Apropos of a comment I made in the "Heinlein movie" thread, I'd like to throw this question out there for kicks. What "twist" could you put on an adaptation for a Heinlein story to make a compelling movie pitch? The twist should not materially alter the plot or theme, but should leverage the visual medium to do something that the printed word cannot readily do.

For instance... in the process of raising my daughters I have fantasized about a movie showing scenes of children bouncing off the walls, making demands all day of their parents who eventually crack and tell the kids to leave them alone - CUT to interior psychotherapist's office 20 years later, with grown-up child on couch bemoaning how their parents were distant and had little time for them.

Okay, so that tells you a lot about my state of mind these days... but still, that intercutting between scene and flash-forward or flash-back is not something that would work at all that way in a book, which would probably have been written as an autobiography. Something like The Joy Luck Club might have gotten this kind of treatment (I don't recall enough of the book and the movie to be sure; I just know that the movie hopped all over different characters' timelines).

So there's the challenge. Imagine you are pitching a Heinlein story to some moguls with pockets stuffed with cash, but they already know the Heinlein oeuvre. Your job is to tell them what you are going to show on the screen that isn't done in the book, that leverages the unique advantage of the visual medium.

a visual flashing through the many years of lazarus' life leading up to the beginning of the proposed movie- maybe throw in a little narration by morgan freeman ? ok the morgan freeman narration has been done- but damn he did it well

I like the way you're thinking here. More of the same please.

In the movie version of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Manny would have a wacky gay neighbor.

Oh wait, that's the sitcom version.

In the movie version of Time Enough For Love, when Dora's crew picks up the severely wounded Lazarus from the WW I battlefield, the soundtrack would play Ride Of The Valkyries.