Roland Emmerich and William Shakespeare, Together At Last

[Diesel]

In today's edition of "WTF" news:

Here are two names we never thought we’d see in the same sentence: Roland Emmerich and William Shakespeare.

In a collision of high and low culture that sounds like something The Onion might have cooked up, Emmerich, director of such cinema spectacles as 10,000 BC, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, and the upcoming 2012, is set to direct a movie about the great Bard.



The film, titled Anonymous, tackles the controversy over whether Shakespeare actually wrote all of the plays attributed to him. It’s no secret the prolific playwright lifted plotlines and characters from history (in the case of Julius Caesar, for example) or other sources (Romeo and Juliet was brought to the stage several times before Shakespeare’s version), but some literary historians claim the philosopher Francis Bacon or rival dramaturge Christopher Marlowe authored some, if not all, of Shakespeare’s works.

Emmerich’s Anonymous focuses on a third possible author:

It’s not Marlowe, it’s De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. [Anonymous is] kind of like a political thriller. It’s about who will succeed Elizabeth and the cause of that thriller, the Essex Rebellion, we take on and we learn how the plays were written by somebody else.

Before you start thinking that this movie is going to require some serious homework to understand, remember the director we’re talking about here. Emmerich took the scientific concept of climate change and made it seriously dumbed down in The Day After Tomorrow. So don’t worry, he won’t be requiring you to think too much. In his words, the film’s pretty well researched, but “Naturally, for dramatic reasons you sometimes alter facts.”

Naturally.

Emmerich’s last historical recreation, the ultra-violent Mel Gibson vehicle The Patriot (set during the Revolutionary War) was panned both in Arts sections and on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times for playing so loose with facts it misrepresented history. And seeing as his plot description uses the word “thriller” twice, I get the impression he’s not going to be as interested in the writing process or the period details as the last Shakespeare biopic to play in theaters-John Madden’s Academy Award winning Shakespeare in Love.

So get ready to have your view of Shakespeare forever ruined altered. Shooting on Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous begins March 22nd of next year, though preliminary filming has already begun.

[Offender_Mullet]

lol Ohhhhh this will be good.

[jhiggy23]

Words cannot describe my anger over the constant discussion of Shakespeare's authorship. I was an English major who focused on duality in the work of Shakespeare's later works. The assertion that Bacon or Marlowe wrote some or most of works attributed to Shakespeare is absolutely false. It is very angersome to me. Furthermore, regardless of whether you believe this blatant falsity or not, does it REALLY matter???? All that matters are the words and stories that have lasted 400 years and have touched billions of people. To me, the authorship really is irrelevant.

That being said, it is no secret that Shakepeare bollowed storylines and characters from history. Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, etc. are all based on pre-existing works. The difference is his language and the unique twists he gave to the stories (see: T & C).

[Idioteque...]

Originally Posted by jhiggy23

Words cannot describe my anger over the constant discussion of Shakespeare's authorship. I was an English major who focused on duality in the work of Shakespeare's later works. The assertion that Bacon or Marlowe wrote some or most of works attributed to Shakespeare is absolutely false. It is very angersome to me. Furthermore, regardless of whether you believe this blatant falsity or not, does it REALLY matter???? All that matters are the words and stories that have lasted 400 years and have touched billions of people. To me, the authorship really is irrelevant.

That being said, it is no secret that Shakepeare bollowed storylines and characters from history. Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, etc. are all based on pre-existing works. The difference is his language and the unique twists he gave to the stories (see: T & C).

We discussed him in theater class and he was basically the Michael Bay of his time with a little bit more of intelligence, yet my teacher loves him.

[anomynous]

Originally Posted by Idioteque...

We discussed him in theater class and he was basically the Michael Bay of his time with a little bit more of intelligence, yet my teacher loves him.

That's a hilarious comparison

[jhiggy23]

Originally Posted by Idioteque...

We discussed him in theater class and he was basically the Michael Bay of his time with a little bit more of intelligence, yet my teacher loves him.

haha I can't even be mad about that comparison because it is so funny. I also enjoy discussing film with you Idioteque, so I am not even going to argue, except in saying that while he borrowed a lot of plot and character aspects from pre-existing works, his intelligence in writing is absolutely mind-blowing.

[EricJ]

Yep, we wondered when Emmerich would move from being a complete sucker for loopy eco-theories to being a complete sucker for loopy Shakespeare theories--
That leaves only JFK, UFO's, and whether Walt Disney was frozen.

Me, I'll take the BBC "In Search of Shakespeare", which manages to put Shakespeare's life into the context of the Elizabethan Catholic vs. Protestant underground war, and manages a pretty darn convincing rebuttal to snotty elitist "He couldn't have written them!" naysayers....Oh yes, he COULD have!

Originally Posted by jhiggy23

That being said, it is no secret that Shakepeare bollowed storylines and characters from history. Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, etc. are all based on pre-existing works. The difference is his language and the unique twists he gave to the stories (see: T & C).

It always drives me up the wall when we get fictionalized fantasies about how Shakespeare "thought up" R&J--
Especially when it's more a compliment on his talent and story awareness to point out that R&J was the intentional West Side Story-like 16th-cty. "modern-day" updating of Pyramus & Thisbe, with the balcony replacing the wall, the poison replacing the lion, and feuding new-moneyed Italian families replacing Greek kings at war.
(Hence the in-joke in "Midsummer", which today would be the equivalent of sitcom characters putting on a bad production of Romeo & Juliet.)

[Idioteque...]

Originally Posted by jhiggy23

haha I can't even be mad about that comparison because it is so funny. I also enjoy discussing film with you Idioteque, so I am not even going to argue, except in saying that while he borrowed a lot of plot and character aspects from pre-existing works, his intelligence in writing is absolutely mind-blowing.

That's why I said with intelligence. Though Shakespeare was the blockbuster writer of his time.

[jhiggy23]

Originally Posted by EricJ

Yep, we wondered when Emmerich would move from being a complete sucker for loopy eco-theories to being a complete sucker for loopy Shakespeare theories--
That leaves only JFK, UFO's, and whether Walt Disney was frozen.

Me, I'll take the BBC "In Search of Shakespeare", which manages to put Shakespeare's life into the context of the Elizabethan Catholic vs. Protestant underground war, and manages a pretty darn convincing rebuttal to snotty elitist "He couldn't have written them!" naysayers....Oh yes, he COULD have!



It always drives me up the wall when we get fictionalized fantasies about how Shakespeare "thought up" R&J--
Especially when it's more a compliment on his talent and story awareness to point out that R&J was the intentional West Side Story-like 16th-cty. "modern-day" updating of Pyramus & Thisbe, with the balcony replacing the wall, the poison replacing the lion, and feuding new-moneyed Italian families replacing Greek kings at war.
(Hence the in-joke in "Midsummer", which today would be the equivalent of sitcom characters putting on a bad production of Romeo & Juliet.)

Yes! Someone actually knows something about Shakespeare. Nice pickup on the Midsummer joke btw...that is the play I wrote a thesis on.

[Foggy]

They make a great couple and I wish them all the best.

[Jodi]

Hey, wait a minute.......
We won't get to see Emmerich's take on Shakespeare. By the time that film comes out, we'll all be blown to bits in 2012!!!


Jodi

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by foggy

they make a great couple and i wish them all the best.:d

lolllllllllllllllllll

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Jodi

Hey, wait a minute.......
We won't get to see Emmerich's take on Shakespeare. By the time that film comes out, we'll all be blown to bits in 2012!!!

That's okay, they'll be showing it as the in-flight movie on the giant space-ark...
Just so long as they don't show John Cusack's "Martian Child", we're okay.

[Diesel]

Roland Emmerich’s Shakespeare Film Sounds Appropriately Insane

Before he gets around to making Foundation, and consequently cutting out the hearts of Isaac Asimov fans with a rusty butter knife, Roland Emmerich is crafting a film called Anonymous. The idea behind the project is the oft-scorned theory that the works of William Shakespeare were actually written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

We’ve known the cast, which includes Rhys Ifans, David Thewlis, Vanessa Redgrave and Edward Hogg, but haven’t known much about the film. Now an article says Emmerich will “be doing with literary conspiracy theories in Anonymous what he did with world monuments in 2012: taking really big famous ones and slamming them into each other.” Dammit, now I want to see this.

Slate did a set visit and has a nice piece on the film. You may need to read no more than the assertion that Anonymous seems likely to be “a certifiably loony fantasia built on an epic scale.”

If you do need to read more, here’s the Cliff Notes version of what we’ll find in the film: not only did de Vere write Shakespeare’s works. According to this take, he was also the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I, with whom began an affair as adult. (He, at least, was unaware of their relationship.) With her, de Vere had a son (brother), who became the third Earl of Southampton, to whom many scholars believe Shakespeare’s sonnets are dedicated.

Well, scholars believe the sonnets are dedicated to this Earl, but not that he was his father’s brother. Ahem. Suddenly, the idea of Ifans as de Vere and Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth I is a lot more interesting.

Screenwriter John Orloff says he’s not trying to argue the case for the de Vere theory, and that his real concern is ” the creative spirit and the power of the word.”

Emmerich has been similarly demure about the film in the past, saying:

I’m so glad he may have something a lot more ridiculous than that in mind.

[Col. Zombie]

Well, here's the trailer.

http://screencrave.com/2011-04-07/ro...ymous-trailer/

I would have to say that if you pay to watch this movie, you've been played.

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by Col.Zombie

Well, here's the trailer.

http://screencrave.com/2011-04-07/ro...ymous-trailer/

I would have to say that if you pay to watch this movie, you've been played.

I agree, it wiffs of one of those films that will act smarter than it actually is

You never can tell can you.

[EricJ]

When I call Roland Emmerich a "lunatic", I don't call him that because he's a bad director--
I call him that because--without Dean Devlin to chain him to soullessly marketable film genres like "The Patriot"--he seems to BELIEVE in every bit of overbudgeted lunacy he brings to us:

He believes the world will tilt and/or cause global warming to bury the Statue of Liberty in ice...
He believes that advanced African kingdoms fought sabertooth-tigers in 10,000 BC...
And he believes that snide, dismissive, fact-uninformed tripe about the Earl DeVere.

Someday, like Oliver Stone, he'll give up his crackpot soapbox and just make "regular" films again...
But for now, be thankful for your local Internet kook-crank, in that he only uses the Internet to spout his rambling theories.

(And for those naive folk enough so awed by the power of big budgets to say, "Well, what about the Earl DeVere, what if it's true? ", I refer you only to the BBC documentary mentioned earlier.
The Bacon/DeVere theories always fail to take into account the Elizabethan Catholic troubles, and that's a basic flaw in the reasoning...)

[Petra_Kalbrain]

Originally Posted by Col.Zombie

Well, here's the trailer.

http://screencrave.com/2011-04-07/ro...ymous-trailer/

I would have to say that if you pay to watch this movie, you've been played.

Well, I love period pieces,and I love anything Shakespeare (including the consiracy theories surrounding his authorship - despite the fact that I don't believe those theories to be true in the slightest).

I'll definitely be seeing this film. It may not be a historically accurate portrayal of the events surrounding Shakespeare's work, however it does look to be a STORY upon which some decent conflict can be developed.

Shakespeare In Love isn't very "true to actual events" and it turned out pretty good... good enought o win a best picture Oscar. Who's to say that this film can't possibly be entertaining?

[P@t_Mtl]

Where are the explosions? Where are the natural disasters?

Comme now Roland you are just teasing us with that trailer, right?

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Where are the explosions? Where are the natural disasters?

Comme now Roland you are just teasing us with that trailer, right?

Dont worry, there are a few dinosaurs in a couple scenes.