Posted by Darth Dobbin at 12.19.232.3 on August 03, 2000 at 10:54:00:
((Please note- This question is for Kevin, or anybody else who read SEX & ROCKETS. If you have not read the book, I'm sure these questions come off as sounding like crazy gibberish. ))
Okay-
I understand that before FLETCH-mania swept the VA halls with the surprise annoucement of Miramax securing the rights, you were toying with the idea of giving a screen treatment to John Carter's SEX & ROCKETS, the chronicle of oddball mystic, aeronautics/rocketry pioneer and generally sad man Jack Parsons.
Phil "Chopper3" Mellor was amazingly kind enough to send me the book, and I found that it was, for the most part, a story which requires a **whole bunch** of pre-knowledge, about some really fringe stuff in the occult/secret society circles. As it turns out, I enjoyed it immensely,but for my own very specific reasons- it deals in a very dry and clinical matter about rituals and rites of the Ordo Templi Orientalis, Argentum Astrum, Crowley's Thelema Lodge, and the whole Theosophical movement of the 20s.. Most books and materials on this subject are so vague and intentionally "shadowy," and often contradictory about the intents and practices of the lodges that they become pointless. In SEX AND ROCKETS' case, it's "boringness" became a virtue, as it related all events in a very matter of fact, non-sensationalistic fashion...
(AFTER MY LENGTHY PREAMBLE, HERE BE THE QUESTIONS...)
1)In your intended treatment, how would you portray L. Ron Hubbard? History showed him to be, in this chapter of his life, kind of a sleazy con man and back-stabber. Beyond that, showing him to be actively participating in Ritual Sex Magick with another man, invoking Archangels, Babalonian dieties, and the like--and being a part of a ceremony which required masturbating onto a knife-- would be likely to ruffle feathers in the Scientology community.
2)While I am greatly interested in the whole Golden Dawn/Arthur Edward Waite/Alestair Crowley/Blavatsky intrigues, with the splitting and fueding societies and lodges, and their dubious (or noble?) intentions, I am part of an admitted minortity. Would you be worried that the subject material, by its very nature, would be way too fringe, even for the "art crowd?"
3)Who do you see playing Crowley? I'd go with a shaved bald Anthony Hopkins, if I could choose anybody. Dude has got, as they say in politics these days, *gravitas.*
4)What would the overall theme of the piece, as you see it, be? A duality between the spiritual and scientific aspects of the guy's life; or the parallel of them- an attempt on each front-both rocketry and magic- to overmaster the physical world to his will?
5)Is your interest in Parsons exclusive to him and his story, or did you have a "background" in being interested in the crazy turn of the century/20s mystics and their various takes on metaphysics?
6)How, ultimately, do you view him? Do you think he was misguided and delusional, or that he was aware of what was broken about himself, and that the "magick" was in attempts to honestly fix and heal himself?