The New Ray Bradbury Review: Number 1 2008

Introduction to Gotcha!

127 Introduction to Gotcha! William F. Touponce Gotcha! was initially broadcast in 1988 as part of the first run of The Ray Bradbury Theater for USA Network. By then Bradbury was well into the process of adapting his short stories for television, having aired six previous episodes for HBO during the summer of 1985 and winter of 1986. We publish here the teleplay Bradbury submitted to Atlantis Productions, transcribed with silent corrections for spelling. The intent here is to document Bradbury’s creative process in adapting his fiction for the television screen. The reader should understand that this text is not a ‘finished’ aesthetic product, transferred subsequently to the screen. The typical Bradbury teleplay contained information on the kinds of shots and camera setups Bradbury thought appropriate to translate his fiction to the TV screen. What the camera sees, how it moves, what the characters see and do and say—all these are suggested by the teleplay. But the teleplays also remained open to the director of the film. They do not, for instance, break down the story into formally marked scenes (though a careful reading can detect Bradbury’s latent scenic breakdown of the story). That was the task of the actual shooting script. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and undoubtedly Bradbury’s director, in this case Brad Turner, together with his director of photography, Brian R. R. Hebb, his art director Tony Hall, and his editor George Appleby, contributed much to the visualization of Bradbury’s teleplay, as did the sound editor Barry Gilmore. Since the shooting script is not currently available, I have worked from my own notes and a segmentation of the film into nine scenes (see below). In what follows I have noted the use of film techniques that support Bradbury’s story, some of them suggested by Bradbury’s script. I have also noted when they are not in his script. As executive producer Bradbury had final say on the look and sound of the film. We can assume that what was finally presented to the public was approved by Bradbury. Surviving correspondence for some of the other teleplays indicates that Bradbury was presented with script changes for approval prior to shooting, and although he did not have a representative on location after the first two seasons, the later directors seem to have at least coordinated changes with him. In many important respects then he remained the ‘author’ of this film, while expanding the boundaries of his creative vision. Despite the disparage- The New Ray Bradbury Review 128 ment often given to it, adaptation is a complex and fascinating process to study. If we want to understand this film as an adaptation, we will have to take into account both the adapted text(s) and the adaptation itself. With Gotcha! the matter is complicated by the fact that Bradbury’s teleplay for Gotcha! is actually based on the doubling and interweaving of two stories—the only adaptation in The Ray Bradbury Theater where Bradbury did this—so there is a further creative step to be considered. In an interview conducted in 2005 by Markus Arno Carpenter, Bradbury looked back at the creation of the screenplay: C Can I ask you about a particular episode called “Gotcha,” a sort of a mixture of the (short stories) “The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” and “Gotcha”…? B That’s right, it was. C I like what you said about The Ray Bradbury Theater, that you were trying to respect your younger self and still bring something new to the old stories. B That’s true. C What about the stories? Do you recall what inspired “The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” and “Gotcha”? B They’re works of love. “The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” I wrote because I loved it. When I was in Ireland in 1953 writing “Moby Dick” for John Huston, I was fortunate enough to see Laurel and Hardy perform some scenes from their greatest films. In joy and amazement tears rolled down my cheeks. When I went home I remembered the time where a friend of mine took me to the stairs up which Laurel and Hardy carried the piano box, only to be chased down the hill by it. My story had to follow. “Gotcha” is a story about, you might say, my love being dispersed, or being destroyed by a woman who didn’t know what she was doing. C That’s interesting. B It scared the hell out of...