Recent tweets and Patreon posts from author Mark Z. Danielewski have alluded to the possibility of an adaptation of his debut novel, House of Leaveseither in theaters or on the small screen. For fans of the novel, this is both good news (who wouldn’t want a book they love adapted for a new medium?) and bad news (how can an adaptation ever do justice to the myriad idiosyncrasies and unique genius of the novel?) novel?).
Below you can see what makes House of Leaves so unique, how that might translate on screen, and why it probably won’t in the end.
Novel about the house of leaves
A groundbreaking postmodern classic, that of Mark Z. Danielewski House of Leaves has gathered a passionate cult following since its debut in the year 2000. A dense, riveting horror thriller that takes an innovative take on the haunted house story, the book attracts readers with relatable characters and sharp psychological insights, but its most notable feature, and the thing that has sealed its continued place in the public imagination, is the way where it defies expectations of what a book can look like.
The novel’s plot is relatively simple: a suburban family discovers that their home is larger inside than it is outside, and the constantly changing, increasingly labyrinthine interior becomes increasingly sinister as the novel progresses. The simplicity of this plot, however, belies the book’s ever-expanding formal experiments. Exploding every stylistic device imaginable, the novel becomes fractured and disorienting as multi-colored text, footnotes, long passages of concrete poetry, and shifting narrative perspectives plunge the reader into their own kind of maze.
These stylistic extremes define the book. Certain words are printed in different colors throughout the book. For example, the word “house” always appears in blue, while the word “Minotaur” appears in red, with variations of each of these examples appearing in different editions of the books. Large parts of the text are crossed out, certain passages spill over into the following pages, some pages contain only a few words, while others are full of text that has been boxed, presented as marginals, or otherwise distorted . (It’s even rumored that the first few pages of the book, which credit Danielewski as the author, were made to fall out or be removed from the book, leaving only a fictional character named “Zampano” referred to as the source of the text.)
Rumors of an adjustment
In 2018, Danielewski tweeted a link to a pilot script he had written for the adaptation of his groundbreaking novel. This was followed by additional teleplays published on his website and Patreon in 2019.
This pilot, according to Danielewski, was written “as an experiment” and not as part of a development deal, but worked to generate interest in a possible adaptation of the cult classic. Little has come of this in recent years, but it’s worth considering how a text so reliant on the literary medium (and stretching that format to its breaking point) can be adapted to the screen.
How it could work
Danielewski’s involvement in writing these scripts, assuming any future adaptation would use them, is a promising start. House of Leaves was Danielewski’s debut novel, and his sister recorded a companion album to accompany the book under her stage name Poe. It clearly has a place close to its heart, and if anyone could make a faithful, successful recommendation, it’s him.
cat album, Bewitched, in itself is a good sign. The project has had a multimedia element from the start, and the addition of a movie or TV adaptation could enhance that, especially with Poe, Danielewski or both. In fact, Danielewski’s father, Tad Danielewski, was a Polish avant-garde film director in the 1970s and 1980s. The book also got a sequel, The Whalestoe Lettersand a sprawling, immersive universe seems to fit the broader aesthetic goals throughout.
Indeed, House of Leaves himself is very interested in movies. The book revolves around a fictional documentary film, The Navidson record, is prominent with photography and, as evidenced by all of his formatting experiments, are very, very interested in visual elements. In many ways, a film adaptation is a logical extension of the book’s heavy reliance on the way it works; one would imagine a filmmaker like Charlie Kaufman making a meta-edit, especially after his recent adaptation of the pseudo-horror book I’m thinking about ending things. So if the stars align, it could work.
How it probably wouldn’t be
That said, there’s reason to doubt that such a tweak could actually work. The book’s existence as a book is a key to its success, both commercially and artistically. Any attempt to replicate the book on film should take a similar approach. Rather than trying to replicate the novel’s textual experimentation on screen, it should invent new innovations that are themselves rooted in film and/or television. This would necessarily result in something quite different from the House of Leaves that fans know and love.
It would also result in a very, very strange show. Horror fans are known for being open-minded, and authors such as Stanley Kubrick, William Friedkin, and Jordan Peele have turned to the genre to push the boundaries of their art, but to reach the level of the book’s uniqueness, House of Leaves customization would have to be both very strange and very expensive.
It is this last factor that can be the nail in the coffin for everyone House of Leaves amendment. Writing is lonely, but film is collaboration, which means it’s precious. For the book itself, Danielewski was able to execute his innovations with nothing more than time, ingenuity and, according to Matthew G Kirschenbaum, a visit to Pantheon Press’ New York headquarters to do the typesetting for the book himself to realize his vision. Doing this on film would be considerably more difficult, as it would require a huge team with technical expertise in multiple areas, countless sets, and no doubt a significant budget; the kind of budget that usually doesn’t get paid back by projects as odd as this would be, even given the book’s devoted following.
So yes, one House of Leaves adjustment might work. However, given everything its success would entail, it’s not very likely that it will actually happen.