01 June 2007

Love You Forever: The Movie?



The following comment gave me an idea:

Liz said...

What? This book is more like a slasher film in the sense that it gives me nightmares. I don't care how much my mother loves me, the day she shows up at my window with a ladder is the day i have her declared incompetent and put her in the home.

Love You Forever as a slasher film? Brilliant! In the extended film version, once the mother passes away, the son goes off the deep end. Unable to live in a world without his mother, he leaves his family, moves to the countryside, and opens up a roadside motel. The son's name? Norman Bates. The deranged Bates mans the front desk with a smile, but in private he wears his mother's clothes and softly sings to himself,

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
as long as I'm living
my baby you'll be."


The more I think about it, the more I think this movie must be made. Love You Forever naturally lends itself to a merger with Hitchcock's Psycho. Is it inevitable that Munsch's young boy raised by a bizarre mother turns into cross-dressing murderer? No. Would it surprise you if he did? Double No.

The director of this film would naturally be Todd Solondz, who specializes in dysfunctional families and giving people the creeps. (If you don't know what I mean, watch Happiness... possibly the most unsettling movie I've ever seen.)

Note: While I recognize the creepiness of Love You Forever, I still stand by my original assertion that it is a tear jerker. As is Psycho (he loved his mother so much!)... so if you go to see Love You Forever: The Movie, you better bring a box of tissues with you.

Sundance, here we come!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Found your great blog from Fuse 8.

I am willing to come out of the closet and say that this book is most certainly a tear jerker. And every time I would read it to my sons, especially my oldest ('cause I think it was lost in the house by the time the third son rolled around), I was sobbing like a fool.

"Mommy, why are you crying?" he would ask.

"Just cause, Honey."

And now that son is just about to turn 21. And I don't know where the time went and I almost hope I never find the damn book because I know I will start to cry just looking at it. Just the sight of the cover gets me a little choked up...honest to goodness.

Geesh, what a fool--huh? But I defy anyone with kids and half a heart to not get a little misty when they read it. Yes, the art is nothing to write home about. Yes, there is something almost creepy about the mother climbing the ladder.

But the feelings are true to form if you are a mother.

Liz Allman said...

I heartily disagree. In fact, I re-read it to my three year-old today just to get another glimpse of the illustrations and all I could think was that I would put the son on more of a Hannibal Lecter level. Those outfits he wears, preparing the mushrooms when she calls. All that illustration is missing is a glass of chianti. Norman Bates was kind of a mess, you could tell just from looking at him that he was a little off. Hannibal Lecter wore chinos, I can guarantee it.

Yes, this movie must be made.