Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing

[Admiral_Young]

My mistake about the production. When it was first originally reported, people were genuinely surprised that Joss had time to film this. No details had really come out about it yet at the time.

Yeah it made it's debut at TIFF (Toronto Film Festival) this year, I expected a theatrical release sometime next year after the film festival debut.

[Christopher]

st.barthgirl wrote:

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Any opinions on who Shakespeare was?

He was William Shakespeare. Period. I've never come across an alternate-authorship theory that didn't fall apart when subjected to scrutiny.

[DigificWriter]

Much Ado is my favorite Shakespearean work, and I've been looking forward to this 'finding a home' somewhere since word of it being filmed first came out, so it's great to see it get a release date and a studio willing to put it out there. The thing that intrigues me most about seeing the film is that it's a modernization of the story with the original dialogue intact, and I'm interested to see how Joss made things work in that regard, since one of the things that I enjoy most about Shakespeare's works is that they're incredibly versatile and lend themselves very easily to a myriad of different interpretations/stagings on both the stage and the screen.

[FPAlpha]

Forbin wrote:

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Well, Shakespeare in modern settings disturbs me (I REALLY like period costume pieces!), but Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Joss is Joss, so I'm sure it'll be great.

Shakespeare's works are universal.. they're not period victorian plays but about the human condition in general and we basically struggle with the same emotions and problems people have been for centuries and millennia.

I am really looking forward to this.. seeing a bunch of my favorite TV actors concentrated in one play led by Whedon.. it's gonna be awesome!

[Gaith]

^ Are they, though, or are we just so used to seeing them freely transposed that we've come to accept it as natural?

[FPAlpha]

There are enough Shakespeare plays that adhere to the original setting but it's usually those who try new things that get more exposure (especially if Hollywood takes a shot at it again).

I'm fine with both as long as it's well played. Someday i'd really like to see Patrick Stewart on stage playing something from Shakespeare.

[Greg Cox]

So, will the ads read: "From the Director of THE AVENGERS!"

[PsychoPere]

Warp Coil wrote:

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I'm pretty sure the budget on this thing was miniscule [...]

It was, and Much Ado is the first project from Joss's new Bellwether Pictures studio. Joss and his wife Kai Cole set up Bellwether specifically for micro-budget independent projects.

I'm assuming Mutant Enemy will continue to be the production company for any future non-Marvel television work and films.

[Christopher]

Gaith wrote:

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^ Are they, though, or are we just so used to seeing them freely transposed that we've come to accept it as natural?

Well, it's not as if Shakespeare himself didn't update the settings of his own plays. "The clock hath stricken three?" They didn't have clocks that struck the hour in Ancient Rome! His portrayals of historical times and places were generally more like the world he and his audience lived in.

[Forbin]

FPAlpha wrote:

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Shakespeare's works are universal.. they're not period victorian plays but about the human condition in general and we basically struggle with the same emotions and problems people have been for centuries and millennia.

Blah blah blah. We like what we like. I prefer it one way, you have no preference. IDIC. I don't need a lecture every time I express an opinion..

[Forbin]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, it's not as if Shakespeare himself didn't update the settings of his own plays. "The clock hath stricken three?" They didn't have clocks that struck the hour in Ancient Rome! His portrayals of historical times and places were generally more like the world he and his audience lived in.

Also a good point. And I fully acknowledge that even his historical plays were (as far as I know) performed in contemporary clothing.

I was just talking to my wife about this tiny controversy. She's a very big fan of the costume drama (and has created period costumes for local theater). Her take is "There are so few movies set in that time period as it is, why pass up a good excuse to wear all those neat clothes?"

FWIW .

[FPAlpha]

Forbin wrote:

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Blah blah blah. We like what we like. I prefer it one way, you have no preference. IDIC. I don't need a lecture every time I express an opinion..

What? I'm not allowed to challenge your opinion on a public discussion board?

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, it's not as if Shakespeare himself didn't update the settings of his own plays. "The clock hath stricken three?" They didn't have clocks that struck the hour in Ancient Rome! His portrayals of historical times and places were generally more like the world he and his audience lived in.

I believe the Romans had clepsydra (water clocks) that could strike the hour.

http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/t...ellingtime.htm

The costumes, props. etc used in Shakespeare's day are known to have been contemporary so, yes, they weren't obsessed about historical accuracy. The play's the thing.

[Mage]

This one was announced quite a while ago actually, and I've been looking forward to it for a while. I loved Kenneth Brannagh's adaption of Much Ado... and I feel that Whedon's sense of humor is just right for a Shakespeare play. Should be good.

[stj]

On the question of period appropriateness, was Shakespeare indifferent, or ignorant? Was Cleopatra dressed in kirtle and wimple because it didn't matter or because he didn't know any better? Perhaps the answer was written on the sands of the seacoast of Bohemia, washed away by the tides, never to be known.

I'm really not so sure that Shakespeare always benefits from its loose attachment to place and time. After all, since real people are always specific to their place and time, ignoring that tends to falsify them. For instance, popular as Antony and Cleopatra seems to be, Cleopatra really seems to be some weird amalgam of King James' resentments of women (such as his mother Mary Queen of Scots or his predecessor Elizabeth I) and vamp that never carried any conviction to my eyes and ears.

For another example, consider Othello. In Shakespeare's time, the discovery of the world was in full swing. You know, Hakluyt's Voyages, etc. In that context, Othello's pompous stories from Latin authors about strange marvels, listened to open-eyed by the gullible Rosalind put a very different complexion on Othello's doubts about her. Abstracting from the setting falsifies the characters.

Nor do all aspects of Shakespeare really survive translation. Richard III really doesn't translate into thirties Fascism. It's about glorifying the Tudors by blackening their predecessor. The vision at Banquo's feast is meaningless to us. A woman's statue coming to life (I've forgotten if that's Cymbeline or A Winter's Tale) had resonances that simply do not apply today. I always found it remarkable that people so blithely ignored the basic premise of Lear that it is a cosmic tragedy if the King doesn't rule.