Episode 264: "Much Ado About Nothing" On-Screen Adaptations

Summary

Summary of Episode 264: "Much Ado About Nothing" On-Screen Adaptations

The Literary Life Podcast, hosted by Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, features seasoned educators and avid readers engaging in deep discussions about literature and its various adaptations. In Episode 264, released on February 18, 2025, the trio delves into the cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, contrasting esteemed adaptations with a notably criticized version directed by Joss Whedon.

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Introduction and Context

The episode opens with Angelina Stanford introducing her co-hosts, Thomas Banks and guest Atlee Northmore, setting the stage for an insightful conversation about Shakespeare’s presence in film. The discussion emphasizes the podcast's mission to explore classic literature beyond traditional boundaries, making it accessible and engaging for a broad audience.

Key Points:

• Introduction of the podcast’s purpose: exploring the art of reading and interpreting great literature.
• Brief banter among hosts establishes a relaxed and personable atmosphere.

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Overview of Shakespeare in Film

Atlee Northmore provides a historical overview of Shakespeare adaptations in cinema, highlighting the extensive number of films inspired by his works—over 1,800 credits on IMDb alone. The conversation traces the evolution from early silent adaptations to more sophisticated modern renditions.

Notable Quotes:

• Angelina Stanford [10:26]: “I just swoon for him. No offense, darling, but Harold Goddard's like my dead Valentine. Is that okay?”
• Thomas Banks [17:17]: “So the first time we see Shakespeare on the screen, it kind of coincides with the first some of the first movies that we have and don't have in the late 1800s.”

Key Points:

• Early adaptations were often short, stage-like performances with limited artistic value.
• The silent era saw around 400 Shakespeare films, most of which are now lost.
• Transition to talkies in the late 1920s brought more feature-length and substantial adaptations.
• Laurence Olivier's contributions in the mid-20th century marked a significant improvement in film adaptations, utilizing camera techniques that enhanced storytelling beyond stage limitations.

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Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

The heart of the episode focuses on Kenneth Branagh’s acclaimed 1993 adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. Angelina and Atlee laud the film for its faithful translation of the play, vibrant energy, and masterful cinematography.

Notable Quotes:

• Angelina Stanford [65:37]: “It's so perfect, visually just kept shrinking and shrinking.”
• Thomas Banks [73:35]: “And the critical reviews were not good. It was like this to was completely wrong.”

Key Points:

• Branagh’s version is praised for preserving the play’s themes and enhancing them with cinematic techniques.
• The film’s setting in Tuscany, coupled with its use of natural lighting and expansive community scenes, creates an immersive atmosphere.
• The harmonious ending, visualized through expanding concentric circles of dance, symbolizes the restoration of community and balance.
• Strong performances, particularly the chemistry between Branagh (Benedick) and Emma Thompson (Beatrice), are highlighted as central to the film’s success.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Angelina Stanford [67:20]: “The whole cast is singing.”
• Thomas Banks [76:04]: “So it's like this play is, in essence, in hell.”

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Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Contrasting Branagh’s celebrated adaptation is Joss Whedon’s 2012 version, which the hosts vehemently criticize for its lackluster execution and misinterpretation of Shakespeare’s text.

Notable Quotes:

• Thomas Banks [101:19]: “It was a piece of hot garbage. That's what they should have used on Rotten Tomatoes.”
• Angelina Stanford [112:12]: “It didn't work at all.”

Key Points:

• Whedon’s adaptation is faulted for poor acting, inconsistent characterization, and disjointed plot elements.
• The decision to film in black and white is criticized as confusing and unnecessary, detracting from the narrative rather than enhancing it.
• The modern corporate setting is seen as a flawed attempt to contextualize the play, resulting in a fragmented and incoherent storyline.
• Specific scenes, such as the "gulling" scene, are highlighted as examples of disruptive and ineffective storytelling.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Atlee Northmore [113:22]: “They'll be divorced within six months.”
• Angelina Stanford [115:49]: “Do not Pay your hard earned money to watch this film.”

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Comparison and Analysis

The hosts analyze the stark differences between Branagh’s and Whedon’s adaptations, emphasizing the importance of understanding and respecting the source material when translating Shakespeare to film.

Key Points:

• Branagh’s approach maintains the play’s integrity while utilizing film’s strengths, such as camera movement and close-ups, to deepen the storytelling.
• Whedon’s adaptation is critiqued for prioritizing personal artistic vision over faithful representation, leading to a misaligned and unenjoyable film.
• The significance of casting is discussed, with Branagh and Thompson’s on-screen chemistry celebrated, contrasting sharply with the flat performances in Whedon’s version.

Notable Quotes:

• Angelina Stanford [87:18]: “Benedict and Beatrice are, honestly, of all of Shakespeare's couples, the most iconic.”
• Atlee Northmore [90:02]: “He was really good. But at the same time.”

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Conclusion and Recommendations

Angelina and Atlee conclude the episode by reaffirming their appreciation for Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing while strongly advising against watching Whedon’s flawed adaptation. They underscore the value of thoughtful, well-executed literary adaptations that honor the original work’s essence.

Key Points:

• Branagh’s film is recommended as a superior and enriching interpretation of Shakespeare’s play.
• Whedon’s version serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of deviating too far from the source material without a clear, respectful vision.
• The episode reinforces the podcast’s commitment to exploring literature through both praise and constructive criticism.

Closing Remarks:

• The hosts tease future episodes, hinting at discussions on other literary works and inviting listeners to engage with their broader content offerings.

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Key Takeaways

• Faithful Adaptation Matters: Branagh’s success illustrates the importance of preserving the original themes and character dynamics when adapting Shakespeare’s works.
• Cinematic Techniques Enhance Storytelling: Effective use of film-specific tools like camera angles and movement can deepen the audience’s connection to the narrative.
• Respect for Source Material is Crucial: Deviating significantly from the original text without a clear, respectful purpose can lead to unsuccessful adaptations, as seen with Whedon’s version.
• Casting and Chemistry are Essential: Strong performances and genuine chemistry between actors can elevate a film, making beloved characters come alive.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Angelina Stanford [03:38]: “A quiet, mousy little thing.”
• Atlee Northmore [10:56]: “You have to have a spark or it doesn't work.”
• Angelina Stanford [65:37]: “It's so perfect, visually just kept shrinking and shrinking.”
• Thomas Banks [101:19]: “It was a piece of hot garbage. That's what they should have used on Rotten Tomatoes.”

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Recommendations for Listeners

• Watch Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993): For an engaging and faithful rendition that captures the essence of Shakespeare’s play through excellent performances and thoughtful cinematography.
• Avoid Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (2012): Due to its poor execution, inconsistent storytelling, and ineffective adaptation choices that detract from the original material.

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Stay Connected: For more insightful discussions and literary explorations, visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and follow The Literary Life Podcast on Patreon. Subscribe, rate, and review to support future episodes and join a community passionate about the transformative power of stories.

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Special Poem by Thomas Banks:

From "A Few Figs from Thistles" by Edna St. Vincent Millais

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow
Faithless I am save to love self alone.
Were you not lovely, I would leave you now
After the feet of beauty fly my own,
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food
And water ever. To my wildest thirst
I would desert you, Think naught but I would,
And seek another, As I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide.
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care
I have but to continue at your side.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and here with me today is not only my partner in crime, my valentine, but the man who's not my valentine, but who is another partner of crime. How's this for a confusing intro? I'm just trying to say I'm here with Thomas Banks and I'm here with Atlee Northmore, because today we're going to talk about Shakespeare on film. And the crowd goes wild. Welcome, Atley.

[Thomas Banks]

Hey, thank you for having me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Again, just to be clear, Atlee's not my valentine. This is how rumors get started. So one of my partners in crime is also my Valentine. That's you.

[Atlee Northmore]

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's this one and the other one.

[Thomas Banks]

I have to talk to HR about this.

[Angelina Stanford]

The other one's a partner in crime, but not a valentine. Not that I don't love you, Atlee, just not that way.

[Thomas Banks]

It's okay. The feeling's mutual.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, you heard the on air breakup here. No, I mean, are there, like. Are there Valentine's for. I think you're special, but not in that way.

[Atlee Northmore]

Sure, I think so.

[Angelina Stanford]

Start a line of those.

[Thomas Banks]

A nice memo.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, we are off to a rousing start here.

[Atlee Northmore]

Surely someone must have marketed friend Zoning.

[Angelina Stanford]

Valentine if they have it. That's genius. It's like this most elaborate valentine and you open and it's like, I see you more as a brother. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking we're good as friends.

[Atlee Northmore]

More as a little brother.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, like a very little. Like a five year old brother.

[Atlee Northmore]

I've definitely had that one said to me.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, we should charge extra for the little.

[Atlee Northmore]

Not. Not a five year old brother. No. But something not too far removed from that.

[Angelina Stanford]

I thank that woman. I think. Wait, I gotta pull a Don John. I thank you. I am a woman of few words, but I thank you. Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Okay. That's it Angelina Stanford, woman of few words.

[Angelina Stanford]

Woman of few. Yeah. Is this exactly what this was? I used to. I used to have this run. I used to have this running joke. It's still a running joke. I just. My kids don't live with me anymore, so I don't make constant jokes with them. But I used to always say to. To my kids, I was like, there's not a whole lot I know about what my funeral will be like, but I know that none of you are going to get up and say, our mother was a woman of few words. But when she spoke. No, they will definitely. They will definitely not say she was.

[Atlee Northmore]

A quiet, mousy little thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, she was a woman of few words, as evidenced by all these hours of podcast recordings. She just.

[Thomas Banks]

She said all she needed to say.

[Angelina Stanford]

And at home was just completely quiet.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

False, false, false. All right, so obviously I'm being called out as a liar here, because last week I totally forgot about this episode. At the end of Act 5, I said, Next week we're to start experiment and criticism. And then I realized it. Right after I sent Kiel the recording, I realized what I had done and I was like, oh, no. Should I go back and edit that out and say something different at the end? Mr. Banks was like, no, just let it be a surprise.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a bonus episode.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's a bonus episode. So here we are. We're going to talk about Much Ado, About Film and with Atley. But I'm really excited about this conversation before. Before we get started with that. Just a reminder, Jen Rogers started her mini class on the theory of the. The Inklings theory on language and the imagination. And I got to tell you guys, it's amazing. It's amazing. So if you're at home and you're like, I don't know, it sounded kind of interesting, but it seems a little esoteric. I mean, why would I really need to know about Owen Barfield? I gotta tell you, the homeschool moms in the class had their minds blown on week one, because turns out that Owen Barfield is simply channeling Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In fact, he wrote a book called what Coleridge Thought. So we are really getting Coleridge dispersed to us through Barfield. And what does this have to do with homeschooling moms? Because Charlotte Mason was completely influenced by Coleridge. And as. As Jen Rogers was explaining to us, everything that Barfield thinks about the mind and the imagination and knowledge and language, light bulbs were just going off for everybody. There was an amazing Conversation afterwards of so many moms saying everything Charlotte Mason said makes so much more sense now to me in, in this context. So if you're on the fence about this and it's not just a sales pitch, I know people got budgets and frankly, you need to save all your money to register for our online classes. Right? But Amen. Amen. At least, at least salary must be paid. But, but, but really, this is, this is a very fine class and very beneficial. And it's not too late to join because it's going once a week through March. So you can check that out on our website. And then of course we have Ella Hornstrass, extremely exciting webinar coming up as well in March. And that's called the Living Page. Learning to read the language of Nature. So it's, we're going to get you a Charlotte Mason one, two punch here. If Jen is jabbing us, Ella's going to knock us out with understanding that nature study, it's not science, it's about learning the language of nature. So we got a lot of fantastic stuff coming your way. And again, you can always find [e-mail] and again, if you're new to what we do, all of our classes are recorded. So, you know, watch them at your leisure. If you can't make the time or the day, you can watch the videos anytime you want and then engage in the conversations in the class. So we look forward to that. And of course Atlee is here. Bless you for this, Atlee, because we are. We are. It's registration time here at the House of Humane Letters, which is where Atlee has to go into deep hibernation. Is it? It's not hibernation. He has to. It's like you're in a prison cell and order.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's kind of cold, I mean, in recent weeks car though, so I can imagine someone hibernating.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's trying to hibernate, but he can't.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I've got a little bomb shelter in the back and yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So of course, if you're interested in any of our year long classes, which we have quite a few again, HouseOfHumaneLetters.com check out our full course listing. We're in the middle of pre registration right now for current live families. If you're listening to this and you're like, I forgot, get on it. Because these classes fill up crazy fast. So get on it. And then Atlee, remind me when we're opening for the general public. So the page, it'll be current students, current families. So younger siblings wouldn't be included in that current families. And then it's going to be open to the Patreon members.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So it's first. It's going to be. At this point when it airs, it'll already have happened, but it'll be for live current families. And then the next week is self paced current families. And then the next week we'll open it to Patreon. And then the next week we'll open it to everybody. I think that's going to be March 10th.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. And all of this is on the landing page of the classes on the website. But yeah, if you're like, oh, I heard the classes fill up really quickly, you can join the Patreon and you can register a week earlier. So there you go.

[Thomas Banks]

May the odds be ever in your favor.

[Angelina Stanford]

May the odds be in your favor. Correct. Correct. All right. Oh, one last thing I wanted to say, which was the Lit Life players finished their performance of Much Ado About Nothing. Atley youy Face tells me everything.

[Thomas Banks]

It was just so good. I'm still reeling about all their performances.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was better than just one film version. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, for sure. We could definitely say that. You're going to hear all about that today. I just. I love our Patreon so much. These guys get so into it. Each time we do another read along, they get better and more into it. We had wigs and costumes and voices and props, and it was amazing. And you can find that on the House of Humane Letters YouTube channel if you want to. If you want to watch that and read along and then listen to the podcast episodes that we've done and, you know, join the mailing list because. So you can find out when all these cool things happen, like when we get together and perform Shakespeare. So that was. That was a lot of fun. And thank you to our actors and actresses and, you know, in keeping with Elizabethan drama, you know, conventions, we. We had switching genders and all the things. We had. We had a woman playing Benedict. We had all the things.

[Thomas Banks]

It was mostly women.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was mostly women. No surprise. I know. It was fantastic. It was fantastic. All right.

[Thomas Banks]

We're very progressive here. I guess so.

[Angelina Stanford]

We're so progressive. We're so. We're historical. We're traditional.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's actually traditional to be creative with the casting of the parts. Okay. Commonplace quotes. Let's get this out of the way so we can jump in to talking about Shakespeare on film at least. Oh, ladies. Oh, ladies first. That would be me. Yes. Not me. That would be me. I. I'm the lady. All right. Well, I. I actually had about four different Shakespeare books out before the podcast, trying to figure out what quote I wanted to use. And I ended up going back to good old Harold Goddard, who we know we love. The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1. I've been quoting from him extensively through this series. And this is a. He's just so great. I just swoon for him. No offense, darling, but Harold Goddard's like my dead Valentine. Is that okay?

[Atlee Northmore]

Sure, sure.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. See, he's just.

[Atlee Northmore]

As long as it's not Harold Bloom.

[Angelina Stanford]

Never.

[Atlee Northmore]

Especially since he looked like Zero Mostel's twin brother.

[Angelina Stanford]

You have absolutely.

[Atlee Northmore]

That would be really weird.

[Angelina Stanford]

You have absolutely. We've lost Atlee. We've lost Atlee. Here's the laugh. Take.

[Atlee Northmore]

No, it's seriously joking on his laughter. My brother and I used to collect celebrity duos who are secretly the same person, and that was one of them. Harold Bloom and the comedian Zero Mostel, who was in the original producers and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the forum. They look exactly alike.

[Angelina Stanford]

You see, this is how I know we're made for each other. Because when I was in college, I did the same thing. Yeah, I did the same thing. And I told everybody that Randy Travis and Morrissey were the same person.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no, right.

[Atlee Northmore]

Bono and Robin Williams.

[Angelina Stanford]

There, you see?

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

We could go all day. Folks, this is going to be just a special podcast. Actually.

[Atlee Northmore]

If you look at them, they're.

[Angelina Stanford]

Seriously, I used to tell everybody, have you ever seen Randy Travis and Morrissey in the same room? I can tell you, I have my case. I rest my case. Okay, here's my quote. We're going crazy. We are. Are we in the middle of, like, pre registration mania? Is that what's happening to us right now?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it's. Yep, that's it.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. Well, here's some. Some brilliance from Harold Goddard. And I'm just going to read it. I'm just going to leave it out there. Here we go. So he's talking about how poetry connects to the oracles, okay. And the oracles of Delphi, you know, they say things that have multiple meanings. They aren't necessarily straightforward. Right. So that's what he's talking about. And he says that poetry and Shakespeare have that quality to our age. Anything Delphic is anathema. We want the definite as certainly as ours is a time of the expert and the technician. We are living under a dynasty of the intellectual. And the aim of the intellect is not to wonder and love and grow wise about life, but to control it. The subservience of so much of our science to invention is the proof of this. We want the facts for the practical use we can make of them. We want the tree for its lumber, not, as Thoreau did, to make an appointment with it, as with a friend. We want uranium in order to make an atomic bomb, not for the mysterious quality that gave it its heavenly name. When the intellect speaks, its instrument is a rational prose. The more unmistakable the meaning, the better. Two and two are four. Everybody understands what that means, and it means the same to everybody. But become what thou art, know thyself, ye must be born again. I should never have sought thee if I had not already found thee. The rest is silence. What do they mean? Will any two men ever exactly agree such sentences are poetry?

[Atlee Northmore]

I can add no comments to that.

[Angelina Stanford]

I wish we were doing a video. Your face was so good.

[Thomas Banks]

That should have gone last. That was a mic drop, kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

I know. I feel like every sentence of Harold Goddard is a mic drop like that. I mean, I actually wrote in the morning. I wrote in the margin. He is so good. Exclamation point, exclamation point. Like, I just love him.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, no notes. I have no notes. Just comment.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm not going to workshop this. This is a go. All right, who would like to follow that?

[Atlee Northmore]

I got a short one here.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ah, yes. Banks is Go boldly where angels fill to dread. Here we go.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. This is actually something. It's just a really lapidary single line of poetry that almost seems like it could be on a gravestone. Of what person? I don't know, but this is from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, the World War I poet. Your soul is full of cities with dead names. That's it.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's good.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Whoa.

[Atlee Northmore]

I don't know of whom that could be said, but your soul is full of cities with dead names.

[Angelina Stanford]

I want to put that on our anti Valentine's Day list cards.

[Atlee Northmore]

I love it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Can we put that. I really.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely. That's going at the top of the list.

[Angelina Stanford]

Top of the list, right up there is Mr. Darcy saying, your face is tolerable. Like, we could just. I want, like, a whole line of, like, anti Valentine's Day card. All right. Atley, you. You've got a lot. A lot to follow here.

[Thomas Banks]

I know. This is. Maybe I should not go at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

My common place is Mary had a little lamb spoke to my.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm going to open my Much Ado Copy and Just read from that. How about that? Hey, Nani. Nani. So this commonplace quote comes from a book that I read for the Star wars webinar, and I didn't list it because it has some things in it that I don't really agree with. But I do agree with this quote. I think it's amazing. He's actually quoting from a philosopher named Alan Watts, who I've never heard of before. So if he's a horrible person, I'm so sorry. So the quote is. The point is, I think that myth is to be distinguished from religion, science and philosophy because it consists always of concrete images appealing to imagination and serving in one way or another to reveal or explain the mysteries of life. Yet there is a sense in which both the poetic and the mythic image at once reveal and conceal. The meaning is divined rather than defined, implicit rather than explicit, suggested rather than stated.

[Angelina Stanford]

Actually, that fits very well with the Goddard quote.

[Thomas Banks]

I thought so, too, as didn't want to spoil.

[Atlee Northmore]

He said that was Alan Watts.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, Alan Watts. From his.

[Atlee Northmore]

I feel I should know who that is, but I don't.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't either.

[Thomas Banks]

The Two Hands of God is the Alan Watts book, but that's not what I was reading for Star Wars. So if somebody wants to read it and tell me if it's any good.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, that quote, at least was good.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, the quote was good.

[Angelina Stanford]

Somebody's going to put in the comments, he's Harold Bloom's best friend. So now deal with that.

[Thomas Banks]

As long as he doesn't know Joss Whedon.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. Oh, yes. Hold on, folks, because today's episode is going to be us gushing with delight about some things and gushing with disgust about others. We're gonna have the heights and the lows today in Shakespeare. We're gonna talk, but we're gonna talk about Much Ado about nothing in different film adaptations.

[Thomas Banks]

But.

[Angelina Stanford]

But Atlee, as he does, jumped in and started researching this stuff and found out just some really fascinating stuff about the history of Shakespeare adaptations on the screen in general. So kick us off with that. Tell us. Tell us about what you found, because this really blew me away.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I wish I had more time to research it because apparently there are books on books on books about just Shakespeare on film. If you go. Anytime we do a movie episode, I go to IMDb and I look up the author and I try to see all the adaptations I can of whatever we're talking about. Shakespeare has over 1800 credits on his IMDb page just for writing.

[Angelina Stanford]

So he's the most successful Hollywood guy.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely, absolutely. That's what that means.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he's the most selling book author too. Behind the Bible.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, right up there. Him and Jane Austen are both have like some of the highest writing credits on there I've ever seen. I mean, everything they've written is in the public domain. So anybody can make anything out of any of his stuff and just call it Shakespeare. He's been like completely morphed and twisted into whatever anybody wants him to be. But so the first time we see Shakespeare on the screen, it kind of coincides with the first. Some of the first movies that we have and don't have in the late 1800s.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're telling me then as soon as film is born, Shakespeare's there almost.

[Thomas Banks]

So when film was a first a thing, it was real like sideshow kind of thing. It was kind of just like you went in saw, like it was like a little magic trick. And so that's. It kind of stayed pretty low on the rankings of art. It wasn't even really considered art. And so people started putting scenes from Shakespeare on film to kind of elevate it a little bit. So that was. It wasn't long after the invention of film. But the earliest sort of adaptation we have is from 1899. It's. It's a scene from King John. It's pretty much just like shot of a. Of a stage play. And I don't even know what's going on. The, the film is only four minutes long and all we have left is about a minute.

[Angelina Stanford]

So this is the kind of thing, like a Nickelodeon kind of thing. You put your coin in there, it might play on the machine.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then, you know, eventually Nickelodeon's grew to actual theaters and um, and now it's a kids channel. But I found, found somebody said that there were about 400 silent Shakespeare films made during the silent era, which was about Maybe almost like 30 years. About 400 movies. And now when they say films, that can mean short films like these four minute films or, you know, feature length stuff. But, you know, along with most other silent films, about 90% of things that were made during the silent era are lost to us either because the film stock has disintegrated or, you know, people lost. People lost movies and they didn't really care about keeping them.

[Atlee Northmore]

That includes like major studio films as well?

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Like quantity of those. Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Nosferatu, Metropolis, all of them were thought to have been lost forever. And these are like, wow, actual classics. Yeah. And Then like random times in like Argentina and like somewhere completely random, somebody had a copy of it and so they've restored them. But not all of these people are that lucky.

[Angelina Stanford]

So everybody check grandma's attic, right?

[Thomas Banks]

Exactly. Please. So around this time we have, you know, the legendary stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. There's some footage of her sort of doing a Shakespeare play on film. And I don't, I don't think we have very much like screen stuff of hers. So that's, that's really precious. And there was an abridged Hamlet adaptation by Georges Melies, who was kind of.

[Atlee Northmore]

Trip to the Moon, one of the.

[Thomas Banks]

First big special effects filmmakers. A big pioneer. He was very big into. Yeah, Trip to the moon. Yep, exactly. And if you've seen the movie, Hugo, he's a character in it, it's really good. Yeah. So those were all more on the shorter side, the short films and then. So the earliest feature length Shakespeare movie we have left comes from about 1912. And they found it again, they found it in the 19th or the 20th century. The late 20th century, apparently, when they would go around and show this film. There was an actor toured with the movie, it was Richard iii and he toured with the movie and he played the role of Richard iii and he would provide sort of recitations and commentary along with the actual performance so people could actually hear the dialogue. That's the thing about adapting Shakespeare, you can't hear the words, which is most of what makes Shakespeare so great. So then about 19, the late 1920s, 28, 29, we start getting big studio talking pictures. And so that's when they really started to do a good bit more Shakespeare movies. So the first talking feature length Shakespeare movie we have is a version of Taming of the Shrew in 1929 with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, who are like Hollywood's like the big royalty. Yeah, the big it couple in the.

[Atlee Northmore]

Description here at that you have them described as the first power couple. Actually, wasn't the term power couple coined to describe them?

[Thomas Banks]

I don't know, actually, I think it might have been. That wouldn't surprise me at all. Yeah, they would meet with like royalty and dignitaries and they were like, they were like American royalty.

[Atlee Northmore]

I could imagine Douglas Fairbanks being a really good Petruchio. Actually. He was a very good physical actor.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Atlee Northmore]

I don't know if you've ever seen the Thief of Baghdad.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Atlee Northmore]

But yeah, he was like the original guy who performed all his own stunts kind of.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And yeah, he's a fantastic actor.

[Atlee Northmore]

Oh, absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

So good.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, what's striking me here for a second, but what strikes me here is that, you know, in cinema, for the. Call it cinema, at first, when the talkies. This is not considered a high art form. Now, it's going to be elevated to that later, but certainly not. This is just your common entertainment. So there's something very telling, then, about Shakespeare being the appropriate subject matter for basic, common Saturday afternoon entertainment. Of course, this is true about the plays themselves and, you know, the Groundlings, paying a penny and coming in and watching that. I just love that. I love anything that pushes back against the idea that Shakespeare is too highbrow for ordinary people to enjoy.

[Thomas Banks]

No, absolutely. And it. You know, all. All that we have in silent films is. Is images and so, like, how. How powerful even these plays can be, you know, when you don't even hear them necessarily.

[Angelina Stanford]

I wonder if it's sort of. Does that presume that the audience had a great deal of familiarity with the plays that they would have just enjoyed seeing the.

[Thomas Banks]

I wouldn't think so.

[Atlee Northmore]

Do you know, just a sheer delight in images, I think. Oh, yeah. I think that's a very big draw. I mean, you think of, like. I know that one of the earliest Nickelodeon silent films, it was like five seconds long and it was just footage of a man sneezing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was all because it was so exciting.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was so exciting to see a person scream.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Moving and. Yeah, right.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, have you guys heard about the Lumiere brothers? And they had the footage of a train coming into a station.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yep.

[Thomas Banks]

And all the people, like, kind of ducked or, like, fled because they thought the train was gonna come off the screen. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Original IMAX experience. Yeah. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, gosh. Yeah. So we have. We have things like Taming of the Shrew. We have a 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream with Jimmy Cagney as bottom and Mickey Rooney.

[Atlee Northmore]

I've seen this movie, actually. This is kind of. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wait, wait.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Young Mickey Rooney as Puck, which is a little terrifying. And Olivia de Havilland was in. It was her first screen role ever. She was Hermia.

[Angelina Stanford]

I love Olivia de Havilland.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think that James Cagney is a remarkably versatile actor. We remember him as just like the guy who was the gangster and everything.

[Angelina Stanford]

He was a dancer.

[Atlee Northmore]

He was a dancer originally. Yeah. I never knew that he was a Broadway dancer. It's kind of like, oh, sheesh. I don't know. I wouldn't know. But, yeah, he could do a lot. Yeah. Both physically and verbally. I Think he's an underrated performer.

[Thomas Banks]

I feel a deep dive coming on.

[Atlee Northmore]

Okay, White Heat. Start with White Heat. Absolutely fabulous film.

[Angelina Stanford]

Excellent one. Yeah. I'm already imagining we're gonna get the James Cagney miniseries by Atlee Hiri Dana. All right, keep going. This is so good. Of course, we get to Leslie Howard. Yes. All of these early actors.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So this was 1936. So Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer. So this was before, like, Gone with the Wind, 1939. So Leslie Howard played Romeo and Norma Shearer, who's one of my favorite old Hollywood actors. Oh, that's.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no, that's. That's Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, Norma Desmond. Okay, wrong one. Okay, okay.

[Thomas Banks]

But she's also awesome. So Norma Shearer was married to Irving Thalberg, and then that's when he passed away tragically, and she kind of went into seclusion.

[Atlee Northmore]

And for Scott Fitzgerald fans out there, Irving Thalberg inspired Fitzgerald to write the Last Tycoon, which was.

[Thomas Banks]

That's right.

[Atlee Northmore]

Fitzgerald's unfinished novel that he was still working on at the time of his death.

[Thomas Banks]

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So these screen performances, these early performances, they just film in general. When sound comes along. They don't really use it to its advantages. Like, especially with these Shakespeare performances, it's kind of very flat. There's not a lot of, you know, camera movement, not a lot of close ups. There's not a lot of utilizing the medium of film yet. It's kind of just sort of just like a flat stage production. And there were some. There were some issues with. With the Romeo and Juliet because Leslie Howard was about 42. Enormous year. Was 40 years old. I know he can't, like, I can't catch a break.

[Angelina Stanford]

As young teenagers in his 40s. Poor guy.

[Thomas Banks]

I know he was even older. And Gone with the Wind.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's like Tom Cruise, who's like, what, 89 years old now, pulling him out. No, I'm 35. I'm forever 35.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, gosh. So, yeah, at this point in Shakespeare's film story, it's. It's good, but it's not great. I found a review from Graham Green in this book of reviews I have during this time he wrote about Romeo and Juliet. He said, I am less than ever convinced that there is an aesthetic justification for filming Shakespeare at all. The effect of even the best scenes is to distract. We cannot look and listen simultaneously with equal vigilance. But there may be a social Justification I do not dispute. By all means, let Shakespeare, even robbed of half his drama and 3/4 of his poetry be mass produced.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that is a great quote.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's gonna suck, but, I mean, why not go for it?

[Angelina Stanford]

Seriously. I find myself very much of that opinion that when I get upset about bad Shakespeare on film, the other part of me is like, but somebody might watch that and then go read Shakespeare. You know, at least somebody's paying attention.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. I'd rather Shakespeare continue to be in the public consciousness than not.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Atlee Northmore]

Is one of those guys who didn't really like a whole lot of things. Yeah. Like a world traveler who disliked most foreign countries he was in. And I think I've read this same volume of film criticism as you, Ali. If I remember correctly, they're mostly negative reviews.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I think you're right.

[Atlee Northmore]

Some of them like famously angry and accusatory review of all Shirley Temple films.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Atlee Northmore]

Right. Which he uses as an excuse to attack America for exploiting children. It's like, not only are these films treacly pabulum, but the United States as a whole. Let me just crack my knuckles here and warm up.

[Angelina Stanford]

Graham Green anticipated 2025 journalism. So I don't like everything. Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, it's just fantastic. Those are the best reviews. The ones where they absolutely dragged them. So. So, yeah, like I said, Hollywood was. They were. They were putting more Shakespeare out there. That was of quality, but it wasn't great. It wasn't. It didn't have staying power quite. Which is really sad. It wasn't until maybe like 10 years later, or a little less, when we have Laurence Olivier kind of step onto the screen doing Shakespeare. He had already been in, you know, big stuff, like, not Laura, Rebecca. He had already been in Rebecca at this point when he did Henry V. So he directed and starred in Henry V, Hamlet and Richard iii all within, like, a short period.

[Angelina Stanford]

But, you know, like, just in general. Film greatly improved during that time.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. I mean, by the time you get to the 50s, that's the golden age of Hollywood. They've mastered, you know, the three camera shots and the fourth wall and all of those things.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's just a better experience. All. Yeah, right.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because it's just very interesting to think of the whole, like, evolution of the process.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Making a film and trans.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I mean, just incorporating things like, like color and sound and kind of making it like an experience that was really big for, you know, turning the tides in film history. So with. With these adaptations of Shakespeare, Olivier is doing More stylized things, which isn't always a good thing, as we'll find out in 2012, but they, they really utilize the camera and. And it sort of becomes a character in itself. So that includes more. More camera movement, more close ups and more use of, like, deliberate, deliberate shots, different lenses to pull focus to different things. Things that you can't really do on a stage. And, you know, because Lawrence Olivier is an actor, he is sort of an actor's director, which means that he's going to be more concerned with getting the best performances out of people instead of being more technical. So these were.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so in the, in the, in that Judi Dench book that I read about Shakespeare that I quoted, the beginning of, I think was at the beginning of the series. So, Judy, Judi Dench was a Shakespearean actor and she has a book out, just kind of reflecting on her career. But she talked about the difference between being a Shakespearean actress on stage versus being on a Shakespearean actress on a. In a film. And that was really interesting. She's like, on stage, everything's got to be so big, right? You know, big physical movements, projecting your voice. And she said, with the, the camera. And you can just see how they had to learn this with film. And you can have close up, she's like, you have to bring everything down. She said. So, like, in a film, I might just raise my eyebrows to, you know, that that's enough to indicate what I'm thinking. Whereas on a stage, I've got to shrug my shoulders. I've got to. I got. Everything's just so much bigger. And it's really interesting when you watch early films, they're doing the big motions still.

[Thomas Banks]

Exactly.

[Angelina Stanford]

Camera. They haven't, they haven't translated. It's like they're just filming the stage instead of. So what I hear you saying is, you know, Laurence Olivier is making use of that. You know, zoom in with the camera, have that more subtle performance because you can get closer to the actor.

[Atlee Northmore]

And also when. When he does a soliloquy on screen, it really is more like he's thinking out loud in the way that a stage Shakespearean actor would be. It's. Right, yeah. And I, I enjoy watching Laurence Olivier in most films, but. Yeah, that's. It's definitely a kind of a transitional period of, of cinematic acting.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He doesn't have to scream his soliloquies out to the back row so everybody can hear him. He can be as kind of subdued as he wants to be. So at the same time, you have Orson Welles. I don't know much about Orson Welles doing Shakespeare, but Orson Welles was also directing and starring in adaptations of Macbeth and Othello. And Chimes, he did a movie called Chimes at Midnight which was about Falstaff character Falstaff. So there's always kind of the best.

[Atlee Northmore]

Of the three that you just mentioned.

[Thomas Banks]

Chimes. Midnight.

[Atlee Northmore]

Midnight, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Big Beth is kind of iconic though. People talk about that a lot.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Controversial film because it was another like. Like so many films of his. Like, he didn't necessarily get to do everything he wanted to do with it. Heard that story before, if I remember rightly. He may even have disowned it later on, I'm not certain.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, he did that with Magnificent Ambers too.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Again, heard that story before.

[Angelina Stanford]

Studios, they would just chop them to bits. They didn't trust him.

[Thomas Banks]

Nope. Absolutely not. Even after Citizen Kane. Yeah. So. So we have these two rivals. They're not really rivals, but, you know, in terms of scholarship on screen adaptations of Shakespeare, they're. They're all. Wells and Olivier are always kind of pitted against each other. But so after that. So in the 60s, Chimes of Midnight came out in the 60s. 60s were big for Shakespeare. So we have Throne of Blood, which was Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth. He did, he actually did three adaptations. He did one of King Lear, which was called Wrong and then now the name's escaping me. But he also did one on Hamlet that was kind of set in modern day Japan, which is really interesting. I haven't seen that one.

[Atlee Northmore]

But of those three that you named Ron, which was. That was one of his last films. I think that was about 1985. That's, I think, one of his three or four masterpieces. I think that has to be among his best, right?

[Thomas Banks]

No, exactly. It's always up there on the top of his. Next to like Seven Samurai. And it is one of those that.

[Atlee Northmore]

Does illustrate, I think, how Shakespeare can really transcend cultures as well. Because I think that Kurosawa, I don't know if he could read English even. I'm not certain about that, but he just had this kind of instinctive understanding of Shakespeare's, I don't know, dramatic artistry, I guess. And I think Ron, even though it's moved to 16th century Japan, is, I think, very, very true to the spirit of that play.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. No, I mean, you can adapt Shakespeare and put it in the proper context and it works out just fine. And that's what Kurosawa does, because he's a master. So we have Throne of Blood, west side story in 1961, which is, you know, if you don't know, it's based on Romeo and Juliet. It was a Broadway show first. You have a version of Othello.

[Angelina Stanford]

Montague. You're a Montague. No, no, I was snapping if you couldn't hear that at home.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh. And yeah, we're kicking and doing our twirls and things like that. We have a version of Othello with Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. We have Chimes at Midnight, like we talked about earlier. The Taming of the Shrew 66 version with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. And then, of course, we have The Franco Zeffirelli 1968 Romeo and Juliet, which I think anyone in high school or older has seen. Yep. That's what they showed us in school.

[Atlee Northmore]

Olivia Hussey, who just played Julia, just died.

[Thomas Banks]

I know.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's like a couple weeks ago.

[Thomas Banks]

I can't believe that she's still really young. I don't understand.

[Angelina Stanford]

She's still 16.

[Thomas Banks]

She's still. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Cause I just saw her.

[Atlee Northmore]

But that was both a controversial thing about that film, but also I think it kind of had to be done, like, actually have age appropriate actors play Romeo and Juliet. Because like we said a few minutes ago, like, Leslie Howard in 1936 is already 40 years old.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Can't get past those crow's feet, man.

[Angelina Stanford]

Judi Dench actually does talk about the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet because Zeffirelli had direct, directed a stage production that she was in. And so she talks about him as a director and said he wasn't so much concerned about Shakespeare. Like, he didn't feel like he needed to have a faithfulness to Shakespeare's text. That he had a vision, you know, and he was going to push forward for that. So she talked about him as just. Even in the stage production, just really pushing the envelope on a lot of things. And he didn't care if people didn't like it. And of course, so with the film, you know, he does that in the Romeo and Juliet film.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's a very good looking film.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's a very. Yeah, but it's an example of. And he's certainly by no means the only one to do this, but he may be the first one to do it. You have to be really careful about watching Shakespeare films with your family because there will just be random nudity.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

And Zeffirelli kind of, you know, starts out.

[Thomas Banks]

That was the first. Yeah, the first big. Yeah, that's so Surprising because you think of that version as like the Romeo and Juliet. Like that's the movie that you watch. And so I can't believe that it's not. I haven't watched it in a long time, so I need to go back and see how faithful it is. But that is absolutely wild.

[Atlee Northmore]

I actually think that. I know I've seen it in the last couple of years and I think there might be like one or two musical interludes in it or something which might seem sort of intrusive, but.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, there's a love scene which is not in the play.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, that's true.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't remember everything she said about it. And I'd have to watch the movie alongside the play to really be sure. I mean, maybe by today's standards it is faithful, but it seems to me.

[Atlee Northmore]

That most of the performances are pretty, pretty solid and the actors, well cast.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, it's wonderful. But like, so the actual play is not about two people being madly in love. It's about two idiot teenagers. And the play is really about.

[Atlee Northmore]

That really is true.

[Angelina Stanford]

The play is really about their family. And that's why the end of the play is somebody coming out and talking about the families. That's what it's really about. But I kind of wonder if the Zeffirelli movie is not why everybody thinks it's a play about two people who are madly in love trying to fight the odds.

[Thomas Banks]

Right?

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

No, because you think about.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, I'm not against it.

[Thomas Banks]

No, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

High school and loved it. But you know, if I gotta sit here and think about it. Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

But if you have those to choose from. Yeah. If you have like just a handful of Romeo and Juliet movies to choose from, you're gonna probably go with that one to show. I mean, you shouldn't show it to a bunch of high schoolers, but you know that's going to be the most faithful and accurate. Because they're age appropriate.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're age appropriate. And the language. He's faithful to the language. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. We did watch.

[Atlee Northmore]

I was once talking with a teenager who had seen. This is a nowadays teenager, a Gen Z teenager who had seen The Claire Danes DiCaprio, Romeo and Juliet and asked me, is that like how the 90s were?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, no, it's like, wait, let our audience just.

[Atlee Northmore]

No, like, but it seems like, I guess the 90s were a longer time ago. It's like, so, yeah, the 90s, like, did people really dress that flashy? Did they have like gold plated handguns?

[Angelina Stanford]

And it was in the 90s, did people really talking iambic pentameter and blank first?

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, that was like. That's like a piece of ancient history, Mr. Banks. And as a survivor of this era, as a relic, as an antiquated relic.

[Thomas Banks]

What do you mean car chases? Everybody had guns. Everybody went to parties.

[Angelina Stanford]

My so called Shakespeare.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, no, that really was what that movie was.

[Thomas Banks]

We actually watched that one in high school too. We kind of compared them back and it was. It was a wild ride. High school was weird.

[Angelina Stanford]

Gordon Catalano shows up at the prom and takes Juliet away. It's a whole thing right now. Moms in minivans are laughing hysterically and their kids are like, we don't understand why they have funny.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh gosh. So. So we're still in the 60s, going into the 70s. There wasn't much going on on screen or in the movies for Shakespeare. But this was towards the end of the 70s when the BBC announced that they were going to do. They wanted to dramatize all. All of Shakespeare's plays for television. And so they, they ended up doing that. And so people kind of studios were kind of just like, if they're gonna show them on TV for free, we're not gonna make movies out of them. Because, you know, what's the point?

[Angelina Stanford]

Same time that the BBC decided to start doing like all the Jane Austen.

[Thomas Banks]

Stuff, I think so I think they.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just decided this too.

[Atlee Northmore]

A lot of dickens from the 90s and early.

[Thomas Banks]

I think when they started doing the Shakespeare, it was kind of unheard of to do something like that. And I think the Jane Austen and the Charles Dickens stuff, I think that came right after like on the heels of that.

[Angelina Stanford]

So it's just. But like part of the whole movement of trying to elevate television.

[Thomas Banks]

Right? Exactly. And you know, like, you know, we've seen a couple versions now where things were made for TV in the 50s and the 60s of certain things, but they weren't. It wasn't like a series that people were doing. They're kind of just one off adaptations of plays and books. So yeah, they did 37 plays on TV. It took them seven years to do that on the BBC. And then come the 80s, late 80s, 90s and early 2000s is when Shakespeare kind of exploded everywhere.

[Angelina Stanford]

Your list here is amazing. It goes on for pages. This is actually. We probably should put this in the show notes because people are going to definitely want this.

[Atlee Northmore]

I'm looking at this. I think I've seen almost all of these.

[Angelina Stanford]

Of course you have. Of course you have. But what strikes me of you saying it hits its stride in the late 80s 90s and early 2000s. I mean, that's when you see, like, the Merchant Ivory films take off, right?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So all. All. There's just suddenly there's. I mean, honestly, for somebody like me, I thought this was the golden age of Hollywood. Like, I loved those years because you could go to the theater and see Pride and Prejudice. You could see Howard's End. You could see.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was like when Hollywood was taken over by English majors.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was glorious.

[Angelina Stanford]

You did. That's exactly it. It was. Yes. It was like every week there was something new I actually wanted to see. And that is not the case anymore. We had our slow ride.

[Atlee Northmore]

I'm just asking, like, what if Merchant Ivory had been born, like, 20 or 30 years later? I don't think they would have had a career or they would have had to found a way to do, like, Marvel movies.

[Thomas Banks]

At least one Marvel movie.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, Kenneth Reynolds made an English major renaissance in Hollywood. I mean, it's old enough now. It's 25 years ago. Surely we can. We can. All right, Ally, take us through some of the highlights here. We will definitely put this list in the show notes, though.

[Thomas Banks]

So here we go. So we start with Ron, which we talked about by Akira Kurosawa. And then really in 1989, we have Kenneth Branagh's first on screen, Shakespeare with Henry V, which I loved when it came out. It's supposed to be. I haven't seen it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I hate to say baby Christian Bale.

[Thomas Banks]

Really?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. He's the little boy in it.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh. Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Judy Dench's husband is in it. She told the story. Okay, so you've seen. You've seen the Henry V film, of course.

[Atlee Northmore]

Oh, several times.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so. So there's the scene where after the battle, Henry V, who's Kenneth Branagh, is carrying Christian Bale's body. Because the French have done such a horrible scene. They've killed the children, and he's carrying Christian Bale's body across. And it's a very emotional scene. So Judi Dench said that was actually her husband's idea. So he went to Ken Branagh and said, hey, I think it would be more like, you know, emotionally impactful if I carried his dead body and kin. Brennan said, that's a fantastic idea. Such a good idea. I'm gonna do it.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, gosh. Oh, no wonder he and Judi Dench are still friends. They're like. They're besties.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're Are they really nothing but good things to say about him?

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah. I mean, she's in like a million of his movies and just does anything with him and does a lot of stage stuff with him. Then we have a 1990 Hamlet directed by Franco Zeffirelli. We have a sort of spin off of Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, and Angelina.

[Atlee Northmore]

And I disagree about this movie. This is a movie I love and that she cannot stand. Well, it's.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's so chaotic.

[Atlee Northmore]

It is. It is. So it's.

[Angelina Stanford]

My husband knows that I can't watch.

[Atlee Northmore]

So it's based on absurdist play by Tom Stoppard, and he reimagines Hamlet from the point of view of two of the clownish minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who just kind of find themselves in the plot of Hamlet and don't understand it. And I'm trying to figure out what their part is, and they don't realize that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die at the end.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. See, but your narration, your summary of the film is so much more interesting than the film.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's kind of like.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, as you're talking, I'm like, oh, I want to see that movie.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's very much. It's very much like a Samuel Beckett play. It's kind of like Waiting for Godot.

[Angelina Stanford]

Waiting for Rosencrantz.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, it has that quality. And that's a lot of Tom Stoppard.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's just a preference. Tom Stoppard fans out there. It's just a preference. My husband knows if we put something on and I look at him and say, this is Agents of Chaos. We're not going to make it. Like, he knows about me. I'm very sensitive to that. We've had to. We won't say which movies, but we've.

[Atlee Northmore]

Had to stop moving classics we've had to turn off just because of, like, annoying zither music.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Atlee Northmore]

If you know.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, no.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Annoying zither music and other things where. Yeah. There was just too much chaos in the. I just can't handle all that visual chaos.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's why I love you.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. I could probably read it, but I can't. I can't see it.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. It's too much. Too much going on.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, it's just. It's just other people are the other way, though, that they can't read certain things, but they can see certain things. I mean, you just have to know who you are.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. You shouldn't have Compared it to Waiting for Godot, though. Because now I will never watch it. I could not. You don't have to watch it.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, now, I see you got 1991 Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho. That's right.

[Atlee Northmore]

You Henry iv partway.

[Thomas Banks]

Henry iv.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, kind of. And I say. I really emphasize kind of with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. So this was a time when there was a lot of Keanu Reeves in Shakespeare.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, you know, this was pre.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, pretty much a do.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I don't have a problem with people taking Shakespeare plots and then making a new story off of it. I mean, honestly, Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen reimagining Much Ado About Nothing in the Regency period. So I can't get enough of that kind of stuff if it's well done.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. And we'll find out when that actually does not work at all. So, yeah, we have. We have. You know, of course. We'll talk about this in a minute, but 93 is much ado about nothing. The Lion King is Hamlet. Hamlet, yeah. And I never knew that. Me growing up. Why would I want to know that? But it's. It's so. It's just out there. You just can't unsee.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, wait, what? Pull over the mini pan. Mom, grab the smelling. Yes, the Lion King is Hamlet and Finding Nemo is the Odyssey. But I digress.

[Atlee Northmore]

This is why some very enterprising.

[Angelina Stanford]

Some Nemo means nothing.

[Atlee Northmore]

I've been saying for years that some very enterprising children's cartoon director needs to make a Lion King spin off called Timon and Pumbaa are Dead. This would sell with, like, eight people. I would be one of them. For some reason, those two characters really annoyed me.

[Thomas Banks]

Wait, didn't they? They did like, Lion King one and a half or something like that, where it was about Timon and Pumbaa's, like, their. Their point of view. So maybe they should have just ended it with their death.

[Atlee Northmore]

Maybe someone beat me to this. All of my get rich quick schemes. Like, I find other people more original than me actually came up with them first.

[Thomas Banks]

Timon and Pumbaa of Athens are dead. Oh, gosh.

[Atlee Northmore]

It took a minute for that joke to land, but it got there. That was good work, Hadley. Good work.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, good job. Good job.

[Thomas Banks]

Every time I see that on my shelf of my destimone.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I'm just gonna move us on here. Yeah, keep going. In the Bleak Midwinter. I never saw that one.

[Thomas Banks]

It's not so much an adaptation of a play. I kind of pulled from different things. This is about, like, a production of one of his plays. I think it's okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. I see.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm not gonna remember, so I'm not.

[Angelina Stanford]

Gonna say that I did see Othello, 1995. Othello.

[Atlee Northmore]

That is one of the best.

[Angelina Stanford]

I really liked the play.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think, honestly, hands down, golden age.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

The fifth. Much Ado. Othello. Those were. Those were fantastic.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. I think that Laurence Fishburne was great, a good Othello. I think that Kenneth Brano, that's his best on screen Shakespeare part is good. Really scary. Iago. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Those are some strong words.

[Atlee Northmore]

There's a lot strong words, but I stand by him.

[Angelina Stanford]

We have one line biblically. We have biblical unity right here. We're one line on Othello. I loved that one. I saw that one when it came out.

[Thomas Banks]

Let's see, we have. In 1996, we have looking for Richard, which was a documentary directed by Al Pacino.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think we skipped a couple.

[Angelina Stanford]

We did.

[Atlee Northmore]

We have Richard III in 1995.

[Angelina Stanford]

I thought he was doing that on purpose. Yeah. Richard III. 95. Midsummer Night's Dream, 96. I did not see either one of those.

[Atlee Northmore]

Richard III is. So that's Ian McKellen in a. What's a modernized Richard III? Set in kind of a 1930s Hitler's fascist, sort of. So they make Richard III into. He's still the Machiavellian, scheming usurper, but he's more of a Hitlerian sort of figure. So Ian McKellen plays him in almost kind of a funny way. Like we're supposed to hate this guy, but also kind of laugh at him at the same time. So he breaks the fourth wall a lot and he explains his evil plots to the audience, which is actually in keeping.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's very in keeping.

[Atlee Northmore]

I mean, he. At the beginning of the play, I mean, he comes out and says, I'm gonna do a lot of bad stuff and get away with it. So I think that Ian McKellen was a pretty darn good Richard III. And it also has.

[Thomas Banks]

He can do no wrong.

[Atlee Northmore]

Oh, who is sorry. Warren Beatty's wife.

[Thomas Banks]

Annette Bening.

[Atlee Northmore]

Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. I can't remember who he plays, though.

[Angelina Stanford]

That one. That's a big no.

[Thomas Banks]

It was kind of the time, but.

[Atlee Northmore]

For some reason, it's kind of been forgotten. I think Ian McKellen was nominated for an Oscar doing that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm sitting here trying to, like, also.

[Atlee Northmore]

I won't tell you how it does. Okay. But, like, just to get you to watch this movie, because it is a good movie, it has, like, the funniest homage to Star wars at the very beginning, and you can't even like. Yeah, they make a Darth Vader reference in Fantastic.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. Atley, you have to see this movie. Yes. Moms, Dads. There's, like, it's a rated R movie, and there's, I think, like a couple of. Of skin scenes in it, but yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Just not all of these are for children.

[Angelina Stanford]

No.

[Thomas Banks]

This is the 90s, people.

[Angelina Stanford]

Check the ratings. Check the ratings.

[Thomas Banks]

Always check the parents guide.

[Angelina Stanford]

So 96. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Look, there's a lot in 96, I would just like to say, because I've seen. None of the ones came out in 96. I had just given birth to a baby.

[Thomas Banks]

I was just born.

[Angelina Stanford]

I get a get out of jail free card for that. It was very focused on the statute.

[Thomas Banks]

Of limitations is running out on that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I remember hearing about statue of limitations is running out. Thank you. I have to make up. I've had 30 years to make up for it. Yeah. Oh, well, things have come. I had other children. Okay. But. But I remember. You can. You can say what these are. But I do remember when these came out, and I remember each time thinking, oh, that. That sounds really cool. But I just never got around to watching it. Well, and then you have straight from, like, brain dead, just had a baby to, like, the wizard of Oz on repeat. I feel like that's kind of what happened. It was just children's movies after that. But anyway, go ahead, take us through. Take us through the hits of 96.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So 96. We have Baz Luhrmann, who at that point had only not only done, but he had done Strictly Ballroom, which was an Australian movie, fantastic movie. But so he did an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which is kind of. I don't want to say iconic, but it's kind of a monument of. Of Shakespeare on screen. At this point in the 90s, it updates to modern day, and they. They're all in, like, Verona Beach, California, which is. I hope it's.

[Atlee Northmore]

I've forgotten. That was what you.

[Thomas Banks]

Verona Beach. Verona Beach.

[Atlee Northmore]

I feel that's pretty good.

[Thomas Banks]

So they. They all. They're all like two warring sort of warring families. Like, in this sort of enterprise situation, they all carry guns instead of knives and daggers and swords and things, and they get in car chases and they. You know, it's just kind of. It's a 90s movie.

[Atlee Northmore]

It looks like you've never seen it. 90s music video, kind of. Actually, I think it is a pretty good. I would put it. It's a good movie in the same way that west side Story is a good movie. I'll just say that. But I mean, it's. I will say the one thing I think that they really understood. The director, whoever the screenwriter was, understood that Romeo and Juliet is a very fast paced play. It seems like everything moves very, very quickly. The dialogue's kind of fast and it's very Austrian. No one really seems to be thinking and everyone's just kind of acting on their instincts and passions. And that is true to the. Again, to the spirit of the play. Is it like really well acted? It's fine. Some things they do are kind of cheesy. It has a memorable look, both in good ways and bad. Yeah. But again, it's Baz Luhrmann. If you've ever seen a Baz Luhrmann.

[Angelina Stanford]

Movie, like soundtrack, it's one of those movies.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, the soundtrack is amazing.

[Atlee Northmore]

You have, you know, if people. I can imagine it causing a seizure, just like the lighting and stuff like that. It's one of those. It should come with an epileptic fit warning at the beginning. Which is true of all Baz Luhrmann movies.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely.

[Atlee Northmore]

From, yeah, like Great Gatsby to you.

[Thomas Banks]

Said strictly bold rouge. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie. I love that. I love the Romeo and Juliet. I love this version. So it's just. I don't know why. It was one that I watched when.

[Angelina Stanford]

I first read this on Valentine's Day. Should we watch it tonight?

[Atlee Northmore]

We can watch it sometime. You just got mad. See, I don't want to turn you off Shakespeare on screen. Totally. Because you just got mad at the most recent Shakespeare film we watched.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is true. We need a palette.

[Atlee Northmore]

And we'll get to the promise.

[Thomas Banks]

That's unforgivable.

[Angelina Stanford]

So we better hurry up. So we have.

[Thomas Banks]

We're just going to rifle through the rest of these. We have Hamlet, which is directed by Ken Brenna.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now he really. So you had the Mel Gibson. Hamlet had come out before that, right?

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, before five years. Yeah. That was the Zephyr Hamlet.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And they had really cut a lot out.

[Atlee Northmore]

That was like bare bones.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like in a.

[Atlee Northmore]

In a regular two hour, it was so bare bones. They like barely had the skull scene.

[Angelina Stanford]

But Ken Brennan, he does. Is it like four hours long?

[Thomas Banks]

It's four hours long. He doesn't cut a single bit of dialogue.

[Atlee Northmore]

He does not cut a single line of Dialogue.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's risky and I haven't seen that, but I have definitely wanted to see that.

[Thomas Banks]

I started it. I started it the other night and I realized it was four hours long and I wasn't going to finish it. So I wanted to start it when I could watch the whole thing. It is beautifully made.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's a beautiful movie. Is.

[Thomas Banks]

It's done like 70 millimeter. So it's like. It's kind of like on a big grand scale, kind of like Lawrence of Arabia.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's almost like a movie you have to watch on the big screen. Yeah, yeah, I think it does. It's one of those that loses something when you watch it in your home, I have to say. You're going to bed.

[Thomas Banks]

It's not a good.

[Atlee Northmore]

No, it's. It's a. It is a beautiful movie and for the most part, a well acted one. And I think there are basically two directorial choices that he makes that I really think are he could have done with that. One of them is implying, shall we say, intimate relationship between not Romans, Hamlet and Ophelia, which is not really in the text of the play. Yeah, he likes his random nudity. And then another is he sometimes tries to make Hamlet's soliloquies more grandiose than they need to be. Especially I'm thinking, I think he delivers the to be or not to be speech in a mirror. And that was a little bit too actorly. But for the most part, I think he made a pretty good Hamlet and I think the movie is probably the best Hamlet on screen that we have, all things considered.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'll say this about Ken Branagh because I have definitely given him some heat for his Agatha Christie films, where Agatha Christie, you know, it's like based on a story that's based on Agatha Christie. It's like that. But he does tend to be one of the more faithful Shakespeare directors.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think that's true.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I'm like, so. So his Hamlet is four hours. I remember everybody taught it was quite the buzz back then because, hey, he's going to do the whole thing and no one ever does the whole thing because it's so long. So you look at the Zephyrli Hamlet, the one with Mel Gibson, which we rewatched just like last week or something. We watched that recently, didn't we? Okay. And this see in now, in that Hamlet, I can definitely see what Judi Dench is talking about where Zephyrelli does not feel any need to be faithful to the text and he just is.

[Atlee Northmore]

Going to tell he Felt that Hamlet was, like, a pretty simple story and, like, you can just cut off, like, a lot of.

[Angelina Stanford]

But not only that, he added all of that deep Freudian interpretation.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. Between. So if you've never seen.

[Angelina Stanford]

If you never. Yeah, he makes a lot. Hamlet and his mom.

[Atlee Northmore]

Hamlet and Gertrude have kind of a weird.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And I saw it when he came out, and I remember being very upset about it.

[Atlee Northmore]

And also, like, we were commenting that the two actors. So Mel Gibson plays Hamlet and not Meryl Streep?

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no, no.

[Atlee Northmore]

Glenn Close plays Gertrude. I don't think they're very far apart in age.

[Angelina Stanford]

And Helena Bonham Carter is a female.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. So it was kind of a. Yeah. There was something very weird about that son, mom relationship in that play.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, like, I really.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think the supporting cast is better.

[Angelina Stanford]

We talked about this when we watched it last week. But I respect that Mel Gibson, who had only done, like, you know, Mad Max and Lethal Weapon, and so he jumps in with Hamlet, like he's going to be taken seriously as an actor. And. No, you know, I thought that was all very laudable. But I remember I had a film professor at the time because we had all gone and watched Hamlet and she had said, mel Gibson would have made a better Macbeth.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's absolutely true.

[Thomas Banks]

Ooh.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like a man, she said, because a man of action, guys who's violent, who unpredictable. But.

[Atlee Northmore]

But.

[Angelina Stanford]

But Hamlet, like, everything's happening inside Hamlet. That Mel.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Atlee Northmore]

Someone who. Yeah. Who's. Someone who's obviously thinking and kind of caught up in his thoughts. That's not really. Yeah. Again.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, what a missed opportunity.

[Angelina Stanford]

What a missed opportunity.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Oh, man. It's gonna bother me.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, let's keep going. So you have, like. We don't have to list everything, but there's a lot.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely not.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I have not. I didn't even know Ken Brand did. Loves Labor's lost in 2000 until you mentioned it to me the other night. Thomas.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's a. It's a hugely underrated film.

[Thomas Banks]

Huge movie. I didn't know he did as yous like it either later.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. So Love's Labor Lost. He takes it and he sets it in, like, right on the verge of World War II. I think World War II, like, is sort of implied in the background. And he makes it. They filmed it. And the costuming is like a George Cukor, Howard Hawks kind of goofball comedy with a couple of, like. They work a couple of Irving Berlin songs in even. And it sounds ridiculous and it is, but it really works. And actually it's like a very light hearted kind of cotton candy fluff play to begin with.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now we go to that one tonight because you told me you wanted to watch it.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think it's really good. And. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's very well done. It's a cute movie, man.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, I'm gonna have to watch that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

His as yous like it in 2006. Is that the last one he's done?

[Thomas Banks]

That's the last Shakespeare he's done.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think that's what I meant.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Right. Yeah. He's directed a lot of stuff after that, but you knew that.

[Angelina Stanford]

But what's the most recent Shakespeare? Was it the Macbeth that came out a couple years ago with Denzel Washington?

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, there's a lot of.

[Atlee Northmore]

Do you mean, like, production Shakespeare?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, the big. Yeah, big production is probably Macbeth with denzel and Francis McDormand. Frances McDormand.

[Angelina Stanford]

The Coen brothers film.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Which. It had a great look.

[Atlee Northmore]

I was just talking about this with someone else. Yeah, it looked like it kind of had the look of a German expressionist film.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. Very sharp lines, very.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I didn't love everything about that Macbeth, but I did love that it was shot in that black and white and like a German expressionist film because, well, Harold Goddard chose us, my man. That everything that happens in Macbeth happens in hell, essentially. And there's an. When Duncan is murdered, Scotland goes under an eclipse. Right. And so the fact that the whole film is just in dark.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's so true.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's perfect.

[Atlee Northmore]

You can't really imagine the sun shining.

[Angelina Stanford]

It doesn't. Everybody keeps talking in the play about there's been this eclipse and the sun is not there and they're all in the dark. And so it's very much like the whole play is in hell. So visually, I think they really. I didn't agree with every choice, but visually I thought they really captured that.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh. I never thought about that. You're absolutely right. And we'll talk about black and white.

[Atlee Northmore]

I really. I really like Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington as actors. I think, like, if you had made that movie 20 years ago when they were a bit younger, I thought they were a little bit old. Yeah. I mean, because Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, these are people who are still young enough to be ruthlessly ambitious in and do their own killing themselves. And I think that there was a little bit too much age. Yeah. In the. In the cast.

[Thomas Banks]

That makes sense. I don't think you were going to cast Anybody else in a Coen Brothers movie but Frances McDormand.

[Atlee Northmore]

But you have to have Frances McDormand in some capacity. That's in the context.

[Thomas Banks]

It was in their vows. Their marriage vows, too.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was very similar to our marriage vows. He vowed to take me as a podcast host.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, I don't even remember, but I'm sure it was there.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just a blur. It was all there, trust me. You also vowed to give me all your books. There's a lot. I'll remind you later.

[Thomas Banks]

There's a lot. Community property.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, are we ready now to turn our attention to the. We focused on two different Much Ado About Nothing film versions. The 1993 Kenneth Branagh version and the one I don't even want to name.

[Atlee Northmore]

We'll get to that one I'll name it. Is the 2012 Joss Whedon version.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, the Joss. What have you done, Whedon. That is my pun on his name. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

What have you done?

[Angelina Stanford]

What have you done, John?

[Atlee Northmore]

I thought we knew you.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, you can buffy your way out of this one, mister. Okay, so if you can't figure out one of these. We love, loved. And one of them, we. The opposite of love. It's Valentine's Day. We can't say we hated it. Let's just say when it was over, at least said, I want my money back.

[Thomas Banks]

I was mad. I spent money on that.

[Angelina Stanford]

So mad I was checked. Because we were watching it. And if you'd have been like, this is the best thing ever. I'm like, I think we have to fire Ally.

[Thomas Banks]

He's clearly what a hot piece of garbage that movie was. I'm so upset.

[Angelina Stanford]

Garbage. That is going to be the pull quote for today's episode.

[Thomas Banks]

That's what they should have used on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, but let's start with Kenneth Branagh. So I saw the 93 when it came out, and it was. This is how long ago I bought it on vhs. I liked it so much. I bought the vhs. I still have it. I don't have the vcr, but I still have the vhs.

[Thomas Banks]

You can give it to me. I have a vcr.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I loved it. And I loved it. And I've watched it many times. It's probably the Shakespeare adaptation on film that I have seen the most. And we watched it again.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think that might be true.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I loved it. I loved it even, even more. It's so good.

[Thomas Banks]

You can't get enough of it, really.

[Angelina Stanford]

Before we get into our long praise and all the moms are like, let's quick. Let's get this movie. We should give a warning because as you said earlier, dear, he does like his random, random. So get ready with your Cindy Rollins pillow to cover the screen because there's just some really gratuitous. It's very. It's not long. Okay. And I think he's trying to show war is over, and now we're turning our attention to love. And so it's kind of like this.

[Atlee Northmore]

Frolic, kind of a frolicking sensuality. Italy and clothes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so, you know, they're. They're getting ready to, you know, not have their attention on war and now focus on love. And so he has, like, a giant scene where the camera's kind of panning a bunch of different groups of people bathing people, bathing men and women. And it's not. It's not sexual. They're. They're getting. You know, they're getting dressed. But it is gratuitous. And there's male and female nudity. So having said that, other than that, it's like a perfect adaptation. Well, absolutely. There's one other scene. There's one other scene that's a content warning. I would say the scene with Borachio and Margaret, which Shakespeare has off stage. He has on stage. So those would be the two places you would want to be careful. That's your two content warnings. But everything else is great. So let's. Let's jump in. Let's see. I'm going through here. Do we want to. Do we want to start off maybe just by saying. Because we kept saying this, or maybe we should wait, I see you have location down here. But he kept saying. You kept saying, this is such a beautiful film. It is so beautiful.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, it's gorgeous.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's so beautiful.

[Thomas Banks]

But it's not distracting.

[Angelina Stanford]

But it's not distracting. Well put. All right, well, we'll get to that point. Go ahead, lead us through Atlee.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, well, so we start off. I'm going to jump around here. We're going to. Nope, we're not going to do that. Okay, jump around.

[Angelina Stanford]

We're going to lose our place in the outline.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely. I can't scroll that fast on the live podcast. So, first of all, I just love this movie. It was so fantastically done. So like I said, at this point, Kenneth Branagh had made Henry V. He had directed it and starred in it, and he, at this point, he had been nominated for three Oscars at this time. Two for Henry V and then one for some other movie. He Made that I've never heard of. Emma Thompson had just. Who is at this time married to Kenneth Branagh. She had already won her first of two Oscars. She won for Howards End, which we covered on the podcast last year.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was a golden age for her, man. She was absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

Was well. And then even more so because she was. During the production of Much Ado, she was writing drafts of Pride or Sense and Sensibility.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

And at one point, I saw an interview with her, and she said that she did one draft and submitted it to the producer. And she said it was. It was a little too Italian. There was a lot of, like, just. It was very bold and brash and kind of like the Much Ado adaptation, where it was just kind of a lot of stuff going on. She had to throw that draft out completely. So Branagh had. He had done the play. He had done Much Ado about four years beforehand. So he was very well acquainted with the character he plays, Benedict, and with the production in general. So you can tell he's kind of going through it in his mind while he's performing it on stage every night and just kind of thinking of how he would want to do a film version. So they filmed it. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to say this right. It's the Villa Vigna Maggio in Chianti, which is why it's so beautiful. It's actually where the Mona Lisa is thought to have been painted. Yeah. And so Brenna stayed where Mona Lisa herself is thought to have to have stayed, which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah. So starting right off the bat, when you. When the film opens, you have this enormous sense of community. You guys had talked about the importance of community in Shakespeare plays. So we don't have this. We don't have an audience, you know, like you do in a play. And so this, including all these. All these characters who are in the play, but always putting them at. On the outskirts of the scene so that they can watch what's happening between, you know, Claudio and Hero and Benedict and Beatrice, they are sort of our surrogate audience. We get their reaction to everything. They're kind of our gauge to see how we should be responding emotionally. So if you have, like, Benedict and Beatrice having their kind of verbal sparring match and nobody's laughing, you're not exactly sure if you're supposed to be laughing at this or if it's something serious. So, like, everybody's. It's very playful, very, very lighthearted. But you, you know, so playful.

[Angelina Stanford]

And light hearted had such great energy. Great energy. Great pacing. Didn't.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, right from the start.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, right from the start.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. There's so much energy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So we did talk in the podcast about how comedies in general in Shakespeare, but especially in this play, operate under the principle that there's a community together at the beginning. Some agent of disorder will enter and break up that community. And at the end, you will see that community restored. And he visually nailed that. Oh, for sure, he nailed it. And so even with, you know, the, I think, gratuitous nudity he was going for, this is a community. Everybody's excited. Everybody's, you know, intertwined. Everybody's talking and moving around.

[Atlee Northmore]

Everyone's on good terms.

[Angelina Stanford]

Everyone's on good terms.

[Thomas Banks]

Very good terms.

[Atlee Northmore]

Many of these people are family members. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. They're singing, they're dancing, they're laughing, all of that. And then you see again, visually, the community breaking up. Like, every time we saw Don Jon, he is alone. He is in a dark, small, confined area. He's in a tunnel. He's in a cave. Like, it was so hard.

[Atlee Northmore]

He's wearing black leather pants, crying out.

[Thomas Banks]

Loud while he's getting a massage.

[Angelina Stanford]

But it was so perfect, visually. Just kept shrinking and shrinking. And then you literally see the community breaking apart. Right? So the men and women are standing on different sides of the scene and. And some of the women go behind this door. And then. So just visually nailed it. And then the ending, really, I mean, I could not stop talking about it when. And it's all one shot at the end. So. At the end, of course, because a comedy ends in a wedding, a feast or a dance, and this particular play ends in a dance and they're dancing and singing, but he pulls the camera back. And so you see, and the dancing was just perfect for that. That symbol. It's. It's circle dancing inside other circles. Right? So it's. It was expanding concentric circles of the dancing.

[Atlee Northmore]

And it was a universe.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was a. Thank you. It was a universe. It was a microcosm of the cosmology. Of. Yes, of the medieval cosmology. It was perfect. And he pulls the camera back. And the more the camera goes back and up that. The more that the dance expands. And so you see that there's. Then there's another group doing the same thing and another group doing the same thing. And it's. I mean, it's the whole.

[Thomas Banks]

Everything's in harmony, everything's in balance.

[Angelina Stanford]

Resonance. Yes. And then, of course, what the comedy does is at the End. It shoots you up out of the story, and it brings you to the divine perspective. Right. The comedy is always leaving you looking up, as I talked about in Act 5. And so I was so excited watching that last shot. And I was like, they're dancing.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh.

[Angelina Stanford]

In another circle and another circle. I just got more and more excited. And then the last shot, he tilts the camera up and he goes all the way up, up into the sky. And I was like, he did it, he did it, he did it.

[Atlee Northmore]

I said I'd seen that movie a lot before this, but I did not. Real. What a masterclass in cinematography that that last two or three minutes is just by itself.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. So there's actually. I found something out about that last shot that was, you know, that it lasted three minutes, but it. The whole shot in itself took six months to plan it out.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow.

[Thomas Banks]

It said it took them eight hours to shoot and 19 takes to perfect it. So you think about it, it's all one shot. That's all one shot. The camera's going through. Through doorways, through tunnels, and like. Like turning around and making sure. You got to make sure everything.

[Angelina Stanford]

Order and harmony in the community. It was so perfect.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And it's the most important shot in the movie. So they. They started out with somebody holding a Steadicam, which is, you know, you're kind of harnessed into the camera and you're moving around freely. So when you watch a movie that's kind of shaky camera, it's usually with the Steadicam. So he's, like, going through the set and trying to capture all this stuff, and everything's super coordinated. And then it ended. So when they got that shot from up above, they had the Steadicam operator stand on a crane, and they lifted him 90ft above the cast and crew. And, like, that's when they got that shot of all the concentric circles and all the dancing. And it cuts out to the end. But six months to plan that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so let me just say, a lot of times I will give film adaptations of books a really hard time. This is an example where somebody understood, I am translating a theatrical performance into cinema. And what can cinema do that the stage can't do? That I can translate here, and that shot is what he could do. You can't have that visual at the end of a stage production. The audience is not going to be physically lifted above. We're not going to see circles and circles of people ever expanding, which is the picture of resonance, you know, as the harmony gets in this community, it's spreading and spreading. The whole world is now in harmony. And then it goes up like. That was a perfect example of adding.

[Atlee Northmore]

A dimension that doesn't corrupt the meaning of.

[Angelina Stanford]

But expands. It says, hey, this isn't diminish it. This is how cinema can translate.

[Atlee Northmore]

What Shakespeare can I say, also one thing that he introduces the. The song Sigh no More.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yes.

[Atlee Northmore]

He begins the play with that. Which is not how the play actually begins. But I think that was entirely appropriate.

[Angelina Stanford]

Entirely appropriate, because, I mean, this is.

[Atlee Northmore]

A thematically important bit of verse that. I mean. And then he repeats it later on in the gulling scene where they. Where it's sung by the. I think it's the film's composer, Patrick Doyle, who sings it in. Pat Doyle. Yep. And it makes it a great. Completely. Yeah, it's really a lovely soundtrack, the music in that film, because it starts.

[Angelina Stanford]

Off with Beatrice reading it to. LAUGHTER and so they're all.

[Atlee Northmore]

We're almost meant to understand that she's the author of this. It's the kind of verse that she would write.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Atlee Northmore]

But also, again, not in the play itself, but very appropriate, Very appropriate, because.

[Angelina Stanford]

She would write a song mocking men's inconstancy. That. Totally, totally consistent.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. You talk about how they put it in. Again, it. I noticed that they put it in, like, sort of the emotional high points of the story. So, you know, at first it's. It's Beatrice reading out to the community and she's not. So they did it three times. The first time, she's. She's reading it out, she's not singing it. It's not a song, but there's like this soft guitar going in the background. And then when Balthazar is it. Balthazar is singing it to everyone. He's. That's kind of right before Benedick and Beatrice fall in love. And when he's doing it, he's singing it and there's like sort of soft music in the background accompanying him. And then. So at the end, when you have the dance and the. The full song, there's like a full orchestration going on and the dances through everything to celebrate the two weddings. And so it's kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

The whole cast is singing.

[Thomas Banks]

The whole cast is singing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Again, that is consistent with Shakespeare's theme of everybody's.

[Thomas Banks]

Everybody's. Yeah, exactly. Everybody's in harmony, everybody's in sync with each other. The community has been restored. And I think that was just.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well done. Like, that was fantastic. Fantastic.

[Thomas Banks]

We got to give him credit. He is a fantastic director, even if he gets a little full of himself sometimes with Agatha Christie.

[Angelina Stanford]

So let's set that aside for now.

[Thomas Banks]

I can't stop thinking about it now. Yeah, we talked, we talked about the, the background, the location. So for like set design and things, there's a lot of texture that's added that you wouldn't necessarily get in the original production. It's not distracting, but it's, you know, there's a lot of, you know, there's food and wine and, you know, bread and everybody's so tan and running through like vines and things like that.

[Atlee Northmore]

Oil massages.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, right, Oil massages. Probably olive oil.

[Angelina Stanford]

But he carried that. True. Because the women are very minimally done up. Everything's really natural. Hair natural. Very natural. Makeup.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, I was gonna say I was actually looking. I look for this in period films, like where women are wearing obviously modern makeup, but they didn't do that here. No, I think this is actually one of the better ones that way.

[Thomas Banks]

The only time, the only time I noticed the makeup was when Emma Thompson's crying and you can see the streaks. It's going in now. You, now you watch it again.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was very natural. I mean, they looked very sun kissed. Were just free and easy in Tuscany.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Well. Oh, and I forgot to mention. So we were talking about the community and like the set. So they, Ken Branagh wanted to set it up like a theater troupe, like a theater company, like where they were all kind of. They were all living together, they were all kind of doing work together. They were. It was very unlike a normal film set. Nobody had like a trailer to go to. They kind of all made lunch together and they wanted that kind of closeness so that. That sense of community and friendship, it's. It really comes through. He really wanted that. And Kate Beckinsale, who plays Harrow, she said that that was her first movie and she thought that all movies were like that. And. And she was very sad to learn very quickly that that is not the case. But you could tell everybody there was having such a good time the whole time. And, you know, everybody's like super tan, super happy, just bouncing around, giggling, whatever. That just looks like the best, the best, best place to film a movie. They wanted to put it in a time and place that was kind of very vague. So he, he said in an interview he chose not to set the film in a specific time in order to emphasize the isolation of the revelers in their rural Italy. It was distant enough to allow the language to work without the clash of period Anachronisms and for a certain fairy tale quality to emerge.

[Angelina Stanford]

So this is totally succeeded at that.

[Thomas Banks]

He definitely did. I mean, this is why, you know, they're in Italy, but you can't really tell where, you know. And, you know, their costumes, they're. You know, they're wearing military costumes and they're wearing kind of just kind of not shapeless, but like timeless sort of clothes, and you can't tell where they are, where they're from.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're very consistent with. With Shakespeare himself. You know, he sets these things. Midsummer Night's Dreams, especially the lighter comedies that have a pastoral element. It's very deliberate, like you don't know when it is.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. Shakespeare is pretty liberal with his use of anachronisms, I would say, not just in the pastoral comedies, but the tragedies as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, about that, I would agree. And I mean, that sort of attention to realism is something that we have great concern for. But he did not. So they would have actually worn Elizabethan dress. They would have worn contemporary dress, even if it was set a long time ago. That's just the way they would have done it.

[Thomas Banks]

I didn't know that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. It's one of the reasons why I don't necessarily have an automatic negative response to say something like the. The Romeo and Juliet from the 90s where they're dressed in contemporary clothing, because the actors in the Elizabethan times would have been wearing contemporary clothing.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Well, sometimes that doesn't work. And we're going to talk about that in a little bit.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, sometimes it doesn't. Funny how that happens.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, let's keep going. Let's keep going. This is good. We loved this, all three of us. Three thumbs up from us.

[Thomas Banks]

Three thumbs up. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about the idea of translating from theater to the screen. And you talked about how when you're. Judi Dench was saying, when you're on screen instead of in a play, you have to be way more toned down, way more reserved. But I think what they did here, and sort of to their advantage, I don't think this would work all the time. But they sort of were heightened emotionally. I think they were. Everybody's performances were very broad and very boisterous. Yeah. And I think it worked to their advantage also in keeping with theater traditions. I like that they kept the soliloquies as soliloquies instead of making them, you know, instead of including another character, so. So one character could, like, confess their feelings to another.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that's true. He looked directly at the camera and delivered the soliloquy, which is how it would. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

A couple. Yeah, a couple times they did that. And, you know, sometimes they do voiceover, which doesn't work hardly ever, especially in more modern film. But I just. I like that they kept it that everybody's performances were super theatrical and super. All these. I think half of these actors were trained theater actors, and half of them were more movie stars. And so I think they wanted to kind of find some kind of middle ground there. So it's not. It's not like they're shouting or anything, but all their expressions are super, super emphasized and super dialed up, and I just. I think it worked so well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I see you've got a quote on here from Brenna about how they. They. Certain things that were off screen in Shakespeare, he put on screen because. And if you want to read the quote, you can. But him saying that is exactly what I suspected he was doing, that he was afraid the audience would not forgive Claudio at the ending. And so we had to. We had to make sure we set the stage for the. For the audience to be like, okay, we can understand why he did this, and we can. We can forgive him. We both thought. And this isn't a negative, but we both thought Robert Shawn Leonard playing Claudio, like he was emoting a lot with the tears and the crying. There's a lot. But when I was watching it, I thought they are working really hard to make sure the audience forgives him at the end so that it feels like a happy end.

[Thomas Banks]

Once he sees harrow, every emotion he has is dialed up to like 11, and he cries on cue instantly. And he's so happy and just.

[Atlee Northmore]

He's one of those characters that maybe the only right way to play him is overplaying him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, you know, Auden said he's conventional and that those highs and lows are very. They're very conventional. And, you know, while. While the Elizabethan audience, as I said in the podcast, the Elizabethan audience would totally buy. He's just. He's a changeable man. Right? He's unstable. And so he. He loves hard. He hates hard, you know, and now he loves again. And. But I agree that Brianna has to sell this to a modern audience.

[Thomas Banks]

Right?

[Angelina Stanford]

And that's. That's. And. And that if the modern audience doesn't forgive Claudio, it ruins the happy ending at the ending. And I. And I. So I. I guess I'm. I don't want to say forgive. That's not the right word. But where I might Be critical of the over emoting in some versions. I thought in this one it worked because I, I was thinking to myself, he's got his work cut out for him to get a modern audience, make somebody like Claudio.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, well. And I don't think that scene. So they included the scene where they are. They. They see what. Who they think is. Is Harrow, you know, whatever. I, I don't think it was very. It wasn't gratuitous. It wasn't just there for the sake of just showing more skin. You don't know.

[Angelina Stanford]

He was trying to sell to the audience.

[Thomas Banks]

You can see how we feel bad.

[Atlee Northmore]

For Claudia, the gravity of this apparent betrayal.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it would help to explain his violent reaction.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Again, not necessarily you want to, you know, you want your 8 year old to see it, but it's. I don't. Well, I thought the opening nudity was gratuitous. I wouldn't necessarily say putting that on stage was gratuitous. I can understand why he did that.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. And you know, I talked about everybody's performances being very, very broad and very big. I think that kind of helped kind of put Claudio on a. Not a more level playing field, but it just kind of made his reaction and his humiliation of Harrow later, it made it kind of fit in better, if that makes sense. So everybody's. His, his reactions are so drastic, but it's, it's kind of also about his. How changeable he is and not so much like his just gut reactions to just fly off the handle. So I think, I think they did. I think you're right. I think they did try very hard to, you know, make him where that people wouldn't be throwing tomatoes at the screen afterwards.

[Angelina Stanford]

I thought it worked. I thought it worked.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I think it did too.

[Angelina Stanford]

Again, I just. I know. I want to point out that I'm not critical of adaptations because I think it has to be just exactly like it is on the page. I don't think that's true Shakespeare, Austin or anything.

[Atlee Northmore]

It's about also that Shakespeare doesn't leave us with many stage directions on the page.

[Angelina Stanford]

Correct. And so you have improvised. And I thought of that where I was watching because there are lots of scenes in Much Ado where somebody says something and none of the other characters speak. They don't have a line. So then Branagh had to decide where are they standing? What do they do in response to this. I was very aware of that watching it the other night and I thought his choices there were interesting, you know.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Especially with the party.

[Angelina Stanford]

He has no choice but to make choices. That's one of the reasons why I say if you watch a film version, it's an. It's a. It's an interpretation.

[Thomas Banks]

It always has to be.

[Angelina Stanford]

In this case, I thought it was a good interpretation, but sometimes it's bad interpretations. But, I mean, they have to interpret it.

[Thomas Banks]

And not including things like a lot of stage direction or any kind of character description or anything like that, that's. That opens it up to, you're gonna have to throw something in there, like you said, or otherwise. It's just.

[Angelina Stanford]

And the reason that Shakespeare doesn't do that is because he doesn't have to. He's working with the same actors. They all know what the character looks like. It looks like this actor, and he would have been involved in the staging, and so, you know, he didn't have to write it down. He was the one directing it, and.

[Thomas Banks]

He was in it a lot of times.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, he was in it. So it was just a whole. It was a whole other thing. Yeah, no, this was good. This was good. What next?

[Thomas Banks]

I think we kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

You want to move on to casting.

[Thomas Banks]

I think we kind of touched on that with.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I do want to talk about a little bit about the actors. So, first of all, I think Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson are as about as close to perfection as Indian.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

For Benedict and Beatrice, like, when I read the play for the podcast, I still heard their voices.

[Atlee Northmore]

I do, too. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Even though I hadn't seen it in many decades, I still heard their voices and their mannerisms. The chemistry between them is so good. And we. Thomas and I were talking about this afterwards. There's a. Because, remember, it's a merry war of words. It's a merry war of words. That's. That's what we're told. And so they're stinging barbs at each other, but they keep it playful.

[Atlee Northmore]

They're. They're flirting from the first line, basically. Yeah. Even though they annoy each other, they can't stand each other, but also they can't live without one another. And they play. Played both of those dimensions perfectly.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think you have to have that spark or it doesn't work. As we'll talk about when we get to the 2012, which it did not work at all. It just comes off as mean.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was sparkless.

[Angelina Stanford]

So you have to have the spark and the chemistry, but it has to be playful. It has to be playful.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, that's why it helps to have a comedic actor like Emma Thompson. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

I Mean, she's wonderful. Everything about their body language, their delivery, their. The. The timing of the lines, and there's a ton of laughter.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

So that's a big difference between that and the 2012 is that they. They would both deliver the stinging bar, but then they would laugh and everybody around them would laugh, which was a cue to us that this is playful, this is funny. They're not just hating each other, which in the. In the 2012, they just come off as, I hate you. Well, I hate you too. And I was like, that's not a spark, Stephen.

[Atlee Northmore]

Just like kind of passive aggressively dislike. Like, you don't believe that these people could ever fall in love.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I have to say, with Branagh and Thompson, you're watching it thinking, oh, they're in love, and they don't know they're in love.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Helps that they are in love in real life.

[Atlee Northmore]

Okay. I think the other character in this film that cannot be improved on is Michael Keaton.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Atlee Northmore]

One of the best Shakespearean clown performances.

[Angelina Stanford]

Again, adding all of those mannerisms, like licking his hair down, like, everything.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, he was like, fake horse.

[Atlee Northmore]

No, he was like mock heroic and, like, had delusions of grandeur. And like, all this, like, he just captured everything. That makes Dogberry memorably ridiculous. It was just.

[Thomas Banks]

It just.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just absolute perfection.

[Thomas Banks]

It's just like, very telling about his character that he'll go from playing Batman.

[Atlee Northmore]

To playing Dog within a couple years. I think it was a year or something like that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah, is right after that, I think. But oh, my gosh, he did such a good job. And the critical reviews were not good.

[Angelina Stanford]

They succeeded in making it funny.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, no, they did. And that's something that the 2012 version did not correct.

[Angelina Stanford]

Obviously, that's not. That's not so easy to do. Yeah, No, I thought that was great. Now, I think we should mention one other person because I have to tell you, before watching that, this we can thank Joss Whedon for.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Before watching the Joss Whedon, I thought Keanu Reeves was the worst Shakespearean actor.

[Atlee Northmore]

In the world and he won a golden raspberry or was nominated for a golden raspberry for this.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm here to eat his golden raspberry. Because in the Marketplace 2012, I turned to Thomas and I said, I take it back. Keanu Reeves is a brilliant Shakespeare level.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. But no, at the same time. Except I was thinking, actually we were saying that, like, he doesn't. It doesn't seem that he misunderstands his Lines or anything like that. And I think. I mean.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, we spent a long time trying to figure out what is wrong with his performance.

[Atlee Northmore]

Just the Keanu voice.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's his voice. That's it.

[Atlee Northmore]

Because you're waiting for him to say.

[Angelina Stanford]

His timing, his delivery. It was all fine. It was all fine. He obviously worked very hard, and with a coach.

[Atlee Northmore]

These are historical babes, dude.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that was it. I think that was it. That was it. It was just his voice. Otherwise. Otherwise, he was. He really was fine. Especially.

[Atlee Northmore]

How do I wreck this most bodacious wedding? No.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

It really is. Like, some actors just don't have a Shakespearean voice.

[Thomas Banks]

They can't.

[Angelina Stanford]

And you can tell he was working Esqu.

[Thomas Banks]

But you could tell he was working with some kind of dialect coach because he was, like, really trying hard on some of his consonants, and it was too much. He couldn't catch it.

[Angelina Stanford]

But that said, when we got to the Josh Whedon and the Don John was there, that's when I turned to Mr. Banks and said, I take it back. Keanu Reeves was really good.

[Atlee Northmore]

He was really good.

[Angelina Stanford]

But you said this, and I thought this was very telling. You said, it looked like Keanu Reeves said his lines and mint it.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Atlee Northmore]

Like he wasn't just going to his trailer.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Everyone in this. Okay, everyone in the 2012 looked like they couldn't wait for the shot to end. And I can get off.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. Okay. Let's officially introduce this, because I gotta just say that Atlee named this part of the outline. Let's just rip this piece of garbage apart. So here we go. From the. From the heights of. This is as perfect as Shakespeare on the screen can get to. Now, the counterpoint. You know, you can only truly see the lights when the dark is shaded in. Atlee. This is it. We're doing the shading now. Give us the Josh Whedon counterpoint.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. I feel like a weight's being lifted off my chest now. Okay, so a little introduction. Joss Whedon.

[Angelina Stanford]

What if we'd have come on and been like, this is the most brilliant thing we have ever done.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a masterpiece.

[Angelina Stanford]

What would you have done, Atlee, if we were both just going on? Would you have quit?

[Thomas Banks]

I might have to hand in my resignation. I can't work with this. So. So Joss Whedon has been. He was the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which started as a movie and it tanked, and now we know why. And then they made it into a TV show, and it was a huge success. He had a spin off from that show called Angel. He was the one who created Firefly. If you've seen that. That dollhouse, Dr. Horrible's sing along Blog or whatever it's called. So he is, you know, he's a guy. He's like a pretty well known guy in. In Hollywood, but for tv, for some reason I have not figured out, he was approached to. To write the screenplay. He is a witty writer. He's not the most witty of a heard, but he was approached to do the screenplay for the Avengers, the first avengers movie in 2012, and he directed it. What I've never told anybody is I didn't like his directing choices. And now this all makes sense. It felt to me that it was very cheap and it wasn't cheap.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it had such a cheap look. It wasn't cheap or was.

[Thomas Banks]

It was. Yeah, it was. So okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Did he film it on his iPhone?

[Thomas Banks]

He. He. Just wait.

[Atlee Northmore]

Just wait.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, you have Scoop. Tell us.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, just. Just little things. I couldn't. I couldn't stand the commentary, but. So when he finished filming the Avengers, he had a contractual vacation time between the end of shooting and the beginning of post production, which is when they edit it, put it all together, put in the special effects, whatever. He had a couple weeks off, and this was something he had stuck in his mind for years, that he wanted to do a version of Much Ado About Nothing. And so all these actors that you see in the film are actors that he has worked with previously, either in Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, you know, whatever. Even somebody from the Avengers plays Clark. Greg plays Leonardo. He was in the Avengers. So this is kind of like his little summer vacation project. It was filmed on basically a shoestring budget. He filmed it at his house in Los Angeles. It's just not a good movie. They shot it in 12 days. I think it was 12 or 14 days.

[Atlee Northmore]

I think I've seen college student, like, product labs.

[Thomas Banks]

It feels. It feels like a student film. Yeah. Not somebody who's been in the business.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was like a junior high production. I didn't say it was like a college.

[Atlee Northmore]

Hey, kids, let's make a movie in the backyard. Yeah. It was literally like the movie in the backyard.

[Thomas Banks]

It was literally. Yeah. It's just so bad. So there's. Oh, my gosh. I don't even know where to begin. Okay, I'll start with the. The fact that it's shot in black and white really bothers me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Let's start here because we don't want anybody to Run out and watch this dog. Okay, so we'll just. He takes Much Ado About Nothing and sets it in the present day in, like, the corporate world.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And maybe filmed in black and white at his house. And so he translates. Instead of men coming back from war, they're like.

[Atlee Northmore]

That's another problem.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're like, in business. It didn't make sense. They're in business with briefcases and.

[Atlee Northmore]

Because, like, one of the reasons these guys want to get married is because they've just survived and, you know, like, they want to put that behind them. So. But yeah, it's just like these are businessmen taking a holiday on the weekend, a Labor Day weekend.

[Angelina Stanford]

John gets out of one of the limos. He's in handcuffs. And then they take his handcuffs off. And like, you're like, what? What?

[Thomas Banks]

Why were you in handcuffs?

[Angelina Stanford]

But then he's using all of the Shakespearean language, so. So he's in handcuffs and they take the handcuffs off. And then Leonardo's like, oh, you've just returned from the wars, and I see you're reconciled with your brother. I'm like, but what?

[Thomas Banks]

That doesn't look like reconciliation.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're in a limo. This nothing makes sense.

[Thomas Banks]

They're in a. Like a neighborhood in California. They're not in some villa somewhere. They couldn't have been just gone.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so that was a huge difference. Whereas Branagh, it's community. Community. Community. This was no. There were no actors. You're just in a house.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was a very small cast.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it was like a cinema verite, kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

So you never get a sense of a community has been broken up and it's gonna be re established. You never get that?

[Thomas Banks]

No.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. And so, yes, we can start with. So he decides to film it in black and white.

[Atlee Northmore]

Should we talk about the very first scene as well?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, you wanna get that with when we get to realism or what? You wanna do it now?

[Thomas Banks]

Sure, yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Realism. I have to say that I had never seen this. You had seen it. And you said to me, I said, okay, well, let's watch. Watch. Let's watch the next bunch of do. And you said, you're gonna hate it.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah, I had to, like, put away the sharp objects within your reach because I thought that you were gonna, like, do something violent.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm gonna have an open mind. It's gonna be fine. He goes, no, you're gonna hate it.

[Thomas Banks]

And I was like, I know my.

[Angelina Stanford]

G. I was like. He's like, no, Angelina, we're gonna put this on. And within 30 seconds you are gonna be yelling. I was like, wait, it's that bad? And he said, it's that bad. And he. So he prepares me for it. We put it on. He says, you need to know that he adds a scene at the beginning of the movie. I'll speak euphemistically because I'm sure there's children listening. In which Benedict and Beatrice. I've apparently had a one night stand. And he's sneaking out the next morning.

[Atlee Northmore]

He's literally putting his pants on.

[Angelina Stanford]

Literally putting. Yeah. Pants on. And like tiptoeing out without having to talk to her. Which I guess is supposed to be the reason that they hate each other. Okay. But the way that it was filmed. And so he's sitting there and he's got his flannel shirt on and he's putting his boots on and everything.

[Atlee Northmore]

This is awkward.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And I turned to you, Mr. Banks, and I said, is this much ado about Reality Bites?

[Atlee Northmore]

I think I spit my drink out at that point. That was hilarious.

[Thomas Banks]

It was.

[Atlee Northmore]

Seriously, that. It was like this kind of Gen X, Y. Like we just had a thing, kind of. But are we a couple?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Are we?

[Angelina Stanford]

Are we? And then that was it. And then that was it.

[Thomas Banks]

Yep. Completely unnecessary. Just ruins everything right from the get go.

[Angelina Stanford]

And. Didn't go anywhere. Didn't go anywhere. So this was not an addition, like we said, with Branagh, which added some layer, helped to explain some themes.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, it was an obvious attempt to try to give a backstory for why they hated each other. Well, so let's just get into. Let's just get into that. Okay. Because where Brenna and Thompson are playful and charming and witty and everybody's laughing and looking at him like, you two, get a room. You know, like that. These two just see each other.

[Atlee Northmore]

Passionless, dull.

[Angelina Stanford]

They're boring. They're. Yeah. They're not even angry. They're bored. They're. I. I kept. I kept waiting for the acting to start. Atley, I don't. You know what I mean? Like, it was. So you kept saying. Thomas, you kept saying, it's like they're doing a table read.

[Thomas Banks]

Right? They're filming their rehearsals, performance.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was just like, you have a jade trick. I know. You have all.

[Atlee Northmore]

Oh, my dear lady disdain, are you yet living?

[Angelina Stanford]

I'll eat all the men you killed.

[Atlee Northmore]

Total lack of conviction. Total lack of conviction.

[Thomas Banks]

I wish you were wrong.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

I wish that was wrong.

[Angelina Stanford]

We're not exaggerating.

[Thomas Banks]

No. It's so bad.

[Angelina Stanford]

Do not Pay your hard earned money to watch this film. It was.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh my gosh.

[Angelina Stanford]

Why was the acting so bad, Ali? It was big name actors. They were so flat. They seemed bored.

[Thomas Banks]

So I am a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've seen a lot of the other shows. I've seen these actors before. I've seen them in many things. Acting with other people and acting with each other. Some of them are in shows together. I know they can have good performances. I don't know what happened in this dadgum movie that was so awful. Maybe it was the fact that they, you know, probably weren't getting paid very much. Maybe it was the fact that they were. They filmed it in 12 days and they're all trying to speak Shakespeare in.

[Angelina Stanford]

These really cheap looking elaborate theory that it was all a big tax scam so he could, he can make his house tax deductible because he filmed the movie there. Because that was the only thing that made sense to me. I hope it was so terrible. It was just.

[Atlee Northmore]

But like Joss Whedon and his friends put on a show that was.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that's, that's what it, that's what it is. It's. I think it means more to people who are, are familiar with him and his shows and his work, but it just. What a pile of garbage. I don't know what else to call.

[Angelina Stanford]

This pile of garage. Okay, let's get back to the acting. Okay, this I'm going to blame on this. This is absolutely the director. Okay, so everything's super flat. What should be witty kind of sexy banter between the leads is falling completely apart. It's just nothing. And then we get to the gulling scene where we're supposed to believe that these two flat people who don't even act physically attracted to each other are going to magically fall in love because they hear that the other one likes them, right? And, and so we're watching this and I'm, I, I honestly couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought, oh my. Did George Lucas just direct this scene? Like that's how cheesy was. Do you know what I mean, George?

[Atlee Northmore]

Luke, you know when he tries to.

[Angelina Stanford]

Do like me, like you did on that boo. You know, it was like that. It was like just completely unbelievable as a romantic scene. But what he did to try to sell it was to put some ridiculous over the top physical comedy. Beatrice falls down some stairs, right? Which was what I'm supposed to do.

[Atlee Northmore]

And then he starts working out in front of her, like doing push ups.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, he starts doing push ups and curls.

[Angelina Stanford]

What? What? It didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense.

[Thomas Banks]

There was physical comedy in the reactions, like Kenneth Branagh's reaction when he heard and it was hilarious. It fit. This was completely out of place because.

[Angelina Stanford]

He had that energy.

[Atlee Northmore]

Also just much better sense of timing because like Branma's fooling around with the folding chair that he doesn't know what to do with. And that was a nice touch. But yeah, this one didn't have anything like that. This one was just. He starts acting kind of goofy but without much conviction. And she's like clumsily doing like the cute girl klutzy thing, bumping into stuff. And it didn't work.

[Angelina Stanford]

It didn't work at all.

[Thomas Banks]

It was still so mad.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was so bad. Okay, tell us, please tell me why did that. Tell us about the black and white. You have this as a point.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Hold on to your smelling salts because none of this makes sense.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wondering. I came up with a theory too, but you're gonna tell me it's wrong. I came up with a theory about why it's black and white. I said, yeah, maybe. Maybe he made a completely modern Much Ado. And then he's like, wait, this is old timey. We'll make it black and white way.

[Thomas Banks]

It's partly that. Okay, so basically what he. And apparently the cinematographer agreed with him. He's like, oh, thank goodness you agree with me. Joss Whedon said he felt, he felt like Much Ado about Nothing was like a noir movie.

[Angelina Stanford]

What? No.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, because there's deception. That was his main thing. Because there was deception.

[Angelina Stanford]

Deception. It's comic deception. Oh my go.

[Thomas Banks]

I've never seen a funny film. Watch.

[Angelina Stanford]

We can just go ahead and get a restraining order out against me. Let's just start with that.

[Thomas Banks]

We all know where you live.

[Angelina Stanford]

We're just gonna come to your house and protest. He's right there. I just reverse Google imaged these bad boys. And we have your address. Yeah. Wow.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, that explains a lot of what he did.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, no, it does. He completely misread the entire play. But so here's the thing. Here's the thing about doing black and white. Any movie in black and white post like 1960, whatever. It is a deliberate choice by the director and the cinematographer to either put some level of like, not confusion, but kind of just displace you a little bit from like the, the background they want you to focus on like the actors performances or you know, in the case of Something like Clerks, it was just. It's just cheaper to film on black and white. White film. Or they. They just want you to. I mean, really, they just want you to kind of be displaced and kind of realize that. I heard Mike Nichols say he wants you. If he's doing black and white, he wants you to think that this is. This isn't real life. This is a fairy tale. This is sort of something not. This is not based in realism. And Joss Whedon, when he made this black and white, he did none of that. That. It wasn't even cheaper to do it in black and white because it's all on digital. I don't think they even. I think he filmed it and then turned it black and white. I don't think he even had any kind of. I shouldn't say this because I don't know for sure, but when you film something in black and white, a lot of colors register the same in black and white. And so, like, that's why you look at their faces and they look washed out in the natural sunlight. And black and white, it just.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

It. Oh, my gosh. It's just infuriating. I'm sure there was some thought behind it.

[Angelina Stanford]

It.

[Thomas Banks]

It was just thought less.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, but just telling me, the guy read Much Ado About Nothing and thought, oh, this is like a film noir.

[Atlee Northmore]

This is Philip Marlowe.

[Thomas Banks]

Beatrice. Beatrice is the femme fatality Philip Marlowe. Right.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, exactly. Like, this made no sense at all.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, my gosh. All right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Anything else you want to say about this piece of garbage?

[Thomas Banks]

Flashbacks.

[Angelina Stanford]

Lawyers will be.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Flashbacks. Tell us about that.

[Thomas Banks]

Flashbacks. Completely unnecessary flashbacks. The production value. So they. I don't know what cameras they filmed on, but there was a scene when.

[Angelina Stanford]

IPhone 6.

[Thomas Banks]

Yep. Maybe a 6 plus.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was almost like that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it felt. It did feel like that. Everything was handheld. Everything was steady cam and not in a good way. So there was a scene when Beatrice is. She's trying to eavesdrop, and when they're talking about how Benedick is in love with her and she's, like, crawling under the. Their. Their kitchen island or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

She hit their head on it.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. They shouldn't have told us this because maybe. Mad. They put a camera on a blanket and pulled the blanket underneath the table to follow her and track with her as she's crawling under the kitchen bar. And it was. You could. You can tell after. After he said something like that. It was just so cheaply done. For somebody who just made an Avengers.

[Angelina Stanford]

Movie, it was like A student project.

[Thomas Banks]

It was. But he has money, and I would.

[Angelina Stanford]

Not have given it a good grade.

[Thomas Banks]

No.

[Atlee Northmore]

Can we talk about.

[Angelina Stanford]

Hold on.

[Atlee Northmore]

Can we talk about how he didn't. He obviously didn't redecorate his house. There was no set design. This really. I know. So there's a scene in what's obviously a child's bedroom.

[Angelina Stanford]

Two little girl twin beds. Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

There's these two twin beds. Stuffed animals all around, dolls.

[Angelina Stanford]

And we're supposed to believe that this is Benedict and Claudio's quarter.

[Atlee Northmore]

And, like, there's no children in the film. And it's like. So it raises the question, like, why is there a children's bedroom? But it's just annoying. Things like this.

[Thomas Banks]

That.

[Atlee Northmore]

Again, it's just a total lack of professionalism.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nothing made sense in terms of the plot about why they're staying for a week in this guy's house in Hollywood.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. No, he said a month. He said they're staying for a month. Like, why would you. Again, okay. This is what really drove me crazy here.

[Angelina Stanford]

For a month. Like, what, the next day, having a backyard barbecue.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nothing makes sense.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

The song performed as a soft jazz number.

[Thomas Banks]

Soft jazz.

[Angelina Stanford]

I forgot about that. I blocked it out.

[Thomas Banks]

You couldn't even hear the words of the song. It was. It was ridiculous. The thing that really drove me nuts was I had no. I was so distracted the entire time trying to figure out who these people are and why they. Why they. Why they have guns. Why are they businessmen with guns or just one has a gun. Gun, and he's got, like, a security detail, and he's going to the police, and just none of it made any sense. This is what happens when you try to put Shakespeare or any other, you know, older story in a different setting and don't put it in context. It is so infuriating. So if you watch something like. Like the Baz Luhrman, Romeo and Juliet, it might have its faults, it might be kind of over the top, but it places everything where it needs to be and creates a sort of framework for you to believe everything. You know, suspend your disbelief, whatever. I was so distracted the entire time watching this, trying to figure out how this all made logical sense. And I know you're not supposed to do that, but I could not help it. It just.

[Angelina Stanford]

If you're gonna. If you're gonna move it to a contemporary setting, then you're gonna have to explain it. You have to make the plot work.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Are the. Are these people like, he's. He's supposed to be a Governor. They. They still call him a governor.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he handcuffed his brother.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. And, like, what is he a governor of? And Dom Pedro's a prince. And like, what's he a prince of? Why is he. Why are they coming up in limos? Where are they coming from? It doesn't. Doesn't make any sense.

[Angelina Stanford]

Nothing makes any sense.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, so you can't. This is. This just goes to show, you cannot just. Just take Shakespeare and throw him wherever. Like, context is so important.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's a great study. In contrast, though, those two versions.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Branagh comes as a stage actor. He comes with a deep understanding of Shakespeare, and that is why he was able to translate it beautifully and just keep all of the themes correct. And obviously, Whedon doesn't have any clue what Shakespeare's about. If you read it and thought, hey, this has got a nuva vibe. Well, to me, that's the difference of Branagh being like, I'm gonna understand Shakespeare. I'm gonna bring him to life in a new way. And this guy saying, this is fodder for me to make a cool noir film. But it wasn't a cool noir film because I love noir. And it wasn't noir.

[Thomas Banks]

It's not noir.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was like. I'm like. It was like a junior high adaptation of the Maltese Falcon.

[Atlee Northmore]

It was too beige to be noir.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, honey, that was fantastic. Well done. Oh, that was good, Thomas. Very, very good. Very good. But then. But then, weirdly then it became I Love Lucy episode.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. But not even a good one.

[Angelina Stanford]

But not a good one. Yeah, it was just. I'm just gonna keep quoting Atlee. It's a hot piece of garbage. It's that. It's a piece of hot garbage. Yeah. I don't know.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, a piece of hot garbage. That's. That's the.

[Angelina Stanford]

We didn't toned down version. We didn't finish. We couldn't finish.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I'm gonna be honest. I fell asleep. I fell asleep halfway through this movie and I had to finish the rest of it the next night. Night.

[Atlee Northmore]

No, I lost him.

[Angelina Stanford]

He got up and said, I'm not finishing this. And he walked off. And I was like, good for you. By myself. I was going to be a professional.

[Atlee Northmore]

I had not seen it in a long time and I. I don't remember hating it, but not. I wasn't impressed with it. But then I. I think watching it with you this, I was like, well.

[Angelina Stanford]

It would have been bad anytime. I would have watched it. But watching it immediately after the brano one.

[Atlee Northmore]

Yeah. That. That really.

[Thomas Banks]

That was wrong. I had to turn the Brannon one on right after, so I couldn't need.

[Angelina Stanford]

A palate cleanser wash out my eyes. But here's the thing. Here's the thing, right? We're not just nitpicking. Benedict and Beatrice are, honestly, of all of Shakespeare's couples, the most iconic, the most fun, the characters that everybody says, if there's two Shakespeare characters who are gonna have a happy marriage, it's gonna be them. And then Joss Whedon, he just sucks all the life out of it. It's not believable that they like each other. There's no spark. There's no nothing.

[Atlee Northmore]

They'll be divorced within six months.

[Thomas Banks]

Months, yeah.

[Atlee Northmore]

Or they'll bore each other.

[Angelina Stanford]

The next morning after the wedding, he'll be putting his trousers on and hitting the road again. How's that for a framing device?

[Thomas Banks]

I think he just wanted it to be quirky. He wanted these characters to be quirky like every other character he writes. I mean, I love this. I love some of his stuff.

[Angelina Stanford]

And, you know, and before we turned it on, I was thinking to myself, I totally understand that he doesn't want to just redo what Branna did. So I expect that he's going to do something different to try to make his own mark. Like, I'm fine with that, but it's got to make sense. It's got to be fun. It was so boring. It was so boring. Okay, so we're going to say one last thing before we sign off, which is that we googled the reviews of this thing, and the critics were falling over themselves for this. The best movie ever in the world.

[Atlee Northmore]

I kind of wondered, like, did he have secrets about them or something that he would air? Did he blackmail them into giving? Like, I wouldn't put it past 5% rotten. Sorry. 85% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And, like, yeah, the, like, Chicago, you know, the New York Times, Washington Post, everyone was like, this is the most sprightly and. And playful Shakespeare we have seen these many years. And it was. Give me a break.

[Angelina Stanford]

You should mail each of them a dictionary. I don't think they know what those words mean.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, the only reason it might have gotten high ratings is because those critics were probably the only people who saw this thing. And that's. That gives me some comfort.

[Atlee Northmore]

It wasn't a big movie. Yeah, no, it. I mean, it was kind of made to be a small movie that we're not. I'm gonna fault it for that.

[Thomas Banks]

No, it was. It was Made for probably under a million dollars. It made 5.3 million. Yeah, it was fine. Whatever.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was a tax write off. That's only one.

[Thomas Banks]

Yep. Let me see how I can make money on vacation. That's what he was going for. Somebody, somebody interviewed him and said, if you had the budget. Because he just made the Avengers. If you had the budget, budget for the Avengers to make Much Ado About Nothing, what would you do different? And he said, oh, I would make all of them. I wouldn't just make Much Ado About Nothing. And I thought, thank goodness. Please don't ever say words like that again, ever.

[Angelina Stanford]

Please. Oh, all right. Well, we gotta kind of. We need to sum this up then. Yeah, that's. It's 17 thumbs down for the 2012.

[Thomas Banks]

Yep. Light it on fire.

[Angelina Stanford]

Much Ado About Whedon is nothing.

[Atlee Northmore]

And.

[Angelina Stanford]

How about Nothing about Joss Whedon? There we go.

[Thomas Banks]

Sounds good.

[Angelina Stanford]

And we highly, highly recommend the Brenna version with the content warnings that we gave at the beginning. But it is just an absolutely delightful, delightful play. And it's clearly made by somebody who is delighting in the play, somebody who.

[Thomas Banks]

Knows the play well.

[Atlee Northmore]

Someone who doesn't positively hate Shakespeare and want to. To ruin him for audiences.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, well, I mean, Whedon was going through a divorce at the time, so maybe that's coming through as well. Like, I hate love. And that's Much Ado about this divorce. Yeah, I don't. I don't know, Atley, as always, this was a whole lot of fun. Thank you for bringing all of your expertise and letting us rant about what we don't like and delight in what we do like. And we hope you guys have enjoyed this conversation. So thanks, Atley, for joining us. And this time I will tell the truth at the end of the episode. Not like I lied last time and said, hey, we're going to do CS Lewis next. And then we're like, atlee is not CS Lewis. But next time we really are going to do Experiment and Criticism. We're going to be rebroadcasting the series we did on that. And then I'm going to come back and do a brand new episode called Revisiting Experiment and Criticism. Because it's been a few years now and I've heard your questions, I've heard where you've been confused and say, I don't understand what this means means. And so we're going to come back and I'm going to give you some, I think some very significant context for when the book was written and specifically what he was addressing and who he was addressing. And then we'll kind of talk about some things that hopefully will be be helpful to alleviating some of the confusion about that book. But I'm looking forward to revisiting it. It's been a while. Well, thanks Atlee. Thanks Mr. Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

Thank you.

[Angelina Stanford]

Even though this is not airing on Valentine's Day, we have recorded it on Valentine's Day. And that's why I keep talking about my Valentine here, which, to be clear, is Atlee. No offense.

[Thomas Banks]

None taken.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, well, you can find out about all of our webinars [e-mail] check the show notes for our commonplace quotes and this list that Atlee worked on for us. And stick around to the end of this podcast. Mr. Banks has a special poem just for you. Until then, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy at Morning time for Mom. Join the conversation at our member Only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Atlee Northmore]

A Few Figs from thistles by Edna St. Vincent Millais. Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow Faithless I am save to love self alone. Were you not lovely, I would leave you now after the feet of beauty fly my own, Were you not still my hunger's rarest food and water ever. To my wildest thirst I would desert you, Think naught but I would, and seek another, As I sought you first. But you are mobile as the veering air, and all your charms more changeful than the tide. Wherefore to be inconstant is no care I have but to continue at your side. So wanton light and false my love, are you I am most faithless when I most am true.