The Reader Travels

I’ve been plottng this tour of Shakespeare in the Movies for over a year now, and what better time than following a trip to England?   Our literary tour of England started in October of last year with Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down. It took us through a journey into alternate reality London, and actual real-life London. 

The movie versions of Shakespeare’s plays are obvious, mostly because they have the same name as the play — movies like Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing and Othello.  But some of my favorites are modern day stories with modern day scripts that take their stories from Shakespeare, with such classic musical examples as Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story.  Some may call it stealing, but I like to think of it as paying tribute.  Then there are movies like L.A. Story and 10 Things I Hate About You that make it point to play up the tribute.

We’re about to explore some of my favorite references to Shakespeare in the movies. What are your favorites?

One of my favorite lines from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was, “So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”  It’s poetry really, because when you’ve overfilled your time, you get all discombobulated like that.

I have no time for books or movies these days, just work and more work, and by gosh it’s springtime, so I have to be outside, buzzing with friends and family, which means cleaning my house so when people can come over I create the illusion of keeping a clean house. Somebody had the great idea of having a crawfish boil, at my house, and as fate would have it, we found someone who’d come by and bring his pot and a bag of bugs and do it all for us, and with my schedule these days, you know I was jumping all over that. Whew!

What I do have time for is half-hour sitcoms on DVD.  They not only keep me laughing, but they keep me on location in London.  I’m not sure that US network television would ever be ready for Coupling, but it’s exactly what I need.

No trip to London is complete without a tour of The Tower.  I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I have a disease where words and concepts trigger songs in my head, and then I can’t avoid blurting that song to all who will hear.  My friends have learned to ignore this ever-so-annoying tic. And it only embarrasses them slightly when I broadcast my disease for all to hear. 

Well, the words, “Tower of London” and “Anne Boleyn,” trigger this song, and though I was sick with a cold, and it was snowing on my head, I kept on singing, and clapping my hands to the rhythms during my entire visit.  (By the way, this was the least annoying of all the versions on YouTube, and you can actually understand the words.)