Ronnie Rocket

Started by Ghostboy, October 16, 2004, 09:42:37 PM

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Ghostboy

I just discovered that the Ronnie Rocket screenplay is online. Has anyone else read it? It's completely bizarre...moreso than any Lynch film since Eraserhead. In fact, its very much an extension of the world Lynch created in that film.

It's a little hard to read at times, as it only bares a scant similarity to normal screenplay format...but it's pure Lynch, all the way through. Maybe he'll actually get to make it someday....

MacGuffin

Quote from: GhostboyMaybe he'll actually get to make it someday....

Quote from: In antother thread, MacGuffinRonnie Rocket was a screenplay originally written by Lynch and possibly to star Michael Anderson (The Man From Another Place in "Twin Peaks" and the Woodsman (Twin #1) in " Industrial Symphony #1"), who would have played Ronnie. This was the first film Lynch offered CIBY 2000 as a part of his former three picture deal, but they elected to pass on it.

More information from Ann Kroeber, the late Alan Splet's (Lynch's sound designer) wife:

"Actually Ronnie Rocket was written LONG before David ever set eyes on Michael Anderson. The first RR script I read was written before "The Elephant Man" was made. He used to talk with my late husband (Alan Splet) and I , any chance he could get, about Ronnie during breaks of shooting "The Elephant Man." Ronnie Rocket was the subject that was near and dear to his heart."

"Ronnie scripts have gone through all sorts of permutations over the years. I suspect that "Ronnie Rocket" is David's most thought about story and may just never be made not because that production company didn't want to shoot it, they and several others were willing, but David wasn't."
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Ronnie Rocket (Tip Filmjahrbuch 1985)

"Lynch: Yes, I was asked to do "Ronnie Rocket" for him [Coppola]. I wrote that prior to  "The Elephant Man' ; it was meant to follow "Eraserhead". I still love the story, but it`s obvious that it still needs a little work. I`ve just recently had a couple of new ideas.

TIP: Is it still the script that I read for, five years ago?

Lynch: No it`s entirely different, more popular.

TIP: A more commercial version of "Eraserhead' or simply easier to understand?

Lynch: Much more easy to understand and funnier. It`s got a lot of humour, an absurd kind of humour. It`s a rock`n`roll movie in a way.

TIP: Which kind of music?

Lynch: I exactly know which kind of music it is. It´s difficult to describe, you know, it doesn`t exist yet, but it´s based on 50s Rockabilly. Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent...

TIP: So Coppola wanted to produce the movie.

Lynch: Yes. I had an office at his studio, and he said: "When do you come over and tell me the story of Ronnie Rocket?"

TIP: Tell?

Lynch: Yes, Francis is a strange guy. He wanted to sit down with his eyes closed and I was to tell him the story like a bedtime story."
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In the early nineties, Ronnie Rocket was to be produced by Ciby 2000 but it was dropped in favour of Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, the cast would have included Michael J. Anderson, and Isabella Rossellini: "I love the script, it`s simply great - very surreal, very funny, very strange, very emotive and in a way very touching as well. My role is just a minor one - but very funny. You never know what David is up to."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

NEON MERCURY

Quote from: MacGuffin
Lynch: Yes, Francis is a strange guy. He wanted to sit down with his eyes closed and I was to tell him the story like a bedtime story."

oh my ..thats funny as sh*t man.
i love this guy... 8)


as  for RR..i heard that is crazy sh*t but  i didnt know a screenplay was online.....thanks for the info GB and Mac.............i'll read it when i get the chance..

mogwai

can anyone give me a short synopsis of the script? thanks.

Ghostboy

Quote from: mogwaican anyone give me a short synopsis of the script? thanks.

From Lynch on Lynch:

"I got one call early on to come into a studio and, you know, talk. And in the talk they asked me what I wanted to do. And I told them I wanted to do Ronnie Rocket. And they said, 'What is it about?' Since I don't like to say too much about something, especially when it's something strange or abstract, I told them basically it was about electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair. And a few more things. They were very polite, but I never, you know, got a call back."

His synopsis pretty much sums it up. In more detail...it's about these two mad doctors who take a hideously deformed hospital patient and reconstruct him into the aforementioned three-foot tall man with red hair, and they dub him Ronnie Rocket. He runs on electricity, and ends up joining a rock band because he has such a beautiful and bizarre singing voice. Simultaneously, a detective investigates a man named Hank Bartlett who has a strange monopoly on the city's electricity.

There are some pretty stunning sequences in the script. If it ever gets made, it'll be like nothing else ever seen before.

ono

According to this interview from Jan. 2000, Lynch is/was trying to turn Ronnie Rocket into a graphic novel.  No clue whether that's still true now.

Pubrick

Quote from: some unattributed source"I love the script, it`s simply great - very surreal, very funny, very strange, very emotive and in a way very touching as well."
that's a perfect description of the script, without really saying anything about it.

and ghostboy, it's Hank Bartells.. i think maybe u've been visited by one too many black trucks  :wink:

what can i say, i had heard this project mentioned but never thought of looking for the script. so i'm thankful for this link, cos really, i just spent the whole (sun)day reading it, and then re-reading parts of it. some truly fantastic sequences described in it. it'd be his most violent, hilarious, creepy, bizarre, shocking, and above all, intriguing movie ever.

u can see traces of it in all his movies, i think. definitely Wild at Heart (the way ppl talk, among other things, just brilliant), and parts of Mulholland Drive (the dreams taking over), and Lost Highway (the darkness). and of course eraserhead (so grimy).

this beautiful thing needs to happen.. this is the way i believe.
under the paving stones.

Ghostboy

The reason I went and found the script in the first place was research, sort of, for this/ Plus I just really wanted to read it and had never really thought about how it might just be online, at the other end of a google search...

Just Withnail

I'm thirty pages into this, and can't get over how funny it is, much funnier than usual Lynch.

Brazoliange

I read this a few weeks ago and forgot to post. Amazing fucking script. I think a graphic novel would be a HUGE waste of its potential though.

--And I hope he didn't edit it, it looked perfect to me  :yabbse-undecided:
Long live the New Flesh