Potrzebie
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Double Dare (1976) and Blue Remembered Hills (1979)
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Dennis Potter's astonishing, multi-layered Double Dare was telecast by the BBC in 1976. For the BBC's Play for Today series, Potter wrote Double Dare as a reflexive commentary on writers and actresses. It was the first Potter production to be done entirely on film.
Playwright Martin Ellis intends to write a play about a prostitute and her client at a hotel. So he invites the actress he plans for the part to join him for a drink at a hotel, hoping this will give him some material to work with. As they talk in the hotel lobby, the boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to blur and overlap.
Scenes included in this clip from BBC Close Up show the play's innovative experiment of double dramas interweaving. Actress Kika Markham's memories of Potter and the production reveal yet another psychological level, as she explains how Potter invited her to meet him at a hotel before he wrote the play. Embedding has been disabled, so to see it, go here. For another Double Dare scene, go here and move to the three-minute mark. Blue Remembered Hills was also written for Play for Today.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
--A.E. Housman (1896)
"When we dream of childhood," said Dennis Potter, "we take our present selves with us. It is not the adult world writ small; childhood is the adult world writ large." Potter viewed childhood as "adult society without all the conventions and the polite forms which overlay it," so the cruelty of children emerges in Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (1979), a theme also explored by Ray Bradbury ("The Playground") and Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye). For Blue Remembered Hills, Potter employed the device he had introduced 14 years earlier (in Stand Up, Nigel Barton): children's roles were cast with adult actors, providing "a magnifying glass to show what it's like to be a child" in this naturalistic memory drama of a "golden day" that turns to tragedy.
On a sunny, summer afternoon in bucolic England of 1943, seven West Country children (two girls, five boys) play in the Forest of Dean. Their games and spontaneous actions (continuous and in real time) reflect their awareness of WWII, but no adults are present to intrude. As the group moves through the woods and back to the grassy hills, their words and actions illustrate how "childhood is not transparent with innocence." When the two girls (Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski) push a pram into a barn to play house, the casting concept is heightened, doubling back on itself in a remarkable moment: adults are suddenly seen to be acting as children who are pretending to be adults, and lines from Housman echo across the years.
Cast: Colin Welland (Willie), Michael Elphick (Peter), Robin Ellis (John), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), Colin Jeavons (Donald), Dennis Potter (Narrator). Potter reads the Housman poem at the conclusion.
Dennis Potter's astonishing, multi-layered Double Dare was telecast by the BBC in 1976. For the BBC's Play for Today series, Potter wrote Double Dare as a reflexive commentary on writers and actresses. It was the first Potter production to be done entirely on film.
Playwright Martin Ellis intends to write a play about a prostitute and her client at a hotel. So he invites the actress he plans for the part to join him for a drink at a hotel, hoping this will give him some material to work with. As they talk in the hotel lobby, the boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to blur and overlap.
Scenes included in this clip from BBC Close Up show the play's innovative experiment of double dramas interweaving. Actress Kika Markham's memories of Potter and the production reveal yet another psychological level, as she explains how Potter invited her to meet him at a hotel before he wrote the play. Embedding has been disabled, so to see it, go here. For another Double Dare scene, go here and move to the three-minute mark. Blue Remembered Hills was also written for Play for Today.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
--A.E. Housman (1896)
"When we dream of childhood," said Dennis Potter, "we take our present selves with us. It is not the adult world writ small; childhood is the adult world writ large." Potter viewed childhood as "adult society without all the conventions and the polite forms which overlay it," so the cruelty of children emerges in Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (1979), a theme also explored by Ray Bradbury ("The Playground") and Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye). For Blue Remembered Hills, Potter employed the device he had introduced 14 years earlier (in Stand Up, Nigel Barton): children's roles were cast with adult actors, providing "a magnifying glass to show what it's like to be a child" in this naturalistic memory drama of a "golden day" that turns to tragedy.
On a sunny, summer afternoon in bucolic England of 1943, seven West Country children (two girls, five boys) play in the Forest of Dean. Their games and spontaneous actions (continuous and in real time) reflect their awareness of WWII, but no adults are present to intrude. As the group moves through the woods and back to the grassy hills, their words and actions illustrate how "childhood is not transparent with innocence." When the two girls (Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski) push a pram into a barn to play house, the casting concept is heightened, doubling back on itself in a remarkable moment: adults are suddenly seen to be acting as children who are pretending to be adults, and lines from Housman echo across the years.
Cast: Colin Welland (Willie), Michael Elphick (Peter), Robin Ellis (John), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), Colin Jeavons (Donald), Dennis Potter (Narrator). Potter reads the Housman poem at the conclusion.
Labels: blue remembered hills, dennis potter, helen mirren, ray bradbury
¶ 4:38 PM 0 comments
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Chris Marshall of Collected Comics Library compares Gemstone's EC Archives The Vault of Horror with GC's EC Archives The Vault of Horror.
Chris calls EC's GhouLunatics "witches", but the Vault-Keeper was a ghoul and the Crypt-Keeper was the son of a living mummy and a two-headed corpse. Another EC horror host was Drusilla, drawn by Johnny Craig as the Vault-Keeper's companion in the Vault, but she made so few appearances we never knew if she had supernatural abilities.
A bafflement about "A Stitch in Time!" is that Craig said he scripted the story but also said he was unfamiliar with the Triangle Factory fire. Yet the story parallels events of the fire. My notes for the EC Archives Vault of Horror cover the influence of Ray Bradbury, Weird Tales and other sources. Here's are excerpts:
The Triangle fire reportedly began in a scrap bin, the focus of the final pages in the story. The sweatshop owner is named Lasch, and the Triangle fire took place in the ten-story Asch Building place at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place. In the last panel, the Vault-Keeper’s concluding pun is a direct reference: “…don’t asch Lasch.” Although polished in both script and art, the story has an obvious flaw, since the fire begins for no apparent reason other than to heighten the finale with flames. What started this fire? We are never told.
“The Jellyfish!” in The Vault of Horror 19 was suggested by Bradbury’s “Skeleton”. The idea for “Skeleton” came to Bradbury when a “strangely sore larynx” prompted him to visit his family doctor, who said, “That’s all perfectly normal. You’ve just never bothered to feel the tissues, muscles, or tendons in your neck or, for that matter, your body. Consider the medulla oblongata.” Recalling the incident, Bradbury wrote, “Consider the medulla oblongata! Migawd, I could hardly pronounce it! I went home feeling my bones—my kneecaps, my floating ribs, my elbows, all those hidden Gothic symbols of darkness—and wrote 'Skeleton'.” It was published in the September 1945 issue of Weird Tales and reprinted in Dark Carnival.
Chris calls EC's GhouLunatics "witches", but the Vault-Keeper was a ghoul and the Crypt-Keeper was the son of a living mummy and a two-headed corpse. Another EC horror host was Drusilla, drawn by Johnny Craig as the Vault-Keeper's companion in the Vault, but she made so few appearances we never knew if she had supernatural abilities.
The Triangle fire reportedly began in a scrap bin, the focus of the final pages in the story. The sweatshop owner is named Lasch, and the Triangle fire took place in the ten-story Asch Building place at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place. In the last panel, the Vault-Keeper’s concluding pun is a direct reference: “…don’t asch Lasch.” Although polished in both script and art, the story has an obvious flaw, since the fire begins for no apparent reason other than to heighten the finale with flames. What started this fire? We are never told.
“The Jellyfish!” in The Vault of Horror 19 was suggested by Bradbury’s “Skeleton”. The idea for “Skeleton” came to Bradbury when a “strangely sore larynx” prompted him to visit his family doctor, who said, “That’s all perfectly normal. You’ve just never bothered to feel the tissues, muscles, or tendons in your neck or, for that matter, your body. Consider the medulla oblongata.” Recalling the incident, Bradbury wrote, “Consider the medulla oblongata! Migawd, I could hardly pronounce it! I went home feeling my bones—my kneecaps, my floating ribs, my elbows, all those hidden Gothic symbols of darkness—and wrote 'Skeleton'.” It was published in the September 1945 issue of Weird Tales and reprinted in Dark Carnival.
Joe Mugnaini's illustration for Ray Bradbury's "Skeleton" in The October Country. Mugnaini did the Ballantine edition cover and interiors.
Labels: ec, mugnaini, ray bradbury, weird tales
¶ 8:23 AM 0 comments
Friday, December 21, 2007
Blue Remembered Hills
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
--A.E. Housman (1896)
"When we dream of childhood," said Dennis Potter, "we take our present selves with us. It is not the adult world writ small; childhood is the adult world writ large." Potter viewed childhood as "adult society without all the conventions and the polite forms which overlay it," so the cruelty of children emerges in Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (1979), a theme also explored by Ray Bradbury ("The Playground") and Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye). For Blue Remembered Hills, Potter employed the device he had introduced 14 years earlier (in Stand Up, Nigel Barton): children's roles were cast with adult actors, providing "a magnifying glass to show what it's like to be a child" in this naturalistic memory drama of a "golden day" that turns to tragedy.
Cast: Colin Welland (Willie), Michael Elphick (Peter), Robin Ellis (John), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), Colin Jeavons (Donald), Dennis Potter (Narrator). Potter reads the Housman poem at the conclusion.
Oddly reminiscent of Potter and Housman is this video of Glósóli by Sigur Rós, filmed in Iceland in August 2005 by directors Stefan Arni and Siggi Kinski with Swedish director Ted Karlsson.
For commercials and more music videos by Arni and Kinski, go here.
The same year that Housman wrote his poem, Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) wrote the poem that gave JP Miller the title for his Days of Wine and Roses teleplay (originally on Playhouse 90 in 1958). The poem's title is from Horace's Ode I and translates as: "The shortness of life prevents us from entertaining far-off hopes."
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetet Incohare Longam
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
-- Ernest Dowson (1896)
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
--A.E. Housman (1896)
"When we dream of childhood," said Dennis Potter, "we take our present selves with us. It is not the adult world writ small; childhood is the adult world writ large." Potter viewed childhood as "adult society without all the conventions and the polite forms which overlay it," so the cruelty of children emerges in Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (1979), a theme also explored by Ray Bradbury ("The Playground") and Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye). For Blue Remembered Hills, Potter employed the device he had introduced 14 years earlier (in Stand Up, Nigel Barton): children's roles were cast with adult actors, providing "a magnifying glass to show what it's like to be a child" in this naturalistic memory drama of a "golden day" that turns to tragedy.
On a sunny, summer afternoon in bucolic England of 1943, seven West Country children (two girls, five boys) play in the Forest of Dean. Their games and spontaneous actions (continuous and in real time) reflect their awareness of WWII, but no adults are present to intrude. As the group moves through the woods and back to the grassy hills, their words and actions illustrate how "childhood is not transparent with innocence." When the two girls (Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski) push a pram into a barn to play house, the casting concept is heightened, doubling back on itself in a remarkable moment: adults are suddenly seen to be acting as children who are pretending to be adults, and lines from Housman echo across the years.
Cast: Colin Welland (Willie), Michael Elphick (Peter), Robin Ellis (John), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), Colin Jeavons (Donald), Dennis Potter (Narrator). Potter reads the Housman poem at the conclusion.
Oddly reminiscent of Potter and Housman is this video of Glósóli by Sigur Rós, filmed in Iceland in August 2005 by directors Stefan Arni and Siggi Kinski with Swedish director Ted Karlsson.
For commercials and more music videos by Arni and Kinski, go here.
The same year that Housman wrote his poem, Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) wrote the poem that gave JP Miller the title for his Days of Wine and Roses teleplay (originally on Playhouse 90 in 1958). The poem's title is from Horace's Ode I and translates as: "The shortness of life prevents us from entertaining far-off hopes."
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetet Incohare Longam
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
-- Ernest Dowson (1896)
Labels: dennis potter, helen mirren, jp miller, ray bradbury
¶ 5:08 AM 0 comments
