Hola, Sneakers. Welcome to Episode 430 of the podcast no one thought would make it past episode 429!
This week: Let’s take a moment; mind blown; wasting time; Dave’s birthday week; Cindy Sherman, conceptual photographer; opposite effect; ouija/weegee/waluigi; odd couple; a Patton Oswalt sighting; enthusiastic fellow; very particular seating; lesbian quotient; aspirational boundaries; guess that jerk; some other jerks; the trencherman; stuffed; the new Emma; the various Emmas; Jane Austen, the novelist; a better Northanger Abbey adaptation; the mirror crack’d; Beatles trivia; Top 10 trivia; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; cold relief; unlikely cold relief; Dave is lying; and finally, what did Ian say again.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the Week: What is a piece of good advice you often give that is always ignored?
Sub-question: What is something you’d like to see adapted that has not yet been adapted to film or TV?
Department of Corections:
Speaking off the top of his head, Dave misremembered the director of the new Emma. The director is, of course, Autumn de Wilde. The film is her directorial debut. The screenplay was adapted by Eleanor Catton.
Interested in Cindy Sherman? Here is a good documentary from BBC’s program Arena from 1994:
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Hey gents,
Belated happy birthday to Dave.
A book series that is ripe for screen adaptation – apart from SPARKS of course – is the Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. This fantastic series for older kids is outstanding. It’s about four orphans who are recruited by a small and enigmatic spy ring to infiltrate a sinister school run my a megalomaniac Gillian. It is part Lemony Snicket, part Roald Dahl and part James Bond. It is a series a recommend for readers who have finished reading Harry Potter and are looking for something to read next. Great characters, lots of action, twists and humour.
Netflix, if you are listening, get on it!
Ah, damn autocorrect. That should have read megalomaniac VILLAIN!
Though a megalomaniac Gillian (Anderson perhaps) would also make a great baddie.
In my industry a good piece of advice that’s been ignored for as long as I can remember is DO NOT OUTLINE YOUR FONTS IN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR! What if we revise copy edits?! Also if the art is going to print, DO NOT WORK IN RGB, CONVERT IT TO CMYK! That is all.
As for adaptations for film or TV and I’ve mentioned it before, the original L. Frank Baum OZ books. Ian hit the nail squarely on the head last time I wrote of this mentioning how perfect the OZ stories would fit into a streaming series for television. I couldn’t agree more. The original stories are just strange and off-putting enough that I believe they would attract a broad audience of today. If only they can distance the production from the 1939 MGM musical that is so beloved by the world and create something that is faithful and compelling on its own. If this ever happened, my dream job would be to work on its creation and art directional concepts. I’m well aware of such hurdles of creating within the shadow of a well loved property since I am currently working with Amazon on the new Middle Earth series…believe me, it ain’t easy to do such a thing without Jackson’s visuals that have so saturated everything. I think the same could be said of OZ from a viewer’s point of view, but I, along with Ian, have read all the books, so I know what THAT OZ should look like giving it a completely different look than what audiences would expect.
I did enjoy “Emma.” for the most part. One part I didn’t need to see was Knightley’s naked backside. They were clearly just trying to up the ante on the Colin Firth wet shirt scene from Pride and Prejudice. I’m overly-obsessed with the age differential between actors cast as romantic interests in film and TV, so I looked up the gap between Emma and Mr. Knightley in the book (about 17 years) and did the math to calculate the gap between the actors in the major adaptations.
1996 Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam (11 years)
1996 Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong (10 years)
2009 Romola Garia and Jonny Lee Miller (10 years)
2020 Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn (13 years)
But the real ages of the actors don’t matter so much as the apparent age of the characters onscreen and I think Dave is right when he says they keep trying to age down Mr. Knightley to appease modern tastes. Marianne and Colonel Brandon have a similar age gap in Sense and Sensibility and some people don’t like it that they end up together. But then as now, older men and younger women do fall and love and get married.
1959 my mom and dad (14 years)
I haven’t seen the whole movie yet, but the 2007 Northanger Abbey with Felicity Jones does use that Walter Mitty-ish device of dramatizing the gothic scenarios Catherine imagines. I read a modern adaptation of the novel recently by Val McDermid where the heroine is a fan of the Twilight novels and wonders if her host is a vampire!
Louise! So good to have you back!
I agree with all your points about Emma., but I must admit that the story is so great that every adaptation somehow captivates me!
One adaptation you didn’t mention – and one I think is very good – is the 1972 version with Doran Godwin as Emma and John Carson as Mr. Knightley. In that instance, they got the actors ages exactly right as there was a 17 year age difference between the two performers. Also – another thing that bothers me – John Carson’s Mr. Knightley is not a god walking among men, but a rather homely – to my taste – gentleman whose eventual winning of Emma is particularly gratifying. The actor playing Mr. Knightley was also rather homely – once again, to my taste – so the misdirection worked there at any rate.
The recent Little Women also aged down one of its male leads to make the marriage more palatable to viewers.
Thanks for the tip on the more recent Northanger Abbey. I’ll check it out!