Volume 1, Issue 5 |
| Frank Beddor |
| Frank Beddor, Producer & New York Times Best Seller, "The Looking Glass Wars" |
(PAGE 2)
IAE: While you were in London for the UK Premiere of ‘There’s Something About Mary,’ you visited
the British Museum, what happened there that sparked your interested in Alice in Wonderland,
which lead to you becoming an author?
FB: It was purely an accident. I had an hour to kill while I was in London so I walked over to the British Museum.
At the museum there was an exhibit of ancient cards. There were all kinds of playing cards and tarot cards.
Most interesting was the fact that Napoleon hired artists to depict his numerous victories in battle, so there
were decks and decks of hand painted cards of Napoleon being victorious. But what caught my attention was,
at the end of this massive exhibit there was an incomplete deck of cards, the only one on the exhibit. On these
cards there was this illuminated art that reminded me of Lewis Carroll’s fairytales, except the art was really dark
and kind of had a twisted Goth vibe going on that I found very appealing and unusual. I became curious where
these cards came from, and I kept telling all my friends that they should go check it out. One time I was having
drinks with my buddy Robert, and these girls came by and I started talking about the cards from the museum.
Robert turned to me when the girls left and said, “Okay, if you bring up those cards one more time I think I
might have to kill you.” I told him that I really liked the cards, and he told me that he knew this guy who was an
antiquities dealer and all he does is sell, trade, and collect cards. So he said, “If I get his [antiquities dealer]
name and number for you, you have to promise me that you’ll shut up about those cards man!” [laughs]
Robert gives me the dealer’s number and I called the guy and told him about the cards. The dealer told me
that not only does he know everything about the cards that are at the British Museum, but he in fact owned
some of the cards from the incomplete deck. By the way, his name was Dugan Buffington, and he was a very
eccentric man. He invited me over and brought out these cards and began telling me this story. The story was
the jumping off place for me to imagine the story as I re-imagined it.
IAE: In 2004, you debuted ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ in the UK. Why the UK and not the US?
FB: When I first published my book in 2004, through Egmont Publishing in Britain, they sent me on a book
tour. I was meeting with all these kids and one student in particular said, “Hey listen, my favorite character is
Hatter Madigan and I do not understand why you skipped the best part of his 13 year search? I think you need
to go back home and write about that.” I laughed and gave him a shout out. But while I was on the plane on the
way home, I thought, “He’s right! That’s a great character.” I didn’t want to do another novel because I was
working on the book ‘Seeing Redd,’ and I thought Hatter Madigan’s story would make a great character for a
comic book. Thanks to this unnamed boy for being very forthcoming and bold, I launched my comic. The irony
is, it published in 2005 before I even had a book deal in the US. The fans liked it so much they discovered that
there was an actual novel that went along with it. The fans in the US started buying the UK paperback edition
of ‘Looking Glass Wars’ and made it a best seller, which in turn got both Penguin and Random House into a
bidding war. So I owe my success in the US to the unnamed boy, ‘Hatter Madigan’ the comic book, and to the
early adapters out of the comic book conventions.
What’s funny is, Penguin Group turned me down about 4 times and Random House turned me down 2
times and I was turned down by everybody else. I kept going back to them and each time with something new,
like when I got published in the UK and sometimes I tried a different division or imprint. Everyone kept saying
the same thing, for instance, one publisher said that ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ would make all the fans of the
classic ‘Wonderland’ story very angry and they’d be turned off by it. Another publisher said, l would only get
‘Alice in Wonderland’ fans, and I remember thinking, “Well, you know that book [Alice in Wonderland] sold over
100 million copies, wouldn’t that be good?” [laughs]
This was around the beginning of the ‘Harry Potter’ phenomenon, and in my stories Alyss is 7 and then 11
[the age of the readers], and then she’s 20, so they [publishers] felt that the story should follow the age of the
reader and not the character. It turned out that they were all wrong.
IAE: I guess the main issue is that, we as adults get so focused on the business at hand that we not
only forget how we were as kids, but we also forget to talk to the children we’re marketing to.
FB: That’s interesting because, that’s exactly what I was most interested in writing about with this story. That
loss of inner childhood wonder is explored in ‘The Looking Glass Wars,’ because Alyss is very adventurous
and has the most powerful imagination, but when she enters into our world that wonder is lost. As in the case
of those publishers who felt that kids wouldn’t relate if Alyss wasn’t the same age as them all the way through;
when we grow up we’re told to have our own voice and personality, but when it’s been taken away from us
during our childhood by adults who have lost their sense of wonder, how are we supposed to get our
uniqueness back? [laughs]
IAE: As a very well respected Film Producer and New York Times Best-Selling Author, tell us what
Transmedia Storytelling is and how it will play a part in ‘The Looking Glass Wars’?
FB: Transmedia Storytelling has been a recently coined phrase. I would try to map out my entire world, the
world creation aspect of it; the logic, the rules, the back-story of all the characters and how it all works. Then
find the narrative for the right medium. For me, it all started when that boy suggested I do a graphic novel on
Hatter Madigan, and I realized that I had files and files of Hatter story during those 13 years [in The Looking
Glass Wars], especially in terms of his past. The whole idea of Transmedia Storytelling is to tell stories across
multiple mediums through a single vision; one person whose nurturing, controlling, and creating the mosaic
first, then overlaying the business as a secondary objective so that it comes from a pure point of view. It’s not
just capitalizing on some level of success, but rather a higher level of production.
IAE: You just released two books from your award-winning trilogy, ‘ArchEnemy’ and ‘Hatter M Mad
With Wonder.’ Tell us about the film you are producing with Chuck Roven (The Dark Knight)?
FB: My interest was originally to do ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ first, and then the Hatter stories second,
followed by ‘Seeing Redd’ and ‘ArchEnemy.’ But as you know, movies are difficult to make; especially
expensive movies. Because ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ has some incidental similarities to what Tim Burton did
with ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and they may be doing a sequel, we’re considering how to launch our franchise.
Chuck and I have collaborated and written two scripts from the franchise, each coming from a different angle.
Tim Burton’s movie has certainly complicated matters for us.
IAE: While you were in London for the UK Premiere of ‘There’s Something About Mary,’ you visited
the British Museum, what happened there that sparked your interested in Alice in Wonderland,
which lead to you becoming an author?
FB: It was purely an accident. I had an hour to kill while I was in London so I walked over to the British Museum.
At the museum there was an exhibit of ancient cards. There were all kinds of playing cards and tarot cards.
Most interesting was the fact that Napoleon hired artists to depict his numerous victories in battle, so there
were decks and decks of hand painted cards of Napoleon being victorious. But what caught my attention was,
at the end of this massive exhibit there was an incomplete deck of cards, the only one on the exhibit. On these
cards there was this illuminated art that reminded me of Lewis Carroll’s fairytales, except the art was really dark
and kind of had a twisted Goth vibe going on that I found very appealing and unusual. I became curious where
these cards came from, and I kept telling all my friends that they should go check it out. One time I was having
drinks with my buddy Robert, and these girls came by and I started talking about the cards from the museum.
Robert turned to me when the girls left and said, “Okay, if you bring up those cards one more time I think I
might have to kill you.” I told him that I really liked the cards, and he told me that he knew this guy who was an
antiquities dealer and all he does is sell, trade, and collect cards. So he said, “If I get his [antiquities dealer]
name and number for you, you have to promise me that you’ll shut up about those cards man!” [laughs]
Robert gives me the dealer’s number and I called the guy and told him about the cards. The dealer told me
that not only does he know everything about the cards that are at the British Museum, but he in fact owned
some of the cards from the incomplete deck. By the way, his name was Dugan Buffington, and he was a very
eccentric man. He invited me over and brought out these cards and began telling me this story. The story was
the jumping off place for me to imagine the story as I re-imagined it.
IAE: In 2004, you debuted ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ in the UK. Why the UK and not the US?
FB: When I first published my book in 2004, through Egmont Publishing in Britain, they sent me on a book
tour. I was meeting with all these kids and one student in particular said, “Hey listen, my favorite character is
Hatter Madigan and I do not understand why you skipped the best part of his 13 year search? I think you need
to go back home and write about that.” I laughed and gave him a shout out. But while I was on the plane on the
way home, I thought, “He’s right! That’s a great character.” I didn’t want to do another novel because I was
working on the book ‘Seeing Redd,’ and I thought Hatter Madigan’s story would make a great character for a
comic book. Thanks to this unnamed boy for being very forthcoming and bold, I launched my comic. The irony
is, it published in 2005 before I even had a book deal in the US. The fans liked it so much they discovered that
there was an actual novel that went along with it. The fans in the US started buying the UK paperback edition
of ‘Looking Glass Wars’ and made it a best seller, which in turn got both Penguin and Random House into a
bidding war. So I owe my success in the US to the unnamed boy, ‘Hatter Madigan’ the comic book, and to the
early adapters out of the comic book conventions.
What’s funny is, Penguin Group turned me down about 4 times and Random House turned me down 2
times and I was turned down by everybody else. I kept going back to them and each time with something new,
like when I got published in the UK and sometimes I tried a different division or imprint. Everyone kept saying
the same thing, for instance, one publisher said that ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ would make all the fans of the
classic ‘Wonderland’ story very angry and they’d be turned off by it. Another publisher said, l would only get
‘Alice in Wonderland’ fans, and I remember thinking, “Well, you know that book [Alice in Wonderland] sold over
100 million copies, wouldn’t that be good?” [laughs]
This was around the beginning of the ‘Harry Potter’ phenomenon, and in my stories Alyss is 7 and then 11
[the age of the readers], and then she’s 20, so they [publishers] felt that the story should follow the age of the
reader and not the character. It turned out that they were all wrong.
IAE: I guess the main issue is that, we as adults get so focused on the business at hand that we not
only forget how we were as kids, but we also forget to talk to the children we’re marketing to.
FB: That’s interesting because, that’s exactly what I was most interested in writing about with this story. That
loss of inner childhood wonder is explored in ‘The Looking Glass Wars,’ because Alyss is very adventurous
and has the most powerful imagination, but when she enters into our world that wonder is lost. As in the case
of those publishers who felt that kids wouldn’t relate if Alyss wasn’t the same age as them all the way through;
when we grow up we’re told to have our own voice and personality, but when it’s been taken away from us
during our childhood by adults who have lost their sense of wonder, how are we supposed to get our
uniqueness back? [laughs]
IAE: As a very well respected Film Producer and New York Times Best-Selling Author, tell us what
Transmedia Storytelling is and how it will play a part in ‘The Looking Glass Wars’?
FB: Transmedia Storytelling has been a recently coined phrase. I would try to map out my entire world, the
world creation aspect of it; the logic, the rules, the back-story of all the characters and how it all works. Then
find the narrative for the right medium. For me, it all started when that boy suggested I do a graphic novel on
Hatter Madigan, and I realized that I had files and files of Hatter story during those 13 years [in The Looking
Glass Wars], especially in terms of his past. The whole idea of Transmedia Storytelling is to tell stories across
multiple mediums through a single vision; one person whose nurturing, controlling, and creating the mosaic
first, then overlaying the business as a secondary objective so that it comes from a pure point of view. It’s not
just capitalizing on some level of success, but rather a higher level of production.
IAE: You just released two books from your award-winning trilogy, ‘ArchEnemy’ and ‘Hatter M Mad
With Wonder.’ Tell us about the film you are producing with Chuck Roven (The Dark Knight)?
FB: My interest was originally to do ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ first, and then the Hatter stories second,
followed by ‘Seeing Redd’ and ‘ArchEnemy.’ But as you know, movies are difficult to make; especially
expensive movies. Because ‘The Looking Glass Wars’ has some incidental similarities to what Tim Burton did
with ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and they may be doing a sequel, we’re considering how to launch our franchise.
Chuck and I have collaborated and written two scripts from the franchise, each coming from a different angle.
Tim Burton’s movie has certainly complicated matters for us.
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