John Boorman's The Emerald Forest.
By Robert Holdstock.
Based on a screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg.
New York Zoetrope, 1985.
207 pages.
ISBN: 0-918432-70-7

If you're a big fan of the movie, consider reading the novel adapted from it. Yes, movie novelizations are cheesy, but this one is by the acclaimed fantasy writer Robert Holdstock, and I found it to be quite well written. It brings more detail to the mythic world Boorman created for the Invisible People, fleshing out many of the concepts that flash across the screen rather quickly. Also, the friendship between Tomme and Mapi is explored in greater depth. Mapi is a year younger than Tomme and somewhat jealous that Tomme passes his rite of passage, or "hunt-death," earlier than him. By becoming a man Tomme is allowed to marry Kachiri and to participate in dangerous hunts, and consequently, leave Mapi behind. Other aspects of the story that are fleshed out further include:

• The relationships between Wanadi and his three wives.
• The relationship between Tomme's village and Kachiri's village.
• The reason why Wanadi kidnapped Tomme.
• What the family did during the ten years they spent searching for Tommy.

Well, I hope that's enough to pique your interest in the novel! The glossary I've made may give you an idea of some of the content that is explored further.

The UK edition, published by Penguin, featured a painting by noted fantasy artist Jim Burns.	The Australian edition, also by Penguin.	The back cover of the US edition.

The book also includes eight pages of color photos. Below, director John Boorman explaining a scene to his son.

The Emerald Forest Diary: A Filmmaker's Odyssey.
By John Boorman.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1985.
242 pages.
ISBN: 274-14769-8
(out of print)

I know what you're thinking: "Am I really interested in this movie enough to read an entire book on the making of it?" Toss aside any doubts you may have and dive into this marvelous book, which is about so much more than this particular movie. Boorman's mind ranges over the topics of Brazilian culture, the destruction of the Amazon, the 20,000-year gulf that divides our culture from the rain forest natives, modern man's loss of a mythology that adds meaning to our lives, the theme that unites Emerald Forest with his earlier films Deliverance and Excalibur. He discusses the movie-making process with profound wisdom and in intricate detail, but in between his meditations on art he gives us hilarious Hollywood anecdotes and explains the elaborate, vicious business world that lies behind the images on the screen.

Both in his themes and in his vibrant, often lyrical style, Boorman recalls the greatest of prose poets, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sadly, Fitzgerald did not finish his great novel of Hollywood, but Boorman's wonderful memoir carries on the flame. Prepare to be dazzled.

Some of my favorite passages in this book:

• "Tribal life follows unchanging patterns. I saw that for us, in our world, change is the only imperative: fashion, novelty, progress, news. We crave them. They feed us. Stasis is death and so we hurtle on, faster and faster towards... what? Film-making is an expression of that neurosis of novelty, that process of inventing impossible problems for oneself and failing to solve them." (p. 8)

• "In Rio and São Paulo life is a continuous celebration that spills out into the tumultuous streets. Its beautiful, vivid people crowd together and make noise and music. They announce the coming of something new; they have stirred the racial pot and here is a new dish, try it, anyone can join, you too can be Brazilian. It is not a nationality, but a new way of thinking and feeling, open, free, spontaneous. Brazil is the future." (p. 43)

• "My foremost impression is that this country is what the United States thinks it is. The immigrants to the USA were supposed to turn their backs on Europe, but they hand on to their past. They foster and indulge the most crass national foibles of their forbears: the sexual jealousy of Italians, wild Irish tempers, etc. They did not melt in the pot. In Brazil they really melted: in fact, melting seems to be what they like doing best: Indian, Carib, European, Japanese - the genes swirl together, dancing to the samba beat, with never more than a pitying glance backwards to those sad, suffering souls who begat them to a life of sun and fun." (p. 72)

• "The rain forest is rampant, spiteful, tangled in angry knots. Barbed thorns, spiked leaves, resins that burn, poisonous fruits, grasses that clutch you, huge ants that sting like snakes, caterpillars whose hair brings welts up on the skin, tarantulas a foot across wearing mink coats." (p. 50)

• [On returning to England:]
  "I looked at my fellow countrymen and felt alien. There is no grace nor dignity in these people, no harmony in their dress, no art in their play. Here is a tribe gone sadly wrong, mutated. Worst of all, they seem to have lost the knowledge of what they have lost." (p. 216)

• "Music and film have always been in love, but never happily married." (p. 218)

• "The Indians, with their music, dance and ritual, are constantly striving to escape their material lives into the spirit world. In making a movie we take the material elements of our society and transmute them into a stream of light flowing on to a wall, hoping that it will contain something of our spirit." (p. 229)

Life in the Amazon Rain Forest.
By Stuart A. Kallen.
San Diego: Lucent Books, 1999.
96 pages.
ISBN: 1-56006-387-4

A concise introduction to the Amazon and its inhabitants. This book is written for younger readers (middle school, more or less) but is a handy reference for anyone, with dozens of black and white photos, and useful maps and statistics. The book focuses chiefly on the Wanadani, upon whom Boorman based his fictional Invisible People, so you will experience a shock of recognition in the photos and in the explanations of their culture. Without mentioning Emerald Forest at all, it indirectly explains a lot about the film.