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State of Play 5 There was a critic in The Daily Telegraph, James Walton, and the only reason I wrote State of Play was because he called me a warrior of white sliced bread, meaning I could only write working-class, and I was like ‘right, you fucker, I’m going to write something posh and you’ll have to retract that’. After the first episode he said that it was really good but that I’d got five hours left to fuck it up – basically that was his summary and I was like, ‘ha ha ha, I’m just going to wipe the floor with you now’. I wrote Shameless and State of Play in
's own ideas regarding adaptations, this chapter will use the GSLI productions as case studies to analyse the specific challenges of adapting his prose for the stage. It will argue that, as in the original text of How It Is , there is no ‘last state last version’ (Beckett, 2009 : 3), no ‘resting place’ ( 2009 : 36) that can or should be achieved in adaptation. Adaptation, performance and intermediality As Corinne Lhermitte notes in her historical overview of adaptation, it was originally seen as a creative act. The term ‘was
, Whitemore decided to revisit the conflict between friendship and patriotic duty in the Portland spy case. As he recalled, “I became increasingly preoccupied with the role of the ordinary citizen in our society” and wondered, was it “risky to allow the state (albeit for well-argued reasons) greater moral license that the individual?” 5 With these concerns in mind, Whitemore reworked Act of Betrayal , expanding the original script into a two-act play that allowed him more freedom to examine the historical incidents that
3 State of play: the TV drama industry – new rules of the game Production conditions for distinctive product Those readers primarily interested in the TV dramas themselves might think the industry background to be less compelling. But, properly to understand why we get a particular kind of TV drama to appear on our screens at any given time is not just a matter of creative people coming up with fresh ideas. Moreover, the dramas behind the scenes are just as intricate and fascinating as those on the screen. First, here, I look back at circumstances in the past
Introduction Constantin Costa-Gavras' State of Siege (1972) 1 deals with the kidnapping, trial, and assassination of American OPS (Office of Public Safety) agent Philip Michael Santore (Yves Montand) by the MLN-Tupamaro guerrillas in Uruguay in 1970. Based on the true story of the execution of Daniel Anthony Mitrione by the Tupamaros on 10 August 1970, the film is structured as a political thriller. Costa-Gavras uses what Richard Schechner has called ‘twice-behaved behaviors’ by re-enacting historical events on the screen dealing with the US
This paper considers the impact of extra-filmic elements on the cultural decision-making behaviours of a small rural Australian cinema audience, focusing on the rural New South Wales village of Cobargo in the late 1920s. In considering how why such fragile rural picture show operations either failed or became successful, it is critical to take account of rural geographies, particularly in terms of early road development, and the nature and state of road bridges in flood-prone areas. The paper argues that these elements are part of a broad ecosystemic framework for cultural decision-making which can assist in our interpretation of early newspaper advertising and promotion for picture show programs.
This article addresses the current state of film studies as a discipline, profession and institution, arguing that the hunt for cultural authority has been the defining feature, motivating force and tragic flaw of film studies. The current self-reflexive soul- searching reveals that the field – no longer a radical upstart – still lacks the gravitas of more established subjects. Departments have responded to identity crises and changing enrolment patterns by mummifying, killing off or burying foundational emphases. The nostalgia for film studies origins and the jeremiads about an unmanageable, unruly and recalcitrant discipline yield rose-tinted fantasies about community and mutual intelligibility that must be ultimately resisted.
This article sets out to reinvigorate national cinema studies in an Irish context through a quantitative analysis of films financed by the Irish Film Board between 1993 and 2013. In constructing and coding a database of titles produced with the aid of state finance during this period, the authors argue for a methodology that broadens the inductive approaches of textual analysis that have dominated discussions of Irish cinema to date. By establishing recurring genres, narrative patterns, themes and character types present in IFB-funded films during this period, this article demonstrates how the professional objectives of IFB personnel have shaped institutional funding outcomes.
Metaphorically set in a border town, the darkly lit, libidinous urban topography of Orson Welles’ classic late film noir, Touch of Evil (1958), harbours primal fears and partially clads criminal activities, underscoring the fact that in the 1950s miscegenation was still illegal in a number of US states. This article juxtaposes Charlton Heston‘s leading role in two interracial romances, Touch of Evil and Diamond Head (1963), which takes place in the new border state of Hawaii. The historical foregrounding of the Civil Rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and ‘60s with respect to the interracial romances growing popularity is discussed, and the relevance of recent genetic research into the appeal of difference and the way it functions within a ‘primal drama’.
The tendency in most writing on the temporal properties of film music has been to note music‘s ability to establish, quickly and efficiently, a films historical setting. Although acknowledging this important function, this paper seeks to explore a wider range of temporal properties fulfilled by film music. Three aspects of musics temporality are discussed: anachronism (whereby choices of anachronistic music can provide the spectator with ways of making sense of a films subtext or its characters’ state of mind), navigation (the ability of music to help the spectator understand where and when they are in a films narrative) and expansion (musics ability to expand our experience of film time). The paper focuses on Bernard Herrmann, and his score for Taxi Driver (1976), and argues that Herrmann was particularly sensitive to the temporal possibilities of film music.