It’s easy to see why Ray Bradbury’s script for an adaptation of Little Nemo In Slumberland, titled simply Nemo!, was never filmed. In large part, it’s because it’s unfilmable. While Bradbury’s unique ability to express childlike wonder through his prose seems like a perfect fit for the manic dreamscape of the Little Nemo storyline, even a fully animated version would have a hard time expressing Bradbury’s remarkable flights of fancy. That does not mean, however, that it’s not an entrancing read.
Originally commissioned in 1980, Bradbury’s script for Nemo! was part of a long line of failed attempts to bring the Little Nemo property to the big screen. Nor was Bradbury the only “name” to have taken a swing at it and failed; Hayao Miyazaki also took a stab. But the film that was ultimately released had little to do with Bradbury’s screenplay, and it’s been largely a lost artifact until now.
As per the original Windsor McCay strip the screenplay is based on, Nemo! concerns itself with the adventures of a little boy named Nemo, who traverses Dreamland in order to find his destined playmate, The Princess. This being Bradbury, however, Nemo and his dreamquest acquire a distinctly pastoral American feel to them, with his magical dream-city spawned from his horrified realization that soon enough, someone’s going to tear the magical world of the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 down. Nemo’s parents are loving, generous, but ultimately generic and nameless figures identified by their roles only; this is a boy’s world and a boy’s imagination, and the mere notion of growing up — as exemplified by the watch Nemo’s father gives him — is enough to set off disaster.
The story of the script is a series of gorgeous spectacles, one piled on top of the other with alarming speed until the whole thing threatens to topple over. It never quite does, though, and the breathtaking pace at which Bradbury keeps the whole thing going is an object of marvel. As for the plot, well, there isn’t much of one. Young Nemo goes to the fair, is distraught about its ending, and falls asleep. Once he does, a duplicate named Omen leads him to the wonders of Slumberland, where he encounters dinosaurs (another distinctly Bradburyian touch), the Princess, the charming rapscallion Flip, and more madcap adventures than one can shake a stick at. Meanwhile, in the real world his body lies slumbering, as his increasingly worried parents try to get him to wake up.
To read Nemo! is not to weep for the film that never was. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that even today, that script could be filmed in such a way as to do it justice. Instead, it is to appreciate the opportunity to see Ray Bradbury work in a lush vineyard not his own, but nevertheless one supremely suited to his talents and style. It’s a fantasia, gossamer-delicate but deeply enjoyable, and best enjoyed on its own terms — as a might-have-been, or perhaps, a dream.
(Subterranean Press, 2012)
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