WHEN TITANS CLASH!

A few scattered things of interest from around the IntarWebs:


Apparently my two theatre friends - from different parts of my theatre life - Tom X. Chao and Bryan Enk have now become acquainted. Dear lord!


Tom X. Chao marks the occasion with a Peculiar Utterance of the Day that, for any friend of these friends (many of you that read this blog), MUST NOT BE MISSED! Pulse-pounding action! Right HERE!


There is something . . . unsettling . . . about putting what is basically a viral advertisement for a multi-million dollar motion picture here, but all the kids are doing it, and, as a fan of the books, I have some hopes for the film -- so here's the Daemon I got from the Daemon Generator on the tie-in website for the upcoming film of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass:

I was a little unhappy to see that Zack Calhoon got another feline with the same name as mine -- hey, how many names/animals have they got in this Generator?

Berit, another fan of the Pullman books (though she HATED the ending of the trilogy a great deal) liked the Daemon she got, though she might have preferred something in the feline range. I think this is cooler:

And finally -- thanks to a pointer from urbaniak, a music video featuring the great Bob Hoskins (definitely no stranger to lip-synching) of Jamie T.'s "Sheila." I'm not sure when I think Hoskins is better -- when he's talking and expressing completely different emotions in his eyes, with his mouth, and with his body at the same time, or when he's just thinking and reacting, and letting you feel everything that's inside of him -- the final shot of The Long Good Friday, an extended, silent close-up of his face - actually a medium shot, but there's only one place you're looking - is one of the greatest moments of film acting ever (maybe, I'm not joking, the best).

Enjoy.

Some Pretentious Answers

Producers in The Pretentious Festival have been asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their opuses (or more properly, "opera") to be posted at the Festival Blog. I've sent in my answers regarding Ian W. Hill's Hamlet, but you get them here, first:


1. What exactly makes your show so damn pretentious anyway?

It's a production of that chestnut-masterpiece by Billy Shakespeare, Hamlet, and I've had the nerve to design it, direct it, star in the title role, and put my name over it (like John Carpenter) and make it into Ian W. Hill's Hamlet. I've been working on it for 18 years, stewing it over a simmering flame like a good Texas chili, so you know it's just GOT to be incredibly overconsidered! I believe that the best way to honor and respect Shakespeare's dramatic work is to have no respect for any of the tradition that has formed around it, like barnacles. So I'm taking a power-sander to the arthropodic crust.


2. Name some obscure influences on your work – extra points for unpronounceability.

Some may be obscure, but most are simply, perhaps, unusual: Charles Marowitz, Josef Svovoda, Russell Lynes, David Halberstam (R.I.P.), John Berger, Joseph Cornell, Gore Vidal, William Peter Blatty, Steven Berkoff, Greil Marcus, Del Close, Joseph Stefano, Ingmar Bergman, Richard Dawkins, Dashiell Hammett, Johnny Rotten.


3. The late Roland Barthes once wrote “For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.” Explicate.

No matter how long your arms may be however, your arms too short to box with God, Barthes, so put THAT in your Umwelt and smoke it!


4. In what ways do you plan on alienating your audience? Cite an intentionally opaque or confusing moment within your production.

I have deliberately removed as many of the "comforting" traditions one would expect from a production of Hamlet as I could. Apart from that, I want people to be surprised, so no specifics.


5. Which other Pretentious Festival show will you declare as your sworn ideological enemy, and why?

I oppose Nothing.


6. Please give us the gist of the acceptance speech you would use were you to win one of our Pretentious Awards.

"I deserve this."