Dwayne Johnson, who is typically known for his outsized wrestler’s physique, was recently seen in public far skinnier than he has ever been. It was dramatic enough to notice, and Entertainment Weekly asked him about it at the Toronto International Film Festival. He noted that he was actually slimming down in preparation for an upcoming role, that of a 70-year-old man who befriends a chicken. It seems that Johnson will be re-teaming with his “The Smashing Machine” director, Benny Safdie, to work on an unusual, kid-friendly project in the form of “Lizard Music,” a film based on the book of the same name by Daniel Pinkwater. Apparently, Safdie pitched the idea to Johnson after wrapping “Smashing Machine,” and the latter immediately said he wanted to play the Chicken Man.
Now, Pinkwater isn’t exactly a household name, but kids of the early 1980s may know him well. Pinkwater, now 83, has been authoring books for children and young adults since the 1970s, and they have always been weirdly whimsical and delightfully odd. He might be best known for his 1977 book “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency,” a story about a young boy who accidentally buys a live six-foot chicken for his family’s Thanksgiving meal. The boy and the chicken bond and become friends, although chaos breaks out in Hoboken after the chicken breaks loose and runs amok. “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency” was adapted into an obscure TV movie in 1984, marking the first and only time one of Pinkwater’s books has been adapted to the screen to date. “Lizard Music” will be the second.
If Johnson’s announcement of “Lizard Music” was your first exposure to Pinkwater, read below for a further primer. The short of it? Pinkwater is the best author you haven’t yet discovered.
Lizard Music is but one of many imaginative Daniel Pinkwater creations
“Lizard Music,” published in 1976, is about a 10-year-old boy named Victor who is left alone at home for a week. His parents are off on a marriage rebuilding retreat, and his annoying teenage sister is going to be shacking up with a boyfriend. It was published at a time when this kind of neglect was common, so Victor will be fine. Also, Pinkwater understands that kids make the best discoveries when left to their own devices, so he frequently writes tales of kids who are far away from adult supervision.
Victor is a weird, nerdy kid who loves Walter Cronkite and late-night television. Without supervision, he stays up super late watching TV and falls asleep during an after-hours movie. When he awakens, he sees an eerie new TV show about lizards playing musical instruments. He assumes it was a dream, but then he begins to see evidence around town that the lizard show was real. He even befriends a local eccentric, the Chicken Man, and they investigate the lizard show together. In time, the pair discover that a species of intelligent reptiles — all named Reynold — resides on a mysterious, mist-shrouded island just off the coast of New Jersey.
All of this is presented as wholly matter-of-fact by Pinkwater. He’s a very down-to-earth author, and his descriptions of oddball things feel natural and fascinating. Pinkwater is merely imaginative. One could never accuse him of following authorial trends.
Other hit Pinkwater books include 1979’s “Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars,” 1990’s “Borgel,” and two sequels to “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency” titled “Looking for Bobowicz” and “The Artsy-Smartsy Club” (both published in 2006). Pinkwater previously wrote about his early ambitions to become an artist in his 1991 autobiography “Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights,” and “Artsy-Smarty” seems to be based on the artistic principles he learned in school. Kids should be more creative, he’s argued.
Dwayne Johnson could potentially star in other Daniel Pinkwater adaptations
Johnson, as mentioned earlier, will be playing the Chicken Man in the “Lizard Music” film adaptation, and he’s potentially signing up for a career in a Daniel Pinkwater connected universe. The Chicken Man is based on a real street performer that Pinkwater encountered on the streets of Chicago in the 1950s. He was a tall man in a tattered coat who wore a live chicken on his head, hidden under a large hat. After the character’s appearance in “Lizard Music,” the Chicken Man would later appear in Pinkwater’s 1983 novel “The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death,” one of my favorite books.
“Snarkout Boys” is about two 12-year-old kids who invent the sport of Snarking Out. That is, they wake up in the middle of the night while their parents are still asleep, sneak out of the house, get on a bus, and go to the Snark Theater, a repertory movie theater that operates for 24 hours a day and shows a new double-bill every day. They eventually get caught up in a kidnapping plot that involves a giant radioactive avocado. The Chicken Man is only a supporting player, though, as he shows up to guide the young protagonists through the bizarre nightlife of the city of Baconburg. There was also a sequel published in 1984 titled “The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror,” a werewolf book. Brent Spiner of “Star Trek” fame once played a key character in an audio rendition of “Snarkout Boys,” but that adaptation is difficult to find.
Pinkwater was married to his wife Jill until her death in 2022, and she illustrated several of his books. They also were both huge dog-lovers and published a dog obedience book together. Pinkwater is a trained artist, briefly lived with a cult (!), and once studied to be a therapist. He is a great lover of food (he’s quite a large man) and often includes extensive descriptions of tasty edibles and comments on what it’s like to be fat in the modern world. His velvety smooth voice could be heard for many years on NPR, contributing to “All Things Considered.”
If you’re not familiar with Pinkwater, now’s the time to change that.
