Month: September 2011

Ralph Fiennes, on, Ralph Fiennes

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Ever since I was old enough to understand what a movie director does, I’ve been curious about those situations where someone both stars in and directs his own movie.  So, basically, he’s the boss of whether he did a good job? How can you do that?

Ralph Fiennes, star of the upcoming Coriolanus (coming December 2012, by the way), gives me some insight into this problem.  He says that, as director, he thought that his own performance at times was horrible.

“‘Oh, that’s horrible,'” was how he recalled his initial reaction to
his performance. Fortunately, he said his editor “managed to stick it
together” into something he’s proud of.

Fiennes said he had to be ruthless on his work as an actor to keep
the film moving, and he came close to regretting his decision to star in
the film.


“I’ve been indulged by directors who allowed me an extra take but I
had to deny myself,” he says during interviews at the Toronto
International Film Festival. “It was hard.”

I honestly don’t know much about Ralph Fiennes – other than the English Patient and Lord Voldemort, I had to go visit IMDB to see what else I might know him from. This article, though, makes me like him.  He’s not shy about being a first time director, giving plenty of credit to the editor above for managing to stick everything together.  Later in the article, on the subject of Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia, he says simply that he knew to “shoot her well, and get out of the way.”

I am very curious to see how this movie does. Coriolanus always struck me as a more political, and therefore boring, play.  Wait, hear me out!  You may love the political stuff, and can make a strong argument that those are the best plays. I’m just looking out at the world at large and wondering what your average audience is looking for.  Love, romance, tragedy, sword fights, comedy?  You have to admit, hardly anybody experiences Coriolanus unless they go out and hunt it down – and even rabid Shakespeare geeks rarely put it in their top 10.

But! We live in some serious politically-charged times. People love their war movies. So, who knows? Maybe I’m not giving people enough credit?  Only the box office knows for sure …

Directing Your Mind’s Eye

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

The message remains loud and clear, as I work my way through Richard III for the first time, that I should see a performance.  Shakespeare was meant to be seen, not read, as the old saying goes.

Let me ask the directors in the audience a question. You’re given a play to direct that you’ve never seen, read, or experienced before. What do you do? Do you immediately go off and find somebody else’s directorial vision of the play, watch that, and then say “Oh, ok, that’s how that’s supposed to go?”

Or would that completely mess with your ability to develop your own vision for the story? Sure, there’s research that can be done – but if you’re a completely empty vessel, isn’t there a very real danger of filling yourself up too much with other people’s ideas and not leaving enough room for your own?

See where I’m going with this?

If all you want to do with a Shakespeare play is to say, “Well, I’ve seen it, I know what it’s about. Check that one off the old bucket list,” then sure, go do that.

Thing is, I wouldn’t really be here doing stuff like this web site if that’s all I wanted.  I want to be so intimately familiar with the plays that I have my own movie running in my head. I want my own opinions, that I can answer by quoting the text – not by saying “I like how Richard Burton did it.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – when you see Shakespeare, you’re seeing one interpretation of what it could be.  When you read it, you’re opening up the possibility of all of them.

How Should We Deal With Anonymous?

~ duane ~ 39 Comments

We all know that it’s coming – Anonymous, the “Shakespeare didn’t write his plays” movie. I’m getting inundated by articles and events both pro and con, on a daily basis.

I’m torn about what to do.  On the one hand, as one of the bigger places where we talk about events in the Shakespeare-related community, I feel somewhat obliged to do something more than ignore it.

However, I also think that we’re making it a bigger deal than it needs to be.  I saw somebody the other day saying that this movie is poised to significantly alter people’s perceptions of Shakespeare’s authorship for generations to come.  Are you kidding me? It’s just a movie by a guy known primarily for disaster flicks.  I am expecting people to care as much about the authorship question after this movie as they do before it – some people will have an opinion that will not change, and some people will continue not to care.  I feel pretty safe in thinking that if somebody was actually convinced to believe the Oxford theory based solely on this movie? Any Stratfordian would not find that a difficult debate to win.  Shakespeare in Love came out, what, 10+ years ago? And I’ve yet to meet someone who thinks that Shakespeare’s life was anything like that.

So, I’m putting it open to discussion. Do you want to hear about every (well, most) bit of goings-on regarding this event? Do you think we should be making a more active effort to shoot it down before it catches on like the folks at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust are doing with their “60 Minutes” project?  I fear that if we actually take up the trolls on this one, we’ll have to spend all of our time dealing with questions of whether Shakespeare was a gay atheist, too.

Best of “Shakespearean First Drafts”

~ duane ~ 1 Comment
I got into work this morning to a note from Bardfilm that he’d started a new game on Twitter that he called, “Shakespearean First Drafts”.  As has become our new policy, here’s a best-of post for posterity:
  • “We are all made of dream stuff.”
  •  “Hey look, it’s Juliet up in the balcony. Hi, Juliet!”
  •  “Brutus is a cool dude.  All these dudes, are cool dudes.”
  • “For aught that ever I could read, / The course of true love never was a walk i’ th’ park.”
  • “Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. Crummy clown, bad material.”
  • “Wanted: 1 horse. 10 bucks. Willing to negotiate. Call Rick ASAP.”
  • “Anyone got a horse? Cause I really need one, like right now.”
  • Claudius: How is’t the clouds still hang on you? Hamlet: You suck! You’re not my real dad!
  • “Holy crap, it’s Yorick! Yorick died? When the frick did that happen?”
  • “And you, also, are among these conspirators? Oh, Brutus. Really?”
  • “My mistress’ eyes are almost like the sun. Something like? Nearly like? Partly?”
  • “By the tickling of my nose, something evil this way blows.”
  • “To be or not – I’m kinda leaning one way, but I’m a bit on the fence, you know?”
  • “Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, / And darned if I know what to do with either one.”
  • “The game’s a toe!”
  • “Darn it, Goneril just said what I was gonna say.”
  • “There’s something a bit off in the state of Denmark.”

Somebody’s Doing Virtual Shakespeare Monkeys (Again)

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

I almost missed it, but looks like the idea of writing computer code to simulate the “infinite monkeys typing Shakespeare” thing has come around again.

As a programmer, I know what it’s like to have free time and to do stuff like this (well, I used to :)).  So we won’t debate the uselessness, or the apparent misunderstanding between “infinite” and “millions and millions.”  You can have all the millions you want, it’s still not infinite.

Instead I’ll just point out that it’s been done before. The source link is long dead, but my blog post back in 2005 should serve as proof that the idea is far from a new one.

When is somebody going to try the Schroedinger’s Cat experiment, and give the monkeys a rest?