Monday, July 30, 2007

The Gorge is Rising

I am spitting chips and blood. I am crackling with furious static. Any minute now, small pieces of paper, coins and pens are going to drag themselves across the tabletop, bent and pulled towards me by the immense, bending-the-laws-of-physics fury I'm experiencing right now.

Why?

I'll tell you why.

This is why.




Hateful!

Let's set it in America?
Let's get rid of "all the Arthurian and Pagan stuff"?
Let's give Will Stanton a twin brother, stolen by the dark?
The Rider a love interest?

In the immortal acronym scribbled on a supervision script by my friend Charles: JHC WTF?

I'd hoped they'd film it one day. I'd hoped for a Sky tv überfest. Like The Hogfather. Filmed on location! Blam! Avebury! The Chilterns! Windsor Great Park! Money thrown at it! They might have had problems finding kids with posh accents to fill the roles, but hey. It would have rocked my world.

I *loved* these books as a child. I must have read The Grey King a billion times.

I am betrayed! The bastards!

Ok, so Christopher Eccleston as the Rider is a stroke of genius. I accept that.

But Ian McShane as Merriman Lyon? Oh no, oh no it doesn't work. I forgave him for Lovejoy, by virtue of Deadwood. But I've just read this, and I'm never, ever forgiving him for it.

I don't think they've been very faithful to the book. I don't know how many of you've read the book. I know they sold a few copies, but I couldn't read it very well. It's really dense. It's from the 70s, you know?

Update: Just read an interview with the guy who wrote the screenplay. I am now convinced I'm living in some alternate reality. This either doesn't make any sense, or it's the stupidest thing I've ever read. And I'm not feeling charitable.

Setting it in the real world, ‘The Dark is Rising’, does that allude to any happenings that are going on now?

Well, if you want, but I mean it was written in 1970 so maybe there was an oil shortage threatening in the early '70's as well. So nothing's changed there. If you'd been making it in the '70's, you'd have to come from unpopular war. No, I mean, you could reel all that into it, but I think that would be laying too much on the film. I mean it's aimed at its audience, and I hope that there's something in it for other people.

God preserve these people if I ever get within striking distance.

6 comments:

Xtin said...

Outrage!

I propose the stocks at Southwold for these rapists of literary culture.

Pluvialis said...

Stocks are too good for them

Pluvialis said...

Erik: *exactly*.

Moro Rogers said...

Hehe...after all, Americans can't stand stories set in England...(I haven't read the books, but I DO know that studio executives are the dumbest people on the planet.)

Carol Maltby said...

Before you get all upset about the setting being in the US, how about you actually read the interview?

In the film version, the Stantons are an American family that has moved to England.

Pluvialis said...

Slap on the wrist for that. Although I guess what I meant was something more to do with the cultural setting, rather than the physical setting (which is, I believe, Romania standing in for England). But I stand by the rest!