Holy Wood (book)
 The supposed cover art; posted on the internet by Manson in 2000.
| |
| Author | Marilyn Manson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel, Satire |
| Publisher | Unpublished |
Publication date |
Unreleased |
| Preceded by |
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (1998) |
| Followed by | - |
Holy Wood is an unpublished novel by Marilyn Manson, written between 1999 and 2000 (although Manson has claimed to have been writing selections since 1995). Initially envisioned as a companion piece to the album Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), it remained unreleased after a series of delays, alleged by Manson to have been caused by a "publishing war".
Describing the plot of the novel itself, Manson said: "The whole story, if you take it from the beginning, is parallel to my own, but just told in metaphors and different symbols that I thought other people could draw from. It's about being innocent and naive, much like Adam was in Paradise before they fall from grace. And seeing something like Hollywood, which I used as a metaphor to represent what people think is the perfect world, and it's about wanting — your whole life — to fit into this world that doesn't think you belong, that doesn't like you, that beats you down every step of the way, fighting and fighting and fighting, and finally getting there, everyone around you are the same people who kept you down in the first place. So you automatically hate everyone around you. You resent them for making you become part of this game you don't realize you were buying into. You trade one prison cell for another in some ways. That becomes the revolution, to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself."
Manson has also stated that there is a character "that's very much a take on Walt Disney," who was a big inspiration in the writing of both the book and its accompanying album. In describing the setting, he compared Holy Wood, the place, to Disney World: "I thought of how interesting it would be if we created an entire city that was an amusement park, and the thing we were being amused by was violence and sex and everything that people really want to see."
In early June 1999 Manson stated at the MTV Movie Awards that he was writing a film script but refused to be drawn into discussion over its contents. By the next month however it became known that New Line Cinema had approved Holy Wood and that Manson was writing the script with the help of writer Robert Pargi. At the 1999 MTV Europe Music Awards in Dublin, Ireland, on November 11, where the band was slated to perform, Manson revealed to MTV News' John Norris the title of his then-unrevealed film project and his hopes for it "[to] go into production sometime in the next year." Manson also met with Chilean avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky at the event to discuss the possibility of working on the film. However, no final decision was made. Central to the idea was a starring role for Manson's then-fiancée Rose McGowan.
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