Just Play

Writer-director-producer of film and theatre Anthony Minghella has died in one of those tragic little random accidents of the world - complications following routine minor surgery. He was 54.

He directed three features that really impressed me as they were all in categories of film that I usually avoid as they drive me nuts, and he did great things with them: Truly, Madly, Deeply, The English Patient, and The Talented Mister Ripley. Three really really good films, those.

He also made a short film that I find most remarkable, as it shouldn't work at all. He directed Samuel Beckett's Play for the Beckett on Film project of several years ago.

Now I love Beckett, especially post-1963 Beckett. Play may be my favorite theatre text of all time (the other contenders for this are also Beckett: Not I and Rockaby). I am a bit fanatical in my feelings about how Beckett's work should be performed. I may be a theatre director who feels that directors should have a pretty wide latitude it terms of textual interpretation, sure, but that you only go as far as you can while remaining true to the text, or illuminating it in some way. With Beckett, sure, you can add things, if you like, and ignore stage directions. However, you should be aware that when it comes to Sam you almost certainly will be WRONG and MAKING BAD THEATRE. I don't think there's another playwright I'd say that about with complete certainty.

And to my mind, making a film of a Beckett theatre text is a BAD THING. Beckett write plays specifically for theatre and radio and television, and one film. And he understood all of those media. He also wrote prose and poetry and I'm nauseated by the apparently common idea that those works of his also belong on a stage. He did in each separate medium what worked best in that medium, and they should stay that way. No matter how well done, it is still Doing Well What Ought Not To Be Done At All.

That said . . . he did supervise a BBC TV version of Not I, which . . . ain't the play but it's nice to hear Billie Whitelaw's voice (and see her mouth) do it. And I do indeed have all sixteen of the Beckett on Film movies on tape and watch my favorites with some regularity -- there are only a couple of outright clunkers in the bunch (Footfalls and, unfortunately, Rockaby at the top of that list), a couple of boring versions of lesser works, a number of so-so films of excellent performances (Not I, That Time, and A Piece of Monologue especially), some good films that aren't altogether true to the plays but adapt them well enough (Mamet's version of Catastrophe, Charles Sturridge's version of Ohio Impromptu with Jeremy Irons) and two outright great films that find cinematic ways to adapt Beckett that really work (Damien O'Donnell's What Where and the Minghella).

So here, behind the cut, is Anthony Minghella's film of Samuel Beckett's Play, featuring Kristin Scott-Thomas, Alan Rickman, and Juliet Stevenson -- and I'll be putting most of my video and photo entries behind LJ cuts from now on, as I've been getting complaints about loading errors and crashes from people trying to look at my page (mainly with Firefox users, it seems) since I've been including more of these things here. Hopefully this will reduce the problems.

( PLAY )

Enjoy. RIP AM.

Penny Dreadful and Other Weekend Fun Activities for Kids

So Episode 5 of Penny Dreadful, "The Deb of Destruction," which I directed and designed, went by on Saturday and Sunday and went over quite well. I was really pleased with how it came out. We had good houses both shows, and it's a good thing we've now added the extra matinee for this monthly series - it was getting to the point of having to turn people away from the one Saturday night show, which we probably would have had to do this weekend without the extra show.

I really enjoyed doing this script, which had a bit of a Lynchian-Twin Peaks feel to it (one cast member called it Penny Dreadful: Fire Walk With Me) - good broad melodrama, scored with big loud Bernard Herrmann music from Hangover Square, White Witch Doctor, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, and Citizen Kane (used most often for the scenes involving William Randolph Hearst, of course).

I was busy up in the booth running the show most of the time, so I didn't get to shoot many pictures of the show, but my camera was passed around on the floor (mainly in the hands of Matt Gray, I think), and a few shots came out okay.

Becky Byers was quite impressive as Abigail Pierce, the Deb of Destruction herself:

The dialogue-free, tense dinner scene (which I scored with the aria from Citizen Kane) was, as expected, the highlight of the show . . .

Unfortunately, we didn't get any shots of it from runthrus where it was done full-out to its VERY bloody conclusion.

Apart from that, I wound up with just a few behind the scenes shots, like this of Christiaan and Bryan planning something . . .

. . . this of our William Randolph Hearst and Abigail Pierce relaxing before cue-to-cue . . .

. . . and what I think is a self-portrait by Matt as Leslie Caldwell, Detective of the Supernatural . . .

Apart from that, the UTC#61 shows at Walkerspace went down, and I got to see Cat's Cradle at least, and we ended the six-episode run of the sitcom for the stage 3800 Elizabeth at The Battle Ranch.

Now, Berit and I can move onward properly to our shows for the rest of the year: The Magnificent Ambersons, Spell, Everything Must Go, and Harry in Love.

Of course, I also have a sizable role in next month's Penny Dreadful, as it turns out. {sigh}

PS As mentioned in the previous post, I've been getting complaints from some friends and family about this page taking forever to load, not loading completely, or just plain crashing the browser (usually Firefox, it appears). I think this has something to do with the amount of photos and videos I've been posting. I've started putting the videos behind LJ cuts, and if that's not enough, I'll do that more with posts containing lots of photos. Let me know in comments if there's any improvement already. Thanks.

Revenge of the Prom

Oh, hey, that short film by Daniel McKleinfeld that I acted in and lit and wrote about HERE and HERE and HERE -- it's up online as one of the finalists in the contest it was created for.

It's now called Revenge of the Prom. It's five minutes long or so (there's a six-minute version that's a little bit better, I think, but it had to be cut down for the contest). The main page for the contest is HERE.

So please check it out and vote for our little horror-comedy, if you so desire. Thank you. Won't you?