Completed film script adaptation of my novel, Nocturne Variations. One of my ongoing projects has been adapting my novels and plays into feature-length film scripts, and it has been a great joy and challenge and learning experience, remixing and re-visioning my work as material intended for cinema.
My ultimate goal is to see at least one, if not more of these works flickering their cinematic life-force on the big screen. Nocturne Variations is the third of my novels that I have adapted. The other two are Broken Land and No Man’s Brooklyn.
NOCTURNE VARIATIONS Dystopic Peter Pan meets surrealist noir in this cinemythical tale about love, loss and the illusions of shadow-play.
“Biscello succeeds in bringing to life both Daniel as well as the intriguing milieu that created him: stoops, city parks, 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor.”–KIRKUS REVIEWS
NO MAN’S BROOKLYN From the valentine boneyards of working-class Brooklyn, comes a tale of first love, lost innocence, tragedy, and healing. Daniel Trovato, having left his native Bensonhurst years ago to start a new life in L.A., is recently sober and enjoying cult success through his Sworn Witness series of graphic novels. When he receives word that his childhood love, Anya, has died from an overdose, he is compelled to return to the “old neighborhood.” It is there that he will walk through the ghostly twilight of an unfinished past, and revisit both the romantic lore and shadow life of his youth. The enduring torch he’s carried for Anya, “the girl from nowhere,” who was found in a trash can and adopted by a Russian family; the hazy circumstances of his mother’s suicide when he was fourteen; glacial estrangement from his father; the street-and-concrete beats and rhythms of an urban boyhood. Ultimately, No Man’s Brooklyn is about the mythic journey we take to meet our core self, and a lyrical testament to the words of Dylan Thomas: “The memories of childhood have no order, and no end.”
“Yokoyama’s graphite illustrations …fashion an understated, symbolic elegy for a famous literary voice … Poetic descriptions of Kafka’s storytelling deftly capture the relationship between existential terror and creative production … Accomplished, graceful mythmaking for children who intuit artistic inspiration’s dark side.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS
THE JACKDAW AND THE DOLL K. leads a double life. Timid office clerk by day, storyteller by night. But not just any storyteller. Transforming into a jackdaw, K. takes secret night-flights around the city, collecting moments of inspiration. Confronted by sickness, and “The Shroud” which has haunted him since childhood, K., joined by his new love, Dora, moves away from home to The City of Birds. It is there that he will meet a young girl, heartbroken over her lost doll, and be given a golden chance to share the healing magic of storytelling. A fable about love, compassion and creativity, inspired by a story about the writer, Franz Kafka.
Audio and text versions of my piece, “Apocalypse Now & Again” appearing in the inaguaural online issue of Dilate Magazine.
ABOUT
“This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends; you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
—Morpheus, in The Matrix
DILATE Magazine first started in Prescott, Arizona back in 2008 as a paper ‘zine, with the last issue coming out in the spring of 2011. It has been reborn as an online publication ready to change things, to make people think, to inspire revolutionary action, to bring us all together in a time when governments and corporations are trying like fucking crazy to keep us divided. DILATE isn’t a left or right-wing magazine— in fact, we are against polarization completely. This is about going forward, together to create a new way of living, for the earth and humans and all other species living on this rock. DILATE is the red pill, and we hope you stick around (and come back) to go further down this rabbit hole with us.
John Biscello 