life and art
Jul. 23rd, 2008 04:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ckmasonSo I've been watching Slings and Arrows with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ftfisher, a Canadian cable miniseries about the backstage life of a Shakespearian theatre festival. It's all raving drama queens and the occasional ghost. The main character, Geoffrey Tennant, was driven mad by his director seven years ago and ran screaming into the night during a production of Hamlet; now his old director is dead and haunting him, and Geoffrey has been asked to take over the festival and bring artistic vision back, despite being still quite mad. I've seen Slings and Arrows before and in fact ftfisher is borrowing my DVDs, but I still love watching it and have been following along with her.
Slings and Arrows is remarkably good at creating characters you love to hate and then providing a creatively satisfying comeuppance for them. Holly Day, Sanjay, Anna's writer boyfriend... oh, they're all so AWFUL.
Geoffrey's nemesis is Darren Nichols, whom he has known since college. Darren, a pretentious bastard director who hates the theatre, is at first called in to direct Hamlet when Geoffrey, understandably, says he is not currently mentally equipped for the job. Past misfortunes with Darren's productions involved finding out the hard way that horses and fire did not mix. The horse stepped on an actress and apparently it was impossible to get across the stage without stepping in horseshit. Darren's vision for Hamlet involves running with the phrase "something rotten in the state of Denmark" for a "foul-looking, foul-acted, and, if possible, foul-smelling" show. His comeuppance involves swordplay and whimpering.
The first couple of times I watched the series, Darren was hard for me to deal with, but this time around, I'm finding myself enjoying the character more. He's still firmly in the love to hate him category, but I am loving it, whereas before it was hard for me to watch. I mentioned this toftfisher and she said, "Were you having to work with the asshat?", referring to a fellow film student of mine whose crimes against cinema are so egregious that we do not speak his name. In fact, I don't think she's ever even met him, but she has always responded to my tales of woe with sympathetic loathing.
(In all fairness I should probably mention that I'm not always a peach to work with either, but honestly, if you start poking at the camera asking, "Hey, what does this knob do?" just after your DP has set up a shot, how do you EXPECT her to react? And then, of course, I am certain that I am at least eight people's Bizarre Film School Story now, for the shoot during which I did not speak.)
I cast my mind back to the first time I saw the series and realized that yes, in fact, I had been in a class with the asshat at that time. Huh, no wonder Darren Nichols grated. And now? I haven't seen the asshat in months.
Another thing Slings and Arrows is really good at is portraying drama caricatures that anyone who's worked in show biz will recognize from the people they've had to work with.
Funny how life imitates art, or vice versa, isn't it?
ftfisher, a Canadian cable miniseries about the backstage life of a Shakespearian theatre festival. It's all raving drama queens and the occasional ghost. The main character, Geoffrey Tennant, was driven mad by his director seven years ago and ran screaming into the night during a production of Hamlet; now his old director is dead and haunting him, and Geoffrey has been asked to take over the festival and bring artistic vision back, despite being still quite mad. I've seen Slings and Arrows before and in fact ftfisher is borrowing my DVDs, but I still love watching it and have been following along with her.Slings and Arrows is remarkably good at creating characters you love to hate and then providing a creatively satisfying comeuppance for them. Holly Day, Sanjay, Anna's writer boyfriend... oh, they're all so AWFUL.
Geoffrey's nemesis is Darren Nichols, whom he has known since college. Darren, a pretentious bastard director who hates the theatre, is at first called in to direct Hamlet when Geoffrey, understandably, says he is not currently mentally equipped for the job. Past misfortunes with Darren's productions involved finding out the hard way that horses and fire did not mix. The horse stepped on an actress and apparently it was impossible to get across the stage without stepping in horseshit. Darren's vision for Hamlet involves running with the phrase "something rotten in the state of Denmark" for a "foul-looking, foul-acted, and, if possible, foul-smelling" show. His comeuppance involves swordplay and whimpering.
The first couple of times I watched the series, Darren was hard for me to deal with, but this time around, I'm finding myself enjoying the character more. He's still firmly in the love to hate him category, but I am loving it, whereas before it was hard for me to watch. I mentioned this to
ftfisher and she said, "Were you having to work with the asshat?", referring to a fellow film student of mine whose crimes against cinema are so egregious that we do not speak his name. In fact, I don't think she's ever even met him, but she has always responded to my tales of woe with sympathetic loathing. (In all fairness I should probably mention that I'm not always a peach to work with either, but honestly, if you start poking at the camera asking, "Hey, what does this knob do?" just after your DP has set up a shot, how do you EXPECT her to react? And then, of course, I am certain that I am at least eight people's Bizarre Film School Story now, for the shoot during which I did not speak.)
I cast my mind back to the first time I saw the series and realized that yes, in fact, I had been in a class with the asshat at that time. Huh, no wonder Darren Nichols grated. And now? I haven't seen the asshat in months.
Another thing Slings and Arrows is really good at is portraying drama caricatures that anyone who's worked in show biz will recognize from the people they've had to work with.
Funny how life imitates art, or vice versa, isn't it?
