lesser choices and and Beatty is very good but again we've seen Michael Shannon in this kind of role a lot and I I personally like him in heroic roles because that plays against type he starting to get typecast including in gear Mo's movie he's excellent of course in that but but again he's starting to play sort of a similar note whether it's in Superman or shape of water or here there's kind of a he's a wonderful actor he's one of my favorite actors but but I hope he gets more variety of roles moving forward because because he has great great capability and empower and intelligence and sensitivity and all of that stuff so so you know at you know it so what I can say is everyone clearly worked hard everyone was trying no this is not you know someone just sloughing things off or you know not caring clearly everyone who made this film cares but and if it leads people to the book that great because that's ideally what Ray would have loved I don't think Ray would have liked this version for various reasons now now now the fact that Michael B Jordan is black is great again the more it opens up to possibility and variety and surprise the better ray I don't think Ray would have minded that at all I think that would have been fine but but it's just you know how how the cake Rises or fails to rise and in this case it's you know just not not entirely the satisfying meal that the book and the Truffaut film are to me so that's so that's the news from from the mister sci-fi mansion and and again you see a car if you see my car give me give me a call it's a blue Toyota but it says mr. sci-fi on the frame around the around the rear plate so watch mr. sci-fi on YouTube so anyway that's life and c'est la vie oh one last thing this is just one last super cool thing now ray ray when I have the many many many times I went to Ray's house he had this beautiful yellow house canary yellow house in Cheviot Hills which is a very nice part of Los Angeles West LA and and I pull up in my cars that's no longer here to that house and I would walk up the steps and go around the back and we would sit and raise Ray's office and or and filled with stuff from his career and we would talk and it's so many fun memories but sadly after we died the house was bought I wish I could have bought it I would have loved to have bought that house and it was demolished so one of Ray's friends went by as it was being demolished and he salvaged some pieces of Ray's house and he gave me one so this is this is Ray Bradbury's house this is a part of Ray Bradbury's house with that wonderful yellow yellow paint so so ray lives in our hearts he lives in our memories he lives in our minds he lives in this spectacular spectacular book and so redid if you haven't read it read it if you haven't read it read it again if you have and I'm so glad I got to know ray and be his friend so until next time mr. sci-fi will be doing mr. sci-fi about Space Command will be doing mr. sci-fi about the in the expanse soon and they're struggling to find a home now they've been Ansel by sci-fi I think you probably know that and so we'll talk really soon and if you haven't subscribed to mr. sci-fi I'm posting once a week about movies TV shows books all sorts of stuff that's it for now so talk soon bye guys

Channel: Mr. Sci-Fi

Views: 2,291

Keywords: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, HBO, dystopic, science fiction, Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther, Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro, Michael Shannon, Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Francois Truffaut, TV, television, showbiz, sci-fi, Syfy, fahrenheit 451 summary, fahrenheit 451 themes, farenheit 451 summary

Id: hEei_JGzRMQ

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Tue May 22 2018