The Man-Thing Show

By Daniel Dickholtz

From Fangoria#242, April 2004

Scripter Hans Rodionoff waded right into the assignment to cinematically update Marvel Comics's muck monster.

Somewhere deep in the marshes of the Everglades, where light can barely pierce the shroud of leaves and vines and moss, where the tangled roots and twisted branches threaten to choke out reason and where unknown beasts glide through the murky waters, there lurks a creature not quite of any world.

Once a scientist developing a super- soldier serum, he is now composed of the muck and vegetation of the swamp into which he was forced to escape from enemy agents, transformed by his own unstable formula. Forevermore a silent Man-Thing, he shambles through the growth, meting out savage justice to all-too-human antagonists and occult opposition alike. Lacking his once prodigious intellect, he is attracted to displays of strong emotion, and as anyone followed Marvel's horror comics is aware, "Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch."

Perhaps that is why he has remained mired in mainstream obscurity while his more loquacious competitor, DC Comics' Swamp Thing, has enjoyed multimedia stardom.

Fortunately for Man-Thing, Hollywood doesn't feel that kind of fear anymore. Or at least, screen and comics writer Hans Rodionoff doesn't. Although Man-Thing hasn't appeared regularly in ages, Rodionoff remembers well the power the creature had back in his heyday in the 1970s power he could wield again.

"When I was a kid," he recalls, "I used to have a bunch of these Power Book and Record sets. They were comics with a 45- rpm record in the back that had the whole story acted out with sound effects. For my birthday one year, my grandma gave me one called Night of the Laughing Dead, and the cover showed Man-Thing carrying a dead clown in his arms. Clowns freaked me out back then, so I was already predisposed to be scared out of my wits. I only got to listen to that record one time. My dad heard the gruesome noises and wailing screams through the wall, stormed into my room and yanked the record off the player, and I never saw that book and record again until the magic of eBay."

His father may not have appreciated the creature's assault, but the young Rodionoff was fascinated. He immersed himself not just in the muck monster's macabre meanderings, but in the exploits of all of Marvel's horrific "heroes." Over the years, his affect ion for the comics never waned. Having become a screenwriter with Sucker (which he also directed), Saint Sinner and The Hollow to his credit, he was visiting Marvel Studios to discuss his script about one of their other protagonists from the blood-soaked '70s (Werewolf by Night) when "the conversation swayed into the swamp." Once he emerged, it was with two new assignments: a screenplay for a Man-Thing feature film (a co-venture with Artisan, later bought by Lions Gate, which releases the movie on video June 14 after an April 30 Sci-Fi Channel premiere) and a script for a three-part comic-book miniseries prequel.

However, despite his affinity for the character, Rodionoff found that a number of changes had to be made in bringing this particular creature to the big screen and to a new audience. Once, Man-Thing was a muscular, moss-coated hulk with unblinking crimson orbs and tendrils in place of a nose and mouth. The gleaming red eyes remain, but gritted teeth can now be seen behind a tangle of branches, and his form now seems comprised of anything and everything that can be found in a swamp, including mouldering corpses. Where before the muck monster was willing to simply pit his brute strength against alligators, heavy machinery and preternatural powerhouses, he now seems to be the very essence of his environment, commanding its growth to carry out his vu. Originally, Ted Sallis was a scientist who sacrificed himself to his own] untested formula; in his new incarnation, it's suggested that Sallis was Native American who may have found' more arcane way of summoning up the Man-Thing.

"Because I grew up reading Man-Thing comics, I approached the character with nothing but admiration respect," Rodionoff notes. "Even with that approach, it was necessary to have the Man-Thing's new incarnation deviate slightly from the established mythology I would describe the Man-Thing as an ancient entity; a malignant force of nature. It's Lovecraftian, it's alien, it's something that we wil1 never be able to fully comprehend. And if we could see into its mind, even just for a brief moment, we would instantly go insane.

"I guess what I'm hoping," he continues, "is that the other die-hard fans will embrace this as an evolution. Horror is a dynamic, mercurial genre. People love to be scared, but those scares have to be immediate and relevant to the time period. The 1970s psychedelic creature I grew up with needs to evolve in order to reach a new generation, just like Blade evolved from his original incarnation In Tomb of Dracula.'

However, since Man-Thing doesn't act as openly as he once did the film's story naturally must focus on the humans who cross his path. The primary protagonist is Kyle Williams (Matthew Le Naves), the new sheriff in Bywater; Louisiana.' Rodionoff explains. 'He is brought in by a local developer named Frederic Schist (Jack Thompson) to replace the prior sheriff, who has gone missing. Rene Lakoque and Pete Horn, both local Native Americans, are important to the plot as well. There are also a handful of townsfolk in Bywater who play key roles.'

Aside from that, there is little more that Rodionoff will discuss about the plot of the film, which The Lawnmower Man's Brett Leonard directed in Australia. "When I was growing up, the best previews for horror movies didn't really give anything away,' he notes. 'They were terrifying because they just left you with half-formed thoughts and Images. By the time you finally got around to seeing the movie, some of the images had already been in your head and given you nightmares for weeks. Because that's a really effective way of building anticipation, I'm reluctant to give too much away prematurely

One thing I can tell you is that it was inspired by Adventures into Fear #16 one of Man-Thing's earliest appearances. I read that particular comic book as a kid. That story resonates so strongly with me because it reminds me of John Frankenheimer's mutant-bear movie Prophecy. That film made me afraid to zip up my sleeping bag all the way for many years.'

Developing this feature, however; proved to be a more pleasant experience for the scenarist. Things went smoothly with Marvel and Leonard. Though Rodionoff admits he has 'yet to see the final cut.' Still, he says, the cinematography of the swamp is beautiful and eerie, very atmospheric. I've also seen footage of the creature, and I'm happy with the way it looks. That's always a big concern with a movie like this.'

Man- Thing Is part of an arrangement Marvel made with Artisan to develop their lesser-known characters into stars of lower-budgeted flicks (The Punisher was the first result). That, though had little immediate impact on Rodionoff 'Thankfully, I was blissfully unaware of the budgetary constraints when I started writing. Marvel encouraged me to focus on the story so the mood and tone of the script became my primary concerns. Once the movie was budgeted, quite a few things- a couple of elaborate death scenes-were cut from the original draft'

Fortunately; certain of those elements could be resurrected when it came time for the scribe to develop the movies four-color prequel. 'Actually, the moments that I saved from the feature and put into the comic were not the death scenes; they were things that sought to explain the Man. Things nature,' Rodionoff says. 'There's a moment in issue #2 where Nathan Mehr (the series' protagonist inadvertently discovers the name 'Man-Thing.' That was a moment that had origin ally happened in the feature and was cut. The death scenes that occur in the comic are unique to it; the ones that were cut from the movie haven't been seen yet, and I'm keeping them under my hat for future use.'

In the Kyle Hotz-drawn miniseries, which debuted last summer, Mehr, an insurance investigator; comes to Bywater to look Into Schist Constructions w'I.4mt of vandalism to their equipment and a traumatized security guard's worker's compensation claim. Although he's convinced there must be some natural cause for the rapid tree growth that mangled the equipment, he's stunned when plants suddenly rip through the guard right before his eyes. The higher the body count and number of disappearances rise, the more the sheriff and the mayor try to block the unflappable Mehr's investigation, one already complicated by whispers about what's really at the root of it all.

'The prequel is meant to act as a bridge between the old Man-Thing mythos and this newer incarnation,' the writer reveals. 'I wanted originally to do a Tales of the Man-Thing series that would jump forward and backward in time in relation to the movie's events. Some of the stories would effectively be prequels, some would be sequels and some would be concurrent to the film. The story that the editors chose is a fairly direct lead-in. The movie picks up a month or two after its events.'

Even with little publicity for the movie to build awareness of the project, the comic sold well enough to warrant a trade paperback collection that also includes the noted story from Adventures into Fear #16. 'We were all pleasantly surprised by the reaction,' Rodionoff says. 'There were many people who weren't interested at all in the Man-Thing as a character who were pulled into the swamp by the comic. I've been handing out copies to every 10-year-old kid I meet. I'm curious to see how they react, knowing nothing about the old continuity If I can get a few kids excited about Man-Thing. I will feel like I've accomplished my goal.'

Then there's Werewolf by Night, which at last report is to be directed by John (Black Roses) Fasano. 'I was definitely a fan of Jack Russell,' the titular lanthrope. Rodionoff says 'Like a lot of things, the influence goes back to my childhood. I was sure the woods around my house were filled with werewolves. I was also convinced that the only way I could keep them from rending me limb from limb was to become one of them. But obviously, I didn't want to become a werewolf and eat my parents. I really wanted to believe that it was possible to be a cogent werewolf in control of what you were doing when you were in lupine form. When I picked up my first Werewolf by Night comic book, I saw the monster as a hero for the first time.

The story; he relates, is about a werewolf who's trying to come to terms with his existence. It's a Jekyll-and-Hyde allegory about a man who is torn by the constant conflict of his rational and primal selves. That's the general concept of the comic books, and the movie is faithful to that."

Although another writer (Chocolate's Robert Nelson Jacobs) was brought in to further develop the script, Rodionoff notes that his own work on Werewolf by Night is still 90 percent intact. From a structural standpoint, it's still basically the same script, just with more heart. I wrote a very visceral action-horror hybrid. Robert Nelson Jacobs came on board to amplify the romantic elements. Our two voices actually worked well together. Robert found some really poignant, heartbreaking moments in the story."

Rodionoff's professional connection with comics actually began with a failed attempt to work with John Carpenter. A devotee of H.P. Lovecraft since he was 7, Rodionoff devised a story in which "the slithering horrors and monstrous elder gods that H.P. Lovecraft wrote about were actually part of his daily reality. Howard is put in the unenviable position of being the guardian of the Necronomicon and humanity's last hope of survival."

Carpenter liked the concept but had moved on to other things by the time Rodionoff finished his first draft. Inspired by the backup story in the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics minis- cries, in which H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain, Lovecraft's Randolph Carter and others battle creatures straight out of the Cthulhu Mythos, Rodionoff sought to convert his script into four-color form.

A meeting with writer/artist Keith Giffen soon led to Vertigo editor Karen Berger's approval of the project as a hardcover graphic novel drawn by Ennque Breccia. A softcover edition of Lovecraft came out last November, and now Rodionoff is "slowly putting the pieces together for a cinematic version of that story. I'm taking my time with it, because I want to make sure that the movie comes out as well as the graphic novel."

None of his current scriptwriting gigs are anything Rodionoff could have expected he would be doing as an adult. "In fact, up until I was about 14 years old, I was fully planning on being a comic-book artist," he reveals. "It wasn't until I got into art school that I discovered filmmaking."

However, his first movie, Sucker, did not turn out to be as rewarding an experience as he had hoped. "I busted my credit cards and convinced my friends to suffer through 10 days of hell with me," he recalls. I would describe Sucker as a crash course in filmmaking that got distributed by Troma. Sucker taught me that directing a movie can swallow up years of your life. I realized that I could have written several screenplays in the time that it took me to produce and direct an independent film. I turned my focus toward screenwriting, and eventually it became primary"

One of his early efforts was The Hollow, a latter-day- sequel to Washington Irving's 18th-century tale of Ichabod Crane's encounter with the Headless Horseman. "Several years ago, I spent the week before Halloween in the town of Sleepy Hollow. The actual town is a fairly typical upstate New York suburb. There is a Sleepy Hollow High School, and it's known as the 'Home of the Horsemen. Every Halloween, the town throws an event called 'Legend Weekend,' which includes a hayride through the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. All of the high-school students hide in the graveyard and jump out at the trailer as it drives by. I remember thinking that if the Horseman ever came back, things would get real ugly real fast. I came home and wrote the script. A producer at Sony bought it, and we were getting ready to show it to directors when Paramount announced that it was going to make Sleepy Hollow with Tim Burton."

Originally set to be directed by Alex (Legend of the Phantom Rider) Erkiletian, who co-starred in Sucker, The Hollow was ultimately helmed by Kyle Newman, with a cast including Kevin (Wrong Turn) Zegers and Stacy Keach. It debuted in edited form on the ABC Family channel last year and is set for video release in October by First Look.

Rodionoff came in much later in the development process for Saint Sinner, a Clive Barker Sci Fi movie in which a young monk from a bygone time journeys to the present in pursuit of a pair of demons. "Doris Egan had written several drafts of the teleplay, and she was also doing work on Smallville and Dark Angel," Rodionoff recalls. "When they hired Josh Butler as director, he had a lot of things he wanted to implement, and Doris just couldn't do it in the given time frame. I was brought on about a month before the cameras started rolling, so it was definitely a squeeze. It was also my first time working for television, so I don't know if this is typical, but we went through about six drafts in three weeks. Writing for a movie that has already been budgeted and is in preproduction is very different. There were a lot of things in the original script that I thought were going to be cut or censored. To my surprise the network was adamant about 'keeping all of Clive's more disturbing and 'moist' setpieces.

The writer was reunited with Barker's production team when he was called upon to piece together a screenplay dealing with Tortured Souls, the monstrous action- figure line Barker created for McFarlane Toys. Although even Rodionoff felt the figures bear a passing resemblance to Pinhead and his Hell raiser cohorts. The scenarios quickly found that Barker had quite a different vision for these characters. Clive had already laid out the mythology and basic story structure. Rodionoff notes. "Each figure from the original series came with a novella Clive had writ ten. I used those and Clive's outline as the basis for my screenplay.

Going back to my theory on keeping people in suspense, I don't want to give away too many details, but there's already such a huge preawareness of this project just by having the action figures out there. So I don't think I'll be spoiling anything when I say that you're going to see some of those creatures in the rotting flesh. The basic plot concerns a man who decides to exchange his wife for a demon. The switch sends his wife to a place called Primordium where she must battle her way across a hostile landscape to get home.

However, since turning in his initial drafts, Rodionoff has had little to do with the project, certainly not since Clive made the decision that he wants to direct. The last that I heard Clive was rewriting the script and getting ready to turn in his draft to the studio.

Still. Rodionoff has other works in various stages of development, including one that might very well not involve pictures, moving or otherwise. "I've got an idea that I'm outlining right now as a novel" he says. There's probably a movie and a graphic novel there, but I want to present it first as a novel. It's one of those scares that burrows. I want to write something that will embed itself deeper than anything I've done before, and a novel is the best way to do that He has also written (with Ray Fawkes) a six-part fright series for DC Comics' Vertigo line called Memory ore (debuting in June), about a girl who loses her memory and tries to save loved ones she can barely recall from a murderous creature"

"I like working in the horror genre because it's constantly evolving and changing, and right now it's going through a renaissance. Rodionoff says. Horror films and comic books have experienced a huge resurgence lately in popularity and quality I believe that's directly related to the current economic and political climate of the world. From a historical perspective, there's always a rise in horror-based material after a time of social crisis. When people are forced to watch horrific events on the news, they start craving an outlet for those emotions. When it's done right, horror provides that catharsis."