Do we shape stories, or do stories shape us? After going through much of my mammoth collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales, I think it’s more often the latter. Fairy Tales, in their original non-Disneyesque glory, are dark and disturbing morality tales that have as much relevance today as they did when the Grimm brothers first started collecting them. Many of our ideas about horror, super heroes, science fiction, and even serial killers come from Fairy Tales. Some of them are so insightful on how people behave, that it’s simply stunning; but Hollywood doesn’t seem to care much about those stories. Either Disney gets to take them over and make them accessible for grade schoolers, or Hollywood gives them a cheesy redo that sucks all the juice out of the actual story. You’ll be able to see the proof of that, I’m sure, when Red Riding Hood hits the theaters in a month. Also, don't forget the fact that Hollywood neuters all of these tales immensely. How come there are only about ten stories that Hollywood is even remotely interested in adapting? How many fucking versions of Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel can they make before people start tearing their hair out? For Christ’s sake, I’m still stunned at how long it took Disney to finally tell the story of Rapunzel. And they couldn’t even be bothered to call it Rapunzel! They had to call it Tangled and stick Pink on the soundtrack to make it seem ‘hip.' And live action films aren’t doing much better. A few years ago, Terry Gilliam tried and failed with The Brothers Grimm and it’s recently been announced that we’re getting not one, but two new ‘dark’ versions of Snow White. Enough is enough!! I think it’s high time Hollywood starts pulling out the darker, weirder, lesser known tales and here are seven for them to start with:
7. The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder
The Gist of the Tale: One of my favorite Grimm Fairy Tales for it’s warped and twisted sense of humor. The story concerns a poor miller and his two sons. The older son is smart, brave and resourceful while the younger is a bit of a stupid oaf. The older son is constantly running errands for his father, which often forces him to walk through the dreaded Black Forest. He frequently returns home and tells his father that he was ‘shuddering’ the whole way there. The younger son has no idea what shuddering is, and when his father tells him he has to learn some skill in order for him to be a success, the dopey boy tells him he would like to learn ‘shuddering.' In other versions of the tale, he wants to learn how to ‘shiver’ or ‘shake,' but you get the idea.
The father, exasperated beyond belief, takes the boy to the local church and asks the minister to teach him about ‘shuddering.' The minister tells the boy to go up to the bell tower and ring the bell at the stroke of midnight. The boy does so and turns around to see the Minister dressed up as a ghost. The boy, being an idiot, asks the ‘ghost’ where the minister is and tells him that he has no time for this nonsense, as he has shuddering to learn about. The minister continues to try to spook the boy and after several warnings, the boy gets fed up and pushes the minister off the tower. He goes home angry that he still does not know how to shudder and his father, finally, kicks him out of the house.
The boy then embarks on a quest to learn shuddering. He asks each person he meets if they know how to shudder and they all direct him to various spooky areas. In one version of the tale, he builds a fire under twelve hanged men and winds up cutting them down so they can stay warm. When one of them catches fire, the boy departs because, clearly, men who do not take care of themselves cannot teach him anything about shuddering.
He eventually winds up in a distant kingdom where he discovers that anyone who spends three nights in the haunted castle down the road (there’s always one of those) will win the hand of the King’s daughter. Our hero, of course, has no trouble with the three nights and wins the beautiful princess. On their wedding night, the boy becomes troubled, because despite his fighting off evil cats, an ogre, and a man with an ax in the castle, he still knows nothing of shuddering. The princess, annoyed with his stupidity, throws a bucket of ice water on him and eureka! He shudders, shivers, and shakes for the love of his princess.
How to Adapt it: Ok, so it’s a bit of a one joke story, but I think there’s room for a lot of fun and mischief in this tale. Jim Henson actually adapted the story for his short-lived show, The Storyteller and he called it Fearnot. This is available to watch on Netflix Instant and it conveys the general idea that I think Hollywood should go with: the boy is an early version of a super-hero, with his power being that he knows, literally, nothing of fear. They could obviously expand on the boy’s exploits. How 'bout having him take on an army of vampires or demons? Perhaps the kingdom he winds up in is besieged by all sorts of creatures of the night, and only he can stop them. Also, how friggin' hilarious will the scene be where he pushes the minister off the bell tower? They could go even further with the idea of people trying to spook the boy by brining his brother back as a character. In the original tale, the older brother is forgotten once the boy gets kicked out. Maybe he’s actually bitter about his brother taking off and decides to follow him and give him a good lesson in shuddering. It would be a great running gag to constantly have the older brother dressed up as something terrifying, with each costume getting more and more elaborate, and his sibling just laughing in his face the whole time.
Who Should Do It
I’d like to see Edgar Wright take the directing reigns here and let Nick Frost take the spotlight, for once, as the boy. Simon Pegg could play the brother and Jim Broadbent could play the doomed minister. Wright has got the perfect tone to make this story funny, smart, and maybe even a little scary.
6. Fitcher’s Bird
The Gist of the Tale: There’s an alarming number of Fairy Tales about handsome grooms who turn out to be demented serial killers. Bluebeard is probably the most well known and The Robber Bridegroom is probably the most gruesome; but, I like Fitcher’s Bird because it is definitely the most bizarre.
The title character is a sorcerer whose touch will cause any maiden to fall in love with him. At the start, the duplicitous Fitcher arrives at a modest cottage of three sisters. He touches the first, she falls head over heals in love and he whisks her off to his castle. Once there, he tells her he has to go away for a while and that she may explore the entire castle, except for one room of course. He also gives her an egg (WTF?) and tells her that she must take very good care of it. If she doesn’t, there’ll be hell to pay. Guy really loves his eggs, I guess.
Almost immediately after Fitcher leaves, the girl goes straight to the forbidden room and finds a charnel house of decomposing body parts. She drops the egg in a vat of blood and runs back into the main quarters. Fitcher returns, discovers her treachery, hacks her up with an axe and puts the pieces in the aforementioned vat. Poor guy. All he wants is a girl who can take care of an egg. Shouldn’t be that hard!
He returns to the cottage and takes the second sister, who asks no questions about what happened to her older sibling. I guess that ‘love touch’ really works. Anyway, she fares no better than her sister and ends up in the vat. Fitcher then takes the third sister, who actually manages to be a little wary of him, but goes with him anyway.
Once inside, she places the egg safely on the mantelpiece (her older sisters clearly failed this experiment in school) and enters the forbidden room. Horrified, but still very resourceful, she collects all the pieces of her sisters and puts them back together. Somehow, putting the pieces back together breaks the spell that killed them and they come back to life. (I guess the other chopped up girls are just shit out of luck.)
The three reunited sisters then concoct their revenge. Fitcher returns and is ecstatic to see that a girl was finally able to take care of the egg and announces their imminent wedding. He goes off to fetch his friends (probably a large group of murderous, egg obsessed sorcerers) and the three sisters take a skeleton from the forbidden room and dress it up as a bride. They place it in the balcony window so that from profile view, it looks normal. The third sister then tars and feathers herself so she looks like a giant bird.
Fitcher and his guests return and see the ‘bird’ sitting on the roof. Fitcher, not even slightly troubled or perplexed as to why there is a tremendous bird sitting on his roof, claiming to be his even though he has never seen it before (nobody in this story is very bright). The ‘bird’ then sings a little tune about how excited the bride is for her wedding and points to the balcony window. Fitcher and his friends rejoice and go inside to start the festivities. The door closes behind them and the other two sisters seal it from the outside. Fitcher and his crew finally realize that something is up, but alas, it’s too late. The sisters burn the house to the ground, rejoice, go home, and that’s that.
How to Adapt it: Obviously, this is a horror story through and through. It should be gruesome, sadistic, odd and humorous. There’s a little bit of The Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave in this story, as the first half depicts terrible things happening to young women and the second half sees them turn the tables on the villains. The best of those types of stories (Last House) do not treat the violence in the second half as something you should be cheering for. Oh sure, it’s always fun to see a murderous psycho get his dick bitten off, but that should not be the main theme. The true theme comes from the loss of innocence. Violence begets violence and while the heroines may get their revenge and live to see another day, they have also damned themselves. Nobody is better off after having committed a cold-blooded murder, no matter how justified it is. That is where the real ‘horror’ of the story comes from. I would also advise the filmmakers to give Fitcher an actual pet bird that the sisters can slaughter before taking their revenge. That’s just so the man does not look like such a damn idiot when he starts asking a bird he’s never seen before where his bride is. As for the egg…they’re on their own with that one. I don’t think there’s much they can do to change it and it could just be used to provide some much needed humor in an otherwise very disturbing story.
Who Should Do It
Eli Roth’s got his name all over this one. He already did the revenge angle in his brilliant and underappreciated Hostel films so it should be very familiar territory for him. I’d even be fine if he updated it to modern times and made Fitcher and Donald Trump-esque figure. As for who should play Fitcher? You’re gonna laugh at me, but I thought Roger Bart was creepy as hell in Hostel II. The guy may spend most of his time hamming it up in Broadway musicals, but he can be terrifying when he wants to. I don’t care much about who they get for the older sisters as long as Amber Heard plays the youngest one. She’s the new scream queen of our generation.
5. Thief and Master
The Gist of the Tale: A man named Jan decides that his son needs to learn a trade; so, goes to the local church to ask God for advice. Trouble is, there’s a sexton who enjoys practical jokes and he overhears Jan asking for God’s advice. The sexton mimics God’s voice and tells Jan that his son should be a thief. Jan, surprised but faithful, takes the advice and sets out to find a master thief to train his son.
It takes the two awhile to find a master thief but they eventually do find one living deep in the woods (of course). The master thief agrees to train the boy and tells Jan to come back in a year. He also makes Jan an offer: if the man is able to recognize his son, then the training will be completely free, but if he does not recognize his son, it’ll cost an arm and leg.
Jan comes back a year later, terrified that he will not recognize his son. Luckily, he runs into a gnome while walking through the woods (Fairy Tales are as full of helpful gnomes as James Cameron is full of himself). The gnome asks Jan for a piece of bread in exchange for telling him how to recognize his son. Jan agrees and the gnome tells him that the boy will be disguised as an animal, most likely a bird.
Jan arrives at the cottage and immediately sees a bird perched on the doorstep. He greets it as his son and the master thief curses him. After that, Jan departs with his son and the two of them begin a very successful life of crime. The boy can disguise himself as any animal, so Jan keeps selling his son off for a very high price. The boy then changes back to normal, runs away and they sell him off again. They continue their con game for years.
One day, Jan has his son transform into a beautiful horse and sells him off to a mysterious figure. However, the mysterious figure turns out to be the master thief in disguise and thirsting for revenge. He places a bridal on the boy that forces him to remain as a horse, but the boy tricks a handmaiden into taking the bridal off. He turns into a sparrow and makes his escape, but the master thief comes back just in time. What follows is a delightful battle as thief and master chase each other, changing forms every ten seconds or so. The boy finally gets the upper hand, turns into a wolf and bites his master’s head off. He is then reunited with his father and the two of them presumably continue their con game until the end of time.
How to Adapt it: Like The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder, there’s a lot of mischief in this story. It should be played as The Grifters or House of Games in a medieval setting. They should greatly expand on the boy’s adventures with his father, maybe even having the two of them trick a few kingdoms out of all of their money. There should also be one of those cheesy training montages for when the master thief is teaching the boy. And the final fight between thief and master could be a great, balls to the wall, wizard’s duel to rival anything in Harry Potter. Fuck having the duel stop with a wolf; let’s see the boy turn himself into a dragon at the end.
Who Should Do It
Christopher Nolan, in addition to being the only man to get Batman right on the big screen (take that Tim Burton!), is a master of trickery and deception making him perfect for this story. He could have a great deal of fun crafting the character of the master thief and coming up with a million con games for the father and son to use. I think Clive Owen would be perfect for the master thief. It’s high time that dude played a villain and give the role of the boy to one of those British kids like Freddie Highmore or Nicolas Hoult. The Brits are always up to their arms in mischief and I mean that as the highest compliment.
4. The Juniper Tree
The Gist of the Tale: There’s a ton of wicked stepmothers in Fairy Tales but, for my money, the one in The Juniper Tree takes the cake. The story begins with a happily married rich man and his wife wishing for a child. They have a beautiful juniper tree in their front yard, where wife goes to whenever she needs to pray. One day, she cuts herself and a drop of blood lands at the base of the tree. The next day she discovers that she’s pregnant, and she asks the tree to give her a child with ‘skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood’ (no, it’s not what you’re thinking). Her wish comes true but she dies in childbirth. As she dies, she cradles her newborn son in her arms and tells her husband to bury her beneath the Juniper Tree.
The story then jumps to ten years later. The rich man has married an evil woman (he, of course, is utterly oblivious to that fact) with a pretty, young child of her own named Marjory. Marjory and her stepbrother get on wonderfully, but the stepmother hates the boy and wants him dead. Why? Well, she is a wicked stepmother, as I have already said.
One day, while Marjory is out in the backyard, the stepmother decides to put an end to the boy. What she does is shocking, absurd, and hilarious all at the same time. She pulls out an old chest and tells the boy to look inside of it. He does so and as soon as his head is in the chest, she slams the lid down on him, effectively decapitating him. She then realizes that her husband will be a mite pissed, so she comes up with a ludicrous ruse to save herself.
She takes the boy’s body out of the chest, places it in a chair and loosely ties his head back on with a white ribbon. When Marjory comes back inside and tells her mother that her stepbrother won’t talk to her, the nutjob tells her daughter to just ‘give him a good whack in the head.'
Marjory does so and, you guessed it, the boy’s head falls off. Marjory becomes convinced that she killed her stepbrother and her mom tells her that (I’m not making this up) they will have to chop him up into little pieces and serve him for dinner so that the father will never find out. I fail to see any of the logic in this plan, but that’s what they end up doing nonetheless.
The father comes home and, yes, they all do eat the boy. The father even remarks that it’s the most delicious meal he’s ever had. After the meal, Marjory, ravaged by guilt, buries the boy’s bones beneath the Juniper Tree. Later that night, a beautiful bird rises from the bottom of the tree and is soon revealed to be the boy reincarnated. He travels the land singing a song with the following deranged lyrics to whoever will listen:
My stepmother killed me, my father devoured me but it was Marjory who buried my bones beneath the Juniper Tree.
You can’t make this shit up. Every person who hears the song, rather than screaming their head off and running for the hills, declares it the most beautiful song they’ve ever heard and gives the boy a gift. He winds up with a beautiful necklace, a pair of red shoes and a giant millstone. After collecting these items he returns to his home, drops the necklace on his father, the shoes on Marjory and the millstone on his stepmother’s head. Sweet revenge. He then turns back into a boy and they all live happily ever after.
How to Adapt it: Wow, right? What the hell is going on in this story? Most Fairy Tales have a pretty clear message, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out just what the fuck the message is in this one. Don’t chop your kid’s head off, perhaps? Or, watch out for singing birds? I’m at a complete loss and as a result I think this story should be adapted as a satire of Fairy Tales. You’ve got all the elements in place: wicked stepmother, love between siblings, bizarre magical intervention and gruesome murders. They should go all out with this story and don't shy away from any of its weirdness. The scene where the stepmother kills the boy sounds like the perfect set-up for a screwball comedy. And I think we need to see at least one person be freaked the hell out by a singing bird.
Who Should Do It:
Before Peter Jackson got all heavy-handed and long-winded with the endlessly boring Lord of the Rings films, he made a masterpiece called Dead Alive. It was a brilliant screwball comedy disguised as the goriest film ever made. He should take the same approach with this story. Now, I’m no fan of Glee, but I am a fan of Jane Lynch and would love to see her sink her teeth into the role of that demented stepmother.
3. Six Servants
The Gist of the Tale: A prince disguises himself as a beggar and ventures out into the world to win himself a princess. He learns of a distant land where a queen demands impossible tasks from her daughter’s suitors and if they fail, it’s off with their heads. The prince decides to try his luck anyway. Smart guy.
On the way, he encounters six very weird people who willingly become his servants. The first is a very large fat man whom the prince actually mistakes for a hill at first. The second is an incredibly tall man who can stretch himself out for miles, the third is a man that can see things hundreds of miles away, the fourth is a man whose gaze is so strong that it will shatter anything he lays his deadly eyes on, the fifth is a man who can hear things going on all over the world and the last is a man who becomes very cold when it’s very hot outside, and vice-versa.
The prince and his entourage arrive in the kingdom and the queen announces her first task. She throws a ring into the ocean and demands that the prince fetch it. The man with the strong sight spots it, the fat man drinks all the water in the sea and the tall man stretches himself out to grab the ring.
The queen, however, remains unsatisfied. She demands that the prince eat all of her oxen and drink all of the wine in her cellar. The fat man takes care of that for him, but the queen is still not convinced. Her third task requires the prince to have the princess in his arms at the stroke of midnight. The prince takes the princess into a room and asks the fat man to guard the door.
The queen, a wily bitch, places a sleeping spell on the kingdom, sneaks past the fat man and takes her daughter far away. The prince wakes up and concludes that all hope is lost; but the man with the strong ears hears the princess screaming hundreds of miles away. He is able to pinpoint the exact spot and the tall man stretches himself out and carries everyone there in a few strides. Once there, they discover that the princess is trapped within a rock and the man with the deadly gaze uses his eyes to break her out.
The queen finally agrees to the marriage, but now it becomes the princess who is unconvinced (apple doesn’t fall far from the tree). She demands the prince find a man who would willingly sit in a blazing fire for him. The prince calls upon the final servant who sits in the fire and simply complains about how cold it is. The princess finally agrees to the marriage and the six servants set off to find their own way in the world.
How to Adapt it: Well, what the fuck does this story sound like? Remind you of anything? Do I have to spell it out for you? An early version of X-Men by way of Fantastic Four perhaps? That’s what I thought. The first thing to do when adapting this story is to shift the focus entirely onto the servants instead of the useless prince, and the bitchy queen and princess. I would want to see just how these six servants make their way in the world and the story could use the servants as a metaphor for the outcasts and weirdos that society overlooks. That’s what the X-Men are all about after all. I’d also have the servants doing a lot more than just help the prince and I don’t think he should simply stumble upon them. He should hear of them from stories and legends that paint them as monsters and seek them out that way.
Who Should Do It:
I’m a happy man when Zack Snyder takes on super-heroes (I eagerly await his version of Superman) and think he would be perfect for this material. The tricky thing is to figure out the servants. Here are my initial ideas, but I’m open to other suggestions: Paul Giamatti CGIed up as the Fat Man, Alexander Skarsgard as the Tall Man, Viggo Mortensen as the man with deadly sight, Mark Ruffalo as the man who can see forever, Jackie Earle Haley as the man with great hearing and Clint Howard as the man who can stand in the fire.
2. Bearskin
The Gist of the Tale: This is the first of two stories on this list that feature the Devil. Surprisingly though, this is also the most charming, feel-good story on the list. The tales begins with a soldier of great courage and virtue, returning home from many years of battle; meanwhile, having trouble figuring out just what the hell to do with himself. He visits his brothers who run a cleaning shop, but they dismiss him because they have no use for a soldier.
Depressed and beaten down, the soldier cries to the heavens for some help and, lo and behold, the Devil shows up. He says he will give the soldier everything he wants as long as the man proves that he is unafraid. The solider informs him that men of his kind know no fear, but the Devil asks him to prove it. He materializes a grizzly bear out of thin air and the soldier kills it instantly.
The Devil then agrees to give the solider all the riches he wants in exchange for his soul. The soldier refuses and the Devil comes up with a different plan: if the man can wander the earth for seven years without cleaning or bathing, he will get to keep his soul. The solider agrees and the Devil tells him that he must wear the bear’s fur for the time period and he will be known as Bearskin. The man will want for nothing, as the inside of his coat will always be filled with riches.
Bearskin begins his wandering across the land, handing out money to the poor wherever he goes. People run from him as he gets smellier, dirtier, and hairier, but he is always able to find a room at an inn thanks to his endless riches. One night, while at an inn, he overhears a man crying and contemplating suicide from the room next door. Bearskin goes to speak to him and gives the man all the riches he needs to cure his woes. The man becomes overjoyed and tells Bearskin that he can marry one of his three beautiful daughters.
The first two daughters are repulsed by Bearskin, but the third, believing him to be a good man, agrees to marry him. He tells her that he must wander the earth for three more years and gives her a ring to hold onto until he comes back. For three years, the girl’s sisters make fun of her, but they are proven fools when Bearskin returns. The Devil moans that Bearskin has beaten him but sticks to the bargain. He cleans Bearskin up and he is transformed into a very handsome man. He marries the youngest daughter, while the other two, so upset by their misfortune, commit suicide. In certain versions of the tale, the Devil shows up at the end to thank Bearskin. He tells the former soldier that he may have lost Bearskin’s soul, but he gained two in return. Nice touch.
How to Adapt it: Is it weird as to how much I love this story? There’s something absurdly charming about a dirty, bearded man wandering the earth doing good deeds. It just makes me smile. They should stick with the feel-good tone for the movie and paint Bearskin as one of the most lovable oafs in the history of cinema. Obviously, they would need to expand on his wandering of the earth and should add in encounters with people that him and people who embrace him. It could kind of be like a weird version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, where a man struggles to find his place in the world. This is also an adorable love story at its core and that should be embraced, but not to be made the main focus of the story. We don’t want the thing to be so cute it makes you want to puke.
Who Should Do It:
Ray Stevenson played a similar, albeit more violent, character in HBO’s Rome; a solider struggling to figure out what the hell to do with his life after fighting war after war. Stevenson is huge and would be perfect to portray the lovable title character. As for director? Well, Spike Jonze made me smile like I hadn’t in years with Where the Wild Things are. It was a wonderfully touching, magical film that captured childhood with perfect accuracy while remaining truthful to its source material. Spike, you need to work that same magic on this one.
1. The Devil’s Smelly Brother
The Gist of the Tale: While not as touching or charming as Bearskin, The Devil’s Smelly Brother gets extra points for having one of the greatest titles of all time and for being funny as all hell. Similar to Bearskin, it tells the story of an out of work solider down on his luck. While wandering the woods he encounters the Devil who tells him that he will happily give the soldier a job. His only demand is that the soldier cannot clean or bathe for seven years. I guess the Devil really fuckin hates clean people cuz this is a recurring aspect of a lot of his stories.
He takes the solider down to Hell and tells him that his job is to stoke the fires underneath the kettles where the damned souls are suffering. That’s pretty much it, except the Devil warns the solider never to look inside the kettles or there’ll be hell to pay. The Devil departs and leaves the solider to his work.
The work goes smoothly enough and our hero even learns to play the flute; yet, one day the solider can no longer resist the temptation, so he looks inside the kettles. In the first one, he finds the soul of his former sergeant. The sergeant was a mean bastard who treated the solider terribly, so the soldier happily throws more coal onto the fire. In each kettle he looks into, he finds another person who wronged him in life. He starts to really love his job, as he gets to torture that shit out of every person he ever hated.
Seven years later, the Devil returns and informs the solider that he knows he looked in the kettles. But does the Devil punish him? Actually no, he tells the solider it’s no big deal cuz he kept the fires lit after all. The Devil then gives the solider his reward.
He tells the soldier that he must go back into the world exactly as he is. Whenever anyone asks him where he’s from, he must reply, “From Hell!” Whenever anyone asks him who he is, he must say, “I am the Devil’s Smelly Brother and He is My King." The Devil also gives him a bag of dirt and tells the solider that he can only open it once he’s clear of Hell. The solider departs, annoyed at his crummy reward and that he smells like shit. However, when he opens the bag, he discovers that it’s filled with gold. He goes to an inn, announces who he is and where he is from, and the innkeeper only accepts him because of all the gold in his bag.
That night, while the soldier is sleeping, the innkeeper sneaks into his room and steals all the gold. The solider returns to Hell and complains to the Devil. The Devil cleans him up and tells him to demand the gold back or else the innkeeper will have to deal with the Devil himself. That does the trick and the soldier departs clean, rich and good looking.
As he travels the land, he plays his flute and one day a King hears the music and declares it the most beautiful he has ever heard. He awards the solider with his daughter and the solider eventually becomes King of the land and lives happily ever after.
How to Adapt it: My favorite aspect of this story is its message: serve the Devil well and you will live happily ever after. That’s great! There’s no lesson that the Devil is not to be trusted, no suggestion that the solider will suffer for what he did, and no typical moral. The film should be as irreverent as the story. It should be a terrific comedy that sticks it to God, religion and all other ‘nice’ Fairy Tales every chance it gets. I’d even be fine with the story being set in modern times. Hell, that might make it even more irreverent. And the theme of the world not taking care of its soldiers is a good one and might be even more relevant today that it was when the story was first written down.
Who Should Do It:
Ricky Gervais needs to write, direct and star in the title role. There’s no question. One of the world’s most vocal and proudest atheists would get a huge kick out of playing the Devil’s Smelly Brother. Can’t you just see Gervais telling people that he’s ‘From Hell’ and happily proclaiming that he’s ‘The Devil’s Smelly Brother’? He would also have a great time torturing his superiors while down in Hell. He could add a backstory that shows the solider being picked on and ridiculed by his superiors that would make the scenes of comeuppance all the more fun to watch. And come to think of it, after watching his comments at the Golden Globes (which were hilarious and fuck anyone who says otherwise), I think Gervais might actually be the Devil’s Smelly Brother.
