Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel and special guest, 2012 Comedy Award Nominee Richard Sandling, creator of Tom Selleck’s Moustache and other videos. They discuss comedy, criticism, virality, and film adaption of novels.
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As a comment on audio quality and not on his contribution to the podcast, it is actually painful to listen to Richard.
His CV says Richard was in We Are Klang, a show that I am the only person I know who watched and liked it.
For a comedic take on the Ten Commandments, there’s always David Wain’s The Ten. Pair it with the Decalogue, of which I have seen a smattering of thanks to my film studies education but what I saw gave me no interest in pursuing further, for a nice contrast.
Wow, OTI’s reach is pretty far. I loved “Tom Selleck’s Moustache” the first time I saw it. You’ve had a couple different Internet celebrities, so when are you getting Tilda Swinton?
My parents used to let me stay home to play each new Resident Evil game as they were released. I was thinking I’d have answered with the T-Virus, had I been on this podcast, before you said it, Fenzel. So I didn’t like the reference, I loved it. ;p
When you brought up exposition, I started thinking of the Harry Potter movies. Something I thought was a clever way to get the plot moving without beating viewers over the head with boring speeches (or making the movies even longer because of all the scenes that would be necessary) was the use of The Daily Prophet, the newspaper of the wizarding world. They’d use headlines of stories to present information about what, in the books, the kids would talk about or realize themselves. IMO, that was one of the strengths of the film versions- rather than scene after scene, there would be brief montages of floating newspapers, holding viewers’ attention. Also, the books sometimes (read: usually) suffered from too much obvious exposition at the beginning and end (the beginning, to give info about what happened between books; at the end, because Dumbledore or someone would always explain every detail of what the baddies were up to in that book/ state flat-out what the lesson from that book was). ANYhoo, point, speeches explaining a character’s backstory (or the events taking place in the background) are difficult to pull off, but if it’s badass enough (like what you were talking about), or clever enough, it can sometimes not even really feel like exposition.
Richard, is your relationship with poetry filled with earony?
About The Hunger Games. I just finished the latter two books, and so while I may have previously disagreed with Fenzel a bit about the perspective making knowing Katniss’s emotions easier, I now think the writing improved with each book and (eventually) confirmed that assessment. I had an easier time knowing her emotions watching the first movie than reading the first book, something that made me like the movie more. But I think that shifted gradually in a way that yeah, perhaps wouldn’t have been as good in a 3rd person book.
Oh hey, so Ridely Scott wants to do an epic Moses movie. And he’s also hoping to make it a character study, focusing on things like the relationship Moses had with the Pharaoh. This on top of two other Biblical movies in the works by other people, one about Noah and one about David and Goliath. Presumably, all three will be following this new “grit” trend in film. But given the Biblical origins, I wonder if they’ll meet the same kind of protest as The Last Temptation of Christ or the event/field trip-type participation of The Passion of the Christ.