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paleomnesis) wrote2023-10-20 02:32 am
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Nightmare - Cornell Woolrich (Novella)
- Cliff Dodge
- Vincent Hardy
I've been on a major Cornell Woolrich kick this year, ran across this, and instantly fell in love .While it has been filmed twice, once with DeForest Kelley in his film debut and again in 1956 with Edward G. Robinson, neither has given me the sheer joy that I felt upon reading this novella. It's the story of a mild-mannered guy named Vince who has a dream that he murders a man in an octagonal mirrored room and wakes up to find that he's got scratches on his wrist and a key. Wondering about his sanity, he enlists the help of Cliff, a cop and his brother-in-law. Cliff goes from doubting Vince to thinking he's a cold-blooded killer to saving his life when he tries to kill himself to saving his life again when the real killer, an evil hypnotist named Fleming, tries to get him to drown himself. But everything's fine at the end, Cliff is standing by Vince's side, reassuring him that he'll be there every step of the way, and it ends with the lines “we went in together.”
>
Prompts:
Dead Again (1991)
- Amanda Sharp | Grace
- Margaret Strauss
- Mike Church
- Roman Strauss (Dead Again)
Oh, where to start with this amazing movie?. An amnesiac heroine showing up at an orphanage where the heroic P.I. grew up and they instantly feel connected, but how to cure her memory issues? Well, how about Derek Jacobi showing up to randomly suggest hypnotherapy and past life regression, which seems super sketchy, but hey it works, because black and white flashbacks kick in and we find out that a murder happened forty years ago where a guy supposedly murdered his wife, and what? They're also played by Branagh and Thompson? Oh, hey,, there's Robin Williams as a street psychiatrist named Cozy Carlisle and Andy Garcia playing the younger version of the reporter that supposedly the husband whispered the truth to (but turned out just to be kissing him because petty revenge?) And then, the part that hooked me for life, when Mike, the P.I., finally says screw it, I'll get hypnotized and figure out if I'm the murderer since obviously I was the husband and now my love interest thinks I'm going to kill her, it turns out, nope, he wasn't. He was the wife! That's right, canonical reincarnated gender swap! It was beautiful and brilliant!
So yes, I'd love something that deals with the ramifications of that. The movie sort of just ends with a happy ending and presumably the modern version of the couple living out the life they should have had, but I really feel it glosses over quite a bit, like the fact that technically, they don't really forget who they were in the past life, given that Amanda is probably still making creepy scissor sculptures and Mike kind of just killed someone (karmic self defense, as Cozy would say). That being said, you do not have to include all the characters, but I would like at least one of either Margaret or Mike and one of either Roman or Amanda. If that means the canonical pairings, cool, but if you decide to have Margaret interact with Amanda, or Mike with Roman, also cool (I also ship them in any and all combinations, including some sort of deeply implausible foursome).
DNWs: No animal harm, extreme underage, body fluids (blood is fine), focus on unrequested pairings involving nominated characters (mentions of past canon relationships are fine). No permanent character death of Mike or Amanda.
Prompts:
Mike and Amanda keep having memories of Roman and Margaret and things are slipping in and out of reality. Perhaps they start to identify more with their past selves and find themselves acting like them, including the jealousy, possessiveness, and Amanda switching from sculpture to writing music.
Fun with dreams, hypnotism, or anything else you can think of to get the modern characters to meet up with their past selves. Maybe Roman's in his cell mourning the death of Margaret and somehow connects with Mike, or Margaret seeks to warn Amanda about danger to her lover.
And yes, I'd definitely be down if you want to throw all four characters in and just start really getting surreal and symbolic with blurring identities and the mind screw of falling in love with someone that has your face (it's not narcissism, it's just neo-noir).
- Julia Russell | Bonny Castle
- Luis Antonio Vargas
It's the one where Angelina Jolie is hot and Antonio Banderas is hot and then they have sex and they're hot and everyone gets to stare very intensely at each other. So he's got money and she's a mail-order bride and look, you know it's not going to end well because it's a thriller based on a Cornell Woolrich novel and more often than not, if the hero lives through it, they're still going to be miserable. So there's double crosses and false identities and dramatic throat-cutting gestures, but at the end, Antonio Banderas is dying, Angelina Jolie is in prison and it's hopeless... oh wait, it's not. Carry on then.
Also, TV Tropes, you may think people are only into this movie for the steamy sex scenes and they are really hot, but I'll have you know I was into it for the plot as well and I loved seeing how the two of them changed each other for the better and for the worse. Plus, I don't care how utterly unrealistic the happy ending was, I adored Luis and Julia/Bonny getting to run off to Morocco and be partners in crime together, utterly besotted with each other. So more of the two of them getting to really know each other, looking out for one another, and yes, sleeping with each other in a variety of creative places would be great!
DNWs: No animal harm, extreme underage, body fluids (blood is fine), focus on unrequested pairings involving nominated characters (mentions of past canon relationships are fine), permanent nominated character death (transformations are fine).
Prompts:
So there's a lot of unanswered questions left after the movie: How did they get to Morocco? How long did it take Luis to recover from the poisoning? Where did Julia ditch her priest clothes (or did she hang onto them because she saw the gleam in Luis's eyes when she was wearing them?) There's so much to explore between the climax and the final scene and I'd love to know how they got from a pretty bad place to scamming people in fancy clothes.
Canon divergence would be fun too! What if their positions were reversed and Julia was the one that needed to get married quickly (perhaps a previous disposable husband died unfortunately and she needs to keep the estate) so she ropes in some servant she just hired with the promise of some quick cash. Then it's the usual morass of scheming and plans and poisoning, but probably not some poor nice lady getting killed off right at the beginning
And look, I will never turn down a vampire AU where Julia is a vampire and she wants Luis's blood as well as his money (which explains his miraculous recovery at the end when Julia turns him and everyone lives happily and bloodily after).
- Arthur Pym (Fall of the House of Usher 2023)
- Verna (The Fall of the House of Usher (TV 2023))
So I binged through this entire series about a family that really should have made some different choices in life and there was so much to enjoy, but without getting into spoilers, the thing that made me really love this show was the scene between Arthur Pym and Verna. Just the way they connected, the quiet nature of it after so much Grand Guignol and gore. There's a line in a Vulture article about “a look of melancholic ecstasy” as Pym recognizes perhaps the only person who understands him. Coupled with Verna's own respect, perhaps even mournfulness, for a man who's done terrible things and knows the exact cost of it all and I just wanted hours of the two of them, sitting and talking. Alas, 'twas not meant to be, but I cherish what I got.