 So well good evening everyone and welcome to Alden Library and Welcome to this edition of Authors at Alden tonight. We are very proud to host Dr. Samuel Crowell Dr. Crowel a Ping Institute founding fellow and trustee professor of English literature will discuss his latest book Screen at the screen adaptations Shakespeare's Hamlet the relationship between text and film Little professors book center is right over there selling copies of his book this afternoon. So I encourage you to pick up a copy The twice distinguished university professor is the author of numerous essays articles reviews interviews and books about Shakespeare in performance including Shakespeare at the Cineplex the Kenneth Branagh era His expertise has taken him on lecture tours everywhere from the Folger Shakespeare library in Washington, DC To the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford upon Avon Shakespeare's language in action has been a source of enchantment for Crowell since his early teens after an education with prominent Shakespeare professors at Hamilton College and at Indiana University He began his Ohio University career in the 1970s Teaching courses about Shakespeare on film He followed his interest and connected with other like-minded scholars and soon wrote rose to prominence in the field of Shakespearean film studies His book part of which was written in Alden library Draws upon new behind-the-scenes material from the British libraries Lawrence Olivier Papers And it is the first to make use of the papers of Olivier's Hamlet film editor Helga Cranston Facilitating this afternoon's conversation with Professor Crowell is Lorraine Wachna Miss Wachna is a librarian in Alden library and is the subject specialist for English language and literature so please join me in giving a big hand to Professor Crowell and Lorraine Wachna Whoa, I Have my very own copy and I do want to say I would highly encourage people to get this book. It's amazing. Look look I Don't do that. Okay, so this and if you stay here after and buy the book you can get it signed Okay, so dr. Crowell this is an honor for me The book is amazing and Hamlet is an amazing character and I want to hear you talk more about it. So So I'm curious how When you started teaching Shakespearean film at Ohio University Were you a pioneer? Yeah First of all, let me thank Dean of library Scott Seaman For this whole idea. I mean, it's what a wonderful idea that the library should celebrate authors and books and for those of us Who grew up in the book culture before the digital age and still love them and still write them I hope that there are people who still buy them and read them. This is a nice way of putting the library in the flow not just as a Receptical for books, but as someone who also prizes them and wants to share them with the broader public so thank Scott and thank Lorraine for Inviting me and doing all this. Yeah when I came here in 1970 and first began teaching Shakespeare I realized that most of my undergraduates had never seen Shakespeare They had no idea what that language looked like or sounded like when it got up off the page and into the voices and bodies of Actors where it suddenly makes sense if you if if you Are someone who is alert to suddenly discovering that this is real conversation going on between real people It just happens to be poetically rich and lively and that's why people keep wanting to say those words Actors are safe Shakespeare every bit as much as those of us who work in the classroom Saving so it wasn't going to be possible for me to take 60 or 70 students that I taught every term every You know turn on take them to Stratford in Ontario or get them to London though We Susan I eventually did that so I began to think what about Shakespeare films and I had seen some when I was Younger and a few in college, but they had really lodged in my memory except for a couple that were obvious in their interest And it was also the case that Even good Shakespeare professors that I'd had in college and graduate school who loved Shakespeare and performance Which was not this was the age of the new criticism when it was the text and text based was not always the case They had very poor opinion of the Shakespeare film and mentioned Orson Welles and You did not get a very happy response Anyway, so I began I got a little grant from University College. There was something called the Experimental Education Fund and Began looking around to see if these films were available and they were in 16 millimeter Remember you youngsters out there. There were no videotape. There were no DVD. This was still something you put through a projector And so I discovered from various little film outfits that you could put together a Group of about ten Shakespeare films And I thought maybe what I ought to do rather than just bringing them into a Shakespeare class is to teach them all at once And I'll do an experimental course called Shakespeare on film And it happened to work out brilliantly because we have a good film program here But it's all graduate work and in those days there weren't even undergraduate courses in the history and And theory of film that there was just graduate students and they were pointed professionally They were being taught how to make films how to be editors how to be sound people and a couple of them came to see me And said we see there's a film course. We want to take every film course we can find can we Take your course. I said sure we'll find a way to give you a graduate number for it And they were terrific because as I tried to Work with the films in terms of making the Shakespeare work for my kids They made film work for the rest of us and they were brilliant in showing us the difference routine a film made Let's say by Laurence Olivier and by Orson Welles and why maybe we ought to prize the latter every bit as much as we Naturally prized the former so it was a wonderful sort of experience of a class and a professor all teaching one another And that led then to some other classes. I got a university professorship So naturally one of the things I said I teach was Shakespeare on film And then that's when Susan and I took our first group to London to begin to see Shakespeare on the stage there I just want to make one more point that about this time. Hey, I discovered that these films were better than people had thought they were Lucky for a young guy. Nobody had talked about them. There hadn't been a lot of stuff going so and that was always a problem with a Shakespearean God the library was filled with 400 years of somebody, you know talking about Shakespeare So here I had fresh material and I wrote a couple little essays based on some things I'd seen in these films and sent them off to professional meetings and lo and behold There were other young people like myself who were doing the same thing and we sort of got on We got we became part of the carnival of professional Shakespearean meetings in that we would go and make outrageous claims for these films to Audiences that were stunned when we would say oh, yeah, well, let's make Beth is much better than Shakespeare's I mean we were just putting them on but it turned out we drew an audience and so they asked back Oh, we got to do more film now Shakespearean film was such a major part of Shakespeare studies that I'd almost like to blow it up Okay, that that always happened So it was great for me turned out professionally But I suddenly found an area that I could write about and that's why my books are text-based as well as film based I'm trying to bring film to the To the literature student, but I also don't want to give away that text, which is what I first Fell in love with with Shakespeare so long roundabout answer But that's how Shakespearean film came to Ohio University And so it really wasn't something that people were exploring that much yet nothing you're saying absolutely nothing there were there was maybe one book that had been written in the Early 70s by a woman who was one of the leaders of this group Bernice Kleeman on on Hamlet and then 19 the first really solid book on Shakespearean film is 1977 published interestingly by the Indiana University Press and That's the that's the first that's the founding text Jack Jorgens of Shakespearean film. So that's That's when it started, you know, it was interesting I just want to share with the people that do research here and that are students that I had asked dr Carl so what database do you use at the library and he he doesn't really need to because he is a database So but all that research you've done in your past all culminates to you being this sort of authority and expert on Shakespearean film And I just wanted to put that out there So let's see did you also like to were you interested in showing other authors on film? Or did you stick strict strictly with Shakespeare no Austin Dickens? Dean McWayms, and I did develop a little course in literature and film that I only taught once I mean it was it was his baby, and I said I'd help him work with it and we taught it in a big lecture class and And I did it once and only did one Shakespeare film in it and did things And Austin is a good example, but we did things all the way from Austin to Passive Glory to a Raymond Chandler of the big sleep Anyway, a variety of kinds of what I taught it but but no my baby was Shakespeare and and But not being embarrassed When Shakespeare touches base with film as popular culture Because Shakespeare was popular culture It's just that over the years he got taken over by the high and mighty and The notion theater is not something that is available to everybody now It's very expensive and film is our is the is the medium that most of us Incorporate into our lives without thinking about something that we're that we're doing that's Culturally important and so I love it when Shakespeare and film and and popular film Touch base when genres sort of mix or when a filmmaker reaches out to see how a particular film genre Would work to maybe open up a particular Shakespearean text? I think that's when the Shakespearean film area is at its richest. There's a there's a phrase in Arnathology Called the abrupt edge and it's where one sort of terrain comes up and abruptly meets another and usually there's Up a path of terrain between the two that's dense think of a Meadow coming up to a riverbank and the riverbank is lined with trees and undergrowth and stuff And that's where the birds are that's where the good stuff is It's in that edge between the two and when Shakespeare and popular culture meet and meet In an exciting fashion. It's that edge that I find particularly interesting so It's interesting too because actually I've been doing a lot of Shakespeare research for other reasons and just hit me how much Shakespeare is about language and How films can really make it pop because it is about late he he wrote things to be performed so film is a beautiful medium for that and What's beautiful about this book is that dr. Krall compares Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet and he breaks down what makes them two different films and I just want you to talk about that. I mean I could apply you full of questions, but just in terms of Why why did you choose them and then go from there? Okay? Maybe I should back up just a little bit and say that this series is a part that my book is in is the series called Screen adaptations and it's not limited to plays into films or Shakespeare into film one of the really good Books in the series is on to kill a mockingbird another one on pride and prejudice Another one on the great Gatsby But it's what it what it attempts to do is to bring an understanding of film to students who are watching these texts in class as I Don't know not a substitute for reading the text, but it's sort of an a cupcake for having done so I don't think there's a lot of discussion that goes on We read the text and then we see the film and wasn't that nice and yeah We liked the film or we didn't and we thought that actor was bad there's no no attempt to understand what the grammar and rhetoric of film are and what How a filmmaker goes about making an independent work of art so that's what this series is meant to confront and of course Hamlet there are so many examples that I wanted to concentrate on two that seemed to me to be wonderfully and starkly different and also wonderfully and starkly Related to the moments when they were made because I like context too I am an old new critic were just give me the text in the words But I think it's not a bad idea to know something about the moment in which the text was conceived I don't even I think it's not a bad idea because we're curious about it If there's anything going on in the artist's life at the moment that the text was conceived that we may see Him or her may be working out in the text. So anyway, these were two wonderful examples of that Olivier's film cuts all of the Political framework of the play. There's no Forton breasts. There's no even Rosencrantz and Gillinson He was really radical doing that and I think that's why Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Gillinson are dead I think he said my god, I'm gonna make him the heroes of my play. If Olivier is gonna cut him out of his film I'm gonna bring those guys center-states. They're still gonna be clueless. They're not gonna know what's going on But nevertheless, I'm gonna I'm gonna make them when we hear Rosencrantz and Gillinson are dead that line in the theater maybe Shelley and Dennis but Most of us don't blink an eye. It isn't oh my god Terrible that they're gone. No man. We're racing to the end of Hamlet He's he's dead their bodies littered all over and these are two more, you know those fraternity boys that came in and Were disloyal to their pal. Anyway boy at the end of Stoppard's play. You care about those two anyway, so Olivier's it comes in a moment after the Second World War after a tough time when the world is turning inward when Freud is suddenly Someone that is being talked about far more than Marx that That even in our own internal political world, it's it's the enemy within It's communism within that's the on American activities committee and all of that and Olivier gives us a very internalized Hamlet of an obviously Freudian Hamlet though none of the reviewers not even somebody as good as James Agee who wrote the best reviews of the film and a cover piece in Time magazine picked up on the How obvious the Freud was in the film? Okay, Brana comes along 50 years later almost on the dot The Soviet Union is crumbled Eastern Europe are overthrowing its little tin pot Dictators and he's going to give us the whole text He's going to give us every word Olivier's film comes in at two hours and 20 minutes Brana's is four hours the longest film since Joseph Mancoitz's Cleopatra and of course that killed it at the box office can't do a four-hour film But anyway, he did oh and one of the great Excuse me for getting into all this. I just don't I want you to get all this stuff One of the great cross once again cross fertilizations of popular culture and Shakespeare and Shakespeare and film is that Brana got the money I mean wouldn't anybody be mad to give a kid $18 million to make a four-hour film of Hamlet. You just know that that's a loser But you know just buy buy the money But a production company had developed called Castle Rock and the only thing Castle Rock ever did which made it a fortune Was to do the Jerry Seinfeld show So just Seinfeld Underwrites Brana's Directly, but Castle Rock does Okay, I mean great the way in which this stuff shifts around anyway, so Brana's film is very different It's shot in 70 millimeter. It's huge not only does it give us Fortenbrass It gives us more Fortenbrass than you've ever seen in your life because every time he's mentioned We get a cut away the Fortenbrass doing something. Okay, so it's it's a very different sort of Attack on the play Olivier takes it inside takes it into the family romance into the Freudian family romance into the relationship between Densely into the relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet and Hamlet takes it out I mean Brana takes it out into an epic Sort of European 19th century novel, I mean, okay this Tolstoy's war and peace hovers behind Brana's version so wonderful the way they They talked to one another in that fashion and a way in which you begin to see That films are independent objects just as stage production You don't go see Shelly's Sensational as you like it and say well that wasn't as you like it that well they haven't you know, they didn't wear They weren't dressed in Elizabethan outfits, you know, and they somebody smoked a joint in Okay, no and you've got to see the the whole Proud of the world that her production creates for the play and that's what a production does and a film does too Then the point is doesn't work Shelly's does okay not every film does but doesn't work. Does it make does it make a a good film? Okay, and if it makes a good film sure, it's great Shakespeare in love is a good film All right, you could imagine that story being told by somebody other than Stopper and it might mean it wouldn't work But that does and we say okay, maybe that's the best version of Romeo and Juliet we got Oh, there's that cover. I mean I was trying to do Hamlet and the two Hamlets and what made them intriguing to me I could go into More things one of the things interesting about the two films is How they're shopped everything in Olivier's film was on a crane everything in Olivier's film is on the vertical There are those winding stairs. Oh Freud again, there are those winding stairs dark crannies that we dash up and down We collapse at the top when we're the fire we collapse on our mother's lap We abuse of feel you at the bottom, okay? Brannos is all on the Horizontal Okay, and they 70 millimeter you got a camera that you can't take a lot of places He's got his mounted on a special dolly that was built in Italy for the the cinematographer on the film was the camera operator on David Leen's Lawrence of Arabia. That's how tight we get in looking at David Leen is is the film model for Brannos Hamlet and so it's meant to be brought it's shot in 70 millimeter. It's meant to be broad big wide huge epic So it's and thus Land the languages all the same although you get more of it in brown I you get all of it and you don't get all of it in a little bit that doesn't Olivier is still making something very tight very interesting as many productions do I don't I've only seen one or two or three Maybe full-text Hamlet's in my life. Everyone is cut and then you look to see not well They cut that it is why did they cut it? What did they keep and why did they keep it and then did they make that work? and something that you're focused that you're going towards that I would love you to talk to people more about is the the translating verbal images into visual ones and using the grammar and rhetoric of film and already you're talking just in terms of Heat brown on shot wide for a reason right and Laurence Olivier did close-ups for a reason and so more about Kind of choices they made with their shooting and editing and lighting and sound Yeah these are all a part of the language of film the the kinds of shots that They long shot the close-up the medium close to two shot the reaction shot etc And it's nice when you're thinking about a film we're talking about it even in class to have some of that language available so that it's just there and you don't have to Make up other language to surround it as though there isn't a quasi test isn't technical in some Way that is unfamiliar to us But we just aren't used to using it in literature classes But you pretty much have to have to Do that and then you begin to discover okay? How does a a film maker work now? Olivier's made an interesting discovery for him He discovered that that the language of film tended to start long and move in that you got an establishing shot and then as things got more emotional in a scene as things got Tenser you got closer and closer to the actor and He found that for him didn't work for Shakespeare Because as you got in Shakespeare as you get closer to the emotional moment it gets bigger and Suddenly you got this camera right on top of this actor who automatically then looks like they're hamming it or that they're because the the Emotion that they're trying to express is so huge and so powerful as As is the language you got to give him some room so he he and his Films began by starting in and Moving back to let the actor have that that space to work with and there's a great Shot which most people do not like including Alex Thompson the cinematographer where Branagh pays absolute homage to that in his Hamlet which is I don't know if you've seen the film but it's the how all occasions to inform against me shot when Hamlet and all black is standing with a Frozen landscape behind him and Fortenbross's army marching to fight for that little piece of poem that nobody Cares about it really wants but they're gonna fight for it And he starts in close and moves back and the score gets bigger and bigger and bigger And you know finally we get this little tiny figure throwing his arms out way back Here with the camera at a great distance although Branagh's actual point there is how how grand the language is and how ineffective the actor is That is the person expressing that It's another moment where Hamlet can say huge and powerful things even in and the way of damning himself And and and not act Talk rather than so there's just a little Example from something Olivia discovered I Later filmmakers didn't necessarily follow that pattern, but it was something that he had to pick up on and I think partly it was because he had He had watched George Cooke's Famous Romeo and Juliet with Norma Sher and Leslie Howard. This is one of the early experiments and sounds Film Shakespeare from 1936 and had seen that it was it failed And of course it failed too because as you closed in on Norma Sher and Leslie Howard you realize they were in their 40s And this was not exactly wrong, but you could get away with that on the stage Couldn't get away with it on film And of course then the great film that Olivia went on to make was Henry V where he didn't need he needed to make all those trumpet speeches and he needed to find a way that the camera wasn't right on top of the actor as he was Making them and so that was what he discovered Maybe a couple of other just and then we can go on and come back to this One of the things that we that we know as a convention in film and not on stage is that There's always a film score. It's not that there isn't a score to the stage In fact, you'll get a lot of birds and Shelly's a little bit more soundtracking birds and stuff But anyway, there is a soundtrack on stage, but it's not Film soundtrack. It's not big and romantic and a lot of violence and it isn't always under the The language insinuating what you're to think or whether you're to be afraid or whether you're to wonder what's gonna come next But that's and so there's a great argument about film scores in Shakespeare because in Shakespeare the language is so Beautiful isn't it has its own music? It has its own rhythm and so are you gonna put somebody else's rhythm under it? And is that gonna chafe at it? But yet it's a part of the way films work and so to recognize that and see that and to see how somebody as great as William Walton Great English composer of mid-century work to try to make that work in The Henry V film and in the Hamlet film or a composer who who I admire just because his style So brilliantly fits Branagh style is Patrick Doyle who writes as we've written all the film scores for Branagh's films and They both have a sort of An Irish love of song Verging on opera they want the big they want it and they're willing to go for it even if we Shakespeareans are saying Are you overdoing it? He's aware that he's overdoing it and I think it works best For audiences who are not Used to Shakespeare films and are used to films and it works. Maybe less well for those of us who Don't want some other music competing with Shakespeare's but it's important Every film director's got to figure out how they're going to use music And if you and it's a great thing to suddenly if you haven't paid any attention to see how subtly they do use music They'll maybe begin a speech with nothing and Then bring a few bars in and then maybe retreat and then wait until The the ending of a long exchange or whatever to come in Stronger sometimes they'll go absolutely silent one of the great moments in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet Is when he just lets those two kids in the swimming pool Talk Shakespeare to one another no zoom cuts no MTV stuff no big sound He eventually gets to the big sound, but there may be two whole minutes Which is a long time in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet where it's just the two of them And it's actually a very it's a great charming moment in that film And that leads me to think to ask you about the because I was thinking about the What's really great about this book is when you're reading it. I would follow along and because of the Internet I Could almost find every scene you were talking about and compare the hamlets to each other and I looked I really wanted to show you guys to be or not to be done by Olivier and done by Branagh because they're very different and So I wanted you to speak a little bit about that scene and also the use of soliloquy in Film okay. Yeah, let's start with soliloquy. Soliloquy is a staged convention So one of the things a filmmaker has to do is think of what's the film equivalent or what could be the film equivalent? So one of the things that film does that would seem absolutely silly on stage and it can it can use voiceover So there's one Possibility which once again Olivier uses In some cases in some cases not some cases he moves in and out But that sense of our overhearing the actor in the theater We know we're overhearing Hamlet because he's there on stage and he's talking to himself But he's also talking to us because we surround him on three sides He's at what we call in the theater I think they call in the theater the point of command. He's where every that actor standing out on that thrust stage is At everybody's point of attention So the soliloquy also seems natural in the way in memod it seems phony An actor standing there where the entire audience is out there Supposedly talking intimately to us doesn't quite work Well on film you've got the same problem an actor standing on in the film Just talking to whom okay now if film wants to break the fourth wall That's another way one way is to do voiceover Another way is to break the fourth wall have the actor look right at the camera and acknowledge that we're there It's interesting how rarely film really wants to do that and how rarely it is actually done in Shakespeare film another device is the mirror and The using the mirror so what you've got is a character looking in the mirror talking to himself Which seems natural and we're getting it We're getting very interestingly the the the character and the mirror Production of the character and for Hamlet that of course gives us you know that it's gangbusters We've got somebody who's divided and in more than one ways and we've got somebody who is in reflection We've got somebody who has even talked about throughout his play in terms of mirror images The mold of that the mirror of fat whatever it is, but there are three or four prominent mirror Images about Hamlet. He's somebody who was trying to rediscover himself and trying to find out who that person That new person is because he's been pretty much destroyed by the events that preceded the opening of the play And then and then hit him again early on So anyway in Olivier's case the soliloquy is done up The stairs on this platform that has belonged to the father That's where the ghost appears and the ghost in Olivier's in a sort of Freudian way is commanding and overpowering and he flattens Hamlet when Hamlet sees the ghost he goes down and reaches out He does the same thing when the ghost reappears in the closet scene. He's a gobsmacked This is the powerful father who won't stay dead okay, he's already struggling with the new father and Who's very much alive and married to his mother and then he's got this other father that he would like to to bury that is to find some way of Assimilating his particular masculine identity and power But you can't do that if the father keeps cropping up and keeps cropping up and telling you what to do Particularly what to do about your mother just God just think about Okay, not healthy not positive so for Olivier man that just wipes him out For for Brana It's because Brana really wants to be king That's the one and then if you put the political stuff in it makes sense. I think Olivier wants To get square with his mother He wants to get rid of Claudius too, but it's getting square Brana really like to be king He's one of the rare Hamlets There are a lot of powerful Hamlets But he's one who you can see has the political skill He's a little Claudius in many ways as he resembles the actual actor who's playing Claudius But anyway and Brana's it's him Interrogating himself in the mirror behind which because it's a two-way mirror Claudius and Polonius are hidden over that's where they're overhearing so the camera is giving us Brana and then Brana on reflection and then Brana only in reflection and when when Olivier gets his dagger out a Bear-botkin or whatever it falls out of his hand Friday and again tumbles down The camera follows as it tumbles down the rock into the sea Brana gets his dagger up and Polonius behind the mirror. Whoa, okay He's scared and Claudius has to sort of shush him and Hamlet puts that dagger right up at him at himself and Imagining other thing and you see that he is a threat threat not only to others, but to himself in Interesting ways so there there are two different ways of dealing with the most famous Soliloquy in the play. It's the only one that Olivier gives us all of and he actually goes back and forth I think very effectively there and he starts in voiceover and then when a moment comes to dream to sleep Hi, there's the rub he goes into but then he goes back into voice over So it's very interesting the way in which he finds a way to talk with himself using the voice over device Brana does all of his soliloquies straight up. That's because he wants to say all of those words on camera I mean he loves them And this is his chance and he knows he's only going to get one chance to do this and he's going to say them Olivier cuts cuts the how all occasions do it for me Soliloquy cuts the oh, what a rogue and peasant slave except for the final couplet So you that's part of how he reduces The text Brana gives us all of that because he wants to say it Oh, we're doing good. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. I Also wanted to talk to you about how they both envisioned it sounds like from what you were writing that Olivier's Hamlet Really is Hamlet's more concerned with his mother and Brana is more concerned with his father and I wondered how you if you talk about bringing that into the bigger picture Sure, and I think we see this when we go to see Hamlet's that some are sort of mother-centered and some are Father-centered that is where is the crisis? Where is the major crisis? For the actor and for the way in which the production has been shaped. Is it related to? Hamlet struggled with his father to achieve the revenge that the father has has commanded him to or is it on trying to both Have punished and then reclaim I think his mother And that's why one seems more fruity and then one seems more political than the other and that that I think It all has to do with the sort of choices the director and the actor are making as they move through The play I think it has to do with the choice of Gertrude So you get a very interesting fact or phenomenon in Olivier's film that the actress playing Gertrude is 27 years old and Olivier who's playing Hamlet is 40 Now that's because he's Olivier and he can but he didn't want a matron. I mean he wanted a young healthy Sexy for that moment Gertrude because he wanted that That Hamlet fixation with her to be alive whether we picked up on it or not that is audiences initial audiences Something else and makes a failure. Although it's a haunting little performance by Jean Simmons the very beginning of her career Makes a failure even you know, she's 16 You know, she's at the very beginning of all this doesn't fully comprehended Compared to let's say Kate Winslet who's a much more modern I mean My students the female my female students are always want a strong affiliate They don't like a few who gets eaten up even if it's not her fault and even if you know the abuser is Hamlet They still want a failure to strike back in some way. Okay, right because They should and so the fact that Kate Winslet has got that key I don't know if you know all this By the way has got the key that she's been duping her captors by having stolen the key and keeping it in her mouth one way to overcome the The water torture the the the therapy the water therapy that they're given but also that she's an agent that she acts that she Isn't someone who just Collapses that even if she finally does Drown that is a piece of her own agency and that's some accident of derangement, okay, and so obviously Contemporary female students react more strongly than that So the so the women the other great woman in the in the text, I think the only other Plays apart and how you're going to do this too in in father-centered performances that father is The key and we're going to find some way to make him Central for Brana. It's with a lot of flashbacks. It's with the very actor who plays him who seems Unn I mean it's Brian blessed blessed happens to be a dear friend of of Brana's was the best man at his wedding with Tom Emma Thompson But Brian blessed, you know is a great big bear of a man He doesn't have a any sophistication in terms of his physical Presence he's he's a terror And it's sort of interesting that Brana gets caught between this father Who is overwhelming and who he wants to be scary in a way? He admits that the scene with the ghost and Hamlet where the earth is erupting and whatever is didn't work And he knows it didn't work because he just didn't have the money to do it, right? He as he said he really wanted to scare people and he didn't scare anybody but but in in In Brana's film Claudius is just a silky smooth that he's got the same blood Brana or brand blessed isn't a blonde Brana is looks a little like Jacobi a Jacobi is a very smooth operator and a smooth Claudius and so it's sort of interesting that the sort of sparks that all sets off I Did not intend to but it almost is though the Claudius and Gertrude We're having an affair that this wasn't something and that the affair started a very long time ago And maybe this kid is not old Hamlet's after all And the only reason I Mentioned that is that John Updike wrote a wonderful Novel at the very end of his career called Claudius and Gertrude which he credits Brana's film with inspiring and That film is about the adulterous relationship between and begin ends when Shakespeare's play begins But he wants he wants to go back into uptake territory which is adultery and and well, that's and And use that as a way Hamlet in his in his novel is a pimply aged kid They're all they try to get rid of all the time anyway I'm sure I remember the question. Oh, so That's that's the issue for Hamlet. It's the father and that the and the scene Julie Christie's terrific as Gertrude in that film But the scene with her is not Sexually charged in any fashion. There are there is a bed there, but they are only on it once very There is no sort of turning her over. There's no physical contact as he For Brana's character it isn't it isn't expunging this awful Vision he's carrying around in his head of Claudius and his mother making love Over the nasty stye, and he's got one of the ugliest images you can imagine and an all Shakespeare In the gross sweat. I mean it seemed that bed seeming means greased honey-ing and making love over the nasty stye So I mean, but that's what's in there and and that and Hamlet has to purge that somehow and so for Olivier and then later much more demonstrably Mel Gibson the way of purging it is through a sort of mock rape of Gertrude and that suddenly they have to pull back from and come to their senses. There's none of that Brana's much Chester Okay There's so many things I want to tell you guys about this book because it's so wonderful But I want to leave time for questions. So I do want to talk to dr. Carl about the future of Shakespeare because one fact I saw was that Olivier was the first Hamlet was the first Shakespeare play to win an Academy Award without any backing from Hollywood and that for the most part Most of these actors or directors or writers make Hamlet. I mean make Shakespeare happen with their own money and We were talking a little bit about the future of Shakespeare Shakespeare on film. Where's it gonna go? Where who's the audience now? Yeah, that's For those of us for whom it's our living. We'd like more Shakespeare films. Yeah Yeah We got that a little It's true that Olivier's Hamlet is the only film to win the Academy Award that didn't have any American money in it all no Hollywood American and so that's why it never shows up on the list of When somebody says what are the best top 10 Academy Award winning films? Can't be in can't be included because it was made with no or the American Film Institute doesn't Include it's unique in that fashion and the only other Shakespeare film is Shakespeare in love to win the Academy Award and that's In that abrupt edge another part of that abrupt edge of the spin-off film not all the way into The feral cats and Romeo but anyway, it is true the word is the money come from film is the most expensive of all the art forms poor Orson well spent the last 15 years of his life begging and thinking that you know the President of France or somebody was suddenly going to come up with money to underwriter King Lear and of course it never happened So these younger directors Branna among them have turned to Trying to direct other kinds of films that might make money And that's why he makes Thor or the Jack Ryan film Because he gets he he does the deal with a percentage So if that film is big then he's got something in his coffer that he can use his upfront Money when he goes to the equivalent of Castle Rock or whatever to try to get funds But it's very much an independent project also The most recent Shakespeare film we have is Josh Whedon's Much to do about nothing Josh did that on his own from the great profits He made from the Avengers which is the largest grossing film in all time over billion bucks Worldwide and nice that what he wants to do with is go and make a home movie it is in his backyard of Much to do about nothing blessings to him It it until we get another Shakespeare film that makes money And that film got a lot of it It's going to be harder and harder for film makers to get Hollywood backing because It's a commercial business And in the 90s you got lucky when first Brown was Henry the fifth got everybody's attention and said oh my goodness And then Zeferelli's Hamlet came along that he'd been working to try to put together since Romeo and Juliet in 68 and because of those two big stars it didn't make a lot of money But it made money didn't lose money and then brand as much to do about nothing which all right I only got to make because he made the end of the fifth thing That was the first baby that really return me was a little budget of about eight million dollars And it did twenty five million dollars of the business. Aha the Weinstein brothers, you know, they'll take a look at something like that Then bass came along and did Romeo and Juliet for about 20 million and it did a hundred and twenty five worldwide Okay, suddenly the coffers were open and a lot of people got to make their Shakespeare films Pachino says I never would have gotten to finish whatever looking for Richard is Without rental he's the one who finally got me the money not literally but Metaphorically, okay, and we got then we got a wonderful run of Shakespeare films in the late 90s that none of which Did big box office? And so it's a shame that a film was nice as Julie Tamar's Tempest, which I think is a very interesting and good and nice film, you know, did zip up It had its longest run in Athens that played three weeks in Athens and it didn't play at any other theater in the country or over two and It was you know didn't make any money. So I'm not sure with the digital revolution, maybe Shakespeare on film will once again go small scale and with small-scale people doing it and suddenly somebody will hit on something that That that can be blown up into 35 millimeter and go But right now we're in a little bit of a slough Period, so it's hard to know absolutely. What's next? However, I Will give you I have no inside knowledge of this at all But I will say that unless there is lightning strikes will get a brand-on Macbeth Somehow it's been on his Mind for 20 years. He's now doing he did a stage version last summer in Manchester and they're bringing it to the Armory Park Avenue this summer to do another run and that's all looking for backers. It's got to be And he's got a little money from Thor and I don't think the Jack Ryan thing did big box office But so I'm certain that we will get brand-ons Macbeth we missed the chance in the 90s when he and Scorsese had linked up and Marty was going to direct And he was going to play it and they were going to do it Wall Street And then the Alma rate of Hamlet came up and they said whoops, you know that idea is dead I mean somebody just did it just did Hamlet on Wall Street or Hamlet in the media world and then it fell apart I mean that is their their Excitement about mutually doing the project fell apart and so it will not be a Scorsese directed Macbeth when we get it, but I bet we get it All right, I'm gonna ask you one more and then I'm gonna I know I was gonna lead into that. Okay. This is terrific. So while I'm standing here though, just one quick note Please bear with us on the questions. We have a large web audience. We webcast these and for the benefit of the web audience When you ask your question if you could Come to the microphone or I think we have a microphone to pass around So thank you. Okay. I guess I could I can ask you my question Because it might not be easy to ask simply. Oh, okay. So you want to question people You want people to watch Shakespeare speaking Shakespeare as opposed to adaptations where yeah, I'm just more interested in That's what I love Shakespeare So I'm more drawn to Film versions of Shakespeare that are using Shakespeare. I also think that's where the problem is I mean, I like ten things. I hate about you and I like she's the man Etc, but that isn't the problem with making a Shakespeare film Problem making Shakespeare film is getting Shakespeare using that language and getting it to work on film Okay, because film length if you've ever been to a film, you know that yes The story is important, but don't ask any screenwriter about that. I mean where he or she falls on the picking order of making a film and Don't don't go looking for big rich speeches Because that you look for dollar and the quicker the better and the back and forth the better and that's fine That's great, but isn't it isn't what Shakespeare's meat is and so you've got the the real challenge for the filmmaker is how you use Shakespeare's language and Make it zing I just this happens all the time it happens walking out of theaters I'm sure it has happened people walking out of Shelly's as you like it when they see a really good production of Shakespeare They came out and say, you know, she did a really good translation or that was you know They rewrote the script because and I just got a paper from a kid who said, you know It was really interesting and Brano's much to do about nothing when they stuck in a line that Brano wrote I'm gonna get a treat and and when Benedict has they've tricked Benedict into thinking that a Beatrice loves him and Beatrice comes out to isn't yet in on the deal I mean that she's anyway and she comes out to invite him in for dinner and she says saucy as she ever is and He wants to bend her meaning any way he can to have a positive that she's really being and so he says and there's a double meaning in that And for this kid who's been his life in English classes where everything's been a double meaning But he that was that couldn't have been Shakespeare that had to be Brano sticking Sucker in there. Okay. Fine. That's what we want. That's what it is happening. That's when You know, can you get too much of a good thing? And I want you all to know that Dr. Carl is referring to Shelley Delaney's production of as you like it Which is over at the Forum Theater through Saturday evening and there is also an exhibit on this floor Concerning the same production and Shakespeare So I open the room up to questions and to our web audience Well quickly, I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about or insight into the way Olivier Olivier opens his film with that To me very strange one sentence summary that very few people agree This is a story of a man who couldn't make up his mind What do you think about that? Longer pause Make up his I think he was once again a Little terrified about going with this thing into this medium and wanting to make Wanted to do something inviting at the beginning that was going to explain it all for you You know because he takes those lines out that are Hamlet talking about Claudius about the one the one defect in our natures and he's talking about Claudius at the Vois sale getting drunk celebrating and and here Olivier lists it to apply To Hamlet and then doesn't even let it alone by a line that yes Olivier wrote And I think that I Nothing I've read Dennis indicates that that was something that Arthur Rank said after watching The rush is you've got Larry Nobody's gonna know what's going on here They don't know what this is and you better tell them. I'm not uncovered. This is not Uncharacteristic as you know of such people It's where the news the little News of the week stuff comes from and Branagh's loves I was lost not That but Harvey Weinstein saying nobody can understand what's going on here This is you got to figure out a way of letting people know and so that was his idea if you know We've just done this in classes Danielle will know if you all know Trevor Nunn's nice little film of 12th night begins with the shipwreck that sort of sets the story up and tells you in dumb show Yeah, exactly that was all after they previewed the movie and The preview audience said they couldn't figure out what the hell was going on didn't know what this was all this girl Washed up on the shore so he was encouraged to go write something that would for a film audience sort of explain Visually what the backstory was so that does happen I don't to my knowledge. This didn't happen here a mistake Didn't need to yeah, that was a weird thing And I'm sure later. He would have Yeah, yeah I'm interested in What you had to say about Stoppard and the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is so good in so many ways and yet to me It almost has to lose something to some of the best stage versions because it doesn't have that like Godot-esque claustrophobia of having three walls around it I wondered if there are other things in you know, not spin-offs in real Shakespeare that are just you know the unsolvable challenges of taking it out of a Walled room and also maybe just a little bit about teaching with the spin-off genre You know in general like looking for Richard or anonymous stuff like that Okay, I That's always a problem when something Seems to work so perfectly on the stage and seems so written absolutely for the stage that when you open it up It just doesn't have that same As you say claustrophobia in there and I think that's why we don't have a lot of wonderful movies of Samuel Beckett Okay, I'm just It happens in one space as Peter Brook would say and it's that Shakespeare seems big I mean Shakespeare seems inviting to film because he also seems big and I think it's probably it's probably true that the that While you start thinking the tragedies are are going to be what work for Shakespeare on film that in fact Maybe the comedies work best because they're closer to our romantic comedy formula I mean they're they go beyond it and they were they created And they do more with it, but nevertheless they are closer to something. We're familiar with that We're not so familiar with with You know film tragedy as a major Genre that we are attracted to So that would be just some of the things that off the top of my head in terms of the The spin-offs I don't do I'm much happier when a student comes in and said have you seen that is when the spin-off is theirs not mine That is I When we were in college my group we We had our books and we wanted her to be our books We didn't want them to be their books and I was one of the odd things about the 60s Then when I got here the kids wanted you to teach their books I mean we could have all you know taught Siddhartha You know for the end of the and I kept saying no those are your books Don't want you don't want those in the classroom because then they're going to be classroom books And they won't be your books. So there's I want My students to have possession of things that are theirs and I even sometimes will say I don't like something Well, in fact, I do just so they say you don't know he doesn't get it, you know, okay Because you ought to have that too. There ought to be some something that the old man says no And I'm too often saying yes, and so I will that did you like that anyway as My professors would have said that about Wells as a fellow and were they wrong That is a great movie. I mean I don't go to the ends. I mean the greatest Shakespeare movie ever made It's time to admit that that's something else, but a fellow is a great film. So hi, okay So that's that's what I would do with that, but you're right. There are playwrights that maybe Yes, sir. I have like a million questions balance as cute too. What is at the end of Branagh's version? Fortune Brass comes in and kills off the entire court And I'm wondering how Branagh's already taken care of a good himself that is him But at the end he comes in because of the entire I wonder how we feel about that decision and we contrast the two sets One is Branagh's set is very very bright and it's filled with mirrors And it seems to be deliberately done in contrast to a lot of Shakespeare play which is just the dark castle Two great questions He wants that big moment. He says it's we're shooting diehard You know that we're making six films at once here and this is diehard He wants that big moment because he wants Fort Brass Brass to be coming in in a coup in a takeover This is not some polite little deal where then Mark and Norway boys been pals and so it's okay We trade kings every now and then this is a military ending to a play that has been dominated by Military figures and he wants that and you know, that's why Rufus Sule is so good those lowered eyes Hawk like and you know, I just he got the right actor and in terms of look for that moment So he wanted that what I found very interesting was that Two years after that film came out I saw the there's a great Japanese director called Ninigawa who's a wonderful stage director and He he was somebody that the West discovered in the 70s and there were Macbeth's and anyway He did a Hamlet which he brought to the Barbican in London and ended it the same way Which I thought was an amazing that the a Japanese stage director would be Stealing filtering something from a film that everybody knew now. He had his own twist in that the actors There were two playing levels and on the upper level you saw actors Supposedly in their dressing rooms making up before large mirrors So you began already with playing with Meta theater theatrical stuff And it was those mirrors that the Fortenbrass people came in and smashed to hell So they were killing more than this the state they were getting rid of this They were getting rid of theater too now So maybe that's why he had him stole it from a film Picking a bone with film your second one. Yes One of the lines that I'm proudest of and couldn't repeat in this book and it's a just a throwaway But it was picked out by everybody who reviewed The book I wrote called Shakespeare at the Cineplex in which I said that Branagh's Hamlet was filmed noir with all the lights on And And you're exactly right that we think of Hamlet in Olivia Olivier's terms He defined that sucker for us. So it's dark corridors and it's Twisting winding stairs, and it's a lot of fog and it's a lot of Curiosity with the faces caught and Branagh was gonna go once again, and he's gonna go Versailles He's gonna go the Winter Palace. He's going for another time another place that These things can happen in okay, and And I I think it all I think it only happens because we have the father of this were Harold Bloom we have the father film and we're getting the anxiety of influence here Out of Branagh and the Branagh Olivier thing is set up to play with that and somebody is Gonna write a book on it someday not me, but they are mean Branagh now has played Olivier for Christ's sake Wonderful little movie about Marilyn and so the the riches there are sensational and that will be a piece of it Yeah, thank you Now I can talk about the edge you like Doug is there anything Anything from the web audience are nothing yet, okay Thank you, thank you great audience