December 5 - the Lymond miniseries in my head
This comes at a good time, for I have just seen the cat creature off and will not get to pet her fluffy belly for a whole month, so I have a sad. 
hedda62 (who has a book out! go check it out!) asked for "the Lymond miniseries in my head starring Tom Hiddleston" - lots of dates still available if anyone would like me to blether on about anything else.
First off, when I say I want to make a Lymond vid (and oh, I do, to this song for starters), I'm not really talking about a realistic miniseries so much as the very vivid visuals that I picture while reading, plus montage techniques. (I have, for example, a fully worked out vid idea in mind for Wolf Hall, which they are actually filming, but I doubt it will look anything like I'd want it to.)
But as soon as we start talking about things that could hypothetically actually happen, rather than straight mind-reading, you have to compromise. Even Tom Hiddleston is a compromise - he's too old and too tall and not blond enough. But at the same time, I'm convinced he'd be great in the part, even since seeing him as Prince Hal in the Henry IV episodes of The Hollow Crown: his Hal basically is Lymond as far as the script will allow him to be, with the laughter and concealed self-disgust and lightening changes of temper. I mean, just look at him, in the moment when he hears his father wants to see him: "Oh God, Jerott, are you doing this for a wager?"
So he's not 20 for Game of Kings, not that any actual 20-year-old actor could conceivably play that (they'd probably get Jamie Campbell Bower or someone if they tried...). In fact, pretty much everyone would have to be aged up, because modern actors don't age like 16th-century people, and that tends to be the done thing. As far as the rest of the casting game, it's a bit fragmentary - there are many characters I have very clear mental images of, like Richard and Margaret Lennox, but an actor hasn't pinged me recently. In practical terms, I'd like to see some unknown and Scottish actors, and if there's anything Game of Thrones has taught me it's that the right person can fully inhabit a role even if they don't seem to have remotely the right colouring etc. for it. Still, if I was casting today, I'd probably pick the appropriately-named Eddie Redmayne for Will Scott. Katie McGrath has the looks and the Irishness for Mariotta, but her complete inability to act has been proved to me now on multiple occasions, so it would have to be Michelle Dockery. Phyllida Law for Sybilla. Natalie Dormer as Marthe (compare with previous gif of Hiddleston). Lara Pulver as Oonagh O'Dwyer. Rose Leslie (actually Scottish, though she doesn't sound it) as Christian Stewart? Perhaps Anna Friel for Kate Somerville? Finding the right Philippa is perennially difficult, but someone on Tumblr suggested Sarah Bolger from The Tudors and I can see it, particularly for The Ringed Castle/Checkmate - here she is even wearing a silly hat(they'd have to cast Young Philippa just right, and there's basically no moment when the switch wouldn't be awkward - we see her more or less continuously between 13 and 20).
And so and on so forth. I do very badly want this to exist, done right - with a series of 6-10 episodes for each book, and proper production values. I'd want them to keep as much of the dialogue in as possible, naturally, but reading through it I can imagine how things could be simplified and shortened a bit to suit the medium (most of the jokes in Game of Kings aren't actually literally). Of course, given Game of Thrones they'd have to change the title, but if they could film The White Queen...!
Just imagine the opening of the first episode - I want a Scottish voice reading the epigraph from The Game and Playe of Chesse while the camera pans over a chessboard lit by candlelight, which becomes a map of 16th-century Europe, zooms in on Scotland*, zooms in on Edinburgh, the Nor'Loch, then the real Nor'Loch at night with a figure swimming through it. He reaches land, wipes his face, and it's TOM HIDDLESTON, looking bright-eyed and dangerous. Cut to Tom Erskine and Wat Buccleuch, discussing the current political situation and what will happen now that "Lymond is back", and go on from there.
*These are then the opening credits of subsequent episodes, with the lay-out of the chessboard changing each series, and the maps becoming the principal locations of that book.
Crossposted to http://yunitsa.dreamwidth.org/674832.html, with
comments.
hedda62 (who has a book out! go check it out!) asked for "the Lymond miniseries in my head starring Tom Hiddleston" - lots of dates still available if anyone would like me to blether on about anything else.
First off, when I say I want to make a Lymond vid (and oh, I do, to this song for starters), I'm not really talking about a realistic miniseries so much as the very vivid visuals that I picture while reading, plus montage techniques. (I have, for example, a fully worked out vid idea in mind for Wolf Hall, which they are actually filming, but I doubt it will look anything like I'd want it to.)
But as soon as we start talking about things that could hypothetically actually happen, rather than straight mind-reading, you have to compromise. Even Tom Hiddleston is a compromise - he's too old and too tall and not blond enough. But at the same time, I'm convinced he'd be great in the part, even since seeing him as Prince Hal in the Henry IV episodes of The Hollow Crown: his Hal basically is Lymond as far as the script will allow him to be, with the laughter and concealed self-disgust and lightening changes of temper. I mean, just look at him, in the moment when he hears his father wants to see him: "Oh God, Jerott, are you doing this for a wager?"
So he's not 20 for Game of Kings, not that any actual 20-year-old actor could conceivably play that (they'd probably get Jamie Campbell Bower or someone if they tried...). In fact, pretty much everyone would have to be aged up, because modern actors don't age like 16th-century people, and that tends to be the done thing. As far as the rest of the casting game, it's a bit fragmentary - there are many characters I have very clear mental images of, like Richard and Margaret Lennox, but an actor hasn't pinged me recently. In practical terms, I'd like to see some unknown and Scottish actors, and if there's anything Game of Thrones has taught me it's that the right person can fully inhabit a role even if they don't seem to have remotely the right colouring etc. for it. Still, if I was casting today, I'd probably pick the appropriately-named Eddie Redmayne for Will Scott. Katie McGrath has the looks and the Irishness for Mariotta, but her complete inability to act has been proved to me now on multiple occasions, so it would have to be Michelle Dockery. Phyllida Law for Sybilla. Natalie Dormer as Marthe (compare with previous gif of Hiddleston). Lara Pulver as Oonagh O'Dwyer. Rose Leslie (actually Scottish, though she doesn't sound it) as Christian Stewart? Perhaps Anna Friel for Kate Somerville? Finding the right Philippa is perennially difficult, but someone on Tumblr suggested Sarah Bolger from The Tudors and I can see it, particularly for The Ringed Castle/Checkmate - here she is even wearing a silly hat(they'd have to cast Young Philippa just right, and there's basically no moment when the switch wouldn't be awkward - we see her more or less continuously between 13 and 20).
And so and on so forth. I do very badly want this to exist, done right - with a series of 6-10 episodes for each book, and proper production values. I'd want them to keep as much of the dialogue in as possible, naturally, but reading through it I can imagine how things could be simplified and shortened a bit to suit the medium (most of the jokes in Game of Kings aren't actually literally). Of course, given Game of Thrones they'd have to change the title, but if they could film The White Queen...!
Just imagine the opening of the first episode - I want a Scottish voice reading the epigraph from The Game and Playe of Chesse while the camera pans over a chessboard lit by candlelight, which becomes a map of 16th-century Europe, zooms in on Scotland*, zooms in on Edinburgh, the Nor'Loch, then the real Nor'Loch at night with a figure swimming through it. He reaches land, wipes his face, and it's TOM HIDDLESTON, looking bright-eyed and dangerous. Cut to Tom Erskine and Wat Buccleuch, discussing the current political situation and what will happen now that "Lymond is back", and go on from there.
*These are then the opening credits of subsequent episodes, with the lay-out of the chessboard changing each series, and the maps becoming the principal locations of that book.
Crossposted to http://yunitsa.dreamwidth.org/674832.html, with
comments.