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It's almost fifteen years since I was first introduced to Audrey Hepburn with, what else, Breakfast at Tiffany's. Since then I've seen a lot of her films, some of them classics (Charade is my favourite) and some less so (I couldn't make it past the first 20 minutes of My Fair Lady). But not until now have I seen her second most famous film, Roman Holiday. The timing works rather well, making it a companion piece to Waters of Mars - two stories about circumscribed power and the degree to which duty can be avoided, two stories which are going somewhere obvious and then throw you in the final 20 minutes. But then, it also seems like a very ahead-of-its-time story with the princess as a proto-Britney (drugged up to help her keep to a punishing schedule, she goes off the net and cuts off all her hair, only to end up palling around with someone plotting to sell her story). Except in other ways it really shows its age* - all that manoeuvring to conceal the fact that someone's taking photos! Admittedly I remember an episode of Frasier which did the same, but even at the time I thought that was a pretty nonsensical episode.
And it should go without saying that Hepburn, in all three iterations of her role, is delightful. Look, got through that whole thing without using the G-word!
Later that evening, flicking through an anthology I picked up years back, I was reading a Keith Roberts story I didn't know which again, felt like Roman Holiday, but this time from another angle - the brief romance that cannot be consummated or continued because they come from different worlds. Except this one was about a hedge witch and a scarecrow (the collection also contained Terry Pratchett's 'Troll Bridge', which I've read before and loved but which is even sadder read in the knowledge that, like Cohen the Barbarian, Pratchett himself now knows he hasn't got so long. Why haven't his short stories been properly collected? Surely there'd be a market for them).
The next day, in the Conan collection I've been reading on and off for ages, I reach the centrepiece, 'People of the Black Circle'. The plot of which? A moment of connection between Conan and a queen, but they can't stay together because different lives and all that. Same as Roman Holiday, though admittedly with more about how the "elemental woman" takes over from the Queen when she gets a thrill from how easily Conan kidnaps her. Also, can't see the massive bloodshed, giant snake or necromantic rape scene really fitting into an Audrey Hepburn film (though Robin and Marian wasn't all that far off...
As a control to prove it's not just me getting obsessional, since last posting I have also watched something like a whole season of Invader Zim and I did not identify the same plot in any of that. Although it was, clearly, brilliant. SPACE MEAT.
More on the Prisoner remake: "The catchphrase and key theme of the original show was Number Six’s weekly decree, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” In an interview in last week’s New York Times, the writer of the remake said he felt the need to modify that sentiment into something more moderate, less individualist, more… community-minded." DO NOT WANT.
The article also has some interesting stuff about what went wrong, for similar reasons, with the Judge Dredd film.
*Something else weirdly dated: Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For A Day. If you've read Freakonomics, he's the American-Indian (as in ethnically from India, not redskin) sociologist who spent years hanging with Chicago gangs, with things winding down by 1996. His fuller account of his experiences is pretty interesting, and some details of that seem oddly out-of-time too, like the lack of mobiles. But what really intrigued me is how many ghetto kids he meets seem to have no idea whatsoever what an Indian is (and some of the local cops are no better). He's initially accused of being a spy for a Mexican gang, other people keep calling him an Arab, such as do grasp he's an Indian start talking about Geronimo and Custer...and not that I know Chicago projects all that well, but I bet after two decades of The Simpsons, Mohinder in Heroes and such, the people there would at least have some conception of an Indian.
And it should go without saying that Hepburn, in all three iterations of her role, is delightful. Look, got through that whole thing without using the G-word!
Later that evening, flicking through an anthology I picked up years back, I was reading a Keith Roberts story I didn't know which again, felt like Roman Holiday, but this time from another angle - the brief romance that cannot be consummated or continued because they come from different worlds. Except this one was about a hedge witch and a scarecrow (the collection also contained Terry Pratchett's 'Troll Bridge', which I've read before and loved but which is even sadder read in the knowledge that, like Cohen the Barbarian, Pratchett himself now knows he hasn't got so long. Why haven't his short stories been properly collected? Surely there'd be a market for them).
The next day, in the Conan collection I've been reading on and off for ages, I reach the centrepiece, 'People of the Black Circle'. The plot of which? A moment of connection between Conan and a queen, but they can't stay together because different lives and all that. Same as Roman Holiday, though admittedly with more about how the "elemental woman" takes over from the Queen when she gets a thrill from how easily Conan kidnaps her. Also, can't see the massive bloodshed, giant snake or necromantic rape scene really fitting into an Audrey Hepburn film (though Robin and Marian wasn't all that far off...
As a control to prove it's not just me getting obsessional, since last posting I have also watched something like a whole season of Invader Zim and I did not identify the same plot in any of that. Although it was, clearly, brilliant. SPACE MEAT.
More on the Prisoner remake: "The catchphrase and key theme of the original show was Number Six’s weekly decree, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” In an interview in last week’s New York Times, the writer of the remake said he felt the need to modify that sentiment into something more moderate, less individualist, more… community-minded." DO NOT WANT.
The article also has some interesting stuff about what went wrong, for similar reasons, with the Judge Dredd film.
*Something else weirdly dated: Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For A Day. If you've read Freakonomics, he's the American-Indian (as in ethnically from India, not redskin) sociologist who spent years hanging with Chicago gangs, with things winding down by 1996. His fuller account of his experiences is pretty interesting, and some details of that seem oddly out-of-time too, like the lack of mobiles. But what really intrigued me is how many ghetto kids he meets seem to have no idea whatsoever what an Indian is (and some of the local cops are no better). He's initially accused of being a spy for a Mexican gang, other people keep calling him an Arab, such as do grasp he's an Indian start talking about Geronimo and Custer...and not that I know Chicago projects all that well, but I bet after two decades of The Simpsons, Mohinder in Heroes and such, the people there would at least have some conception of an Indian.
