When I ask people what their favorite Poe story is the same ones come up over and over: The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask Of Amontillado seem to top the list, and The Fall Of The House Of Usher, The Black Cat, and The Masque Of The Red Death are always popular. Usually they’re ones most of us read in school, the ones that were our first introductions to Poe. I also remember The Murders In The Rue Morgue being talked about a lot, though it would be a long time before I read it, and in fifth grade watching a strange, and very loose, adaptation of The Gold Bug with a young Anthony Michael Hall.
One Poe story that never seems to come up is Hop-Frog. It’s one I think deserves a lot more attention. In eleventh grade I wrote a term paper on Poe and read a biography that kept referring to A Descent Into The Maelstrom as Poe’s most autobiographical story. Oh no, I thought, if you have to single out one Poe story as “autobiographical” then it’s Hop-Frog. Even his most sympathetic biographers describe Poe as a touchy guy who took criticism personally, but people also liked him because he was funny. The image of Poe as the gloomy goth misses the fact that he wrote satire and humor pieces too. In Hop-Frog the title character is an abused servant, a jester, who—spoiler alert–finally gets revenge on the royalty, and, I think, is as clever and funny as it is brutal. Hop-Frog has dwarfism and maybe that’s why we didn’t read the story in school, but he’s also the hero. Ultimately he succeeds over those who think they’re better than he is, and I think that would have been a good message for a lot of us.
Two things came up recently that reminded me of Hop-Frog. The first is the new AppleTV series Time Bandits, based on Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film. The original cast five little people, and I understand the new series didn’t want to go that route for fear of seeming exploitative, but the casting got some well-deserved criticism for that. The original film wasn’t in any way making fun of its characters for their stature. The five “bandits” in the original are complicated characters who, it’s been pointed out, resemble the Monty Python gang in their personalities, with filthy, mute Vermin representing Gilliam himself.
The other thing is PBS just released a documentary called Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal. As an aspiring writer and science fiction fan I read a lot of Del Rey books growing up without knowing, or even thinking, that Del Rey was a person, and I wish I had. Judy-Lynn del Rey was a little person but, obviously, that’s only part of who she was. She was a smart, passionate publisher and editor who helped make Del Rey a publishing powerhouse. Among other things she spotted the potential in the novelization of a little forthcoming science fiction film called Star Wars.
And finally there was an adaptation of Hop-Frog, also on PBS, titled Fool’s Fire. It was directed by Julie Taymor before her groundbreaking stage adaptation of The Lion King. The two stars are two little people, Michael J. Anderson, probably best known for being a dream character in Twin Peaks, and Mireille Mossé, a French actress with a few credits, as the woman Hop-Frog rescues. The rest of the cast is puppets. This made sure that, as Taymor said, “These two little people, so often used in the theatre and cinema as special effects themselves, were deeply and painfully real.”
And of course Hop-Frog is the hero.
I love Poe but I’ve never heard of that one! Now I absolutely have to read it! I know Julie Taymor best for directing the most amazing and bizarre version of Titus Andronicus ever conceived, starring Anthony Hopkins. If you haven’t seen it, you really need to!
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I hope you enjoy Hop Frog if you haven’t gotten to it yet, and if you have I hope you enjoyed it yet. And I loved Taymor’s Titus. She also did the amazing biopic of Frida Kahlo. We got a book about Taymor in the library before she directed The Lion King, which I think is what propelled her into something like mainstream fame. She’s had a fascinating career and I can say I knew her before she was well known.
Now I have to hope to it and do some reading and TV watching, Chris. You’re always a hero to me.