By Acquaviva Productions is at work on a tribute doc to Ray Bradbury aiming for a December release. Titled Live Forever: A Ray Bradbury Odyssey, it will be narrated and co-produced by Joe Mantegna. Michael O’Kelly will direct. Deadline reports that the film will feature appearances by Edward James Olmos, Dennis Franz, Malcolm McDowell, and Hugh Hefner. (Playboy originally published Fahrenheit 451 in serialized form.)
I hope they add some members of the lit world to Live Forever, like Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Kelly Link, Junot Diaz, and so on. It would be odd to leave them out. As one commenter at Deadline notes, it would also be odd to leave out Ray Harryhausen since the two men were good friends. (Getting Spielberg wouldn’t be a bad idea either.)
Ray Bradbury has a special place in my heart as one of the writers who made me want to become a writer. You’ve probably heard that a lot, especially after all of the eulogies and remembrances: a middle schooler reads The Martian Chronicles or Something Wicked This Way Comes or R is for Rocket, and in that first encounter with Bradbury a fuse is lit. For me it was Dandelion Wine. I still believe in the invincible magic of new tennis shoes; he’s made it impossible to think otherwise.
It’s fitting that Bradbury first hits people around that age, because that’s when the imagination seems its hungriest and most fertile, and when your ability to dream is still unfettered. The idea is to keep that feeling alive; the idea is to follow his example: write a story a week (he dares you to write 52 bad ones), live in the library, collect metaphors, love what you do, and, because you’re alive, run.
[Via Deadline]