The man who brought us the Texas noir film, Frailty, is finally bringing the Joe R. Lansdale penned, The Bottoms, to the silver screen.
This East Texas Depression era tale revolves around a young boy and his sister who find a murdered body of a black woman in the ravine where they play. A death whose investigation opens up a can of worms involving racism, and their local urban legend The Goat Man. A chilling story that weaves Lansdale’s trademarked humour with unflinching violence. A novel that fits perfectly next to your well-read copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Everyone’s been be seeing Lansdale’s name a lot more these days after his latest film Cold in July, starring Michael C. Hall, and Don Johnson took Sundance by surprise. That film is set for wide release May 23 of this year. Here’s that trailer:
But, if you don’t know who Joe R. Lansdale is, yet, then you are in for a treat in discovering his oeuvre of stupendous work that ranges from straight up Horror to coming of age dustbowl stories, and all manner between. As he said on Facebook the other day,
“I don’t want to be a horror writer. I don’t want to be a western writer. I don’t want to be a crime writer. I don’t want to be a mystery writer. I don’t want to be a historical writer. I don’t want to be science fiction writer. I don’t want to be a fantasy writer. I want to write what I want, and if it falls into those categories, so be it, but I write a variety of things. I’m a Lansdale writer.”
-Joe R. Lansdale
Now, Paxton and The Bottoms has been the rumoured a couple for about 10 years now, which isn’t a long amount of time for a book to go from option to celluloid, but for the fans having to wait to have more Lansdale on the big screen or small, could be compared to Stephen King fans waiting for any word about Wizards and Glass; fraught with many leaks for many of his books being optioned, only for that option to laps. But as Lansdale has been known to say, he has made some good money selling and re-selling the options to his Hap & Leonard books, that he is doing just fine. Course, us fans, on the other hand, are ringing our collective hands in wait for the world to finally experience what we already know.
They don’t call him Champion Joe, for nothing.
James C.
In the meantime, one can pick up the perfectly sized Trade paperback copy of Joe R. Lansdale’s The Bottoms at Amazon, or any of your better bookstores.
