Manimal Crackers

An Introduction

You see, ever since I was a young girl, I've been fascinated by the dynamics between humans and animals. We're all members of the animal kingdom, so why should our more bestial instincts be so foreign to us? And of course, such dynamics are no stranger to popular fiction. In middle school, my friends were really into this series called "Maximum Ride," about kids whose DNA was spliced so they're, to quote my super-cool science teacher "98% human, 2% bird!" I was downright intrigued. Screw X-Men, this is the superhero movie Hollywood should be making!

Of course, Maximum Ride was hardly the only example of "animorphism" in contemporary pop culture, or even contemporary literature. Twilight, which featured a girl falling in love with a vampire and a werewolf- two literal sexy beasts- was incredibly popular in my school, this being 2009 and all. I never got into it (too plastic and superficial) or The Incredible Hulk (too much testosterone.) I preferred more "classic" horror, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula (Christopher Lee was the Original Gangsta!)

So, this one day I was dicking around on ImdB, when, for the sheer hell of it, I decided to click on a link saying "Turns into Animal." Scrolling through the films listed, I was fascinated, in a kind of weird way. But then, I found something that caught my eye: Manimal! The IMdb summary said, of course "A man who has the power to turn into any animal fights crime." Wow, this actually looks like a pretty cool show, I thought to myself. 

After doing a little more research, I got more and more interested. Eventually I decided to look up the series on Youtube. While it's technically illegal to post copyrighted material to Youtube, nobody remembered Manimal, so it went under the YouTube copyright lawyers' heads. In between middle school and trips to see grandparents to celebrate whatever Jewish holiday, I watched all the episodes. Which, of course, wasn't so hard when there are only eight of them!

It looked pretty weird at first, I'd have to admit. But then, the series slowly, yet surely, grew on me. I came to accept how "weird" the series was. I mean, special effects weren't so great back then, but morphing technology was only starting to become high-grade for movies in the early 80's, let alone TV shows. Eventually, I got so intrigued, I started scrolling the IMDb message boards for the show. There were some posts, of course, of people discussing a possible film adaptation of the show, complete with who should play Dr. Jonathan Chase; the protagonist of the series. Of course, I already had my pick: John Hodgman, an author whom I had a crush on. Sure he was a portly brunette nerd, a far cry from the dashing 80s British Adonis that was Dr. Chase, but I didn't care- after all, I had a huge crush on him and figured that this movie was a fantastic opportunity to combine my two interests.

I decided to take a look at the IMDb message boards to see what they would think of my idea. Of course, they suggested people like Aaron Eckhart and Daniel Craig. You know, more conventionally attractive actors.

Sleeping at night, I couldn't help but think of how cool it would be to have a film based on the series. I've always been fascinated by Hollywood's obsession with creating shows out of iconic franchises, so why should my interest in creating a show for Manimal be any different? I mean, even if it is cheesy, I don't think Hollywood would give a damn. After all, most other film adaptations based on iconic shows aren't that much better.

Eventually, this interest died down and led to more "normal" interests, like pop music and cute boys, like any normal 13-year-old girl, and not-so-normal interests, like classic rock, like any not-so-normal 14-year-old girl. But eventually, I got really bored at school- Halloween snow days and Hurricane Sandy notwithstanding- and put more interest into writing stories about the shows I liked.

Of course, I've also had a close relationship with my Dad's family. Ever since my grandfather got sick, we've always been visiting him in the hospital. It's been pretty hard on him, but I was always there to cheer him up with a story or drawing. Once I even brought in my I-Pod to share with him! Recently, he became too sick to live at home, so we had to move him to a nursing home up the street.