In an era where cinema can set Shakespeare everywhere from high schools to other planets, and even turn them into kung-fu movies, anything is possible. So, speak now and be counted; who would you like to make a Shakespeare movie, and what alternate genres would benefit from the skills of the Bard of Avon?
For myself, I would like to see:
The Toho movie - Mechahamlet
The slasher movie - Henry V Part 8
The wire-fu movie - Macbeth Reloaded (“Is this a dagger I see before me?” “No, Macbeth, it is merely part of the dream that makes you a slave.”)
Have you seen Kurasawa’s Throne of Blood? Samurai Macbeth-- not exactly an indecisive battlemech epic, but a lot of fun, anyway.
I wish that they had made Bob & Doug McKenzie versions of the entire Shakespeare canon.
I’d really like to see Measure for Measure updated. I’m thinking of something along the lines of Angelo as a D.A. in Vienna, Virginia, pandering to the “Focus on the Family” demographic. Everything else just kind of fits into place.
I know! Let’s make Romeo and Juliet into a musical, but instead of Montagues and Capulets they could be, like, rival street gangs in New York! Yeah, that would be great, and one could be Puerto Rican, and the other… What, it’s been done?
I like the romeo and juliet and the Othello they did. I’m not the only one right, they were good!
The one adaptation I would like to see is Julius Caesar. It could be set in a high school, and it could be done just like Romeo and Juliet was done, just saying the lines from the actual play. It could work, really it can.
If not then an adaptation of Julius Caesar but not done like Romeo and Juliet. But the main character has to be named Caesar.
I’ve seen R&J and the Scottish play done so many different ways (and to a lesser extent Hamlet and Julius Caesar) and most pretty well too. Generally, I think that if anyone has the desire to do the Bard, they want to do him well. I think even the Decaprio thing had good intentions.
I think Comedy of Errors might lend itself to good old-fashioned slapstick and I can see it being done in modern dress. Isolation would be somewhat necessary – Perhaps an island in the Caribbian or perhaps a village in the Tyrolean Alps or an island in Indonesia or even a mountain town in Colorado (that could put it in the Old West too - that could work-- I mean Patrick Stewart did it with Lear in early Texas didn’t he?).
I could see doing a modern dress Measure for Measure in Detroit or Chicago or better yet New Orleans. I think that could work.
Maybe put Merchant of Venice in turn of the century New York or London. I could see both of those. If you wanted to change the dynamic of Merchant, though, put it in just pre-Nazi Germany. It would change the stress in so many different ways. Imagine Shylock’s final speech in that situation.
When recently reading Henry V, I noted that the one-man chorus insists in all of his speeches that the cause of the war is just and that the people are enthusiastic, and yet his statements are often clearly contradicted by the facts as presented in the scenes that come directly before and after. This got me thinking about a modern-day adaption of the play where the Chorus is a cable news show host.
Years ago, the TV show Head of the Class featured bits from a version of Hamlet, which were surreal and would have made an interesting feature-length film.
Orson Welles did some fascinating sounding versions of Shakespeare’s work for the stage during the Depression, including one with an all black cast, that I’d love to see filmed.
(As a side note, in Adrian Noble’s production – which was sort of a precursor to Branagh’s film; a lot of the same people were in it – Ian McDiarmid played Chorus very skeptically and ironically. I see a little of that in Derek Jacobi’s take on the part in the Branagh film, but it’s not so pronounced as McDiarmid seems to have done it, although I go by secondhand knowledge, not having seen the Noble production. ;))
Governor Quinn said:
I’ll see your Henry IV and raise you a Richard II…
TV time, Trevor Nunn’s recent stage production of Merchant was set in the 1930s. It did add a lot to the play…
I’d rather like to see a Roaring Twenties Measure for Measure. Or a Weimar Berlin adaptation of same. And a good film version of Tempest (maybe a sci-fi version, with Shakespeare’s text…that’d be cool). And some of the histories that are not either Henry V or Richard III, much as I like those two plays.
I’d love to see an anime Tempest as well, or a real modern production of Merchant, but I think that would be… Difficult, considering the subject matter.
For years I’d wished to see a Hamlet done in the Business world, and lo Michael Almeredya did it in 2000. (Although in my mind I always saw Michael Douglas as Claudius, not Kyle McLaughlin)
I’d love to do a half/half thing of Henrys IV-V, focusing on Henry’s change from boy to man (And deleting the wooing scene at the end of V). Done in the JUlie Taymor style.
Yes, I have seen Throne of Blood - along with most of Kurosawa’s better-known movies (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Kagemusha). It was pretty good.
Though this was meant to be a joke thread, it’s interesting to see what people have come up with in seriousness. When I put this question to a group of friends and acquaintances someone suggested a gay porn version of Two Gentlemen of Verona and Richard III: International Man of Mystery, but Julius Caesar set in a high school takes the biscuit. (Fast Ides at Cicero High?)
I wouldn’t mind seeing Schwarzenegger do Coriolanus.
A few years ago there was a version of The Merry Wives of Windsor done, set in 1950s suburbia. As this play was the only play Shakespeare wrote set in contemporary middle-class England, this setting would be about perfect. I’d love to have seen it.
For a college assignment, I once set Hamlet in a Wal Mart. The title? Dane’s Discount City
And here’s an idea I’ve had for a long time, so everybody has to promise not to use it, OK? I want to do a hip hop musical (I think the term used for Carmen was “hip hopera”) based on Julius Caesar and roughly following the Tupac Shakur / Notorious B.I.G. murders. The title? Et Tu, Niggah
