Got some extra money lying around? Want to help advance the dream of “more Shakespeare”?

Take a visit over at Kickstarter.com which tries to connect artists (film makers, mostly, it seems) with financial backers. I’ve seen random projects go by recently, and it only just dawned on me that I can type “Shakespeare” in ye olde searcheth box and see no end of ideas about how to interpret Shakespeare.

Many seem to be “We want to take our existing troupe on the road” projects, or “We want to record something we’ve already been doing”, but if you poke around you’ll find a number of original script projects looking to be turned into reality.

So if you want to do something with all that extra money besides giving it to me :), why not check it out? I have no affiliation to the site or any of the projects, and quite frankly I’m not fully sure how it works. They apparently run on (and promote) the “all or nothing funding” idea. So if somebody says they need $5000, and they only raise $4000, then both parties walk away with no commitment. It’s not like you as the contributor have to put something up front and then try to get it back later.   

How do you know, even with 100% funding, that the project will happen? Well, you don’t. And that’s where the risks come in. There’s a lengthy FAQ on the site that does a good job of explaining how they try to minimize this risk, though.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I’m getting inundated with “Shakespeare’s Most Romantic Valentine’s Love Quotations” links. I find most of them incredibly boring, because so little thought goes into them. They all say the same thing, and for the most part there’s little thought in them other than “Oh hey look, Shakespeare mentioned love, let’s use that.”

My favorite example?

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

This quote shows up on pretty much everybody’s list, for the fairly obvious reason that it says Cupid right there in it. But…am I wrong here in thinking that this is not really a great sentiment for writing in a card to give to your loved one? Hi Sweetie! Just thought I’d tell you that looks aren’t important.

It’s a nice sentiment, in general. We like to think that love, like beauty, is more than skin deep. But do you really want to look someone in the eye and say that?

Did anybody watch Glee this week, the “Silly Love Songs” episode, where Puck decided to sing Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls” to …umm, well, the curvy girl who he’s got a crush on? I have no idea of her name, I don’t follow the show closely enough. But it’s a similar idea – he seems to think the song’s got some deep message, and she’s just sitting there thinking “You just sat here in front of the whole glee club and called me fat over and over and over again.”

By the way, if you’d like to see an actual list of quotes compiled specifically for this purpose – organized by who might say it, when and why, might I suggest my book on the subject?

Ok, now we’re talking. Moviefone’s Family Film Guide tackles Gnomeo and Juliet from exactly the right angle. Of course it’s silly. Of course the ending is changed. It’s a movie for children, for pete’s sake. Good info as well about any parts that might be scary or inappropriate for children (it’s G rated, so not really), whether the 3D is worth it (as expected, it’s not) and even some talking points to work on with your kids after the movie. I would have loved if the reviewer included something about “…and to encourage their interest in Shakespeare, you could go here here and here.” Instead she ends with “go get some Elton John music and have a dance party.”

Once upon a time I so much as mentioned Bob Dylan in a post, and it rapidly became one of my largest traffic spikes ever. And there wasn’t even any meat in that post, just a friend comparing Dylan and Shakespeare.
Well this time I’ve got a better link and I’m hoping that some of those Dylan fans stuck around to appreciate it. Our friend and long time contributor Bardfilm wanted to make the connection between Bob Dylan’s folk narrative in a song like “Seven Curses”, and the Shakespeare’s problem play Measure for Measure. He did this for his class (he teaches Shakespeare for a living), so this is not just some random grab for web traffic. This is an entirely independent project that *deserves* some recognition. That’s different.
What he’s done is to sing Measure for Measure. In 5 minutes. As Bob Dylan. To the tune of Seven Curses. Accompanied by a video, with finger puppets.
Regular fans of the site may have already seen this link go by on Twitter or the Facebook page, but it dawned on me this morning that it really merits a post of its own so that the blog readers who only stop by via RSS feed can see it as well. Normally I don’t play the “blog post pointing to a blog post” game, because that’s a game that results in way too many links and not enough original content. I’m making an exception here because of the quality (and quantity!) of content in this most. I think more people need to see it. Truthfully I’m hoping that we can get this little effort enough attention that he’s convinced to do it again. I’ve always been a big fan of learning and memorizing Shakespeare through song, and stuff like this is a golden opportunity.
I call this post Where My Dylan Fans At, and I mean that. All it took originally was for one Dylan fan to post my link on a Dylan fan board, and traffic the likes of which I’ve never seen came pouring in. I’m hoping that someone can extend that same favor to Bardfilm’s effort. I don’t even want you to link this post – link directly to him.
[And for the record he’s neither asked me to post this, nor even knows that I’m doing it (though I expect he’ll notice soon enough)]

Look at this, just the second installment and already I’m a day late. Hope you folks appreciate these 🙂 Since I clearly do not have the time to do a proper summary of the entire week (given that those summaries would each depend on how busy the previous week was), I’ll prune it down to just the most interesting posts…
The most notable push this week is the long-awaited (by some!) arrival of Gnomeo and Juliet, Elton John’s animated musical tribute to Shakespeare. We’ve been talking about this literally for four years now, and I don’t think anybody has expectations that it’s going to be the next Shrek, but we can dream.
First, we’ve got a review and a look at what it’s up against at the box office this weekend.
More interesting, I hope, is my plea for Shakespeare Geeks of all shapes and sizes to do what they can to make sure the world at large gives this movie a chance : What’s In A Gnome? To show that I’m not messing around I even dug up my old Cinderella Story from out of the archives. I wrote that two years ago, and I still want it just as much.
On a lighter note, Bardfilm brought us one of his famous lists, this time pondering Why Would You Watch A Shakespeare Play When You Could Watch The Super Bowl?
Not wanting BF to have all the fun I offered up my own list with Why Hamlet Can’t Date You, a riff on one of Twitter’s “top trends” that floated across my radar one day.
Lastly, in anticipation of finishing The Story of Edgar Sawtelle I posted A Hamlet Story, where we discussed the origins of The Lion King and pondered exactly how little Shakespeare can be in a story before you can’t call it Shakespeare anymore. Bardfilm pointed us to the official rules for defining that sort of thing. Who knew?