Dwayne Johnson’s Subsequent Film Is From The Greatest Children Writer You have By no means Learn

Dwayne Johnson, who is usually identified for his outsized wrestler’s physique, was lately seen in public far skinnier than he has ever been. It was dramatic sufficient to note, and Leisure Weekly requested him about it on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. He famous that he was truly slimming down in preparation for an upcoming position, that of a 70-year-old man who befriends a rooster. Plainly Johnson will probably be re-teaming with his “The Smashing Machine” director, Benny Safdie, to work on an uncommon, kid-friendly mission within the type of “Lizard Music,” a movie primarily based on the guide of the identical identify by Daniel Pinkwater. Apparently, Safdie pitched the thought to Johnson after wrapping “Smashing Machine,” and the latter instantly stated he needed to play the Hen Man.

Now, Pinkwater is not precisely a family identify, however youngsters of the early Eighties could know him nicely. Pinkwater, now 83, has been authoring books for youngsters and younger adults because the Nineteen Seventies, they usually have at all times been weirdly whimsical and delightfully odd. He is perhaps finest identified for his 1977 guide “The Hoboken Hen Emergency,” a narrative a few younger boy who by accident buys a stay six-foot rooster for his household’s Thanksgiving meal. The boy and the rooster bond and turn into mates, though chaos breaks out in Hoboken after the rooster breaks unfastened and runs amok. “The Hoboken Hen Emergency” was tailored into an obscure TV film in 1984, marking the primary and solely time considered one of Pinkwater’s books has been tailored to the display screen so far. “Lizard Music” would be the second.

If Johnson’s announcement of “Lizard Music” was your first publicity to Pinkwater, learn beneath for an extra primer. The in need of it? Pinkwater is the very best creator you have not but found.

“Lizard Music,” printed in 1976, is a few 10-year-old boy named Victor who’s left alone at house for every week. His mother and father are off on a wedding rebuilding retreat, and his annoying teenage sister goes to be shacking up with a boyfriend. It was printed at a time when this sort of neglect was frequent, so Victor will probably be nice. Additionally, Pinkwater understands that youngsters make the very best discoveries when left to their very own units, so he incessantly writes tales of youngsters who’re distant from grownup supervision. 

Victor is a bizarre, nerdy child who loves Walter Cronkite and late-night tv. With out supervision, he stays up tremendous late watching TV and falls asleep throughout an after-hours film. When he awakens, he sees an eerie new TV present about lizards taking part in musical devices. He assumes it was a dream, however then he begins to see proof round city that the lizard present was actual. He even befriends an area eccentric, the Hen Man, they usually examine the lizard present collectively. In time, the pair uncover {that a} species of clever reptiles — all named Reynold — resides on a mysterious, mist-shrouded island simply off the coast of New Jersey.

All of that is offered as wholly matter-of-fact by Pinkwater. He is a really down-to-earth creator, and his descriptions of oddball issues really feel pure and interesting. Pinkwater is merely imaginative. One may by no means accuse him of following authorial tendencies. 

Different hit Pinkwater books embody 1979’s “Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars,” 1990’s “Borgel,” and two sequels to “The Hoboken Hen Emergency” titled “Searching for Bobowicz” and “The Artsy-Smartsy Membership” (each printed in 2006). Pinkwater beforehand wrote about his early ambitions to turn into an artist in his 1991 autobiography “Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights,” and “Artsy-Smarty” appears to be primarily based on the inventive rules he discovered in class. Children must be extra artistic, he is argued.

Johnson, as talked about earlier, will probably be taking part in the Hen Man within the “Lizard Music” movie adaptation, and he is doubtlessly signing up for a profession in a Daniel Pinkwater related universe. The Hen Man relies on an actual avenue performer that Pinkwater encountered on the streets of Chicago within the Fifties. He was a tall man in a tattered coat who wore a stay rooster on his head, hidden below a big hat. After the character’s look in “Lizard Music,” the Hen Man would later seem in Pinkwater’s 1983 novel “The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Demise,” considered one of my favourite books.

“Snarkout Boys” is about two 12-year-old youngsters who invent the game of Snarking Out. That’s, they get up in the course of the night time whereas their mother and father are nonetheless asleep, sneak out of the home, get on a bus, and go to the Snark Theater, a repertory movie show that operates for twenty-four hours a day and exhibits a brand new double-bill day by day. They ultimately get caught up in a kidnapping plot that includes an enormous radioactive avocado. The Hen Man is simply a supporting participant, although, as he exhibits as much as information the younger protagonists by the weird nightlife of town of Baconburg. There was additionally a sequel printed in 1984 titled “The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror,” a werewolf guide. Brent Spiner of “Star Trek” fame as soon as performed a key character in an audio rendition of “Snarkout Boys,” however that adaptation is troublesome to seek out.

Pinkwater was married to his spouse Jill till her demise in 2022, and he or she illustrated a number of of his books. In addition they have been each enormous dog-lovers and printed a canine obedience guide collectively. Pinkwater is a skilled artist, briefly lived with a cult (!), and as soon as studied to be a therapist. He is a good lover of meals (he is fairly a big man) and infrequently consists of in depth descriptions of tasty edibles and feedback on what it is prefer to be fats within the fashionable world. His velvety clean voice could possibly be heard for a few years on NPR, contributing to “All Issues Thought-about.”

When you’re not accustomed to Pinkwater, now’s the time to vary that.