KING KONG: THE STAGE PLAY!

If you find yourself anywhere near Southern California within the next three weeks, I recommend checking out the Maverick Theater's wildly fun and inventive stage adaptation of KING KONG (1933), which I had the pleasure of seeing this past Sunday night. The Maverick Theater is located in Fullerton where Brian Newell has spent almost the last twenty years producing such eccentric stage adaptations as PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE and SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. (Obscure & Useless Factoid: Oddly enough, the theater is located within walking distance of the Santa Ana apartment building where Philip K. Dick wrote VALIS.) What better way to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's most legendary film? The next performance is Friday, July 21st. To order tickets for the show, click HERE!

In other KONG news, I recommend buying a copy of PS Publishing's recent hardcover release, Edgar Wallace's KONG: AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (edited by Stephen Jones). Here's the publisher's description of this historically important book:

90 YEARS AGO, the classic Hollywood monster movie King Kong was released. What most people do not realise is that much of the film was the brainchild of best-selling British mystery writer Edgar Wallace (1875–1932). Known as the “King of Thrillers”, Wallace was an incredibly prolific and influential writer who moved to California in the early 1930s, where he was employed at RKO Radio Pictures. He was working on the initial drafts of Kong when he died unexpectedly, at the age of fifty-six, just two months into pre-production.

For decades, Wallace’s contribution to the film has been consistently down-played. Now, with the publication of Kong: An Original Screenplay, we can finally see how Wallace’s substantial draft script prefigures much of the narrative structure and more important themes found in the final film. It also depicts many of the production’s key scenes, while also including several epic sequences that were never used.

With an historical Introduction by multiple award-winning editor Stephen Jones, Wallace’s personal copy of his original draft script with his own corrections and interpolations, a boys’ story-paper adaptation of the film, preliminary production stills and art-work, and a colour portfolio of King Kong posters from around the world, Kong: An Original Screenplay finally gives Edgar Wallace the credit he deserves as the “Man Who Created Kong”!