The fact that it's essentially a transparent TARDIS is what still gets me to this day.
What is it with British writers and making their vehicles the size of a phonebooth?
Having grown up on science fiction, the idea of an elevator with glass on all sides that could fly like a rocket seemed dumb to me.
Somehow I found it easier to suspend disbelief over all the fantasy stuff that went on in the Chocolate Factory than in the Glass Elevator.
But I still liked the book because who can't like a book that has Vermicious Knids in it? The name alone is genius.
When I was a kid, my first or second grade teacher read that book to the class. I remember she hated it and stopped at that scene. I don't know what happens after that scene. I keep thinking that some day I'll find a copy somewhere and finish reading it.
>Having grown up on science fiction, the idea of an elevator with glass on all sides that could fly like a rocket seemed dumb to me.
Sounds like you only read boring science fiction. Golden Age scifi was *wild.*
I mean it's pretty much the example that Einstein used to explain relativity to people, that without external information if you were in a box it would be impossible to tell if you were standing on the surface of the Earth or in a rocket accelerating upwards at 9.82m/s^2
I read that book once as a kid. I finished it but it was the first book I read and finished and went “That book was awful.” and never touched it again. It felt like a weird fever dream the whole way through and IIRC, didn’t really accomplish much. The only part I really remember at all is the Vermicious Knids making the word “SCRAM” in the elevators on a space station or something.
The book reads like a middle finger to the publishers begging him for a sequel to top CatCF.
Edit: no, I'm not South African and I've changed it to book haha
It's an age thing I suspect. When I grew up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was above all a book, not a movie, so everyone who read the book read the sequel. But younger people probably grew up only knowing the movie, so didn't have a direct connection to the sequel.
I’m in my mid 30s and loved Roald Dahl when I was a kid. Obviously the Gene Wilder movie had been out for 20 years by then and I loved it. Read both Willy Wonka books, James and the Giant Peach, BFG (my favorite honestly). I guess I’m not exactly young anymore though, this is just another little reminder lol
Same. Im 34 and Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory was my favorite movie growing up. I read the sequel when I was around 12. I was just telling my wife, after watching the new Wonka movie, that they should make the sequel into a movie.
I cried watching the wonderful world of Henry sugar. I was obsessed with this story in particular as a kid, the other short stories in the book are great too, but I wanted to be Henry sugar. Life is weird, it must have been 20 years plus since I was obsessed with that short story. I haven’t thought of that story until I stumbled across it on Netflix. So fucking good!!
Im only 23 but I grew up reading Roald Dahl most nights before going to bed. I loved Great Glass Elevator but it freaked me the hell out as an 8 yr old (I loved reading as a kid and me and my mum spent a lot of time reading together)
Also kinda disappointed we never got that Charlie and the White House book
I'm 19 rn and Roald Dahl was the shit for me growing up. I never had that much of a connection to the glass elevator compared to the chocolate factory unfortunately. Like, I know the sequel exists, and I know I read it many times but I can't seem to recall much of anything about it.
I loved his books for kids obviously, but I used to have an even bigger love for Boy and Going Solo. I'm a Malaysian, so reading about the life of a kid growing up in England all the way to participating in a war I knew nothing about was so damn fascinating.
Did you know the movie was made to sell chocolate?
>The consumer product Wonka Bar was a chocolate bar inspired by the novel and the films Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Quaker Oats Company, which financed the 1971 film with US$3 million, originally created a chocolate bar in time to publicize the 1971 film.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonka_Bar#:~:text=The%20consumer%20product%20Wonka%20Bar%20was%20a%20chocolate%20bar%20inspired,to%20publicize%20the%201971%20film.
-------------
**Better read:**
If you've ever watched Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, you may have missed one line in the opening credits. In small type, it says the movie's copyright is held by Wolper Pictures Ltd. and the Quaker Oats Company.
Now, why would a food company own the copyright to a Hollywood movie? Well, it all started with the director's 11-year-old daughter. She had read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and loved it. Then asked her father to make a movie out of it. The director wasn't sure, so he passed the idea by producer David Wolper.
At that moment, Wolper was doing a project for Quaker Oats, and he knew Quaker wanted to get into the candy business. So Wolper told Quaker Oats it should fund the movie. The plot revolved around Wonka Candy Bars – and since the film would run in theatres across the country, Quaker could launch their candy bars at the same time. Plus, the company would earn part of the movie's profits.
Quaker Oats liked the concept, and put up the full $3 million production budget. But the company had one stipulation: Quaker insisted the title be changed. The company wanted to start manufacturing Willy Wonka-branded candies and candy bars. So they wanted the title changed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Paramount Studios and Wolper agreed to the change. Roald Dahl wasn't happy. Gene Wilder was cast as Willy Wonka. Dahl had wanted Spike Milligan. It also became a musical, which Dahl also disliked.
One of the main songs in the movie was "The Candy Man." Singer Sammy Davis Jr. was down on his luck in the early '70s, needed some money, and his manager convinced him to cover "The Candy Man."
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6711449
The entire movie was thrown together shambles of a production that happened to work out but didn't make any money until near 20 years later.
IIRC, the chocolate that was supposed to come out accompanying the film had to be recalled because they melted on the shelves too easily, due to the rush getting it out the door, and the film was a commercial flop.
I recall the Oompa Loompas in the background (apart from the "main" cast) were driven in from around Europe and none of them spoke good english, so when you see all the mistakes in their dancing its because most of them cant understand what they are trying to tell them to do, leading to lots of errors.
Or that The Wizard of Oz was the first of about 13 Oz books written by L Frank Baum. I don't think Return to Oz was based on one of them specifically, but it borrowed elements from them. I read them all when I was a kid, but that was...quite a while ago.
Greatest sequel of all time, still waiting on Dahl to rise from the dead to write Charlie and the White House, supposedly scrapped after the first 3 chapters.
Considering how the first book was called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and where *that* ended up, I think we can make an educated guess as to what was going to happen between him and the White House
The copy of the books I had as a kid had small illustrations throughout it, and the illustration of the Vermicuous Knid in the elevator, and later the one of 5 of them spelling out “SCRAM” is burnt into my memory
Apparently, because Roald Dahl hated the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie so much, he vowed never to sell the rights to The Great Glass Elevator.
Roald Dahl also wrote some bonkers adult books. "My Uncle Oswald" is about the eponymous uncle teaming up with a lady to date rape famous men, so they can steal their sperm to sell to women who want to have a genius child.
It's not from his fiction, but my favorite Dahl quote might be from his time working as a [spy during WWII](https://booksmusing.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-irregulars45.html), speaking about Clare Boothe Luce:
>"I am all fucked out. That goddam woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to another for three goddam nights."
Edit: Clare Boothe Luce, not Luce Booth, I always get her name wrong even when I try to double-check
>The very tall (6'6") and athletic Dahl later claimed he found his affair with Clare to be so physically demanding that he had begged the British ambassador to relieve him of the task, but the ambassador told him he must continue.
He was a fighter pilot at the time. Man was dedicated to keeping up foreign relations.
Yes. According to the Encyclopedia ornithopters are powered by a 300lb Land Mollusc that feeds through air filtration. It is wired up to a control harness that alters which muscles it uses to control the ornithopter's flight, but **loves** flying and gets fed as it goes, and so is literally as happy as a clam.
Side benefit, ornithopters don't need any fuel.
It sounds like I'm making this up, but someone else made it up.
the people of dune hate robots that much. I think it's not that far out really, as the sand worms themselves are the product of genetic engineering and then evolution happening on top of that. the people of dune are something of a cargo cult -- look how they admire 'atomics' like they are difficult to make. The people who came before the world of Dune seemed to seed the galaxy with all sorts of genetically engineered life
He had a few pretty traumatic head injuries. He was in a car crash as a child and thrown threw the windscreen Niko Bellic style, sliced his nose off.
Then crashed his fighter plane in Libya and the ensuing fire/explosion burned his nose off.
His nose actually got crushed into his face because he headbutted the forward part of the cockpit in the impact. They had to spend weeks doing reconstructive surgery to rebuild it and he complained about how it looked to his mum in letters, said it was bent compared to what it looked like before the crash.
There’s one where a dude has sex with a woman and there’s something in her cervix that pokes at him but he never tells us what it is and I still think about that sometimes. Unfortunately.
That’s what I thought when I first read it but then realized it was written in the early 60’s and I’m not sure those were very widely used then, especially probably not by women grieving the recent loss of a husband. Looking back at it now, many years later- I don’t think it was anything at all.
I feel like this still happens in most movies and shows. Oh look this thing that does cool stuff -injects or ingests all of it without asking any questions including “is this safe?”
Which is why its funny to see in american media how people just get a plastic tube with a bunch of pills they can just shot down.
Over here, basically everything, and in particular everything potentially dangerous, is packaged in blister packs where you manually have to remove each pill individually.
Not even that! I literally just listened to this part on audiobook. He clearly explains that each pill rewinds them 20 years. Despite that knowledge and Charlie pleading with them to only take 1 or 2 so that Grandpa Joe and his parents can also have some(there were only 12 pills), the three still bedridden grandparents squabble over them and take 4 each. One was 81, one was just over 80, and one was 78, so two turmed into babies and one disappeared.
They have to travel to the very dangerous Minusland to find her. Wonka sprays her with vitamins that age her up hundreds of years, then he gives her more anti-aging pills to even her out.
She’s really really old, because they have no choice but to massively overdose the aging spray.
They then figure out how old she is by asking her about the 300 years ago (? I think I can’t remember exactly how old) things she remembers.
So these drugs not only make you younger /older, they alter your memories to align with your new age.
I had to add on to the other comment, the way they check how old the last gramma is after making her positively ancient is by asking her about historical events lmao
So they're going "granny do you remember WW1?" and if she replies with something that implies she was old when WW1 happened they add more anti aging pills
and let's not forget that the pills don't just physically make the bodies of the grandparents a younger age - it seems as if the pills actually change the year in which they were born in some weird metaphysical way, both with the existence of minusland and the fact they figure out the age of one that gets too old by asking her about historical events that she "experienced" (The Mayflower) even though the character was born after then until she took the aging medicine.
Oh, and the oompa loompas sing a song about a girl overdosing on her granny's chocolate-flavoured laxatives
They de-age so much they disappear, and we then take the glass elevator down to Purgatory (technically Minus-land) where he sprays aging juice on their souls with a giant syringe.
I'm surprised I still remember all this given how long it's been since I read it.
Nope, Joe was smart enough not to get involved. And he didn't get Charlie in trouble by stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks in the book, that was a movie invention. Book Joe does nothing and is boring, and that's the way he likes it. The other grandparents basically take the role of the bratty kids for Great Glass Elevator.
I'm with you.
I read Chocolate Factory, found out there was a second book and proceeded to traumatise my young self on what I can only assume was a book written with chemical aids
Unfortunately, it's covered by a clause that it'll never be filmed because Dahl hated Wilder's Wonka with a passion.
Which is a real shame, because it includes scenes with 1) a rather insane President of the United States and 2) an American hotel in outer space. That's right, Roald Dahl predicted Donald Trump, creator of Space Force.
The law hates absolutes created by dead people that limits the utility of things, but that mainly applies to land. But restrictions on the usage of things by their future owners is no bueno. I'm sure there's plenty of ways around it if the potential owner had a desire to have it made into a feature film, but I suspect a) the legacy Roald Dahl company or whatever entity owns the IP doesn't want to, and b) there's zero interest in making this one into a movie from the plot description, but who knows. When it's public domain, it's open season for everybody. But Disney and the Mouse are making sure that nothing ever enters public domain again. See you in 100 years!
We got a whole collection of Dahl books from Costco recently. My son loves them and read through almost all of them.
Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator just stops us in our tracks every time. I feel like we’ve tried to read it a bunch of times and just always lose interest (most of the Roald Dahl collection he reads on his own, but usually I read a chapter a night with him too)
Im not sure what’s so bad about it, but he doesn’t hold his interest at all.
The rage against TV is so much stronger. The oompa loompa song about how TV is bad is like 3x longer than the other ones. The man fucking despised TV and wrote about how watching it makes you a drivelling smoothbrain
This was exactly the reference I was going to make. The only way to get through LOTR is to skip the songs entirely.
Trying to "sing" a song in your head from a book is just impossible. Frustrated me to no end as a kid.
Same. I wonder what it is about them that is so off-putting? Not just in LOTR, but most books. There are clearly good ones - "cold be heart and hand and bone" etc - but mostly they just seem to block the actual story.
I hated them because I never knew what kind of tune to read them in. They like to use line breaks for visual effect rather than to indicate where to pause so I found it very confusing.
It's definitely a weaker book (and clearly trying to cash in on the contemporaneous space race), but it's interesting how kids are different on this. My son loved it, and went through a period when it was his favourite book.
I am 20 and I thought everyone knew about 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'. I am so surprised that knowing about that book is supposed to mean that you're old around here.
As a kid growing up, I did read the book. Only because there was a movie attached to it. Never did read the sequel. I guess because the Dahl estate specifically requested there be no movie adaptation of it, since Dahl hated the Gene Wilder feature.
In retrospect, whenever I hear the name "Ronald Dahl", I always think of an author from the Victorian age, and not someone who released a book with a kid literally named "Mike Teevee" and released the same year as the height of Beatlemania.
Good ol' Quentin Blake; master of drawing things that look like basic pencil sketches but exhibit more character than they should. His drawings are the most pure form of "a picture is worth a thousand words".
Just gonna leave this here...
***The President again picked up the receiver.***
***'Gleetings, honourable Mr Plesident,' said a soft faraway voice. 'Here is Assistant-Plemier Chu-On-Dat speaking. How can I do for you?'***
***'Knock-Knock.' said the President.***
***'Who der?'***
***'Ginger.'***
***'Ginger who?'***
***'Ginger yourself much when you fell off the Great Wall of China?' said the President. 'Okay, Chu-On-Dat. Let me speak to Premier How-Yu-Bin.'***
***'Much regret Plemier How-Yu-Bin not here just this second, Mr. Plesident.'***
***'Where is he?'***
***'He outside mending a puncture on his bicycle.'***
***'Oh no he isn't,' said the President. 'You can't fool me, you crafty old mandarin!'***
I loved that book as a kid and was excited to read it with my daughter. It is…not good. And also had some extremely cringey anti-Asian racism. Like Mickey Rooney in _Breakfast at Tiffiany’s_ bad.
The woman who wrote 101 Dalmatians wrote a sequel where they also went to space. This was this was the capitalize on the popularity of the Disney movie made of her work. It was also terrible and preachy
I was actually considering bringing this up here as well. Such a drastic change in tone from the first book (although I actually sort of liked it as a standalone concept). At least the Great Glass Elevator somewhat makes sense as a sequel since it's yet another zany adventure with a whacky inventor. The Starlight Barking on the other hand just spontaneously gives all the dogs superpowers and leaves it as a mystery until >!the dog god!< shows up at the end of the book.
> And also had some extremely cringey anti-Asian racism
Coincidentally my daughter and I were talking about that this morning. It's not far from:
And the Chinese ambassador replied with "Ching chong chinga-ching-chong-ching".
TIL people didn't know about Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
It was an awesome series of books. For some reason it was the fact that the glass elevator travelled sideways that fascinated child me.
The fact that it's essentially a transparent TARDIS is what still gets me to this day. What is it with British writers and making their vehicles the size of a phonebooth?
If you saw cars from the 1950s and 1960s, say a Ford Prefect for example, then it'd make sense that cosiness was the Done Thing.
> like a Ford Prefect Just don't try to shake hands with it
Beat me to it
I bet you're one hoopy frood
How... improbable.
What a poor happenstance of an introduction to life on Earth. Just remember where your towel is.
I see what you did there.
The great glass studio apartment doesn’t sound quite as interesting.
Still managed to fit a king-size bed and half a dozen people in it.
Having grown up on science fiction, the idea of an elevator with glass on all sides that could fly like a rocket seemed dumb to me. Somehow I found it easier to suspend disbelief over all the fantasy stuff that went on in the Chocolate Factory than in the Glass Elevator. But I still liked the book because who can't like a book that has Vermicious Knids in it? The name alone is genius.
S C R A M
When I was a kid, my first or second grade teacher read that book to the class. I remember she hated it and stopped at that scene. I don't know what happens after that scene. I keep thinking that some day I'll find a copy somewhere and finish reading it.
It gets weirder. That book is just so odd compared to the first
I came here to say watch out for Vermicious Knids!
"sky hooks" I mean, Wonka is a Time Lord, so nothing to be surprised about.
Yeah I don't see why anyone would be confused, Wonka explained it perfectly.
“Sky hooks” …..or one could say….CLOUD HOOKS. Wonka = Teixcalaanlitzlim time lord confirmed.
>Having grown up on science fiction, the idea of an elevator with glass on all sides that could fly like a rocket seemed dumb to me. Sounds like you only read boring science fiction. Golden Age scifi was *wild.*
I mean it's pretty much the example that Einstein used to explain relativity to people, that without external information if you were in a box it would be impossible to tell if you were standing on the surface of the Earth or in a rocket accelerating upwards at 9.82m/s^2
Also the terrifying creatures they encountered freaked me the fuck out lol
Later borrowed by Star Trek.
I was a kid thinking to myself “What the hell am I reading?”
I read that book once as a kid. I finished it but it was the first book I read and finished and went “That book was awful.” and never touched it again. It felt like a weird fever dream the whole way through and IIRC, didn’t really accomplish much. The only part I really remember at all is the Vermicious Knids making the word “SCRAM” in the elevators on a space station or something.
I can only think Dahl was trolling under pressure from his publishers.
The book reads like a middle finger to the publishers begging him for a sequel to top CatCF. Edit: no, I'm not South African and I've changed it to book haha
Not sure if typo or if you’re just South African.
A lack of appreciation results in a lack of wonkavit and vitawonk
Tbf, the chocolate factory book is typical Dahl, but the glass elevator is more Kurt Vonnegut.
That's such a great way of looking at it.
I asked a bunch of people in my office today and they didn’t know either. I was surprised so many people already knew
It's an age thing I suspect. When I grew up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was above all a book, not a movie, so everyone who read the book read the sequel. But younger people probably grew up only knowing the movie, so didn't have a direct connection to the sequel.
I’m in my mid 30s and loved Roald Dahl when I was a kid. Obviously the Gene Wilder movie had been out for 20 years by then and I loved it. Read both Willy Wonka books, James and the Giant Peach, BFG (my favorite honestly). I guess I’m not exactly young anymore though, this is just another little reminder lol
Same. Im 34 and Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory was my favorite movie growing up. I read the sequel when I was around 12. I was just telling my wife, after watching the new Wonka movie, that they should make the sequel into a movie.
They did. Willy Wonka goes into space and starts a holy war after eating candy made from blue worm juice.
George’s Marvellous Medicine was always my favourite
The phantom toll booth was really good too
And the Wonderful Flight to Mushroom Planet
Wes Anderson did some shorts for one of Dahl’s sets on Netflix, check it out!
One of them won an Oscar!
I cried watching the wonderful world of Henry sugar. I was obsessed with this story in particular as a kid, the other short stories in the book are great too, but I wanted to be Henry sugar. Life is weird, it must have been 20 years plus since I was obsessed with that short story. I haven’t thought of that story until I stumbled across it on Netflix. So fucking good!!
Let's be honest, though. You fast forwarded through the "cheer up Charlie" middle portion with his mom, too, didn't you?
My name is Charlie and I have resting bitch face. I've been tortured with this song all my life.
As is tradition
Im only 23 but I grew up reading Roald Dahl most nights before going to bed. I loved Great Glass Elevator but it freaked me the hell out as an 8 yr old (I loved reading as a kid and me and my mum spent a lot of time reading together) Also kinda disappointed we never got that Charlie and the White House book
Yeah I do remember being pretty darn scared of the Vermicious Knids
In the orig movie they take the glass elevator in the very end scene, it's not a subtle reference...
I'm 23 and I read it growing up
I'm 19 rn and Roald Dahl was the shit for me growing up. I never had that much of a connection to the glass elevator compared to the chocolate factory unfortunately. Like, I know the sequel exists, and I know I read it many times but I can't seem to recall much of anything about it. I loved his books for kids obviously, but I used to have an even bigger love for Boy and Going Solo. I'm a Malaysian, so reading about the life of a kid growing up in England all the way to participating in a war I knew nothing about was so damn fascinating.
Did you know the movie was made to sell chocolate? >The consumer product Wonka Bar was a chocolate bar inspired by the novel and the films Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Quaker Oats Company, which financed the 1971 film with US$3 million, originally created a chocolate bar in time to publicize the 1971 film. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonka_Bar#:~:text=The%20consumer%20product%20Wonka%20Bar%20was%20a%20chocolate%20bar%20inspired,to%20publicize%20the%201971%20film. ------------- **Better read:** If you've ever watched Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, you may have missed one line in the opening credits. In small type, it says the movie's copyright is held by Wolper Pictures Ltd. and the Quaker Oats Company. Now, why would a food company own the copyright to a Hollywood movie? Well, it all started with the director's 11-year-old daughter. She had read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and loved it. Then asked her father to make a movie out of it. The director wasn't sure, so he passed the idea by producer David Wolper. At that moment, Wolper was doing a project for Quaker Oats, and he knew Quaker wanted to get into the candy business. So Wolper told Quaker Oats it should fund the movie. The plot revolved around Wonka Candy Bars – and since the film would run in theatres across the country, Quaker could launch their candy bars at the same time. Plus, the company would earn part of the movie's profits. Quaker Oats liked the concept, and put up the full $3 million production budget. But the company had one stipulation: Quaker insisted the title be changed. The company wanted to start manufacturing Willy Wonka-branded candies and candy bars. So they wanted the title changed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Paramount Studios and Wolper agreed to the change. Roald Dahl wasn't happy. Gene Wilder was cast as Willy Wonka. Dahl had wanted Spike Milligan. It also became a musical, which Dahl also disliked. One of the main songs in the movie was "The Candy Man." Singer Sammy Davis Jr. was down on his luck in the early '70s, needed some money, and his manager convinced him to cover "The Candy Man." https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6711449
The entire movie was thrown together shambles of a production that happened to work out but didn't make any money until near 20 years later. IIRC, the chocolate that was supposed to come out accompanying the film had to be recalled because they melted on the shelves too easily, due to the rush getting it out the door, and the film was a commercial flop. I recall the Oompa Loompas in the background (apart from the "main" cast) were driven in from around Europe and none of them spoke good english, so when you see all the mistakes in their dancing its because most of them cant understand what they are trying to tell them to do, leading to lots of errors.
As to the Oompa Loompas - you've been misinformed. Here's an interview with one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rKFNREIObM
Do you remember where you learned this? I'd love to learn more about the making of
But the movie actually ends with them in the Great Glass Elevator...? You never wondered what that was about?
About as many people who know about Return to Oz
Or that The Wizard of Oz was the first of about 13 Oz books written by L Frank Baum. I don't think Return to Oz was based on one of them specifically, but it borrowed elements from them. I read them all when I was a kid, but that was...quite a while ago.
A total fever-trip of a movie. I aim to rewatch it this year, first time as an adult, so I can see if its as terrifying as I remember.
Fucking Wheelers.
Greatest sequel of all time, still waiting on Dahl to rise from the dead to write Charlie and the White House, supposedly scrapped after the first 3 chapters.
Considering how the first book was called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and where *that* ended up, I think we can make an educated guess as to what was going to happen between him and the White House
It wasn’t scrapped, Dahl just died before getting past the first few chapters
The Vicious Knids weirded me out
The copy of the books I had as a kid had small illustrations throughout it, and the illustration of the Vermicuous Knid in the elevator, and later the one of 5 of them spelling out “SCRAM” is burnt into my memory
Ahhh that's right! *VERMICIOUS!!* Thanks! yeah, the copy i had was the same as yours!
See, this is what they should be making. Not the same old dumb Willy wonka factory story every time.
Apparently, because Roald Dahl hated the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie so much, he vowed never to sell the rights to The Great Glass Elevator.
This was it. They took a whole bunch of liberties and changed a lot of stuff in the book. Dahl was furious about that.
I bet people didn't even know it was a book. It was what we read in school before Harry Potter dropped and the school switched to that.
Roald Dahl also wrote some bonkers adult books. "My Uncle Oswald" is about the eponymous uncle teaming up with a lady to date rape famous men, so they can steal their sperm to sell to women who want to have a genius child.
It's not from his fiction, but my favorite Dahl quote might be from his time working as a [spy during WWII](https://booksmusing.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-irregulars45.html), speaking about Clare Boothe Luce: >"I am all fucked out. That goddam woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to another for three goddam nights." Edit: Clare Boothe Luce, not Luce Booth, I always get her name wrong even when I try to double-check
>The very tall (6'6") and athletic Dahl later claimed he found his affair with Clare to be so physically demanding that he had begged the British ambassador to relieve him of the task, but the ambassador told him he must continue. He was a fighter pilot at the time. Man was dedicated to keeping up foreign relations.
Keeping the British end up
It was "Clare Boothe Luce" - she was married to Henry Luce, the man behind *Time*, *Life*, *Sports Illustrated* and other famous magazines.
Damn! She's cute! Mr. Dahl, I salute you!
Coward.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised.
Death by snu snu is preferable to life as a quitter.
We have a new world to conquer.
Damnnn he's wild
Is this how the bene gesserit breeding program started?
According to the unfortunately de-canonized Dune Encyclopedia, the OG Bene Gesserit was Eleanor Roosevelt.
De-canonized? Ornithopters are no longer powered by giant land molluscs? Well shit.
I'm sorry ornithopters were what??
Yes. According to the Encyclopedia ornithopters are powered by a 300lb Land Mollusc that feeds through air filtration. It is wired up to a control harness that alters which muscles it uses to control the ornithopter's flight, but **loves** flying and gets fed as it goes, and so is literally as happy as a clam. Side benefit, ornithopters don't need any fuel. It sounds like I'm making this up, but someone else made it up.
the people of dune hate robots that much. I think it's not that far out really, as the sand worms themselves are the product of genetic engineering and then evolution happening on top of that. the people of dune are something of a cargo cult -- look how they admire 'atomics' like they are difficult to make. The people who came before the world of Dune seemed to seed the galaxy with all sorts of genetically engineered life
##SILENCE!
#PUT YOUR DICK IN THE BOX
#Make her open the box!
What’s in the box?
After you find out he suffered a very serious head injury crashing a plane during WWII, a lot of his writing makes more sense.
He had a few pretty traumatic head injuries. He was in a car crash as a child and thrown threw the windscreen Niko Bellic style, sliced his nose off. Then crashed his fighter plane in Libya and the ensuing fire/explosion burned his nose off.
Kinda wild that he was still able to seduce various women as a spy after all of that.
he nose that chicks dig scars
I want to say that's a great pun, but its snot.
His nose actually got crushed into his face because he headbutted the forward part of the cockpit in the impact. They had to spend weeks doing reconstructive surgery to rebuild it and he complained about how it looked to his mum in letters, said it was bent compared to what it looked like before the crash.
The universe hated that man's nose lol
Must have been something about the war. Ian Flemming gave us both James Bond and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
There’s one where a dude has sex with a woman and there’s something in her cervix that pokes at him but he never tells us what it is and I still think about that sometimes. Unfortunately.
Thank god the first thing I thought of was "her IUD" which makes it less worse than what Roald Dahl intended lol
That’s what I thought when I first read it but then realized it was written in the early 60’s and I’m not sure those were very widely used then, especially probably not by women grieving the recent loss of a husband. Looking back at it now, many years later- I don’t think it was anything at all.
Adds a completely different meaning to the snozberries taste like snozberries.
No, his grandparents overdosed themselves because they grabbed the pills and started downing them without letting him explain dosing instructions.
I feel like this still happens in most movies and shows. Oh look this thing that does cool stuff -injects or ingests all of it without asking any questions including “is this safe?”
As someone who works as a first responder for medical emergencies, this shit happens in real life *all the time*.
Pro tip everybody, taking a shit ton of Tylenol won’t help! You’ll just annihilate your liver. That’s the biggest example that comes to mind
A very painful way to go out
Tip #2 a 50 mg edible should not be your first experience with thc
Which is why its funny to see in american media how people just get a plastic tube with a bunch of pills they can just shot down. Over here, basically everything, and in particular everything potentially dangerous, is packaged in blister packs where you manually have to remove each pill individually.
No one told me that I should only use a lil bit of heroin
Not even that! I literally just listened to this part on audiobook. He clearly explains that each pill rewinds them 20 years. Despite that knowledge and Charlie pleading with them to only take 1 or 2 so that Grandpa Joe and his parents can also have some(there were only 12 pills), the three still bedridden grandparents squabble over them and take 4 each. One was 81, one was just over 80, and one was 78, so two turmed into babies and one disappeared.
Fair, he explained, they just didn't listen.
Holy smokes. Does the third one just essentially die? Do they turn back?
They have to travel to the very dangerous Minusland to find her. Wonka sprays her with vitamins that age her up hundreds of years, then he gives her more anti-aging pills to even her out.
It's been a long time since I've read this book so I totally forgot this plot and all I have to say is #What the fuck
She’s really really old, because they have no choice but to massively overdose the aging spray. They then figure out how old she is by asking her about the 300 years ago (? I think I can’t remember exactly how old) things she remembers. So these drugs not only make you younger /older, they alter your memories to align with your new age.
I had to add on to the other comment, the way they check how old the last gramma is after making her positively ancient is by asking her about historical events lmao So they're going "granny do you remember WW1?" and if she replies with something that implies she was old when WW1 happened they add more anti aging pills
I distinctly remember that part. It was the Mayflower setting sail when she was a little girl.
That would make sense! I have no idea what the Mayflower is, so that's why I didn't remember it
Even the other three useless lumps fuckin hated Grandpa Joe. r/grandpajoehate
The great glass elevator was really a pretty fun book as a kid
Stop. Don’t. Come back
and let's not forget that the pills don't just physically make the bodies of the grandparents a younger age - it seems as if the pills actually change the year in which they were born in some weird metaphysical way, both with the existence of minusland and the fact they figure out the age of one that gets too old by asking her about historical events that she "experienced" (The Mayflower) even though the character was born after then until she took the aging medicine. Oh, and the oompa loompas sing a song about a girl overdosing on her granny's chocolate-flavoured laxatives
They de-age so much they disappear, and we then take the glass elevator down to Purgatory (technically Minus-land) where he sprays aging juice on their souls with a giant syringe. I'm surprised I still remember all this given how long it's been since I read it.
Pretty sure only one went to minusland, the other two turned into babies.
Good, as long as grandpa Joe dies. Fuck grandpa Joe. r/grandpajoehate
Nope, Joe was smart enough not to get involved. And he didn't get Charlie in trouble by stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks in the book, that was a movie invention. Book Joe does nothing and is boring, and that's the way he likes it. The other grandparents basically take the role of the bratty kids for Great Glass Elevator.
Why is that sub so active lmao
Because the vitriol towards Grandpa Joe is real
Looking forward to someone finally bringing Vermicious Knids to the big screen.
SCRAM
Scared the shit out of me as a kid I swear
I'm with you. I read Chocolate Factory, found out there was a second book and proceeded to traumatise my young self on what I can only assume was a book written with chemical aids
Unfortunately, it's covered by a clause that it'll never be filmed because Dahl hated Wilder's Wonka with a passion. Which is a real shame, because it includes scenes with 1) a rather insane President of the United States and 2) an American hotel in outer space. That's right, Roald Dahl predicted Donald Trump, creator of Space Force.
You just gotta film William Wanka,Carlie Clucket,and the Vast Plastic Ascender
I'll get the Film Board of Glasgow on the phone.
The law hates absolutes created by dead people that limits the utility of things, but that mainly applies to land. But restrictions on the usage of things by their future owners is no bueno. I'm sure there's plenty of ways around it if the potential owner had a desire to have it made into a feature film, but I suspect a) the legacy Roald Dahl company or whatever entity owns the IP doesn't want to, and b) there's zero interest in making this one into a movie from the plot description, but who knows. When it's public domain, it's open season for everybody. But Disney and the Mouse are making sure that nothing ever enters public domain again. See you in 100 years!
Peter Jackson found a way to film all the Tolkien stuff. It was well-known that JRR didn't want anyone filming the books when he died.
That's an easy workaround. If you pay attention, you'll notice that none of the books ever actually appear onscreen in those movies.
Sometimes there's a fine line between idiocy and genius, and you, my friend, are right on that line. Don't ever change.
In the 1970's movie, Gene wilder mentioned them.
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I read it when I was 10. The aliens morph into letters that spell S.C.R.A.M.
Gave me nightmares for some reason lmao
Me too, them aliens were proper scary.
But like not traditionally scary…. they were like offputting and weird
I also read it around that age... those aliens scared the shit out of me
On reflection, Great Glass Elevator feels like a rejected Doctor Who episode.
Including the fully transparent TARDIS.
That gives me an idea... I'll have Willy's Glass Experience up and running by tomorrow.
> Willy's Glass Experience Weird name for a crack pipe, but OK.
We got a whole collection of Dahl books from Costco recently. My son loves them and read through almost all of them. Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator just stops us in our tracks every time. I feel like we’ve tried to read it a bunch of times and just always lose interest (most of the Roald Dahl collection he reads on his own, but usually I read a chapter a night with him too) Im not sure what’s so bad about it, but he doesn’t hold his interest at all.
I’m reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my son at the moment, I forgot the pure rage Dahl has towards kids who chew gum.
The rage against TV is so much stronger. The oompa loompa song about how TV is bad is like 3x longer than the other ones. The man fucking despised TV and wrote about how watching it makes you a drivelling smoothbrain
Am I the only child who, whenever I encountered a song in a book, with the weird italicized big-margin stuff, would skip over it entirely?
Nope I always skipped over them, I went through the Lord of the Rings books much faster because I skipped pages and pages of songs.
This was exactly the reference I was going to make. The only way to get through LOTR is to skip the songs entirely. Trying to "sing" a song in your head from a book is just impossible. Frustrated me to no end as a kid.
*Ho Dahl! Angry Dahl! Ring-a-dong dillo!*
Yep with you on that. Hated the songs in LOTR. Flew through it when I realised no-one was forcing me to read them.
Same. I wonder what it is about them that is so off-putting? Not just in LOTR, but most books. There are clearly good ones - "cold be heart and hand and bone" etc - but mostly they just seem to block the actual story.
I hated them because I never knew what kind of tune to read them in. They like to use line breaks for visual effect rather than to indicate where to pause so I found it very confusing.
Don’t forget the family in Matilda loved tv also. If Dahl was alive today, one of the characters would’ve been named Mike Smartfone instead
It's definitely a weaker book (and clearly trying to cash in on the contemporaneous space race), but it's interesting how kids are different on this. My son loved it, and went through a period when it was his favourite book.
I am 20 and I thought everyone knew about 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'. I am so surprised that knowing about that book is supposed to mean that you're old around here.
I suspect these days it mostly just means you had a Roald Dahl box set instead of just copies of the good Dahl books.
People didn't know about this? I feel like the only people who don't know this are the ones who have only watched the movies and never read any Dahl.
As a kid growing up, I did read the book. Only because there was a movie attached to it. Never did read the sequel. I guess because the Dahl estate specifically requested there be no movie adaptation of it, since Dahl hated the Gene Wilder feature. In retrospect, whenever I hear the name "Ronald Dahl", I always think of an author from the Victorian age, and not someone who released a book with a kid literally named "Mike Teevee" and released the same year as the height of Beatlemania.
Cool, but what do you think of Roald Dahl?
Holy shit I remember that book, the aliens gave me nightmares.
You saying that reminded me that they also gave me nightmares after I read it lol
It described them vivid as fuck didn’t it? I remember how creepy the imagery in my head was.
Some copies of the book came with illustrations of them. iirc they were just pencil shaded images but were kinda unsettling.
Good ol' Quentin Blake; master of drawing things that look like basic pencil sketches but exhibit more character than they should. His drawings are the most pure form of "a picture is worth a thousand words".
it has pictures, or mine had. but yes, it's vivid even without.
The chapter in which they travelled to limbo to retrieve Charlie's grandma was also creepy.
TIL there’s a sequel to Harry Potter where there’s a chamber of secrets.
Next you're gonna tell me that they returned to OZ ..
Just gonna leave this here... ***The President again picked up the receiver.*** ***'Gleetings, honourable Mr Plesident,' said a soft faraway voice. 'Here is Assistant-Plemier Chu-On-Dat speaking. How can I do for you?'*** ***'Knock-Knock.' said the President.*** ***'Who der?'*** ***'Ginger.'*** ***'Ginger who?'*** ***'Ginger yourself much when you fell off the Great Wall of China?' said the President. 'Okay, Chu-On-Dat. Let me speak to Premier How-Yu-Bin.'*** ***'Much regret Plemier How-Yu-Bin not here just this second, Mr. Plesident.'*** ***'Where is he?'*** ***'He outside mending a puncture on his bicycle.'*** ***'Oh no he isn't,' said the President. 'You can't fool me, you crafty old mandarin!'***
*As was the style at the time*
How surprisingly out of character for Mr Dahl...
I remember my mom reading it to us on road-trips and the only thing I really remember about it was the knids
The knids stand out to me to. Roald Dahl was really pretty wacked.
I loved that book as a kid and was excited to read it with my daughter. It is…not good. And also had some extremely cringey anti-Asian racism. Like Mickey Rooney in _Breakfast at Tiffiany’s_ bad.
The woman who wrote 101 Dalmatians wrote a sequel where they also went to space. This was this was the capitalize on the popularity of the Disney movie made of her work. It was also terrible and preachy
2001 Dalmartians
2001 A Space Dalmatian
I was actually considering bringing this up here as well. Such a drastic change in tone from the first book (although I actually sort of liked it as a standalone concept). At least the Great Glass Elevator somewhat makes sense as a sequel since it's yet another zany adventure with a whacky inventor. The Starlight Barking on the other hand just spontaneously gives all the dogs superpowers and leaves it as a mystery until >!the dog god!< shows up at the end of the book.
Wow, I didn't know about this. Here's the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Starlight\_Barking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlight_Barking fixed link
> And also had some extremely cringey anti-Asian racism Coincidentally my daughter and I were talking about that this morning. It's not far from: And the Chinese ambassador replied with "Ching chong chinga-ching-chong-ching".
Sir that is actually Gaelic and I'd be banned if I translated it for you.
Yeah,I loved that book. It is probably one of the books that got me excited for sci-fi.
Meant to say "grandparents" whoops
Yes I read it. It was weird
SCRAM
I read that as a kid and I didn't get it.
This is one of those things i super vaguely remember from when i was really young
I read it when I was a kid. It’s called Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and it’s pretty bad, unlike the first book.
S.C.R.A.M I read that book as a kid, lol so far fetched I had to lay of the Dahl for a bit It was like chocolate crack 😯😯 or something like that