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House of Leaves: Teleplays
A collection of three teleplays (written episodes) for a proposed television series of House of Leaves.
178 pages, ebook
First published November 29, 2019
1 person is currently reading
198 people want to read
About the author
Mark Z. Danielewski
20 books8,401 followersMark Z. Danielewski is an American author best known for his books House of Leaves, Only Revolutions, The Fifty Year Sword, The Little Blue Kite, and The Familiar series.
Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time in Paris, preoccupied mostly with writing.
In the early 1990s, he pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television. He later served as an assistant editor and worked on sound for Derrida, a documentary based on the life of the Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida.
His second novel, Only Revolutions, was released in 2006. The novel was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.
His novel The Fifty Year Sword was released in the Netherlands in 2005. A new version with stitched illustrations was released in the United States 2012 (including a limited-edition release featuring a latched box that held the book). On Halloween 2010-2012, Danielewski "conducted" staged readings of the book at the REDCAT Theater inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Each year was different and included features such as large-scale shadows, music, and performances from actors such as Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad).
On May 12, 2015, he released the first volume, The Familiar (Volume 1): One Rainy Day in May in his announced 27-volume series The Familiar. The story "concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten..." The second volume, The Familiar (Volume 2): Into the Forest was released on Oct. 27, 2015, The Familiar (Volume 3): Honeysuckle & Pain came out June 14, 2016, and The Familiar (Volume 4): Hades arrived in bookstores on Feb. 7, 2017, and The Familiar (Volume 5): Redwood was released on Halloween 2017.
His latest release, The Little Blue Kite, is out now.
Quick Facts
He is the son of Polish avant-garde film director Tad Danielewski and the brother of singer and songwriter Annie Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe.
House of Leaves, Danielewski's first novel, has gained a considerable cult following. In 2000, Danielewski toured with his sister across America at Borders Books and Music locations, promoting Poe’s album Haunted, which reflects elements of House of Leaves.
Danielewski's work is characterized by experimental choices in form, such as intricate and multi-layered narratives and typographical variation.
In 2015, his piece Thrown, a reflection on Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2, appeared on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Official "Yarn + Ink" apparel inspired by his books House of Leaves and The Familiar is now available through his official website, Amazon and Etsy.
His latest short story, "There's a Place for You" was released on www.markzdanielewski.com in August 2020.
Read more on his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z....
Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time in Paris, preoccupied mostly with writing.
In the early 1990s, he pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television. He later served as an assistant editor and worked on sound for Derrida, a documentary based on the life of the Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida.
His second novel, Only Revolutions, was released in 2006. The novel was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.
His novel The Fifty Year Sword was released in the Netherlands in 2005. A new version with stitched illustrations was released in the United States 2012 (including a limited-edition release featuring a latched box that held the book). On Halloween 2010-2012, Danielewski "conducted" staged readings of the book at the REDCAT Theater inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Each year was different and included features such as large-scale shadows, music, and performances from actors such as Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad).
On May 12, 2015, he released the first volume, The Familiar (Volume 1): One Rainy Day in May in his announced 27-volume series The Familiar. The story "concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten..." The second volume, The Familiar (Volume 2): Into the Forest was released on Oct. 27, 2015, The Familiar (Volume 3): Honeysuckle & Pain came out June 14, 2016, and The Familiar (Volume 4): Hades arrived in bookstores on Feb. 7, 2017, and The Familiar (Volume 5): Redwood was released on Halloween 2017.
His latest release, The Little Blue Kite, is out now.
Quick Facts
He is the son of Polish avant-garde film director Tad Danielewski and the brother of singer and songwriter Annie Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe.
House of Leaves, Danielewski's first novel, has gained a considerable cult following. In 2000, Danielewski toured with his sister across America at Borders Books and Music locations, promoting Poe’s album Haunted, which reflects elements of House of Leaves.
Danielewski's work is characterized by experimental choices in form, such as intricate and multi-layered narratives and typographical variation.
In 2015, his piece Thrown, a reflection on Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2, appeared on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Official "Yarn + Ink" apparel inspired by his books House of Leaves and The Familiar is now available through his official website, Amazon and Etsy.
His latest short story, "There's a Place for You" was released on www.markzdanielewski.com in August 2020.
Read more on his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z....
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 6, 2020
I figured there was no way one could translate House of Leaves to a TV show, but Danielewski sure lays out a very compelling way it could be done. Reading the scripts was a lot of fun and I can't stop thinking about it. It's "about" House of Leaves in a sense, but with plenty of new material.
August 9, 2022
Danielewski's adaptation (if you can call it that) of his own acclaimed and beloved novel House of Leaves adds more even more layers to the story—possibly too many for its own good. Instead of slowly easing the audience into its labyrinthian weavings, the teleplays are immediately jarring, bouncing between several plot lines occurring at different times. Even by the third episode, it's difficult to keep track of the various stories, let alone understand the bigger picture of how they connect. It's a challenging read, even as a huge fan of the novel, but certainly intriguing. It's a shame it'll likely never be produced, because I would love to see how the series was intended to unfold and evolve.
September 24, 2021
Really interesting adaptation from book to screen. The subtle changes in Johnny's character from the novel to the screenplay is intriguing. New characters like Mélisande and Eddie. The introduction of the AR game that seems to be playing a bigger and bigger part as the story goes on. Enough new additions to keep fans of the novel engaged while also being distinctly House of Leaves.
I'd love it if Danielewski finished the rest of the season. I'd love to be able to watch this on my television. Sadly I don't think either will happen (any time soon at least).
I'd love it if Danielewski finished the rest of the season. I'd love to be able to watch this on my television. Sadly I don't think either will happen (any time soon at least).
June 3, 2022
Utterly fascinating in how it adapts House of Leaves, but since it's only the first three episodes of a much larger show I'm left feeling bummed there isn't a lot more. And that it hasn't been picked up.
October 4, 2023
Very interesting read! If you’re gonna check it out, go in with the mindset that that is more of a showcase of concept vs an actual complete story. It’s sometimes difficult to comprehend in places, but that’s just because it’s designed for the visual medium. I really hope the tv show adaptation (sequel?) one day comes to fruition!
August 6, 2022
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Mark Z. Danielewski's screenplays for his proposed TV series adaptation of his own classic cult novel, House of Leaves, is that this isn't solely a straightforward adaptation of his book (inasmuch as you could ever possibly make something "straightforward" out of such a decidedly un-straightforward tome).
No, because as it turns out, Danielewski's vision for a TV version of House of Leaves is one that is both a televisual adaptation of the original story, and a direct sequel!
WHAT????!!!
Yep, that's right. Not content to be head-spinningly convoluted enough already with the narrative layer cake of The Navidson Record + Zampanó + Johnny Truant + Unseen Editor Assembling and Commenting Upon It All that was present originally in HoL, Danielewski's TV adaption-cum-sequel further folds into the fray a present day narrative, which itself has its own multiple layers of non-linear time-jumping, documentarian editorialising, framing devices within framing devices, satires within satires, meta atop meta atop meta, etcetera.
Worthy of note:
MZD has thus far published two variants on a TV script/proposal for a show based on his book. First he released a single teleplay for a Pilot episode in 2018, and then in 2019, he released the 3 teleplays that comprise this single Goodreads book entry.
The difference between the 2018 Pilot, and the 2019 scripts for episodes 1 through 3, is that the events of the original Pilot are broken up, restructured, and spread intermittently throughout the Episodes 1-3 scripts, with many scenes, passages of dialogue, and narrator stage directions remaining identical to how they appeared in 2018.
The other big difference is that while the 2018 Pilot was a (comparatively) more linear, (comparatively) more 1:1 recreation of the book's narrative(s) and fourth-wall-breaking sinister playfulness, the scripts for Episodes 1-3 expand MZD's ambitions humungously, where even if you read the 2018 Pilot, you don't see almost any of the lion's share of that material until Episode 2, and you're completely thrown for a whole other loop from the loops the book, and the 2018 Pilot, sent you spiralling down before. In Episodes 1-3, the narrative scope grows even larger, encompassing dozens of new characters, a vast network of shadowy crime and conspiracy, and a literally global scale that necessitates the narrative starting out as a sprawling, fractured, disjointed, seemingly random assortment of scenes that take quite a long time to begin cohering together, and which feel like they have barely anything whatsoever to do with what one may know, recognise, or expect to be within the universe of House of Leaves.
In many respects, Danielewski's imagined serialised TV requel to House of Leaves feels most akin to David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return, with a side order of Dennis Kelly's Utopia, and a dash of J-horror technology-driven supernaturalism in the vein of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, and Hideo Nakata's Ring.
In conclusion:
I WANT THIS SHOW TO BE A REAL THING THAT EXISTS, EVEN THOUGH IT'S SO UNLIKELY ANY NETWORK OR STREAMING SERVICE WOULD HAVE THE NERVE TO MAKE IT.
(And if any of them did, just please don't give it to Netflix so that they only make one season of it, then cancel it on a cliffhanger... and definitely don't give it to HBO Max, who I guess will now just flat out delete entire movies and shows from existence that didn't do well enough for them... though I suppose it would be fitting for a House of Leaves TV show to briefly exist, and then not exist, and leave people wondering if it was ever there or real to begin with...)
No, because as it turns out, Danielewski's vision for a TV version of House of Leaves is one that is both a televisual adaptation of the original story, and a direct sequel!
WHAT????!!!
Yep, that's right. Not content to be head-spinningly convoluted enough already with the narrative layer cake of The Navidson Record + Zampanó + Johnny Truant + Unseen Editor Assembling and Commenting Upon It All that was present originally in HoL, Danielewski's TV adaption-cum-sequel further folds into the fray a present day narrative, which itself has its own multiple layers of non-linear time-jumping, documentarian editorialising, framing devices within framing devices, satires within satires, meta atop meta atop meta, etcetera.
Worthy of note:
MZD has thus far published two variants on a TV script/proposal for a show based on his book. First he released a single teleplay for a Pilot episode in 2018, and then in 2019, he released the 3 teleplays that comprise this single Goodreads book entry.
The difference between the 2018 Pilot, and the 2019 scripts for episodes 1 through 3, is that the events of the original Pilot are broken up, restructured, and spread intermittently throughout the Episodes 1-3 scripts, with many scenes, passages of dialogue, and narrator stage directions remaining identical to how they appeared in 2018.
The other big difference is that while the 2018 Pilot was a (comparatively) more linear, (comparatively) more 1:1 recreation of the book's narrative(s) and fourth-wall-breaking sinister playfulness, the scripts for Episodes 1-3 expand MZD's ambitions humungously, where even if you read the 2018 Pilot, you don't see almost any of the lion's share of that material until Episode 2, and you're completely thrown for a whole other loop from the loops the book, and the 2018 Pilot, sent you spiralling down before. In Episodes 1-3, the narrative scope grows even larger, encompassing dozens of new characters, a vast network of shadowy crime and conspiracy, and a literally global scale that necessitates the narrative starting out as a sprawling, fractured, disjointed, seemingly random assortment of scenes that take quite a long time to begin cohering together, and which feel like they have barely anything whatsoever to do with what one may know, recognise, or expect to be within the universe of House of Leaves.
In many respects, Danielewski's imagined serialised TV requel to House of Leaves feels most akin to David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return, with a side order of Dennis Kelly's Utopia, and a dash of J-horror technology-driven supernaturalism in the vein of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, and Hideo Nakata's Ring.
In conclusion:
I WANT THIS SHOW TO BE A REAL THING THAT EXISTS, EVEN THOUGH IT'S SO UNLIKELY ANY NETWORK OR STREAMING SERVICE WOULD HAVE THE NERVE TO MAKE IT.
(And if any of them did, just please don't give it to Netflix so that they only make one season of it, then cancel it on a cliffhanger... and definitely don't give it to HBO Max, who I guess will now just flat out delete entire movies and shows from existence that didn't do well enough for them... though I suppose it would be fitting for a House of Leaves TV show to briefly exist, and then not exist, and leave people wondering if it was ever there or real to begin with...)
April 29, 2023
the tv adaptation we didn't deserve and so didnt get
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews