We took Ariel and Caroline to see the newly opened "Little Mermaid," the musical that's been crucified by just about every NY critic. It seems there's no element of the show that they haven't found bitch-worthy.
We loved it.
Personally, I think that for a show like this, critics should be required to take a small child with them so they can see it through their eyes.
Caroline was literally on the edge of her seat, goggle-eyed at the splendor of it all. Ariel (my daughter, not the mermaid) was likewise entranced. I thought it was a lot of fun.
The theater was packed beyond all belief. I'm hoping that people vote with their feet and wallets.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at January 13, 2008 10:11 PM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingAs I recall, the critics said "Les Miserables" turned the book into "The Glums." I therefore trust your opinion first.
The critics probably didn't like it since there were so many people there to see it. Every critic knows that a show can't be good if ordinary people are flocking to see it.
For what it's worth, Roma Torre's review for NY1 (http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=238&aid=77412 )seems to share your general take on the musical, noting a few criticisms here and there but generally praising the show. Torre's always struck me as a tough but fair theatre critic, so her review coupled with your experience puts a couple good marks on the plus side of The Little Mermaid ledger, IMO.
I still have not seen the film, and probably never will. Basically, what i have read since its initial release (and my affection for the original Andersen story keep me away.
I also, after reading reviews, was refusing to see Disney's "Beauty and the Beast", too, till a friend persuaded me to watch it.
Only the fact that the VCR and the tape belonged to my friend, who obviously loved it, prevented me from ejecting the cassette and stamping it to pieces.
And, from what i've read, "Little Mermaid" takes even greater liberties with the original. But, at least with "Beauty and the Beast", there's a *good* production - Cocteau's 1947 b&w film - that i could watch to take the taste of Disney's *thing* out of my mouth. No such version of "Little Mermaid" exists...
Actually I think there is a "Fairy Tale Theater" version of the Little Mermaid that is true to the book.
I remember watching it as a child and she dies at the end, or rather turns to sea foam.
It depressed me incredible.
It may not be a 1 hour 30 minute production but it'll have to do.
I loved faerie tales as a kid, and I understand your reluctance, Mike W. Particularly regarding Andersen's version of The Little Mermaid, as that is a personal favorite.
However, I also love most things Disney; and let's face it, not many kids will go see movies with sad or tragic endings. Old Yeller possibly being the one exception.
The key is to accept the Disney movies as completely different stories. If you expect to see one of their movies/musicals to stick to the original, then you will be disappointed.
PAD, I'm glad you and your family enjoyed the musical. How would you rate it versus the other Disney productions?
mike weber, you should stick to Disney's historical documentaries.
Like 'Cool Runnings'.
My playwright friend seems to share the same opinion of New York theatre critics. "Brainless Ben Brantley" is a proper noun for him. And a theatre critic plays a key role in his last play...not in a good way.
However, I don't share many people's views on the "authenticity" of adaptions. That seems to miss the point of folk tales (and stories in general), many of which have various versions, with their own value in the telling. Trying to "honor" the original seems to me too close to cultural embalming to bother with...
Ah, they're just a bunch of pikers who have no sense of scale.
I consider myself an effete snob when it comes to theater, art and food. but even I think the current crop of NY Times critics usually hit the mark. I often feel "What play or artist did they see, or place they ate?"
I think the critics should be allowed to judge shows as they wish, despite the disagreement of certain involved fans. Readers have some history with them and understand their prejudices. Just because you or I like something does not put it above criticism. As far as the question of the show's fidelity to the original story goes, "The Little Mermaid" is a very different matter from many folktales - because it isn't a folktale, but a short story written entirely by Hans Christian Andersen in 1836. In the case of this "Little Mermaid" show, I expect it is very enjoyable for many children and their parents, and I'm glad it is there for their entertainment, but it really ISN'T "The Little Mermaid," but "WALT DISNEY COMPANY's Little Mermaid." While the resultant show is great entertainment for modern children and their parents, it is a complete corruption of Andersen's original work, intent and theme. Although (sad to say) you wouldn't be around to comment on it, suppose that in 2177 children were treated to a show of "Walt Disney's Fallen Angel" in which the protagonist is a non-religious old man from Turkey, the characters you killed lived and the characters you saved died. If you felt that was a misappropriation of your own intellectual property that might be justified.
I enjoyed a lot of Disney material when I was a kid, but it is galling to know how much the company has absorbed, digested and spat out previously conceived characters and stories. You may remember in 1989 when Disney executives said with a straight face that they owned Snow White and no one else could use the character. That would have come as a surprise to the Brothers Grimm, who knew the story was old when they printed it about two hundred years ago.
Peter, you may be heartened to know that while the NY critics may have hated it, there was a very positive piece on it in this past Saturday's Philadelphia Inquirer.
I quote the most eloquent speech by Anton Ego (Peter o'toole)...
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
Tell the NY Theater critics to swivel on it.
Bob A
J.M. Barrie solved that problem by bringing orphans to see the debut of Peter Pan, as seen in Finding Neverland. Once the kids laughed, the audience got it.
Were the sea creatures done in the same puppet styles as The Lion King?
David
Meh. Cultural embalming is cultural embalming. It preserves the form while losing the essence. Embalmers at times think they know the story better than the original authors or the story itself.
Jeffrey wrote: I think the critics should be allowed to judge shows as they wish, despite the disagreement of certain involved fans.
The critics are and do. In addition, the fans ("involved" or not) should be allowed to disagree with and criticize the critics.
Just because Roger Ebert (much as I like to hear his opinion) loves a movie, it doesn't mean I have to think it is Oscar worthy.
Just because you or I like something does not put it above criticism.
Nor does it mean that we cannot suggest that the critic should consider a different angle - like who is the target audience.
Christine--everyone--please don't bother. Jeffrey's need to pick apart anything and everything I say informs just about everything he writes. It would be nice to see JUST ONE DAMNED THREAD not derailed by either Jeffrey or Mike or both.
PAD
As I recall, the critics said "Les Miserables" turned the book into "The Glums." I therefore trust your opinion first.
Funny thing. When "Les Miserables" was first published, a number of critics were scathing in their assessment. But it was a huge hit with the readers. So now it's a different century and reviewers were scathing in their assessment of the musical, claiming it was an insult to that great classic that their predecessors in the art of criticism lacerated over a century earlier. Yet the musical was a huge hit with theater goers.
Personally I think nothing gets critics more incensed than knowing that people aren't going to give a damn what they write.
PAD
Meh. Cultural embalming is cultural embalming. It preserves the form while losing the essence. Embalmers at times think they know the story better than the original authors or the story itself.
I doubt that, but there's always the chance that they know current audience tastes better than people who wrote books a hundred years ago know them.
The fact is that no matter what Disney, for instance, does to Pinnochio or Bambi or, yes, the Little Mermaid, it doesn't change the original material one iota. The original books remain perfectly intact, ready to be enjoyed by readers who quite possibly would never have heard of the characters if Disney hadn't done their adaptations.
Most youngsters these days ONLY know Pinocchio or Bambi or Mary Poppins because of their Disney incarnations. Which means that if those adaptations had never been done, youngsters would likely be completely unfamiliar with them. But because they are, the original versions have the opportunity to reach audiences that they never would have.
The simple fact is that interpreting and reinterpreting stories is a tradition that goes back...God, as long as humans have been telling stories. To hold Disney up for criticism for revising and retelling stories when it was good enough for the likes of the Bros. Grimm and William Shakespeare strikes me as just a bit ridiculous. If in the 22nd Century, someone is finding my stories so compelling that they want to reinterpret them for a future generations, who might then be so intrigued by what they see that they seek out the source material, God bless 'em. Go for it. Were I alive, I'd be honored that my work achieved that measure of timelessness.
PAD
There's probably no more common a cliche than the movie that was hated by many top critics when it first came out and is now held up as the standard by which they bash NEW movies.
The Wizard of Oz, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, Blade Runner, 2001, Fantasia, It's a Wonderful Life, The Thing, Dark City, Fight Club, Vertigo, so many others...
Critics and box office results have their place but after a while one ought to get a sense of whether or not something will appeal to them. I'm seldom disappointed by any movies I see because I usually am able to correctly gauge the quality beforehand and adjust my expectations accordingly. About the only critic I trust is Ebert because I've read him long enough to tell when he is disliking a film I'll like.
One of the funniest "criticisms" of a film I ever saw was Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as a cheerleader movie reviewer on an old SNL "Weekend Update." Apparently, despite all logic, she had JUST seen "The Wizard of Oz" and was dismissing it as being a rip off of "Star Wars."
PAD
Christine--everyone--please don't bother.
You got it.
I did have a question for you above though... How would you rate this production vs the other Disney shows on Broadway?
Thanks :)
PAD wrote: "Which means that if those adaptations had never been done, youngsters would likely be completely unfamiliar with them."
Very true, and not just of the fictional stories. As an early teenager I saw on TV a couple of the Disney movies about Francis Marion, a brigadier general in the Revolutionary War. Staring Leslie Nielsen when he was a young, dramatic actor. They started off with Walt himself giving a little history lesson about the Francis Marion, aka 'The Swamp Fox.'
I thought these were fascinating. Then I read a book about the real history. Ouch. The Disney movies had more in common with the Dukes of Hazard than the actual history of the man. I couldn't watch any more of them because they were so incredibly wrong, driven by overly simplistic plots and attempts to sell hats with fox tails on them to kids.
But as soulless as they were, they got me to read the actual history. I found the real life of Francis Marion even more fascinating. So it accomplished something very real.
I did have a question for you above though... How would you rate this production vs the other Disney shows on Broadway?
I actually liked it better than the Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, but that's probably because of my affection for the film. I'd rank LM first, followed by Lion King just because of its ingenuity, if nothing else, and then Beauty and the Beast. I'll never forget taking Ariel when she was five years old to see B&TB. At intermission she turned to me and said, "Daddy...why isn't this on ice?" It sent everyone in the audience within hearing into hysterics. And I had no real answer for her.
Never saw "Tarzan." Just wasn't interested: I was lukewarm on the songs when I saw the film, so listening to even more songs by the same composers kept me away. Haven't seen "Mary Poppins" yet.
PAD
Ah, Francis Marion. When you're a guy with two first names and they're both girl's names, you better be damned good at fighting.
PAD
"NY Theater Critics Needlessly Carp About Little Mermaid" is the thread topic PAD chose for this string. His argument is this: A. The critics dislike "The Little Mermaid"; B. Peter David and some people whose identities are usually off-limits on this site like "The Little Mermaid": C. Therefor, the opinion of the critics is needless carping. Of course, he would never stop them from expressing such foolishness, but c'mon! He likes it, and that's much more convincing than the opinion of professional theater critics, those curs!
He has every right, and according to attendance figures may be in the right, to disagree with the critics - perhaps to ridicule their standards or criteria - but is on shaky ground calling reviews different from his own opinion needless carping.
PAD - I'll say this part with as much respect as possible (some - not a whole lot, maybe). I don't believe you when you say it makes no difference to you if future generations "reinterpret" your work. I can't predict whether they will want to, but I would imagine you have enough pride in your work to think you usually got it about the right way. Future generations are free, perhaps, to retell your stories differently, but then they really won't be your stories, but different ones recycling your titles and some of your characters. If someone, say, published "Peter A. David's Fallen Angel," In which the protagonist became Satan's older sister, engaged in a millennia-long plot to ensnare the souls of singing and dancing crabs, that might be interesting to somebody, but it wouldn't bear any relationship to what you had created. Disney's "The Little Mermaid" is a thoroughly enjoyable story, and one which is much more easily digested by modern children than Hans Christian Andersen's original. The original film made excellent money and is very well-respected, but it isn't H.C. Andersen's "The Little Mermaid." He had a story he wanted to tell, a tragic ending he selected, and no singing crabs whatsoever. The original story remains in print and readable by anyone who wants to read it, but its image and reputation are rewritten by Disney's joyous romp. H.C. Andersen wrote a good story; Disney made a film which appropriated that story's title but almost none of its substance. That doesn't make it a bad film or Broadway show: It makes it not "The Little Mermaid." Forget for a moment that I am not your hugest fan and consider this: If you saw the 1995 Roland Joffe/Demi Moore "The Scarlet Letter," what was your response to the liberties it took with the Nathaniel Hawthorne-written plot? Beyond the fact that the film was terrible, it was also a complete lie that it WAS "The Scarlet Letter." Everyone is sure to value each work of literature differently, so the magnitude of the offense of totally changing the plot of an adaptation may seem different in each case - but it is still a lie.
I saw Little Mermaid and would, like Peter, rate it as the best Disney musical I have ever seen. It has the ingenuity of Lion King, but has much more heart and better music. The numbers are almost all showstoppers, including much of the new music material, which greatly surprised me since Disney doesn't have the best history with incorporating new songs into established pieces. The entire audience was on their feet at the end of "Part of Your World," "Under the Sea" and "Kiss the Girl," and I've only seen so much applause at the end of a show for "Wicked."
I highly recommend it, keeping in mind this is how I rank all the Broadway Disney shows:
1) Little Mermaid
2) Lion King
3) Beauty and the Beast
4) Tarzan- which wasn't as bad as everyone said, the staging was amazing even if the songs were mediocre in quality.
5) Mary Poppins- the house rocked. Nothing else did.
Everyone should also remember that "B&TB" was eviscerated when it first opened, and went on to run for 12 years.
I doubt that, but there's always the chance that they know current audience tastes better than people who wrote books a hundred years ago know them.
Well, I have a distaste for cultural embalmers. To me, they're antithetical to the spirit of artists. To take a related case, there were heated complaints about MULAN and how Disney was desecrating the Fa Mu Lan legend. However, if you look at Chinese literature, you can see the basic legend has different permutations, and each of these permutations have spawned modern day reinterpretations by Chinese authors. I'm not that much of a purist to say that Disney can't do what Chinese artists are free to do. Disney may not be as successful in reinterpreting the story, but that's a different argument.
(And I've mentioned this before, but I got really pissed off at the cultural embalming influence when they started moaning and groaning about the revised version of FLOWER DRUM SONG a few years back, saying that it desecrated the original Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. Hmmm. Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves deviated greatly from the original novel. And the original novelist approved of the new version. Who or what is being authentic here? What and where is the lie?).
I'm not sure that "The Wizard of Oz" got such bad reviews when it premiered in 1939. "Time Magazine" wasn't very impressed with the Munchkins, but thought the special effects were marvelous. "The New York Herald Tribune" thought it was "amusing and spectacular." "The New York Daily News" was impressed with Judy Garland and the film's music. "The New York Times" was very impressed. "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Wild Bunch" did receive many negative reviews, although there were more positive reviews for "The Wild Bunch" than for "Bonnie and Clyde." Leaving myself open for derision, I am less impressed by the latter picture than are a lot of people. Warren Beatty's performance seemed no more than average, although Faye Dunaway's was quite good. I'm not very much in favor of making degenerate criminals romantic, which the film sometimes did. The contemporary reviews of "Fantasia" which I have found are uniformly ecstatic, so I'm not so sure it was panned, either. As for the others, it seems to be the case.
(And I've mentioned this before, but I got really pissed off at the cultural embalming influence when they started moaning and groaning about the revised version of FLOWER DRUM SONG a few years back, saying that it desecrated the original Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. Hmmm. Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves deviated greatly from the original novel. And the original novelist approved of the new version. Who or what is being authentic here? What and where is the lie?).
Well,that's really the point. Either they're all lies, or they're all different truths.
People ask what art is. My feeling is that the definition of art is something that is able to speak to generation after generation. That it has such fundamental truths that new audiences can connect with it on some level.
Me, I never heard of Fa Mulan until the film. Neither had my daughter, Ariel (not to be confused with the character) but she immediately started getting books about her and read up on her. So, again, not really seeing the harm.
PAD
Critics view art for the purpose of having something to say about it. I view art for the purpose of seeing what it has to say to me. Those are very different reasons for viewing art, and that's why I find that even though some criticism can be interesting, it seldom does much to sway or inform my opinions.
PAD, after reading your story about Ariel asking why a show wasn't on ice, I have to ask something. What's the appeal of an ice show?
Yeah, skating is neat, but it doesn't seem like an inherently better way of telling particular stories. I remember liking ice shows as a kid, but I can't remember why they were *that* big a deal to me. Now all I can think of is the scenes in 'Death to Smoochy' where the agent kept saying that he *had* to do an ice show.
So why is it that something like a stage production of "Beauty and the Beast" seems like such a natural fit for an ice show?
I don't know that it's a natural fit per se. It's just that all the previous live versions of Disney movies she'd seen were on ice, so she didn't understand why this one wasn't.
PAD
"What's the appeal of an ice show?"
Can't speak for Ariel, obviously. But when I saw the Ice Capades or somesuch when I was eight, the appeal was simple: spectacle.
Glenn Hauman wrote:
Ah, they're just a bunch of pikers who have no sense of scale.
Maybe I'm just being crabby, but are you fishing for applause? Or did you just do that for the halibut?
(I can just hear everyone now, groaning, "Please, spear me the puns!" To which I reply, "Don't be so shellfish about things - it gives me a haddock!")
Robert Taylor wrote: 5) Mary Poppins- the house rocked. Nothing else did.
I really wanted to see the musical up until they performed "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. As a kid, I loved that song and to this day have it memorized from the movie. The Broadway cast sang it with different lyrics, and there went my desire to see it. Picky of me? Sure, but so it goes... Not to mention, I cannot picture anyone but Dick Van Dyke in the role of Burt. :)
Meh. Critics are what they are. I thought that The Simpsons episode where Homer became a food critic nailed about 99.9% of the reviewers and critics dead on. You can't give give reviews of popular stuff or you're just not doing it right. Hell, our local jackass wrote up a review for one of the Potter films (I think the third one) that was hilarious. He grudgingly, and he wrote just about those words, gave it a good review for about 1/3 or his write up. But then, so desperate was he to be negative, he spent the remainder of his review talking about how sad it was that this film had maintained the quality, if not improved on it, that its predecessor had achieved because that would only make the inevitable decline of the series so much worse. Yeah, he spent the majority of his review discussing how awful the future films in the series would likely be rather then making himself suffer the indignity of writing a review full of praise for a popular film. And yes, the jackass is still employed today as the local paper's film critic.
The only professional ones I've heard in the last few years that liked have been Max & Mike on the Movies (http://www.maxandmike.com/podcast.html) because they, most of the time, review a movie the way I've always felt a reviewer should. Unless a movie just drives them up all wall, they usually look at the movie's structure, internal logic and stuff like that and, evening when personally panning it, will point out that fans of such-and-such would probably like the film.
And even with them, I don't use them as a guide to what I will or won't watch as much as just getting general information on what I should likely expect from a film. Besides, their genre specialty shows are always a blast to listen to. I just wish their new distributor would get them back on the air in this area or at least on XM.
Ok, I admit that I have issues with all things Disney as a rule. I get annoyed that everything requires a song AND needs to be sung by animals, furniture, and various knick knacks. I get even more annoyed when the source material is mutilated.
However...
Disney is a business first and foremost. Their business model has raked in enough money to pay all our debts AND get us pizza and soda for the party afterward. At least.
Also if Disney's productions lead people to the source material that can only be good. Honestly, though, I don't know many people who care to expand themselves all that much. Evidently it's too much effort to crack open a book when there's a picture box and beer handy.
This is actually one of the measuring sticks by which I determine who I'll hang out with.
And it's not as though Disney is the only one to do it. Look at any book made into film. Source material is always hacked to fit into a different medium. This almost always sucks for the fan of the source material, and even moreso when it's a result of the lack of creativity on the part of those transfering it to a new medium. The examples of this are so numerous that I'm having trouble picking just one.
Something I both understand and don't: If the changes tou the source are so significant why retain the title? That's the part I don't understand. The pat I understand is that keeping the title is good business. It's a selling point for the production. "The Little Mermaid" may not have gone over as well if it were called "The Fish Girl and the Singing Crab."
As for critics...
To Hell with them. It's almost a universal constant that critics don't get it.
Hey, wouldn't it be a fun job to criticize the critics? That would be a fun article to write.
Here's to you,
M
As a rule of thumb for me, whenever the characters who live or die in the original do the opposite in the adaptation, it's a new story. When there's a singing crab where there was none, it's usually a new story. When tragedy becomes feel-good, sing-along uplift, it's a new and different story. When a story is traditional and told in varying versions, there is more leeway than when the story and original text are identified. There's nothing wrong with telling the new story, but it shouldn't be identified as the old one. I'll admit that I am predisposed to suspect Disney, because it has a history of appropriating existing material and claiming it as its personal property. In 1989 Disney attempted to convince a court that it owned Snow White and could prevent any other usage of the character - which was centuries old when the Brothers Grimm recorded the tale in 1812. To the argument that Disney at least owned the usage of the character in cinema, it had been filmed in 1902, 35 years before the Disney animation - when Walt Disney was less than one year old, and with not a speck of his participation.
Jonathan (the other one):
"Glenn Hauman wrote:
Ah, they're just a bunch of pikers who have no sense of scale.
Maybe I'm just being crabby, but are you fishing for applause? Or did you just do that for the halibut?
(I can just hear everyone now, groaning, "Please, spear me the puns!" To which I reply, "Don't be so shellfish about things - it gives me a haddock!")"
Stop that. Stop that NOW.
;}
M
I won't criticize Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bete," because it's so good that it should be forgiven its liberties. In any case, I think it is quite faithful to the ancient tale. Disney's "The Little Mermaid" strays much further and is of less excellence.
The Wizard of Oz was not universally panned but some of the more influential critics of the day disliked it. My favorite is from the New Yorker: ""Displays no trace of imagination, good taste or ingenuity.. It's a stinkeroo." It also lost money. It's reputation quickly grew, however. In that way, it reminds me of Bladerunner, which got some harsh reviews and poor BO but is now seen by most as a classic.
Fantasia was roasted by a lot of the critics for daring to mix "low-brow" animation with "high-brow" music and didn't become a success until decades later, with a boost from those looking for a psychedelic experience.
At any rate, these were just off the top of my head and there are doubtlessly better examples.
Mitch: "And it's not as though Disney is the only one to do it."
True, true. The biggest thing that got me into mythology as a kid was reading Thor comics. I thought he was cool, so I read up on the myths. Then I went back to the comics and wondered why the handle of Mjolnir wasn't shorter and why Thor talked with all the "thees" and "thous". It didn't keep me from reading the Thor comics, unlike some of the Disney stuff that was just too Disneyized.
Bill Mulligan - When it comes to films losing money, I suspect you are correct; Anyone can cherry-pick reviews, so this is a bit harder to nail down.
Jason M. Bryant:
"True, true. The biggest thing that got me into mythology as a kid was reading Thor comics. I thought he was cool, so I read up on the myths. Then I went back to the comics and wondered why the handle of Mjolnir wasn't shorter and why Thor talked with all the "thees" and "thous". It didn't keep me from reading the Thor comics, unlike some of the Disney stuff that was just too Disneyized."
Verily I say thee yea.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
PAD:
"People ask what art is. My feeling is that the definition of art is something that is able to speak to generation after generation. That it has such fundamental truths that new audiences can connect with it on some level."
I agree, though many claim this only applies to "classics." Some of which are merely classic examples of how to bore the Hell out of Mitch.
But what you have written here begs a question. If a work of art is able to speak to generation after generation, that it has such fundamental truths that new audiences can connect with it on some level, then why rework it to a degree that it's no longer the initial work of art?
I'm not trying to pull a Mike or Jeff thing, so I hope I don't come off as such. Just interested in your perspective.
Regards,
M
The critics seem to be...criticy. Critics don't get people to read their columns by praising every movie that comes along. Either they're looking or getting paid to say something that can be used as an ad, or they're looking to move papers by saying something controversial or provocative.
I much rather prefer a reviewer, who's not concerned so much with a final up or down conclusion, but more commenting on the work in part and in whole.
As for griping that Disney's Little Mermaid differs from the HC Anderson version, or whether an artist really cares whether someone comes along and tells the story differently, I think that's pretty much bunk. First off, it's clearly and always has been Disney's Little Mermaid. Way back when the film came out, I was vaguely aware that it was based on some old tale. Frankly, I didn't care how it differed. I wasn't interested in seeing the older version, and I still haven't been tempted to go back and encounter it. I like the Disney version just fine.
And if Disney takes a tale and updates it for a particular audience today...why does that bother anyone? They haven't gone back and changed or destroyed all the written versions of the older story, nor do they claim that older version got things wrong. Most of the time, they don't even claim to be a version of the older work, usually using an "inspired by" or "based on" credit.
And I bet in many cases, if you went back the original source and could ask them questions, I bet they'd tell you that their version was based on something they'd encoutered somewhere along the way.
I find this entire discussion interesting in light of the recent erruption of discontent over Marvel's OMD/BND event and Spider Man. Marvel has essentially cleared the way for the main Spider Man book to update and...most likely...re-tell key moments of Spider Man Mythos. Like the Ulitimate Spider Man line before it, the BND stories give Marvel the ability to tell the same stories, updated for today's audience. Granted, I think much of the resentment over BND is because it's not just an alternate telling...it's Marvel saying the older stories were wrong, and here's how things really happened.
But Disney, whether in film or stage, generally doesn't do that.
We really loved Lion King on the stage, in a way I never thought would happen. Of course the story is primed for the stage...but the costuming was the issue, and all who have seen it fairly know they pulled that off. It seems that the critics of Little Mermaid focus on the trappings of stage and costume. What I don't understand is how does on manage to convey a submerged setting where fish and crustaceans play major character roles. At least with the lions, hyenas, and other savanah characters from Lion King, everyone is still a mammal, and shares many of the same features. Fish and such are very non-mammal, and no amount of costume is going to be able to change that.
From May 1994 to Oct. 1995 I wrote a weekly movie review column for a local newspaper. In a review, I would summarize the plot of a movie; give some background information (such as whether the film was based on a book and whether it might differ from the same in any significant way (without giving anything away)); then say what I liked or didn’t like about it; and why. Then I’d give it a grade of A to F.
In one instance, I went to review a film expecting to hate it. I ended up enjoying it. I said so in my review. In another instance (when reviewing The Shadow) I admitted that I wanted to give the film a higher grade than I did, mainly because of my affinity for the character, but had to be honest with myself: it didn’t deserve the higher grade.
If someone is going to review (or criticize, if you prefer that term) a movie, play, book, concert, Broadway show, whatever, I believe he or she should state why he or she likes or dislikes it. Beyond the obvious fact that just saying either “it’s fantastic!” or “it stinks!” and not elaborating is a cop-out, it gives readers/listeners/viewers an honest review, and also provides them with a point of comparison. If you know a reviewer absolutely hates, say westerns, then you can take his ripping apart of 3:10 from Yuma with a grain of salt. On the other hand, if he sings its praises, despite hating westerns, then it might be worth seeing.
That depends, I suppose on how informative his or her reviews are, overall. If you’re left wondering whether he or she saw the same film you did, that’s probably not a good sign.
In the case of my reviews, like I said, I tried to let people know what they could see at the local theatre, and why, in my opinion, they either might or might not enjoy a particular film. Maybe some people agreed with my reviews; maybe others disagreed, but either way they knew why I felt a particular way about a film.
Rick
P.S. Speaking of stating why one likes or dislikes something or someone, I once read a piece, presumably by a film reviewer/critic, in which he excoriated Keanu Reeves’ acting, but never once gave an example of why he felt Reeves’ acting was so bad. To my way of thinking, that inability and/or refusal to give a reason undermined his criticisms, and made him look petty.
P.P.S. PAD is right about the criticism of Disney. Stories have been told and re-told for generations, especially fables and fairy tales. On the other hand, I really hope Disney gets past this phase of putting songs- especially current songs- in their animated films. They'll only date them that much faster.
Evidently it's too much effort to crack open a book when there's a picture box and beer handy.
This is actually one of the measuring sticks by which I determine who I'll hang out with.
You only hang out with people who have a picture box and beer handy? :)
(Hey, at least I stopped punning - for now... [insert evil chuckle here])
Evidently it's too much effort to crack open a book when there's a picture box and beer handy.
This is actually one of the measuring sticks by which I determine who I'll hang out with.
You only hang out with people who have a picture box and beer handy? :)
(Hey, at least I stopped punning - for now... [insert evil chuckle here])
And if Disney takes a tale and updates it for a particular audience today...why does that bother anyone?
Let me preface this by saying that I adore Disney's version of the Little Mermaid.
Why does changing from the original bother anyone? I would say that it depends on your expectations going in, and if there is a plausible reason for the changes (i.e. the sad ending of Andersen's version - out-sads Bambi IMHO).
For a non-Disney example, I recently saw "I Am Legend" in the theater. I went in expecting significant changes due to the fact that the book is set in 1976, and technology has changed drastically since then. Therefore, I judged the movie on it's own merits rather than comparing it to the book by Matheson.
On the other hand, a few years back I went to see "The Bone Collector" (based on the book of the same name), and I came out very disappointed because I had not anticipated major modifications. There were huge changes in not only the main plot, but they changed the identity of the murderer! Had I not been expecting something closer to the book, I probably would have enjoyed the movie more. For the life of me, I still don't understand why they felt the need to modify the story as much as they did.
If a work of art is able to speak to generation after generation, that it has such fundamental truths that new audiences can connect with it on some level, then why rework it to a degree that it's no longer the initial work of art?
Who says it isn't? "The Little Mermaid" is a story about a little mermaid who falls in love with a landbound prince and is willing to leave her world behind in order to pursue her love.
There are subtleties that are part of the Anderson tale that were absent from the film, true. Some of them don't date especially well. Feminists are all over the original Anderson, citing all manner of "insulting to women" subtext. And yeah, they didn't kill the Mermaid at the end. And a century ago, traveling troupes of actors went around England performing Shakespeare and giving the tragedies happy endings.
PAD
We really loved Lion King on the stage, in a way I never thought would happen. Of course the story is primed for the stage...but the costuming was the issue, and all who have seen it fairly know they pulled that off. It seems that the critics of Little Mermaid focus on the trappings of stage and costume. What I don't understand is how does on manage to convey a submerged setting where fish and crustaceans play major character roles. At least with the lions, hyenas, and other savanah characters from Lion King, everyone is still a mammal, and shares many of the same features. Fish and such are very non-mammal, and no amount of costume is going to be able to change that.
--------
The Finding Nemo Show at Disney World's Animal Kingdom does a pretty good job of it. Like the Lion King, some of it is people holding puppets, while in others it's people in costume.
David
Rick Keating: "If someone is going to review (or criticize, if you prefer that term) a movie, play, book, concert, Broadway show, whatever, I believe he or she should state why he or she likes or dislikes it."
Geddy Lee (and anyone who doesn't know who Geddy is is just uncool) has said he distrusts fawningly positive reviews as much as he does excessively negative ones. But every once in awhile he finds a review that is sensitive to what he's trying to do, combines praise with constructive criticism, and actually helps him improve what he does.
It's my feeling, however, that most critics approach art focused on what they can say about it, rather than first exploring what it can say to them.
"The Finding Nemo Show at Disney World's Animal Kingdom does a pretty good job of it. Like the Lion King, some of it is people holding puppets, while in others it's people in costume.
David"
While I was reading some of the critics' reviews, I had the thought that at some point...maybe during the initial run, maybe for a travelling show...production would include the same kind of puppet/costumes that have been succesful in the past. At the same time, I was thinking that Disney, in allowing the director/producer to go in a different direction, made a pretty bold choice, one that supports creative expression and freedom. In a way, it surprises me that this move is panned by the critics, rather than embraced.
On changing future iterations of entertainment...I used to read the Anita Blake novels...haven't since they went more SCinemax than romantic horror...but I know that, between the hardcover and paperback version of one book, a key scene was re-written to make a sexual encounter less rape-like than the first printing made it out to be.
The thing of it is, writing, and story-telling overall, is a continuing, evoloving process. When you're dealing with fiction, you're never ever done writing a story. Every creative writing course I've ever had, and some non-creative writing courses, have stressed how the process of writing is never done. You just stop at some point and let the work go. But you could always come back and think about how to improve a passage, or write a scene better, or make the plot tighter or resonate with the reader more. Sometimes those changes are small and subtle, and sometimes they are grand and sweeping.
And sometimes they aren't done by you at all, but by whoever takes up your story and decides to tell it in the future.
Recently, our son (2 years, 2 months) has started asking me to tell him stories, rather than reading him stories from books. I can tell them with the lights off, which makes them better suited to bed-time. The other day, I was telling him my Three Little Pigs story, which changes slightly every time I tell it. My wife was in the room with me, and she kept interrupting by telling me how the story "really went."
I eventually had to stop her, thanking her, and told her that if I was interested in telling the same story every time, I'd read it out of a book. I wasn't particularly interested in her version of the story, and told her that she could tell it her way when she was doing the telling.
Because it's, far as I know, fiction. There are no historical three pigs that built their houses out of straw, wood, and brick. There's no big bad wolf who could huff and puff and blow houses down. I'm not telling the story of the Normandy invasions...I'm making up a bed-time story. I can change it, embellish, and be as creative as I can be. Even from night to night, the telling changes a bit.
That's what story-telling IS. That's what makes it great...because there's always room for improvement. Not every change is going to appeal to everyone, and if that's why someone doens't like a version, I understand. But if someone doesn't like a version for the simple reason that it's different from another version, that I don't understand.
In some cases I don't mind a massive change during adaptation, but there are cases where I think the criticism of the changes is valid.
Take the Lord of the Rings movies, for example. My favorite character in the book was Gimli. So I wasn't very happy with a lot of the short jokes. I felt they made the character seem more silly than the version in the book. A friend thought I was just saying that they should have made it exactly like the book for the sake of making it like the book, but that wasn't it. I really did feel that the version in the book was better and the movie would have been better if they'd done that particular detail the way the book did.
Another problem with adaptation changes is when the new version makes a faithful adaptation less likely. Fans of the Asimov's "I Robot" had been talking about a movie adaptation for years. When Will Smith's "I Robot" came out, it definitely wasn't that movie, but it was just close enough that it will be a long time before anyone considers making a movie like what Asimov wrote. That's not to say that it was a bad movie. I thought it was a very good Will Smith action movie and even got some of the heart of Asimov's work across. I just wish they had changed it slightly more and used a different title so the "I Robot" I'd like to see had a slightly better chance of becoming a reality.
Okay, I just double checked my info on Will Smith's I robot. I probably should have done that first, since it turns out that's actually a very poor example of an adaptation.
It turns out that Smith's movie was pretty much written before they got the rights to call the I, Robot title, then they just sprinkled a little of Asimov's standard details (like the laws of robotics) into it. I had thought it started off with Asimov and got morphed into something different, but apparently it was never much of an adaptation of Asimov's stuff at all.
The Bowdlerized Shakespeare and expurgated performances were silly, and not a very good model of respect for artistic intent. Perhaps next we should have the tragic tale of the sad day Jean DeWolff had a tummy ache, but felt better really soon. (Wait, with the current storyline that could happen.)
Maybe it's just me, but I see a big difference between dissolving into foam and living happily ever after with a snappy animal sidekick and a happy marriage. There's nothing wrong with the stories Disney wants to tell, but a lot wrong with pretending they are the original stories. (Remember, in the real Pinocchio, "Jiminy Cricket" didn't have a name, and died very early on.) When PAD was writing "the Incredible Hulk" nobody said "Yeah...This is the REAL story of Edward Hyde. That other stuff is outdated and stupid." Of course, keeping the familiar names and ignoring the story is all about name recognition and good will, but it's also dishonest and lazy.
I kind of got turned off from Disney on Broadway after Aida. I've loved the stage version of Beauty and the Beast ever since the original cast, because I liked the fairy tale and the Disney movie in the first place and I thought the added songs were more or less the best music I'd heard in anything with Disney's name on it.
Lion King... well, I'm just not a visual enough person for it, I guess, or at least not visual the right way. I want to be able to see people act, not just move around in costumes, and they obstruct the ability to see what any given person brought to the performance like none of the ones in BatB. About half of the songs from the movie annoyed me even as a child, and I didn't think there was anything particularly special about the new songs.
Aida was more mediocre music and flashy sets and costumes, and since I'm not so much into the spectacle (though it doesn't bother me either if it doesn't get in the way of the stuff I really like- see my abiding love for Beauty and the Beast), I've pretty much decided that Disney's plan for their Broadway shows diverged from anything that would be of interest to me somewhere around 1997.
PAD:
"Who says it isn't? "The Little Mermaid" is a story about a little mermaid who falls in love with a landbound prince and is willing to leave her world behind in order to pursue her love."
I agree with you here. But I was too vague in that my question was meant to be 'in general' as opposed to how it relates to "The Little Mermaid" in particular. I'd give an example but it would be extreme and entirely unreasonable.
THEN...
"There are subtleties that are part of the Anderson tale that were absent from the film, true. Some of them don't date especially well. Feminists are all over the original Anderson, citing all manner of "insulting to women" subtext."
I also agree with this. Especially since it was made primarily for children. As adults we already 'get' certain things in these (kids)films that kids don't because those things are aimed at us to keep us interested as well as the kids. Too much of that and the kids (target audience) could get bored.
LATER THAT SAME DAY...
"And a century ago, traveling troupes of actors went around England performing Shakespeare and giving the tragedies happy endings."
Yikes!
A tradgedy is a tradgedy on purpose, is it not?
Salutations,
M
Generally, I think folks (and critics) are on safe ground looking at a piece and saying that it doesn't achieve what it intends to do, or that it falls because the craftsmanship is not good. That's judging a piece for what a piece is, not judging it for you want it to be. I'll admit I had a friend who wrote the books for a couple of the musicals mentioned here. He never has problems with folks saying that his work didn't work...but he'll kick your ass if you try to go the "true to the source" route (well, actually, his wife would...she's a bit fiestier...)
Jonathan (the other one):
"You only hang out with people who have a picture box and beer handy? :)
(Hey, at least I stopped punning - for now... [insert evil chuckle here])"
Ok, you have to stop the Q-tip when there's resistance!
We could go on like this for weeks, you know...
M
Critics have one big disadvantage over regular viewers. They have to see stuff whether they like it or not.
If I saw a movie, a play, or anything else, it's because I thought there was at least a chance that I'd like it. If something doesn't look appealing to me, I don't watch it. If I had to watch everything that came out whether I wanted to or not, I'd turn into a little ball of rage that hates everything.
Plus, critics sometimes see way too much in general. If they see 20 productions in a year that are all similar, it doesn't matter if they're good or not, eventually the critics will get sick of them. Meanwhile the people in the audiences have only seen a few of those productions, so they're not tired of them. I think this is why movie reviewers sometimes love those edgy, experimental movies more than the public. They've seen so many movies that they've started valuing originality more than other factors.
roger tang:
"I'll admit I had a friend who wrote the books for a couple of the musicals mentioned here. He never has problems with folks saying that his work didn't work...but he'll kick your ass if you try to go the "true to the source" route (well, actually, his wife would...she's a bit fiestier...)"
Wouldn't it be more difficult to stay true to the source when writing an adaptation of an adaptation when the first adaptation wasn't true to the source?
Also, I've never read an adaptation of a musical, so I'm wondering how the musical parts are handled in print, if at all.
Good Day,
M
It's amazing what can set people off about movies. I loved The Little Mermaid when I first saw it (on video, not the theater). It told me Disney had finally quit doing cutesy movies like The Rescuers which I loathed as a child. The animation and music were wonderful, and the story was pretty decent along with it.
Beauty and the Beast came out, and I just didn't care for it. It seemed to me that Disney took all the PC-criticisms of TLM and redid the movie. Rather than a girl blindly chasing her man, here was a "modern" girl who refused to be so blind. So, I've never cared for it. Why rehash the story? I wanted something different.
The Lion King is the ultimate Disney movie to my mind. About the only thing I would change about the movie would be to replace Matthew Broderick. His voice just doesn't say "King" to me - not even "young king". I guess he's just too much Ferris Beuller in my brain. Still, I can watch that movie over and over. The fact that I was a first-time father just when that movie came out has a lot to do with my affection for it, I'm sure.
Someone mentioned Lord of the Rings. To this day, I only have two significant "objections" - and I'll use the term loosely since I love the films. 1) Aragorn not wanting to be king, but having to be convinced, and 2) Frodo telling Sam to leave - which he does. Beyond that, PJ did a job beyond my wildest expectations.
Still, like most critics and fans, what works for you might not for me.
I used to have problems with the changed-up Disney versions of classic stories, but then I learned to stop worrying and love the anything-but-a-bomb.
It was pointed out to me that this is not "Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid". This is "Disney's The Little Mermaid". (For that matter, this is "Disney's The Little Mermaid [Broadway version]".) It is not being presented a faithful version of the original fairytale; it is being presented as a *Disney* version of it, and anyone worth their salt knows that means that all bets are off, especially if the original didn't have an upbeat ending.
Once I accepted that crucial difference, I was able to handle all sorts of adaptations much better, able to appreciate them (or not) largely on their own merits.
"Eragon" still sucked, though. "Spamalot" annoyed me because I couldn't manage the separation needed. "Young Frankenstein" troubled me for some of the same reasons; the parts I enjoyed most were the ones where it didn't hew to the film.
On the topic of negative reviews: The example I've always kept with me of a badly-written negative review was my local paper's review of Baseketball, which spent the entire review going on and on about how stupid the humor was. My reaction was: It's a film by the Zuckers, pioneers of the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks school of comedy, and the creators of South Park, which isn't exactly stupid so much as it uses stupid humor in an intelligent way. It was a given that it would contain stupid humor; but was it entertaining? The answer seems to have been "no, not especially," and I hadn't been planning to see it anyway, but it missed the point of writing reviews for the public on a pretty basic level: Different people enjoy different things, and just pointing out that a work of art contains something you don't like doesn't address whether someone else will or not. (It's like reviews that say things like "This film is terrible because it's full of gratuitous nudity!" For some people, that's likely to make them more interested in seeing the film, not less.)
The best negative review I've ever read was Entertainment Weekly's review of Freddy Got Fingered. Everyone else was busy wringing their hands about how it was full of gross humor and OMG he fondles a horse and it's the end of American culture. EW panned it as well (they gave it an F) but they pointed out that it failed as a film for Tom Green fans, because his comic persona was of a guy who's in control of events and his character in the film, a guy who's unhappy because his father doesn't appreciate him, doesn't work with that persona. In other words, they paid attention to the level the film tried to work at and who the intended potential audience was, and told them not to bother, and why.
Critics are in a funny situation. I used to, when I was SLIGHTLY younger and more negative, despise all of them and the horses they rode in on and the presents they left on the road and pay them all the attention that I give to the instructions on a shampoo bottle. I've realized, though, that critics are doing what they're paid to do--clue people in on what a given thing is like. I've seen people trashing SF from A C Clarke to, well, something starting with Z. I've been told by people that they couldn't read Tolkien because(GASP!) they had to READ all that stuff!! I still have only slightly more patience for critics than I do for they who write into Dear Abby(PEOPLE--is there NO ONE in your life that you can turn to besides someone in a paper you've never met whilst simultaneously sharing your problem and making yourself look like a goon?) but at least I'm no longer tempted to egg their cars at random. I'd say most people are educated enough to make their OWN choices, but then I look at what's the rage where I work, and I have to wonder....
"Can't speak for Ariel, obviously. But when I saw the Ice Capades or somesuch when I was eight, the appeal was simple: spectacle."
Thus proving, that amongst other things not mentioned in National Treasure, Ben Franklin invented ice shows.
...SF from A C Clarke to, well, something starting with Z.
Roger Zelazny, perhaps?
If a work of art is able to speak to generation after generation, that it has such fundamental truths that new audiences can connect with it on some level, then why rework it to a degree that it's no longer the initial work of art?
Well, the difference between the movie and the original Anderson story is substantial. In both versions, the prince must fall in love with the mermaid or she will lose her life as she knows it. However, while the Anderson version demonstrates that you can't count on the reciprocation of your love, the Disney version demonstrates you can.
Whenever you present anything to the public, you have to balance intimate and epic elements. Like a conversation in a restaurant, you have to keep the attention of your audience you are acquainted with (like the people at your table) and you have to make yourself understandable to a general audience (like anyone listening in from another table).
Society bestowed no significant privileges to youth until the 20th century, when they became a distinct buying market. The Anderson version is aimed at adults, making a story of adult agendas transparent to children. The Disney version reworks the Anderson story for children in a culture where children enjoy more privilege than the previous generation.
Speaking as an amateur critic myself (writing sans pay for the Armchair Critic), I think the essence of criticism is communicating whether you liked or disliked something, and why. Some critics feel the need to tear down everything (I'm thinking of the great ol' cartoon THE CRITIC: "I give this movie my highest rating ever: eight out of ten"), some feel the need to praise only the pretentious and obscure (though I enjoyed seeing movies like RATATOUILLE, SUPERBAD and KNOCKED UP turn up on many crtiics' best of the year lists), and some have their own agendas (like THE VILLAGE VOICE, where they can't review a sneaker without some Bush-bashing). I (half-) jokingly differentiate between what I've heard about a movie from critics and from humans.
I am *not* a fan of significantly changing a work from its original source material into something almost unrecognizable, whether it's replacing thought with mindless action (I, ROBOT), sadness with happiness (THE NATURAL), or a 180-degree difference from the original (THE SCARLET LETTER with Demi Moore). PAD has argued that the original works remain unchanged no matter how different the adaption is; that may be true, but if you see a play before reading it, your perception of that play will be filtered through that performance. And there should be no need to use the title of something famous to essentially advertise an otherwise unrelated movie: Will Smith didn't have to call it I, ROBOT to make a shootin, slo-mo film about robots damnit! (A friend of mine said that the Will Smith I AM LEGEND is a good movie -- if you forget everything about the original novella. Personally I wanted to see Bruce Campbell star in it.)
I see here a tinge of the pseudo-egalitarian Khmer Rouge-style class leveling that hates experts of any kind. Obviously, some critics have poor taste, and some are woefully ignorant of the subjects they choose to criticize, but there is nothing inferior or suspicious about criticism purely on the basis of it being criticism. To loathe critics as a class is the same thing as distrusting astrophysicists to tell one about supernovas -- ooh, icky INTELLECTUALS, my god! While Genes Siskel was alive I trusted his taste more than Roger Ebert's - simply because he liked many of the same movies I did - but I've found Ebert's criticism almost always based on experience and sound critical theory, consistent with his known tastes, and easily defensible. There are other critics who are similarly worthy, and far too many who aren't, but very few who are much inferior in taste to an average person chosen at random. To distrust stage and film critics plying their trade isn't much different from preferring only books by people with no talent for writing.
On the title: Yay fish puns!
Also, damnit James! Now I want to see Bruce Campbell in I Am Legend.
Then you'll probably love THEY CALL ME BRUCE which has the can't miss idea of a bunch of film geeks kidnapping Bruce Campbell (played, in an inspired bit of casting, by Bruce Campbell) to fight the actual monster that is attacking their town because...he's Bruce Campbell! Who ELSE would you get?
Posted by bobb alfred
And if Disney takes a tale and updates it for a particular audience today...why does that bother anyone? They haven't gone back and changed or destroyed all the written versions of the older story, nor do they claim that older version got things wrong. Most of the time, they don't even claim to be a version of the older work, usually using an "inspired by" or "based on" credit.
Gresham's Law ("Bad money drives out good.") applies equally - or even more so - to popular entertainment. The Judy Garland "Wizard of Oz", another cultural icon that i have never been able to stomach, having read the Baum original years before i saw it, has so displaced the actual story in the public mind that the main criticism of Disney's "Return to Oz", which was (for the most part) fairly faithful to the books it was based on, was "They got it wrong - it's not like the original!"
(Which point, i think, the last sentence of your previous graph:
Way back when the film came out, I was vaguely aware that it was based on some old tale. Frankly, I didn't care how it differed. I wasn't interested in seeing the older version, and I still haven't been tempted to go back and encounter it. I like the Disney version just fine.
speaks to.)
posted by PAD
And a century ago, traveling troupes of actors went around England performing Shakespeare and giving the tragedies happy endings.
And in earlier centuries - apparently into the 18th Century or even the 19th (according to Babrbar Hambley's notes at the end of her Ban January novel involving murder in an opera company) - opera producers often added popular songs that had nothing to do with the plot to famous operas, and often the opera was cut short after the death of the tenor because he was what the public had come to see. It was wrong then, too.
OTOH, it's almost traditional for all but the most fanatically-purist companies to rewrite the Lord High Executioner's "I've Got a Little List" with local and contemporaneous references, even if they're doing the rest of "The Mikado" absolutely straight. (Well, as straight as you can do G&S...)
Posted by bobb alfred
On changing future iterations of entertainment...I used to read the Anita Blake novels...haven't since they went more SCinemax than romantic horror...but I know that, between the hardcover and paperback version of one book, a key scene was re-written to make a sexual encounter less rape-like than the first printing made it out to be.
The SF novel that Newt Gingrich "co-wrote" (i hesitate to flat-out state that i think he had no real input, since i don't want to insult my brother's publisher) was rewritten to tone down some sex scenes between a printed excerpt that Baen put out to promote it in advance and its actual publication. And the cover of a Barbara Hambley novel (the third "Silicone Mage" book, i think) was cropped and modified to make it more of a "fantasy" cover and less of a "horror" cover between the prepeints the puiblisher sent out to bookstores as solicitiations and publication.
Posted by Jason M. Bryant
Another problem with adaptation changes is when the new version makes a faithful adaptation less likely. Fans of the Asimov's "I Robot" had been talking about a movie adaptation for years. When Will Smith's "I Robot" came out, it definitely wasn't that movie, but it was just close enough that it will be a long time before anyone considers making a movie like what Asimov wrote.
Exactly.
Posted by Mitch Evans
Wouldn't it be more difficult to stay true to the source when writing an adaptation of an adaptation when the first adaptation wasn't true to the source?
The really hard part is *translating* a musical - for instance, the classic off-Broadway production of "Threepenny Opera" (which, at various times, numbered Beatrice Arthur, Ed Asner, John Astin and Paul Dooley among its cast - the MGM Records cast album very clearly features Astin and Arthur, and Arthur is in one of the jacket photos, which you can see here), is carefully labelled "Adapted" (not "translated") by Marc Blitzstein, and several of the songs are definitely *not* even close to literal translations of the originals. And that includes "Moritat" ("Mack the Knife") and the "Army Song".
And they had to rearrange the "Jealousy Duet" for Charlotte Wolfson (as Polly Peachum) and Bea Arthur (as Macheath's other wife, Lucy Brown) - Wolfson was rather petite, and Bea Arthur was ... well ... Bea Arthur, and they decided to change the line "He likes a big, *complete* girl..." from Polly's part to Lucy's part. (And when she sings it on the CD, my mind's eye persists in showing me a twenty-something Bea Arthur proudly throwing her shoulders back...)
Posted by Mark L
Beauty and the Beast came out, and I just didn't care for it. It seemed to me that Disney took all the PC-criticisms of TLM and redid the movie. Rather than a girl blindly chasing her man, here was a "modern" girl who refused to be so blind. So, I've never cared for it. Why rehash the story? I wanted something different.
My biggest gripe with Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" is its inversion of the story that completely throws away any real suspense and destroys the ending of the original story.
Posted by Jim
It is not being presented a faithful version of the original fairytale; it is being presented as a *Disney* version of it, and anyone worth their salt knows that means that all bets are off, especially if the original didn't have an upbeat ending.
You seriously overestimate the erudition and general savvy of the average moviegoer; i would guess that a huge percentage of the audience for either Disney's "Little Mermaid" or "Beauty and the Beast" was more than vaguely aware that they were adaptations - but i do remember hearing about people complaining that the Disnewy "B&B" wasn't like the TV show...
(Incidentally, "Faerie Tale Theatre" was mentioned above - when they did "Beauty and the Beast", it was simply a "Reader's Digest Condensed Film" version of the Cocteau original, in colour - not only were Klaus Kinski's costumes and makeup as the Beast virtually identical to the Cocteau, he even seemed to be copying Jean Marais' body language as the Beast.)
Oh - i forgot that i meant to mention TIME's initial characterisation of Tennesee Williams on the occasion of his Broadway debut:
"A little Southern boy who thought he could stand taller by putting manure in his boots."
Of course, a while later, after all the other critics were raving about the little ponce, they had to "re-assess" and announce that, indeed, they had come to realise that the Emperor's new clothes were simply lovely.
Also, someone mentioned that the "Village Voice" will find some way to make every review somehow an attack on George Bush - here in Atlanta, my friend David T Lindsey (Kathleen will remember him, i suspect) reviews films for a freebie music magazine, and manages to see virtually every film he reviews as an insiduous attack on American morality and values by the Evil Liberal Conspirators in Hollywood... (I haven't heard his opinions on the WGA strike, but they're probably lurid and wonderful.)
For Instance, his review of No Country for Old Men:
While it didn't apply necessarily to theatre, Walter Benjamin believed in the greatness of film because it essentially eliminated the "expert".
I kind of liked the idea.
For critics in general, I find a film critic I generally agree with and go with him or her. Sometimes I disagree, but that's people for you. Anyway, all opinions are valid. Some are more educated than others, but does it point to your enjoyment as an audience member? That's the question that should be asked.
"To distrust stage and film critics plying their trade isn't much different from preferring only books by people with no talent for writing."
How are they the same? Those are two completely different things.
How is not believing that someone I've never met and has a completely different experience watching something can be an accurate judge of whether or not I will enjoy a movie, be the same as having apparently bad taste?
Yes some critics will have tastes very similar to mine and chances are if they like or don't like a film I will agree with them, but not always.
So every review I read I read with a grain of salt. does that mean I have no taste when it comes to writing?
Even if you answer this I won't respond, because I'm already regretting giving you what you so clearly want.
PAD will we see Cowboy Pete's take on the new Terminator series? Or have you chosen not to watch that, given Mr Ellison's history with the property?
JasonK,
Noooooooo! Please don't engage Jeff. No good comes of it. The sentance you quoted wasn't something he actually believes. He just said it to goad someone into an endless arguement based on nothing. Please don't give him the satisfaction.
Bill Mulligan wrote: Then you'll probably love THEY CALL ME BRUCE
Argh! Now you have me intrigued and neither Netflix nor my library has it!
JasonK wrote: PAD will we see Cowboy Pete's take on the new Terminator series? Or have you chosen not to watch that, given Mr Ellison's history with the property?
Speaking of which... Anyone notice that they named the FBI Agent James Ellison?
Bill Mulligan wrote: Then you'll probably love THEY CALL ME BRUCE
Argh! Now you have me intrigued and neither Netflix nor my library has it!
JasonK wrote: PAD will we see Cowboy Pete's take on the new Terminator series? Or have you chosen not to watch that, given Mr Ellison's history with the property?
Speaking of which... Anyone notice that they named the FBI Agent James Ellison?
,i>not only were Klaus Kinski's costumes and makeup as the Beast virtually identical to the Cocteau, he even seemed to be copying Jean Marais' body language as the Beast.)
If they really wanted to be true to the original story they should have just had Klaus Kinski play it sans makeup. Now THAT'S a beast!
I love the Cocteau version but is there anyone who doesn't think the "beast" is waaaayyyy more attractive than the "handsome prince" he turns into? Even Beauty looks a bit let down.
Also, someone mentioned that the "Village Voice" will find some way to make every review somehow an attack on George Bush - here in Atlanta, my friend David T Lindsey (Kathleen will remember him, i suspect) reviews films for a freebie music magazine, and manages to see virtually every film he reviews as an insiduous attack on American morality and values by the Evil Liberal Conspirators in Hollywood... (I haven't heard his opinions on the WGA strike, but they're probably lurid and wonderful.)
Whenever someone slips some gratuitous politics into a movie review (or sports report or rat soufflé recipe) I always become suspicious of how good the rest of the effort is. I mean, if these wannabe pundits are so desperate to get bumped up to the op-ed page why should we trust what they put out in the meantime? I want a movie reviewer who loves movies.
Bill Mulligan wrote: Then you'll probably love THEY CALL ME BRUCE
Argh! Now you have me intrigued and neither Netflix nor my library has it!
It's not officially out yet. Also, I'm an idiot: the actual title is MY NAME IS BRUCE. (THEY CALL ME BRUCE is an actual movie but not this one). Sorry!
here's the trailer: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QZLv3Z7L5lY
Jason M. Bryant - you are mistaken that I don't believe what I wrote. Apparently you mistook yourself for me. I may not have expressed myself exactly as I wished, so I'll try again, being more precise. Some people here dislike and distrust critics as a class - not caring to read the analysis of a work of entertainment by a person who has some experience of that kind of entertainment. Some critics have terrible taste, just as some ordinary consumers have terrible taste, but it's foolish to distrust informed criticism just because it is informed. A better analogy than the one I used would be this: "Hey, I don't want to hear any crap about Chaucer by these asses who actually speak Middle English! That's elitist crap! I was just reading some V.C. Andrews the other day, and this Chaucer guy is no V.C. Andrews! I made it all the way through Eighth Grade, so don't feed me this stuff about specialized vocabulary and medieval conventions. This so-called poem stinks." There's some popular opinion for you.
Distrusting any criticism that doesn't exactly mirror one's own preconceptions is anti-intellectual and stupid.
Mike, your view on things seems to me to be hidebound. You invest in whatever you view to be the "original," and anything that comes after that must adhere to that version or be reviled. What's your take on The Hulk, whoever was doing the writing? Stan Lee will happily tell anyone interested that Hulk was based and inspired by Jekyll and Hyde, with a dash of Shelly tossed in. As a derivative work, admittedly so, is all it takes is to not claim the original name to allow a new, updated version of something older?
I, and I would think many, people that enjoy Disney's Little Mermaid have no interest in the original tale, mainly becase it's age presents access problems. The attitudes and mores imbedded into the writing don't mesh well with modern attitudes, so the lessons they attempt to teach may not have the same value today as they did in the world they were written in.
I, Robot, mentioned a ways up, is another example where the movie isn't based on the Asimov short, but inspired by it. The credits even use that term, inspired by. That's a very true claim. The fact that it uses the same title should not require the artists making the new presentation to adhere to every word, comma, and image found in the original.
Jackson's Lord of the Rings films are an excellent example of how a non-literal translation from one media to another can be accomplished. Tolkien's core story is timeless, if not his use of language. The fantasy setting allows some of the prose to pass onto the screen intact, although certain passages were handed from one character to another. Still, the films hold true to the core events and themes of the book, and no character (short jokes notwithstanding) is so changed as to be unrecognizable nearly instantly to those familiar with the written version.
Then you'll probably love THEY CALL ME BRUCE which has the can't miss idea of a bunch of film geeks kidnapping Bruce Campbell (played, in an inspired bit of casting, by Bruce Campbell) to fight the actual monster that is attacking their town because...he's Bruce Campbell! Who ELSE would you get?
Sarah Michelle Gellar?
What's your take on The Hulk, whoever was doing the writing? Stan Lee will happily tell anyone interested that Hulk was based and inspired by Jekyll and Hyde, with a dash of Shelly tossed in. As a derivative work, admittedly so, is all it takes is to not claim the original name to allow a new, updated version of something older?
Consider even further: When I was writing the Hulk, I had endless criticms from various Hulk fans who asserted that I wasn't doing the Hulk right. That by having the Hulk articulate, crafty, etc., I was reinterpreting and changing the character from the correct and proper "Hulk smash!" monosyllabic brute (who became that way when Bruce Banner got angry) that everyone knew was the way the Hulk was supposed to be. Yet if you look back to the original six issues of the Hulk's run, the Hulk was articulate, crafty, and Banner transformed either at night or with the aid of a gamma gun. My Hulk was in fact MORE accurate to the original, yet that did not deter people from slamming my work as getting the Hulk wrong.
Yet another example of the constantly mutating nature of truly classic characters and concepts.
PAD
Apparently you mistook yourself for me.
Jesus jumping Christ on a pogo stick, where's an eye-roll emoticon when you need one?
PAD said: "Apparently, despite all logic, she had JUST seen "The Wizard of Oz" and was dismissing it as being a rip off of "Star Wars.""
"Glinda never told you what happened to your Auntie Em."
While I recognize the SNL bit as satire, it's amusing that some people do think one film is a rip-off of the other (though most, at least, know which was made first).
No, wait. Come to think of it, they've got a point. Consider:
Wizard of Oz: Tornado.
Star Wars: No tornado.
Star Wars: Droids channeling Laurel and Hardy.
Wizard of Oz: No Droids. Of any kind.
Wizard of Oz: All the good guys live.
Star Wars: Alas, poor Obi-Wan (and the rebels in the opening scene, and everyone on Alderaan).
Wizard of Oz: Magic shoes.
Star Wars: No magic shoes. For that matter, no one even discusses footwear.
Wizard of Oz: Singing.
Star Wars: No singing.
Wizard of Oz: Consistent accents.
Star Wars: Leia's accent.
Wizard of Oz: Hot air balloon (and a "wizard" full of hot air).
Star Wars: Neither.
Wizard of Oz: Yellow-Brick Road.
Star Wars: Neither roads nor bricks.
Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch melts away.
Star Wars: Darth Vader gets away.
How could we have been so blind? The two films are exactly alike.
Rick
Who ELSE would you get?
Sarah Michelle Gellar?
If you are in California, wouldn't you call the Governator?
While I recognize the SNL bit as satire, it's amusing that some people do think one film is a rip-off of the other (though most, at least, know which was made first).
The rest of your amusing post aside (and it WAS amusing, make not mistake) it wasn't ludicrous enough that some reviewers really did dismiss "Star Wars" as an Oz rip-off, claiming that Luke=Dorothy, 3PO=Tin Man, Chewie=Cowardly Lion, and Obi-Wan=the Wizard. What fractured me was that when "Willow" came out, reviewers turned around and claimed that Willow was--wait for it--George Lucas shamelessly ripping off his own "Star Wars," declaring that Willow was a rip off of Luke, the two pixies were 3PO and R2, and Madmartagen was Han Solo. They had no understanding of mythic archetypes at all.
PAD
I just don't see the big deal here, sorry. I enjoyed the disney-fied versions of the stories, often more than the "originals" simply because they were more fun and that's what I wanted. What I don't waste time doing is criticizing folks who have a different preference. It's the critics who DO turn the review into an attack, no matter how passive aggressive, that annoy me. Or worse, those critics who seem to forget the target audience of the movie. I gained tremendous respect for Ebert when he bascially gave a Rambo flick a good/positive review because it was what it set out to be. Contrast that with a former (thank god) local critic who picked apart Predator 2 and told people to not go see it because it was "too violent".
You also have the critics who bash simply to bash... and praise to praise (and get their names listed in the ads).
I simply read them to get an idea about the movie but not to tell me if I want to actually see it.
PAD is completely correct about his run on the Hulk. The crafty and ill-tempered, rather than infantile, Hulk is true to the original conception. (He's waiting for a "but...," but there is no "but...") With an ongoing character such as the Hulk it is legitimate to change the character (as PAD did several times), but probably is not to pretend what had gone before never happened. (If he did this, I never noticed it.) Dealing with a previously existing and completed story such as "The Little Mermaid" or "Pinocchio" is different. "The Little Mermaid" is exactly the story that H.C. Andersen wrote, with the characters he created, and no others, living, acting and dying as he wrote them. It would not be possible for me to disagree more strongly with bobb alfred about the accessibility of "The Little Mermaid." Mermaids do not exist, so it isn't a big priority to make them behave accordingly with bobb's conception of modern girls. The actual, original tale is not about social actualization, or catchy songs, or anything at all but the striving for love and the seeking of a soul in a kind but inhuman creature - The mermaid is not a teenager from Santa Monica, and she doesn't need to be portrayed as one. The problem with new productions taking the names of existing stories is that they explicitly link the original creators to stories they didn't tell.
Let me ask this very seriously: Most of us would agree that the 1995 Demi Moore "The Scarlet Letter" is pretty awful, but what is it that is more offensive - that there's another of many bad films starring Ms. Moore or that this piece of dreck is presented as being the story told in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel? There are a lot of bad movies, bad novels, and bad shows, and there will be more. Hawthorne doesn't deserve to have his name associated with ideas not his own. Closer to home, PAD's creations are what he makes them, rather than what someone later chooses to do to them. I've never read PAD's "Fallen Angel," so I couldn't tell you all of her adventures, but if I wrote a story using his characters and identifying itself as "Peter David's 'Fallen Angel'" it would be a theft of his intellectual property. The term "fallen angel" precedes his use of it, so someone else could reuse it - but not if they maintained the identification of the character with his work. The credits of the film "The Little Mermaid" identify Andersen as the original author, but the film does not honor his intentions.
Jonathan--I don't care WHICH one you are, THANK YOU.
(THE SCARLET LETTER with Demi Moore)
I had ALMOST gotten over that one, and seeing it with several people that'd never read the book. Another YEAR of therapy....
I just got into this with some people about the new Trek movie and the actors. What I want to see is the new cast acting as the new cast, not, I repeat NOT as imitating the original cast. Why? Because if I wanna see Shatner imitations I can watch SNL or Mad TV or sit for five minutes at work on a Sunday. I mean, look at the Christmas Carol thread. HOW many different versions were spoken of? With HOW many different preferences?
Jonathan--I don't care WHICH one you are, THANK YOU.
For continuing the puns, or stopping?
I just got into this with some people about the new Trek movie and the actors. What I want to see is the new cast acting as the new cast, not, I repeat NOT as imitating the original cast. Why? Because if I wanna see Shatner imitations I can watch SNL or Mad TV or sit for five minutes at work on a Sunday.
Hey, over at www.televisionwithoutpity.com, on the Star Trek forum, I was one of the people voting for a BSG-style reboot of the concept - that is, not necessarily the whole grim-n-gritty thing, but totally tossing out prior continuity, as I think it's gotten hopelessly tangled.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan
I love the Cocteau version but is there anyone who doesn't think the "beast" is waaaayyyy more attractive than the "handsome prince" he turns into? Even Beauty looks a bit let down
It's said that, at the end, Marlene Dietrich said "Give me back my beast."
No matter how insipid the Prince appears, Marais is a handsome SOB, though, isn't he? He was Cocteau's lover, you know.
Posted by: bobb alfred
Mike, your view on things seems to me to be hidebound. You invest in whatever you view to be the "original," and anything that comes after that must adhere to that version or be reviled. What's your take on The Hulk, whoever was doing the writing? Stan Lee will happily tell anyone interested that Hulk was based and inspired by Jekyll and Hyde, with a dash of Shelly tossed in. As a derivative work, admittedly so, is all it takes is to not claim the original name to allow a new, updated version of something older?
Nope. It is quite possible to improve an original - i think that Kurosawa's "High & Low" is an improvement of Ed McBain's (already excellent) novel "King's Ransom" - moving the story to Japan makes its points about honor and obligation much more salient.
But when the changes actually change the *meaning* of the original - that's not legit, so far as i'm concerned. If you have to rewrite it that much, do what Kurosawa did when he adapted Hammett's "Red Harvest" as a samauri story and called it "Yojimbo" - or what Leone did when he turned "Yojimbo" into a Western and called it "A Fistful of Dollars" ... or what Lucas did when he turned Kurosawa's "Hidden Castle" into "Star Wars" - give it a new title. All of those are actually closer and more faithful to their sources than Disney's "Little Mermaid".
In my opinion, what Disney did with "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" was closely akin to bait-and-switch fraud - they promised one thing and delivered something entirely different.
"I, Robot", mentioned a ways up, is another example where the movie isn't based on the Asimov short, but inspired by it. The credits even use that term, inspired by. That's a very true claim.
Actally, it isn't; as mentioned a few posts later, it's actually an original story that the Asimove title got scabbed onto, with a few minor cosmetic rewrites.
Jackson's Lord of the Rings films are an excellent example of how a non-literal translation from one media to another can be accomplished. Tolkien's core story is timeless, if not his use of language. The fantasy setting allows some of the prose to pass onto the screen intact, although certain passages were handed from one character to another. Still, the films hold true to the core events and themes of the book, and no character (short jokes notwithstanding) is so changed as to be unrecognizable nearly instantly to those familiar with the written version.
I watched the first film, and maybe some day i'll get around to the other two; it was, indeed, a worthy adaptation, but it didn't grab me like the books did.
Posted by: Peter David
The rest of your amusing post aside (and it WAS amusing, make not mistake) it wasn't ludicrous enough that some reviewers really did dismiss "Star Wars" as an Oz rip-off, claiming that Luke=Dorothy, 3PO=Tin Man, Chewie=Cowardly Lion, and Obi-Wan=the Wizard. What fractured me was that when "Willow" came out, reviewers turned around and claimed that Willow was--wait for it--George Lucas shamelessly ripping off his own "Star Wars," declaring that Willow was a rip off of Luke, the two pixies were 3PO and R2, and Madmartagen was Han Solo. They had no understanding of mythic archetypes at all.
Actually, if you want to consider "Star Wars" a "rip off"/derivative from something previous, check out Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" - tall skinny and short fat comic-relief/viewpoint characters, Princess whose whole family has been wiped out on the run, former ally with scarred face working for the Bad Guys (who turns away from them and does something heroic), etc. The interesting thing is that Lucas got four characters out of the two main characters - the Princess becomes both Luke and Leia (early "Star Wars" production art by McQuarrie shows a female protagonist, BTW) and Toshiro Mifune's general becomes noth Han Solo and Obi-Wan). Great film.
I know a number of people who, on first seeing "Dark Star", dismiss it as "A 'Star Wars' rip-off", when, in fact, it came out some years earlier. (As a matter of fact, the computer search sequence in "Star Wars" is lifted almost directly from "Dark Star" - not surprising, because Dan O'Bannon did both.)
Posted by: Jeffrey S. Frawley
PAD is completely correct about his run on the Hulk. The crafty and ill-tempered, rather than infantile, Hulk is true to the original conception. (He's waiting for a "but...," but there is no "but...") With an ongoing character such as the Hulk it is legitimate to change the character (as PAD did several times), but probably is not to pretend what had gone before never happened. (If he did this, I never noticed it.) Dealing with a previously existing and completed story such as "The Little Mermaid" or "Pinocchio" is different. "The Little Mermaid" is exactly the story that H.C. Andersen wrote, with the characters he created, and no others, living, acting and dying as he wrote them. It would not be possible for me to disagree more strongly with bobb alfred about the accessibility of "The Little Mermaid." Mermaids do not exist, so it isn't a big priority to make them behave accordingly with bobb's conception of modern girls. The actual, original tale is not about social actualization, or catchy songs, or anything at all but the striving for love and the seeking of a soul in a kind but inhuman creature - The mermaid is not a teenager from Santa Monica, and she doesn't need to be portrayed as one. The problem with new productions taking the names of existing stories is that they explicitly link the original creators to stories they didn't tell.
Scary. For once i not only understand what Jeffrey is saying, but (mostly) agree. I'm willing to let things go a bit further in regard to changes before i get annoyed, but the Disnye "Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" didn't just cross the line, they used a brass band and fireworks to emphasise that they were.
Also, previous Disney fairy tale films ("Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty" - even "Pinocchio") stayed pretty close to the original story, even if they did make their heroines someone the audience could (supposedly) identify with and introduce simplifcations (Sleeping Beauty sleeps for a hundred years in most versions).
(Incidentally - the "Snow White" that everyone knows as the "original" is, in fact, the result of a translation error - the original French said a "vaire" ("fur") [spelling approximate] slipper, but it came over to English as "verre" ("glass") [s.a.].)
For that matter, PAD wasn't the first to make the Hulk intelligent, though i think the previous "Smart Hulk" sequences made him basically Banner with the Hulk's physique. (I seem to recall one sequence where the Hulk was smart and Banner was the dumb one.)
The most believable swipe at "Star Wars" is the claim that it's a ripoff of Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" and maybe his "The Men Who Step on the Tiger's Tail" restructured to ape both Campbell's "The Hero With 1000 Faces" and countless movie serials from the 30s-40s. Even though Lucas has acknowledged some inspiration from all of them, it's more original than that (and he picked a title of his own, too).
No matter how insipid the Prince appears, Marais is a handsome SOB, though, isn't he? He was Cocteau's lover, you know.
And he was also married briefly to one of the two evil sisters. Incidentally, they got off easy in the film--in the original story weren't they turned to stone?
In my opinion, what Disney did with "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" was closely akin to bait-and-switch fraud - they promised one thing and delivered something entirely different.
Why doesn't anyone mention THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME? Talk about taking liberties! In the original everybody dies! Oh, and there's some implied necrophilia at the very end that's supposed to be somewhat uplifting. Wow, would that have set the kids running for the exits...
Mike, we'll just have to disagree on this one. I don't see Disney advertising any of their productions using the original author's names, or claiming to be a faithful reproduction of some other tale. As far as the modern DVD advertising, it's usually in terms of Disney's take on a timeless tale, or something similar to that. I don't see the original work or auther getting besmirched through association by anyone other than the viewer...if one goes into a Disney production expecting to see a faithful reproduction, buyer beware.
As for I, Robot, whatever another poster claimed, even if that remark is true, I don't see how the "inspired by" mark is inappropriate. Regardless of when Asimov's title entered the production line, enough of the film revolved around the Three Rules and weaved in concepts found in the short that "inspired by" is apt.
I don't know that providing examples of films produced in a different language really supports the point one way or the other. Name recognition is the whole point, after all, but if the cultural base your selling to has no common cultural reference, there's no value in retaining the title. Western fairy tales and Elizabethean stage shows would have fairly limited, if any, circulation in an eastern country, so changing the name might make the venture more marketable. Putting those forward as examples that managed to remain faithful, despite a name change, doesn't support the idea.
Although I do think Mike goes a step further in explaining his view...it's not so much the changes, it's that the doesn't like the changes. That's entirely different. I'd taken from his earlier comments that he rejected new versions outright when they deviated from the original.
Which begs the question: How does one "better" the original, when the producer is not the creator of the work? Despite knowing that fiction/creative works can always be better, who but the originator of that work is to say what is and is not "better" than the published version?
Which begs the question: How does one "better" the original, when the producer is not the creator of the work? Despite knowing that fiction/creative works can always be better, who but the originator of that work is to say what is and is not "better" than the published version?
Hm. Shaw's Pygmalion vs. Lerner & Loew's My Fair Lady.
The story generally tells the tale, though. Most of the time, the originator has it best, laying down the foundations and knowwhy a theme or character is there. But occasionally, someone else takes it to a higher height....
"As for I, Robot, whatever another poster claimed, even if that remark is true, I don't see how the "inspired by" mark is inappropriate. Regardless of when Asimov's title entered the production line, enough of the film revolved around the Three Rules and weaved in concepts found in the short that "inspired by" is apt."
I wouldn't say that "inspired by" is wrong, it just isn't indicative of an adaptation in this case. Any story where robots are created to serve man but eventually decide to rule man could be retrofitted to have the three rules of robotics easily. And since Asimov used the three rules in dozens of stories, someone could easily be inspired by his works in general without trying to make something based on a particular book. So my earlier point was simply that I was jumping the gun by saying that 'I, Robot' was an example of a book adaptation gone wrong.
As it turns out, the movie apparently has a resemblance to a short story written before Asimov's 'I Robot' that was called... wait for it... 'I Robot' and was written by Eando Binder. That was a 1939 story about a robot charged with the murder of its creator.
Asimov's collection was named by his publisher against Asimov's wishes. So even though it bugs me that the Will Smith movie took it's name from Asimov's work that it doesn't completely resemble, Asimov's work took it's name from a previous work, too.
Now THAT'S a good review of the Little Mermaid musical. Fair, critical while also praising.
Just thought i'd share.
roger Tang suggests that "My Fair Lady" is superior to "Pygmalion" - and I must disagree. The score is beautiful, of course, and there have been a number of excellent Eliza Doolittles and Henry Higginses over the years. What "My Fair Lady" is missing is Shaw's original ending. Happy endings are excellent for ticket sales but this one is completely unjustified. Lost opportunities and realizations which come too late intrigue me (no personal speculations, please) more than they do some, but the important point is that Shaw saw fit to end his play differently from Alan J. Lerner's revision. He'd been dead for six years when the adaptation premiered, so I doubt Lerner and Loewe and company were able to run that one by him. It's a fine musical, but I prefer the original play. In "Pygmalion," Eliza's triumph is having her mind unleashed and being free to experience the world. In "My Fair Lady," it is to become the wife of an overbearing linguist - her character and mind improved enough to belong to him.
Just a note: At the end of "Pygmalion" Eliza marries Freddie. Whether or not that is better than being married to Higgins is a matter of personal preference. :-)
Henry Higgins seems a bit more overbearing than Freddie - who seems disinclined to rule Eliza. The Fourth Act breakup between Henry and Eliza is triggered by his treatment of her as a servant to retrieve his slippers. In subsequent writings Shaw made it very clear that Eliza Doolittle could never be allowed to marry Henry Higgins, or the themes of the play would be defeated. Freddie loved her before he knew who and what she was, while Higgins had always known, shaped and ruled her.
I have to admit, I was never wild about Shaw's ending. I always thought the best ending was something that an actress playing Eliza in "My Fair Lady" came up with. Higgins demanded to know where his slippers were, and the actress--admittedly a bit of a diva--ad libbed, "Fetch your own bleeding slippers." Higgins', or rather the actor playing Higgins, reacted with such genuine shock that it brought the house down. The producers kept it.
PAD
Yeah. Freddie never struck me as an equal to Eliza--more like a puppy dog Nice Guy. Eliza clawed her way up to respectability; that struggle informs her character, and I'm not sure she'd accept or be fulfilled by that unconditional affection. Someone who challenged her would be more suitable (though perhaps Higgins is not the best match)
Well, it's nice to hear you had a good time, PAD. Personally, I just went to see Spamalot when it came to Proctors in Schenectady and had a blast. I even came away from it with a pair of souvenir coconut halves (though, I'll probably never spend that much on empty nut shells again).
What matters is what you liked. It all comes down to our own judgement in the end.
Now, as an oral storyteller who's made use of various old folk and fairy tales, I can tell you that it's within the nature of a storyteller to make a story their own. It helps make a storyteller feel comfortable within the story. And it's within Disney's nature to make stories bouncy and enjoyable for the whole family with catchy songs. Hating Disney for making story adaptations that are bouncy and catchy is like hating a mosquito for buzzing in your ears or hating a scorpion for stinging. It's who they are and what they do. You can dislike their product, but you shouldn't hate Disney for being itself. I had a Children's Literature professor in college who had that same grudge against Disney. I could never hate Disney like that. The truth is the same as PAD said. They can lead you to the original if you let it. I know I would have never read Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes if it hadn't been for the Disney version of Tarzan. I probably wouldn't also have copies of Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Jungle Book or The Arabian Nights if it weren't for some of the adaptations I've seen. I even managed to read the original version of One Hundred and One Dalmations recently. The key is to not let Disney or whoever be the end of things and to go out and find the stories.
The Disney version of "Tarzan" was actually closer to the original than a lot of other Hollywood adaptations. And the follow-up animated television series drew all manner of characters and stories from the ERB canon that has never been mined, ranging from the Waziri tribe to La of Opar.
PAD
AdamYJ:
"You can dislike their product, but you shouldn't hate Disney for being itself."
I don't get this. If not for itself, then for what shall one hate Disney? I may have taken your statement totally wrong, but isn't that exactly why we should hate something?
I mean I don't hate a mosquito because it's not a free pizza. I hate it because it's a damn mosquito!
Look, it feeds on my blood, leaves itchy bumps upon my person, and on occasion buzzes in my ear as I'm trying to sleep. I hate it precisely BECAUSE it's being itself.
But, hey, I am fair about it. I don't hate all mosquitos. Just the ones I've had contact with. I try to judge them as individuals.
As for Disney, at least they mix it up every once in a while. Tron, the Pirate movies, etc...
But if it's animated there damn well will be anthropomorphized animals/furniture that sing, a mother figure that is either evil or absent, and then the critics will have more to carp about.
That wasn't my point!
M
I really liked the Disney version of Tarzan. And I liked the music, I'd much rather have background music with lyrics than characters bursting into song. I'm not much on musicals.
"Which begs the question: How does one "better" the original, when the producer is not the creator of the work? Despite knowing that fiction/creative works can always be better, who but the originator of that work is to say what is and is not "better" than the published version?"
I don't know if you can "better" things, but you can sure make them more enjoyable. Usually an original book is far better than a movie - Harry Potter being prime examples - but there are a few exceptions where I've found the adapted movie to be far more enjoyable than the book - Poseidon Adventure, for one, Planet of the Apes for another. I'm still waiting for that Broadway adaption of POTA that the Simpsons promised us!
PAD is right that the ad libbed ending is more satisfying to many people, but it isn't Shaw. Suppose one of the illustrators of one of his stories (make it one of his creator-owned ones, so there's minimal complication) had just not liked one of his plot developments and replaced it with another. There is a small chance it would be more satisfying to the reader, but even if it were, it would still be unfaithful to his intent. I don't know PAD (for which he surely thanks God) well enough to speak for him, but if it were my own material I would be offended. Some people don't like that Hamlet dies at the end of Shakespeare's play. Shall we rewrite it so he is wearing full-body Kevlar, prevails, and brings Ophelia out of a soap opera-style coma to rule Denmark alongside him? No one is obligated to like an author's intentions, but neither should anyone be entitled to change them and call the result by its original name. Many super-heroic tales leave me unconvinced. Mostly these are not the stories PAD has told, although they certainly could be sometimes. If I were the creator or teller of many of them, I would tell them differently - but I'm not. It isn't mine. If I were telling the Superman story, for example, when the Kents told Clark he could never use his powers for his own benefit, he'd say something like "Why not? Why should I pretend to be a weaker, smaller, more foolish species? I like my dog, and would never want to hurt him, but would never want to be a dog, either. I'm a Kryptonian, Father, and you disappoint me!" I think that is truer psychology, but it isn't Superman - It's "Supreme" with a better first 40 scripts.
Posted by: Peter David
The Disney version of "Tarzan" was actually closer to the original than a lot of other Hollywood adaptations.
And the Disney "Return to Oz" was a lot closer to the spirit of baum than almost anything done previously.
And got slagged by a lot of people because it "wasn't like the original". (It didn't help, of course, that, as Harlan has claimed, Disney management were apparently intentionally trying to kill it, as it had been greenlighted by the previous management...)
It didn't even have *songs*...
Posted by: Jeffrey S. Frawley
If I were telling the Superman story, for example, when the Kents told Clark he could never use his powers for his own benefit, he'd say something like "Why not? Why should I pretend to be a weaker, smaller, more foolish species? I like my dog, and would never want to hurt him, but would never want to be a dog, either. I'm a Kryptonian, Father, and you disappoint me!" I think that is truer psychology, but it isn't Superman - It's "Supreme" with a better first 40 scripts.
Well, here's the thing about that - i've always seen Superman as the alternate identity that Clark Kent uses to keep people from bothering him and attacking his friends, but i see Bruce Wayne as the false front that the Batman uses to give him freedom to move among us unseen. (In some ways, i really sometimes feel as if Bruice Wayne is no more "real" than Matches Malone.)
Twenty years on a Kansas farm, learning by example from the Kents, pretty well set Clark in the "not-for-my-own-selfish-ends" mindset *without* any real need for them to overtly tell him, i'd say.
Mike Weber - The thing is that there are a lot of humans raised on Kansas farms by nice people, but hardly any of them are as inhumanly self-controlled as Clark Kent. It's easy to see why the writers and editors have almost always played him that way. Godlike powers are far easier to abuse than to use responsibly (if the level of detachment from responsibility for mankind Superman displays really is the most responsible thing...). It might not make for exciting scenes, but I think one of the most under-explored aspects of the Clark Kent guise is how difficult it would be to be convincingly weak and vulnerable. We approach doors with the apprehension of them offering resistance; We avoid bumping into objects even more because they could injure us than because we prefer not to knock them over; We run with the greater part of our strength and so on. Being the mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent would be a much more challenging acting job for Kal El than pretending to be a silly playboy would be for Batman: Every step, touch and gesture would have to be preplanned by that Super-Brain. Every human criminal captured unmaimed would be an accomplishment equal to you or I picking up wet tissue paper with tweezers without tearing it - not impossible, but a matter of concentration. Every government policy left unchallenged would be a decision. We don't like murderers, rapists and thieves going uncaptured; We chafe under legal requirements for warrants and probable cause; We want to be safe walking the streets. If he chooses, the Superman can give that and much more; If he does not, that is a choice, and people will suffer directly from it. There's material for a good novel here, but it's probably too non-visual and slow-moving to work well on 22 pages of a comic. It's good business to maintain the 70 year old character as a relatively uncomplicated heroic icon, but it's not the whole, or only story. (Dream sequences, time travel and mystical reality resets are pretty useful sometimes.)
Regarding Batman, I think you are entirely correct. The obsessive, driven child did not become a careless playboy, but rather a grim predator who pretends to be one when it serves his obsession.
PAD said:
"The Disney version of 'Tarzan' was actually closer to the original than a lot of other Hollywood adaptations. And the follow-up animated television series drew all manner of characters and stories from the ERB canon that has never been mined, ranging from the Waziri tribe to La of Opar."
True. When I read the books, I was actually impressed with Disney in the fact that it seemed evident that they had actually read it. There were definitely changes, but a lot of things were there that I wouldn't have expected. The thing is that Tarzan is one of those "icons" that is so ingrained in people's minds that everyone thinks they know the story when they don't actually know the story. You ask anyone about Tarzan and they'll tell you the same thing. Africa. Jungle man. Raised by apes. Jane. They may even do a Weismuller inspired impression and the trademark "Tarzan yell". And I bet they would believe it's possible to put together a movie based on that little bit of info, too. :p
Mitch Evans:
"I don't get this. If not for itself, then for what shall one hate Disney? I may have taken your statement totally wrong, but isn't that exactly why we should hate something?"
Well, I try not to hate anyone or anything at all. I've hated some experiences I've been in, but not the people or institutions that were also involved in those situations. And this applies to certain mouse ear wearing multi-national companies too.
Oh, and I should note that there are some adaptations of classic stories where I like the adaptations just a little more than the originals. Treasure Island for instance. I've read the original book and I've seen a couple different adaptations (including the Muppet one and Treasure Planet). While the book is a nice little adventure yarn, the way that the adaptations play the relationship between Jim Hawkins and Silver as being a sort of surrogate father/son relationship adds a whole lot more to the story and characters. Their relationship is almost non-existent in the book. It just adds a little something extra to it.
The talk of Tarzan reminds me of another terrible adaptation. The Tarzan TV series for the WB. "It's Tarzan, but he's never in the jungle, only in the city! And he solves crimes!"
It was one of those adaptations that changed so much that it feels like a different product, plus is low quality in general. Like the Flash Gordon series on Sci-Fi.
Most folks know that West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet, updated so that it resonates more with a modern audience. Problem is, Juliet doesn't die in the end. Granted, she's probably arrested, and her "life" as we've seen it during the play is over, but it's a pretty large divergence from the original.
I rarely hear people complain about that. Maybe it's because the title has been changed. The thing of it is, a title is only a label. Calling it West Side Story doesn't make it any less a version of Romeo and Juliet than calling it Tony and Maria would have. Calling Hulk Incredible or otherwise doesn't change the fact that he's a derivative of Hyde. Would calling it The Incredible Hyde have made it less palatable?
I know people put a lot of weight into titles and labels, too much by my estimation. But clearly, marketing literally banks on titles.
Jeffrey, your Superman thoughts overlook many things. The moral background of the Kents as alluded to by Mike W, for instance. Your line is spoken by a Kryptonian born and raised, not by the Kryptonian orphan raised by hunble Kansas farmers. Unless your Kal-El has had his Kryptonian heritage and ego transmatted into his brain, no Kansas farm boy would say that to his dad.
Also, your strength issue overlooks many things. For example, I used to be the 140 pound skinny weakling. Over the course of years, of working out and doing more sports and such, I got stronger...developed shoulders, muscle. I was never huge, but I did get a lot stronger over time. The thing is, lifting didn't get any easier...I was just able to do more. But as I got stronger, I didn't find that I had to compensate. In other words, I never lost the fine motor control needed to, say, use a tissue or pick a flower.
Now, granted, I'm not Superman. I can't lift mountains. But then again, assuming Superman didn't just wake up on his 25th birthday and suddenly found himself with all that power, he'd have spent a lifetime learning to control the fine motor skills that come with his power. Would that require some brain activity? Certainly...but why does that seem like such a difficult thing? Every day, we all walk through a world composed of things that we can easily break if we want to, or are careless. Glass, plants, pets, children, even each other. Sure, some thing take more effort, but others don't. And while in some instances we exert more concentration than normal, most of the time we just do, rather than think, our way through these situations.
I imagine it's pretty much the same for any super-powerd individual. They've spent enough time learning to control their power, when dealing with normal individuals, they just naturally hold back. I've seen many times where such a character comes across another super-strength character, and thinks "I don't have to hold back with this one."
John Byrne's Next Men featured a character that had super-dense muscles, granting him super strength and toughness. But that character specifically lacked the ability to excercise fine motor control over his ability, and had to wear a restraining harness. I don't think that's necessarily realistic.
What I think would be more difficult than fine motor control (which I do think would pose more of a problem than bobb alfred allows) is the assumption of typical human behaviors. At about 6'2" and 190-something pounds I am more than strong enough to open any door I have encountered, but for a particularly heavy one there is some effort involved, and it shows. When I walk in the dark, I can't see every obstacle, and I grope to avoid bumping into anything that can hurt me. In many things, there is a tangible effort visible in watching the muscles. To appear to be like everyone else, a superman would have to make constant gestures to pretend strain, weakness and apprehension. The modern era stories in which Superman comes into his powers gradually make much better sense than those in which there was a Superbaby: How could an infant ever learn to walk when he could fly, or move what he could smash? I'll admit that with effort and a superior mind one could eventually learn to feign human limitations, but there would be a steep learning curve, and continuous effort to keep up the illusion. I'll accept that bobb is rather strong, but challenge him to imagine the challenges of being billions of times more so. Larry Niven once wrote that for a Superbaby there might be no concept of surfaces, as he could see through all objects with X-ray vision. (He also raised some issues involving hygiene and adolescence which can be set aside for now.)
A great deal of "normal human behavior" is an adjustment to and acknowledgement of limitations a Superman would not have. Even if I try, I cannot launch myself into orbit with my legs, and each step I take indicates some amount of effort; It's difficult to imagine anything beyond isometrics which would present Superman with resistance or effort. I've often wondered about how the almost infinitely powerful Silver Age Superman could have even passed his skin off as human - it would be only minimally compressible or ductile, and he might well be experienced as a real "Man of Steel." Whatever struck or made contact with his body would react as if it had struck an infinitely hard and dense surface, or at best a lightly cushioned plate of cobalt steel.
West Side Story is directly based on Romeo and Juliet, but indirectly it isn't. Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet on a much older story, so he didn't come up with the basic plot either. If you remove all of his Shakespearian speech and make a new movie based on the plot, then you're not really using any of Shakespeare's work.
If Leonard Bernstein had said "This is William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet'" there would be a problem, but he didn't. That Robert Wise selected a Slavic Maria who couldn't sing - that's also a problem, but one of a different kind.
Bill Mulligan said:
"About the only critic I trust is Ebert because I've read him long enough to tell when he is disliking a film I'll like."
=====
I feel the same way. Siskel and Ebert reviewed movies because they liked movies. Many reviewers today review because they want the attention their words bring them, especially that useless **** who became Ebert's new partner.
It just came to me that Ebert's new partner is similar to a troll.
JERRY CHANDLER!
Thanks for the info that Maz and Mike are back (at least to me). A local radio station used to carry them, but no longer.
I could listen to Max all day. Absolutely love her raspy voice. Max, if you're reading this, call me!
The character in the Terminator show indeed was deliberately named James Ellison, a reference to James Cameron and Harlan Ellison. It was reported a the Ellison site that the writer of the show is a fan of both.
Interesting remarks today from Roger Ebert:
A reader comments
How is it you can throw one star and a bedpan at a movie like "The Bucket List," and yet after reading your darn review, I wanna see it?
Ebert responds
I have succeeded. Any review, whether positive or negative, should give the reader a fair idea of what it would be like to see it themselves. I refer you to an actual conversation I once had on the phone:
Caller: "We live near the Wilmette Theatre, which is showing 'Cries and Whispers.' What can you tell us about it?"
Self: "I think it is the best film of the year."
Caller: "Oh, that doesn't sound like anything we'd want to see!"
Coming in late here (but not all THAT late for a change), so I just wanted to add a couple of things.
First, a question to PAD: do you think TLM would be a good first Broadway show for a preschooler? I know Caroline loved it, but (a) she's 5, and (b) you've taken her to bunches of shows before. Katherine's 3 1/2, and while she's gone to the occasional kid-centered show locally (mostly HS stuff), she hasn't been to Broadway. She loves the film and has named lots of dolls Ariel recently, so would certainly be well suited on that score, but I'm just not sure. Any thoughts?
Now a few other musings:
PAD:
One of the funniest "criticisms" of a film I ever saw was Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as a cheerleader movie reviewer on an old SNL "Weekend Update." Apparently, despite all logic, she had JUST seen "The Wizard of Oz" and was dismissing it as being a rip off of "Star Wars."
True story: back when my wife and I were at Cornell, an anime adaptation of Lensman came out and lots of students went. Several less-than-informed people came out saying it was a Star Wars ripoff -- it fell to the more informed people to get the timeline straightened out. :-)
Rick:
From May 1994 to Oct. 1995 I wrote a weekly movie review column for a local newspaper...
If someone is going to review (or criticize, if you prefer that term) a movie, play, book, concert, Broadway show, whatever, I believe he or she should state why he or she likes or dislikes it. Beyond the obvious fact that just saying either “it’s fantastic!” or “it stinks!” and not elaborating is a cop-out, it gives readers/listeners/viewers an honest review, and also provides them with a point of comparison. If you know a reviewer absolutely hates, say westerns, then you can take his ripping apart of 3:10 from Yuma with a grain of salt. On the other hand, if he sings its praises, despite hating westerns, then it might be worth seeing.
Abso-bloody-lutely. I reviewed TNG and DS9 episodes online for over a decade, and briefly had a paying gig for Britain's _TV Zone_ reviewing novels. It always confused a certain segment of Usenet when I mentioned that the numerical 1-10 rating was what I devoted the least amount of thought to: what mattered was the commentary I put in beforehand explaining what worked and what didn't.
Most people seemed to like that I provided that level of background. Some folks didn't.
AdamYJ:
You ask anyone about Tarzan and they'll tell you the same thing. Africa. Jungle man. Raised by apes. Jane. They may even do a Weismuller inspired impression and the trademark "Tarzan yell". And I bet they would believe it's possible to put together a movie based on that little bit of info, too. :p
[producer] And hey, throw in a naked Bo Derek and it's a sure thing! [/producer]
TWL
Abso-bloody-lutely. I reviewed TNG and DS9 episodes online for over a decade, and briefly had a paying gig for Britain's _TV Zone_ reviewing novels. Most people seemed to like that I provided that level of background. Some folks didn't.
---------
I always enjoyed your reviews on Usenet, Tim, and there's one thing I want to complement you on. With Voyager and Enterprise, you started reviewing them but, since, if I remember right, you didn't care much for them and decided to stop reviewing them. And you did. And that was that. Unlike some you weren't the type who week after week would talk about how bad the show was and would say things like "I can't understand why you people are watching such a crappy show." You didn't like it, you stopped discussing it, end of story. And that was a refreshing change.
David
Thanks, David. I appreciate.
In VOY's case, I could tell about halfway through the second season that it wasn't going to be remotely the show I wanted to be watching or reviewing, so I held out until the end of the season for completeness' sake and then ended my reviewing and said why. (From the online reaction, you'd think I'd gone out and shot a lot of fans' pets.)
In ENT's case, it was primarily a lack of time -- I'd been regularly late with the reviews and they were turning into a chore, so I stopped that time for other reasons. (Not that I was enchanted with ENT during season two, but it wasn't the same sort of dislike that I had with VOY.)
In any case, I'm glad you thought I handled it well. I certainly tried to.
TWL
Whoops. That should be "I appreciate it," not "I appreciate."
I iz a riter. Reely.
TWL
True story: back when my wife and I were at Cornell, an anime adaptation of Lensman came out and lots of students went. Several less-than-informed people came out saying it was a Star Wars ripoff -- it fell to the more informed people to get the timeline straightened out. :-)
Well, to be fair, the Lensman anime is kind of a ripoff of Star Wars; or, at least, it's been run through a heavy filter to be more Star Wars-like, rather than an accurate adaptation of the books. I don't recall the original books having a cute R2-D2-like robot or Mentor being a Yoda-like gnome.
Tim, did you ever bother to watch the rest of Voyager after you stopped reviewing it?
I couldn't get into the show at all until around the time 7 of 9 showed up. Not that the show was all that and a plate of shrimp even then but it was able to keep me mostly watching up till the end.
My stepson has gotten into the repeats lately seeing some of the first episodes reminded me why I stayed away for 3 or 3 years. But I'm curious to see if you thought the show got better after Jeri Ryan showed up or if it just got sexier.
Doug -- okay, fair point.
Bill -- I saw most of the third season, because I was involved in writing questions for a CD-ROM trivia game and needed material. I've only ever seen about half a dozen episodes from the Jeri Ryan era. Ryan herself was fun -- a decent actress (which I knew from her short stint on _Dark Skies_) and of course easy on the eyes -- but I can't say that the series itself grabbed me any more than it had previously.
On the other hand, Jeri Ryan can be indirectly credited for the rise of Barack Obama, so I suppose I owe her some debt for that. :-)
TWL