Or...we could just hit him repeatedly with these big spiky maces!

[alexsarll]

Did anybody see The History Boys on stage *and* film? Because I saw the latter last night, and having already read the director's commentary, I'm interested as to whether there are any differences between the two beyond the obvious. Certainly it felt as though many of the lines and performances would have been quite powerful on stage where they were a little unsubtle for the screen; the ending might even have been moving rather than mawkish. The only scene which felt even vaguely *filmic* was the montage of Oxbridge scenes set brilliantly, counterintuitively to The Cure's 'A Forest', reminding us that our protagonists are but innocents abroad. Beyond that, it's passably entertaining - but even as a play, I can't see how it would have been great rather than good. Its argument is confused - by which I don't mean any failure to take sides, rather, unlike Stoppard it fails even to throw light on the terms of the conflict. Why does neither side of the Holocaust argument scene have any decent points to make? Why would a headmaster who talks about creating "Renaissance men" object to Hector's classes which seem to do just that? What the blazes does the PE teacher have to do with *anything*? And at the risk of coming across a bit Tatchell, I'm uncomfortable with the implication that any good teacher is necessarily "a homosexual and a sad fvck". In terms of plays with heavy Housman references, this is maybe fit to kiss the shoes of The Invention of Love. Maybe.
And Richard Griffiths...I feel a bit sad for Richard Griffiths sometimes, and I do mean him not his characters. I picture him longing to lose a little weight, but mournfully shovelling those pies down his gullet, always aware that if he ever stops looking like a hippopotamus with a splinter in its foot, his career will be over.

Jon Savage's England's Dreaming is one of the music books I see most frequently on my friends' shelves, and yet if any of them knew his follow-up proper was imminent, they've not mentioned it to me. For the record: Teenage: the Creation of Youth Culture is out next month, but there's a wider question to be asked, about why with a few exceptions (mostly boy wizard-shaped), people are generally so unaware of imminent book launches, even when they're exactly the sort of people who know which albums of interest are hitting over the next few months.

The Disability Rights Commission objects to the continued use of Routemasters on *two* central London routes, even though both routes also have accessible buses running. What selfish, joyless pricks they must be.
Meanwhile, McDonalds is campaigning against the dictionary definition of 'McJob', apparently failing to grasp, as these campaigns always do, that dictionaries record WHAT THE BLOODY WORDS MEAN and cannot be amended at any monomaniac's whim, unless said monomaniac somehow convinces the language to do its bidding first.
In summary: a pox on all special interest groups.

Comments

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

has been called "the last bus to be a proper bus".

Oh fvck off. It's a BUS. Its purpose is to enable lots of people to go from one place to another along a predefined route. It's not a fvcking museum piece. I have problems with bendy buses, but Routemasters, attractive though they are, are bloody impractical.

[angelv.livejournal.com]

With book releases, how do you find out about them? I only find out through Bookseller, which is pretty specialist, and tube/bus ads, which only seem to advertise fucking spy books and ones about girls who are meant to be like me but are totally alien to me.

Music is much more easily accessible.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Dudes seemed to know about the Thomas Pynchon that was out before wobs...

I suppose wobs is a different matter altogether though, dudes find themselves in bookshops more often.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

also, pynchon dude.

i never have any idea when books are out, i wonder if it's related to the fact that books are, in general, expected to sell over a long period of time, rather than the push to get records into the charts in week one?

also, to my shame, i've never read england's dreaming, and i ph34r that if i look for it on amazong, one-click ordering on payday could lead to BADNESS...

[darkship.livejournal.com]

Re McJob: are Google still campaigning to have the verb form of 'google' removed from the dictionary, which I feel is an equally fruitless quest?

[auxyeuxdargent.livejournal.com]

Interesting facts about Richard Griffiths:

He was in the year above my mum at manchester Poly Drama School thing.
His parents were both deaf and dumb.
His weight problem is medical - it's to do with his thyroid.

Kisses x x x

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

You can borrow my England's Dreaming, especially if you remind me during Friday and I can bring it to the pub.

It's good, though I think I prefer the battier Greil Marcus take on things. This new book sounds very interesting.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Their case is different, because they lose the trademark if it becomes a generic term. Hoover and others have also had this issue. Something like that anyway.

Remember, McDonalds and other firms, dictionaries are not Wikipedia.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

History Boys stage and screen differences:

In the play, Irwin is shown in flash-forward scenes as a popular wheelchair-bound TV history presenter in the 90s (receiving a pathetic attempted blackmail about his schoolboy-fancying by a desperate, bedsit-bound, Internet-dwelling older Posner). Irwin also becomes a sinister Government advisor a la A. Campbell in the near future. Alan Bennett is clearly saying something about his teaching techniques - all soundbites and attention-grabbing spin - appearing in other aspects of modern society. Although this keeps you waiting to find out how he ended up in a wheelchair (the traffic accident at the end), I did think that AB was trying to say too much at once. This was all cut out partly to keep the film shorter, but also to focus more on the boys. Stephen C Moore's more filmic style of acting (all in the eyes!) coupled with the omission of these flash-forward scenes made the film a lot kinder to Irwin - he's less the villain of the piece. Posner, without his flash-forward scene as the blackmailer, also gets a kinder ending in the film. According to the DVD audio commentary, Hector's end felt more than enough in the film (where everything is brought into a harsher light), so all the more reason to give Irwin and Posner happier endings.

The play is a lot more moving, not least the Bye Bye Blackbird song and all the other musical bits, because the young actors are really there singing in front of you (and the Scripps actor is a brilliant pianist).

So I'm a fan of both, as both formats have their own pros and cons. Read the play!

[ksta.livejournal.com]

I *loved* the History Boys film. Apart from the stupid ending. I only hope there is some hidden meaning in the tosh tweeness there.

Virgin Airways have won my unbounded respect for showing films that have been in the cinemas in the last year, all of which I wanted to see. There were 50 films to choose from! Along with episodes of blackadder. Now if only they had given me enough food...

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

>Why would a headmaster who talks about creating "Renaissance men" object to Hector's classes which seem to do just that?

He doesn't realise this himself until right at the end, where his Assembly speech quotes Hector verbatim.

>What the blazes does the PE teacher have to do with *anything*?

Film only, brought in for a bit of variation. See also the Art class.

Stoppard can't do poignancy as well as Bennett, Bennett can't do ideas as well as Stoppard. Only one way to settle this: FIIIIGHT!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Except that in a city often near gridlock, where it's a gamble as to whether taking the bus will be faster than walking, a bus the able-bodied majority can enter or leave at will according to traffic flow &c is the very zenith of practicality.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yup. And even Bookseller tends largely to be about stuff which'll be filed at the front of bookshops but which means less than nothing to me. With a few favourite authors I'll check Amazon every so often, see if any forthcoming releases are listed, but obviously one can't do that for every author one vaguely likes (especially someone like Savage who is hardly prolific). So often the first I know will be if I see a review somewhere else (meaning it's too late for me to seek a copy for review), or (as here) when a copy just turns up and I think "he'sgotanewoneoutI'msohavingthat" before striking for it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Good point - there are a few writers big enough that the arrival of their new one is preceded by ripples of news and anticipation; I suppose the recent Iain Banks would be another, non-wobs example of that. But say, Ian McEwan - he's a pretty big deal too, but I'd seen no mention that he had a new one coming. Not that I'm a big fan, but I would have expected to know that after all the fuss over Saturday.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I suppose books in general are less immediate in many ways. Another example would be that my CDs and records are scrupulously alphabetical, mainly so that I know where everything is - because if I want to listen to a given song I want it NOW. Whereas the books are on a looser, more intuitive system - because if I want to read a given book, I want to read it sometime vaguely soonish.

On punk:

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Greil Marcus > Jon Savage >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Stewart Home

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I believe so, but in a rather halfhearted fashion, presumably in order to satisfy the legal requirements without actually violating their mission statement by being evil.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Now, I knew the thing about the deaf parents, but not the thyroid (nor, obviously, your mum). In a way I find that less sad; if he's trapped by his physiology then he's in the same boat as everyone else, which doesn't seem as bad as being a kind of inverse supermodel trapped by his career.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Which brings us to the whole other rant about how intellectual property laws, while based on a valid foundation, have become far too wide-ranging to the point that they stifle legitimate creativity and even the evolution of the language.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Or Hulk, even - particularly the Ultimate version with his boundless appetite and tendency to get typecast but play those roles very well.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Was Irwin played by someone else on stage, then? Looking at the Hytner article again I suppose there is one line which can be read that way, but I didn't register it at first, and had thought the whole cast the same.
The idea of having Irwin become a spin doctor does seem to be a rather heavy-handed way of clarifying the point; I wanted a little more focus, sure, but that just sounds like polemic. Whereas leaving it at TV historian, especially with Frances de la Tour's comment as to what *sort* of TV historian, seems a subtler and also more general way of making the same connection. From what you say, the piece is better without that stuff - and I'm definitely glad Posner got a (slightly) happier ending.

I can very much picture 'Bye Bye Blackbird' working a lot better in the theatre, though.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Bet they weren't offering any Sky programmes, though...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

">Why would a headmaster who talks about creating "Renaissance men" object to Hector's classes which seem to do just that?

He doesn't realise this himself until right at the end, where his Assembly speech quotes Hector verbatim."

The funeral assembly? In the film at least, the most noticeable Hector lines from the head are when he (unwittingly?) says everything Hector *didn't* want said of his boys.

">What the blazes does the PE teacher have to do with *anything*?

Film only, brought in for a bit of variation. See also the Art class."

A variation that doesn't add anything but variation, and indeed verges on the utterly generic, is deeply inartistic. They might as well have opened a door to a room full of ninjas a la Wayne's World - that would at least have been funnier.

"Stoppard can't do poignancy as well as Bennett, Bennett can't do ideas as well as Stoppard. Only one way to settle this: FIIIIGHT!"

I know that's the usual line on Stoppard, but I really don't think it's fair - it's often just another symptom of the prevalent British belief that intellect and emotion are somehow mutually exclusive. Leaving aside the 'entertainments' (TV plays &c), all of his major plays have some absolutely heartbreaking moments - missed chances, lost loves and the rest. And as a rule, they're utterly and indissolubly intertwined with the ideas.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

>Was Irwin played by someone else on stage, then?

No, it was SCM onstage too, but I meant his very eye-orientated (and indeed eyebrows!) style of acting works better on the screen than onstage. He really comes alive in the film version, and when the boys ask him what his private life is like, you really feel for him.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

I don't mean Stoppard can't do heartbreak and loneliness, just that he can't do it as well as Bennett.

As for a melding of intellect and emotion, 'Sunday In The Park With George', the recent UK production, is the most moving production I've ever seen. And it's just brainy, difficult old Sondheim going on about a brainy, difficult old painter. It can be done. But the right music always helps.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

Oh, and in the stage version, the audience ARE the assembly kids, sung to directly by the History Boys class. The stage of the school hall is the stage of the National Theatre.

In the movie, of course, the scene is in a real school hall, with real kids as extras. So the emotional punch isn't the same at all. But I don't think there's any other way of adapting that scene, short of just filming the play onstage.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

My general feeling about Stoppard is that, at least in the modern theatre, he does everything better than everyone.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Stephen Fry's play Latin, or, Tobacco and Boys also has the audience as the schoolboys and the actors as teachers, doesn't it? And covers not dissimilar topics. I wonder if it was an inspiration on The History Boys.

That sort of thing does work much better in the theatre, it's true. It's one of the tragedies of even a great filmed Shakespeare that they can never quite manage the moments where it's important for the audience and actors to be in the same physical space.

Hope tonight goes well, incidentally; I am sufficiently ill that even if I managed to drag myself out, I would only lower the tone.