Here Come the Poes

Val Kilmer & Ben Chaplin (as Poe), Twixt

As I've mentioned before, I've been falling drastically behind on blogging this summer because of progress on my book manuscripts and the fact that my kids and husband are home for two and a half months. But... I have had time to keep up on my Entertainment Weekly reading—my revered Friday-night guilty pleasure.

Last week I read the Comic-Con wrap-up issue and saw a photo featuring a movie audience wearing 3-D glasses shaped like Edgar Allan Poe's face. My first thought: "Oh, the audience is watching that upcoming John Cusack Poe movie, The Raven." Nope. They were watching another film that features Poe: Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt. Oddly enough, neither film is a biopic about the famous troubled author of dark tales, and each treat him more as a character than a real-life man. Furthermore, an upcoming TV series and a farcical movie are creating their own versions of the famous nineteenth-century writer.

Here are the various E.A.P.'s you'll be seeing soon on big and small screens:

Twixt
The story: A writer with a declining career arrives in a small town as part of his book tour and gets caught up in a murder mystery involving a young girl.
Poe's role: From what I can gather, Poe appears in dream sequences that involve the main character's trippy search for answers.
Who plays Poe?: Ben Chaplin

John Cusack

The Raven
The story: A fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet is in pursuit of a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories.
Poe's role: Crime solver.
Who plays Poe?: John Cusack

Poe
The story: Follows Edgar Allan Poe as the world's first detective, using unconventional methods to investigate dark mysteries in 19th-century Boston.
Poe's role: Crime solver.
Who plays Poe?: Christopher Egan

Lives and Deaths of the Poets
The story: Comprising a series of approximately 50 comic vignettes, the movie is the fictional story of what really did NOT happen to famed poets who have so enriched all of our lives..
Poe's role: Hard to tell from the website, although he's listed as an author and beer drinker.
Who plays Poe?: Greg Coale

I'm happy Poe is having his moment in the modern cinematic spotlight, but the guy married his thirteen-year-old cousin, made a huge impact on the horror genre, invented the modern detective story, and struggled with drinking and depression.  Do we really need a fictionalized version of him?  Isn't he interesting enough as is?  My challenge to filmmakers: bring us a gripping, straight-from-Poe's-letters biopic.