Something "Wicked" This Way Comes... (Finally!)

Wicked the movie (based on the musical, not the book) is on the way!

Let's get the facts straight here though: "in-the-works" is "in development". That does NOT mean "greenlit". It means they want to do it - heck, lots of people want to do it and there's some money being spent - BUT they're still trying to see if they can make it happen and are at the idea stage (of successfully translating the musical to the big screen).

When Producer Marc Platt was talking to Film Divider he confirmed the film was definitely "in development" with a first-pass script being written and a soft goal of a 2016 release. The production companies for the film are Marc Platt Productions and Universal Pictures.

Here are the relevant quotes from the interview at which the news was revealed:

The most famous (and possibly beloved) cast of Wicked The Musical.
Casting have some big shoes to fill!

It’s a loose goal. But the bar is very high for the creators of Wicked. Our show is still so strong everywhere, and we just set a record in both London and Edinburgh last week, and in Los Angeles, and we did on Broadway. Audiences enjoy that show so much that we are intending to move forward on the movie but aren’t going to do so until we’re satisfied in the material we have as a screenplay, and that the film will be every bit as satisfying as what we have on the stage. 

Who’s been writing it?Winnie Holzman. 

And what shape is her script in now?She’s just writing it now. 

And do you have a director at the moment?It’s Stephen Daldry. He’s been on for a year or two. But it’s in process. 2016 is the goal, but I don’t know whether we’ll make that goal or not. We will make the movie, but like I said, the bar is really high. We’re going to scrutinise our work on the screenplay and our prep on the movie, and when we feel like it’s ready, okay. We’re not going to shoot a release date is what I’m saying. It’s in the works, it’s not in a rush.

This movie is a no-brainer fan-draw. No matter what trends are happening, from misunderstood villains to Oz tributes to nothing-at-all-to-do-with-any-of-these, this movie has a guaranteed built-in audience who have been dying to see it for YEARS.

If you're one of them, just be warned it could still be quite a ways off. 2016 is only next year and that's a LOT of work to get done to get a film release-ready from it's current state by December 31st!

In the meantime, let the dream casting begin! (Or, continue...)

Sources: Here, here, here & here

Sondheim on Bettlelheim, and Lapine on Narrators

So Into The Woods didn't snag any of the awards they were nominated for at The Golden Globes on the weekend, but the movie (and fairy tales) are still very much being discussed, especially as the cast (and media) continue to promote the various overseas releases.

I keep seeing references to Sondheim and Lapine using Bettelheim's philosophy when writing Into The Woods, (as in the original musical, which they both then adapted for the Disney movie), however it's not quite as black and white as that. 

We'll start with a summary so you have a better idea of the thought processes behind the writing of ITW, from an interview with Edward Seckerson, published by Stage and Screen Online in 2006. It seems to make it pretty clear the pair were anti-Bettelheim, but as I said, it's not so straight forward so keep reading:

Sondheim: "[W]e took a Jungian approach. You know, this whole thing about how we based it on Bruno Bettelheim is nonsense — it’s nothing to do with Bettelheim. In fact, I don’t know if James read the book, I didn’t." 

And when Sondheim was interviewed by James Lipton for the TV series Inside the Actors Studio, Lipton brought up Bettelheim: "There seems to be a philosophical war in that musical between the theories of Bruno Bettelheim and Jung." 

Sondheim responded, "It’s interesting you say that. Everybody assumes we were influenced by Bruno Bettelheim. But if there’s any outside influence, it’s Jung. James is interested in Jung—Twelve Dreams is based on a case Jung wrote about. In fact, we spoke to a Jungian analyst about fairy tales."

And from Sondheim's book, "Look, I Made a Hat" comes the following quoted paragraph:

"And, ah, the woods. The all-purpose symbol of the unconscious, the womb, the past, the dark place where we face our trials and emerge wiser or destroyed, a major theme in Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, which is the book everyone assumes we used as a source, simply because it's the only book on the subject known to a wide public. But Bettelheim's insistent point was that children would find fairy tales useful in part because the young protagonists' tribulations always resulted in triumph, the happily ever after. What interested James was the little dishonesties that enabled the characters to reach their happy endings. 

... James was also skeptical about the possibility of 'happily ever after' in real life and wary of the danger that fairy tales give children false expectations. As his play Twelve Dreams has demonstrated, he was drawn not to Bettelheim's Freudian approach but to Carl Jung's theory that fairy tales are an indication of the collective unconscious, something with which Bettelheim would be unlikely to agree. James and I talked about the fairy tales with a Jungian psychiatrist and discovered that with the exception of 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' which apparently is native only to the British Isles, the tales we were dealing with exist in virtually every culture in the world, especially the Cinderella story. African, Chinese, Native American - there is even a contemporary Hebrew version in which Cinderella wants to dance at the Tel Aviv Hilton." 

So the answer is more like "No, they didn't base it on Bettelheim's ideas" but also "those ideas weren't exactly ignored either."

OK, that's all good then, but here's the thing that bothers me, personally, though: Lapine (who wrote the "book" for the musical, as well as co-wrote the screenplay for the current Disney movie adaptation), is reported by Performing Arts Journal in 1988 as saying this (emphasis in bold is mine):

"The Narrator is what the fairy tale is about. I tried telling the stories without a narrator and it just doesn't work. A story needs a storyteller, and the storyteller is the ultimate figure of authority. Originally we wanted a public figure, not an actor, to play the Narrator: Walter Cronkite, or Tip O'Neill—someone who disseminated information and points of view. Then when we got rid of him you would see that the news was now being reported by the newsmakers, not the news reporter; decisions were being made by the people, not the politicians. Ultimately, we defined our narrator as a kind of intellectual, a Bettelheim figure; I wanted to get rid of Bettelheim!"

If this is the case, why was the Narrator's pivotal role so greatly downgraded in the movie? It makes a huge difference not having The Baker's father as the Narrator (especially as we then lose the impact of the change of POV in story telling when he's removed). Having The Baker be the Narrator all along didn't work quite like the bookend I (now) believe it was intended to be (as in, he was telling this whole story to his child.) When watching the movie I was a little confused as to why the Baker was telling us all of this in the first place, the WAY he was telling it (especially how the telling started, then ended...). 

A last but important note: I want to be clear on one point. I am in favor of the movie, in general. I fully expected it to miss the mark - widely - but the material is more faithful than I expected too. The fact that it uses fairy tales at its center is actually what helps transcend the things that bother me about the movie. What fairy tales are, how they live in people's minds, how the stories communicate and pass themselves on, is what does it. The stories themselves, and all the history they bring with them, the social legacies and various personal contexts etc work to overcome the movie's shortcomings, simply because their essential forms (wonder stories/Märchen) are kept intact. The beauty of certain iconic images (created by Rob Marshall et al) and catchy, beautiful tunes that remind us of certain story phrases, support this too. Everything else is peripheral and people can take what they want to (or need to) from the movie as a result. It's kind of magical in a way.

So there you go - my two cents for the day. ;)

Additional sources: "Look, I Made A Hat" & HERE. All movie screencaps created by Turn the Right Corner. Go HERE to see many more.

What To Expect From Matteo Garrone’s "Tale of Tales" by "The Thinker's Garden" Custodian (& Film Update via FTNH)

Maxfield Parrish, "Romance," 1992

Reposted in full with kind permission by Andrew Manns, Founding Editor of a wonder-filled place on the web called The Thinker's Garden. 

Film Preview:

What to expect from Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales

Matteo Garrone, the same director who made the graphic and telling Gomorrah crime film in 2008, is now hard at work on Tale of Tales, a fantasy film based on Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone. Production is taking place in various locations around Italy, and the cast reportedly includes A-listers John C. Reilly, Vincent Cassel, and Salma Hayek.

First published between 1634 and 1636, The Pentamerone, also known as The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones, is one of the earliest written collection of fairytales and one of the source texts for the Brothers Grimm. Its author Basile was a Neapolitan soldier, courtier, and poet who was influenced by Italian oral folktales and elements of his own adventures. New Sparta Films released a statement saying the film is a ‘fantastic journey through the Baroque era’, but what else can we expect from Garrone’s interpretation?

1. Dark Fantasy

The Bacchante, Jean-Léon Gérôme 1853. A woman transforms into a goat-creature in Basile’s tale, ‘The Goat-Face’

Giambattista Basile’s tales are full of magic and funny moments, but there are also a few stories with dark and disturbing themes; much like in Greco-Roman myths.  Sun, Moon, and Talia (an early version of Sleeping Beauty) casually depicts the sexual assault of a slumbering princess, Penta with the Chopped-off Hands details the incestuous intentions of a king, and The Myrtle  illustrates the violent murder and dismembering of a fairy princess. Garrone may not try to recreate these particularly explicit scenes, but it’s not difficult to imagine his film exploring the corruptive and decadent aspects of the human psyche within the larger background of Southern Italy in the 17th century. At the time, Naples was full of elite literati but it also had its fair share of revolts, superstitions, religious upheavals, feudalistic petty nobles, wandering bandits, and disease. Perhaps this is why Garrone revealed in a recent Variety interview that he conceives of his movie as a ‘fantasy film with horror elements’.

2. On-Location Wonders 

Interior of Castello Sammezzano

Basile’s fables often unfold in crystal tunnels, subterranean palaces, enchanted woods, or among families of ogres. Garrone’s scouting team is maintaining Basile’s aesthetic of mystique by using lesser known locations in rural Italy for the film sets. So far the cast and crew have been spotted at places such as Castello Sammezano, a peculiar estate built in the Moorish Revival style, Castel del Monte in Apulia, the spooky Bosco del Sasseto near Torre Alfina in Viterbo, and the Etruscan Necropolis and network of ruined roads in Sovana and Sorano.

3. Neapolitan Early Modern culture

Giambattista Basile

The film will be made in English, but that doesn’t mean Garrone will leave out all the Neapolitan colloquialisms and vernacular cultures which originally made Basile’s work famous in the first place. One of the most hilarious verbal exchanges takes place in the first chapter of The Pentamerone, when an old woman and young boy level insults at each other:

One day while Zoza was sitting at the window as sourly as a pickle an old woman chanced to pass by. She began to fill a jar she had brought with her, sopping up the oil with a sponge, and as she was busily going about her task a certain devil of a court page threw a stone at her with such precision that it hit the jar and broke to pieces.

The old woman, who Basile reminds the reader, ‘let no one ride on her back’ then gives the prankster a piece of her mind :

Ah you worthless thing, you dope, shithead, bed pisser, leaping goat, diaper ass, hangman’s noose, bastard mule! Just look even fleas can cough now! Go on, may paralysis seize you, may your mother get bad news, may you not live to see the first of May!…Scoundrel, beggar, son of a taxed woman, rogue!

The boy counters with:

Why don’t you shut that sewer hole, you bogeyman’s grandmother, blood-sucking witch, baby drowner, rag shitter, fart gatherer?

The old woman then responds by lifting up her skirt and revealing her ‘woodsy scene’.

Garrone may not take the obscenities that far, but his other Neapolitan films have featured  bawdy dialogue and it’s possible that he may attempt to retain some level of plain-speech and traditional Campanian humour in Tale of Tales.

If you’d like to catch up on Basile’s Pentamerone before the movie comes out in 2015, the best and most recent version is Nancy Canepa’s 2007 edition.

*******************************

Thank you Custodian!

The Thinker's Garden is full of mythical and wonderful posts! This article was originally published on August 14, 2014 by The Thinker's Garden Custodian. If you liked this, you're sure to find other articles you'll like too, so go have a visit! Click HERE.

And now a film update on Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales

from your Fairy Tale News Hound:

The following update on Tale of Tales was posted on an Italian film website. According to a variety of foreign film and entertainment review sites, Tale of Tales is one of the most anticipated films in Europe for 2015, although it's difficult to find out much more than the following with such a closed set:

 Great expectations for Matteo Garrone that, surrounded by the greatest secrecy, has created a personal version de Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile . Tale of Tales - Tale of Tales (May 14) was filmed in English and starring international stars such as Salma Hayek , Vincent Cassel , Toby Jones , John C. Reilly , along with Italian Alba Rohrwacher .  (Auto-translated from Italian, source)

The only release information currently available is for Italy, UK and France, with May 14, 2015 set as the date for opening in theaters. There are no posters, teasers, promotional shots or trailers yet (that I am aware of). The latest update reported from movieplayer.it, discusses the visual impact (apparently "stunning") though I am, unfortunately,  unable to find any of said images online (yet!):

The first images of the much mountedTale of Tales , Tale of Tales , the new film by Matteo Garrone . " Extraordinary images - says the Director of 01 Luigi Lonigro - after seeing them we realized that we could not open our convention in a different way . " And in fact it is amazing images: you recognize some of the characters, from Vincent Cassel to Salma Hayek , Toby Jones and John C. Reilly , the setting is fabulous and baroque-inspired collection of seventeenth-century fairy tales Pentamerone The element of fantasy is pregnant, the effect is stunning.

A little more from a previous article while shooting from taking place reveals a smidge more information about what we might see:

The shooting, which will last about four months, will affect different regions of Italy, showing mysterious landscapes and still secret places, among castles, villas and gardens still unknown. 

The subject of the film is inspired by and loosely based Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile , genial Neapolitan author of the seventeenth century whose tales are universally recognized as forerunners of the whole fairytale literature of later centuries. The project, whose development has participated in the same Matteo Garrone, collaborating in the writing of the story and screenplay with Edward Albinati , Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudioso , is proposed as a large fresco in fantastic Baroque period, told through the stories of three kingdoms and their respective sovereigns. "I chose to approach the world of Basile for I have found in his fairy tales that mixture between reality and fantasy that has always characterized my artistic research. The stories told in The story of the stories describe a world in which are summarized opposites of life: the ordinary and the extraordinary, the magical and the everyday, the royal and the scurrilous, the terrible and the suave " says Garrone. (auto-translated from Italian, source)

It's also been described by the director as "...a fantasy set in 1600..". Here's a bit more from a what seems to be the only press given during filming, while Garrone was on set at "Castel de Monte" for Tale of Tales during July of 2014 (all pictures are from this location and this day):

Beyond the time, then, what really away The Tale of Tales from the rest of the film Garrone is a component that you can very well define the supernatural:

The element fairytale I think it's a bit 'in all my films, but this is the first time I'm telling stories related to supernatural elements, a magical tales. It is a completely new adventure.

"The King Is Dead" (scene)

An adventure that promises to be particularly spectacular, especially from the visual point of view:

I come from painting, my training is pictorial and this is a movie where the visual aspect is predominant. The tales of Basile born as a form of entertainment, lend themselves to a dramatic development, film and I hope that this film has also a component of spectacle and entertainment. In fact I am the first to be curious to see it. 

It is a film that tell three stories that intertwine, a bit 'on the structure of Gomorrah. Salma Hayek is the protagonist of a story, Vincent Cassel another and Toby Jones is the protagonist of the story that will develop in Puglia. The main casting was done in London, then there are secondary roles that involve some Italian actors and then there is the participation of Alba Rohrwacher and Massimo Ceccherini, which will play an important enough. 

There is an Italian news video HERE in which you can see a little more of the castle and "props" from that day.

What do you think? Are you excited? I am. A grownup, European-made, diversely cast, fairy tale with a large visual fantasy element? (And in English so we can see all this as the director originally conceived?) Yes please!

Announcing...

Exciting news!

❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋

We are pleased to announce our new partnership with Timeless Tales Magazine! 

*cheers, whistles and enthusiastic applause!*

Editor in Chief and Fairy Blogmother, Tahlia Merrill Kirk and I have been in discussion for many months and are so close to making this official, we couldn't wait any longer to tell you!

After more than five years (!) of bringing you daily fairy tale news, Once Upon A Blog, partnered with Timeless Tales, will finally be able to offer even more.

Once Upon A Blog will stay at this address and remain your daily fairy tale news source (never fear!), except you will have the added bonus of knowing exactly what's going on with Timeless Tales, among other extras and opportunities... to be revealed. ;)

Details and the official launch to be announced very soon.

Stay tuned!

Gypsy Thornton

Once Upon A Blog... daily fairy tale news

❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋ ❋

* The lovely center photo is one in a series of enchanted self-portraits by talented fashion designer and photographer Esther Boller. No matter my surroundings, this photo represents, to me, my true state when I am writing and making art. You can see more photos from Ms. Boller's "Bedtime Lights" shoot HERE.

Ask Baba Yaga: How Do I Find The Strength To Stay Open, Energized, And Authentic?

Cover illustration for The Sugar House by Rose Bailey - artist Rachel Kahn

The letter to Baba Yaga below isn't mine, the problems aren't mine, yet I have the very same question nonetheless: when you keep trying and trying and trying and there feels like no forward motion with the things you're working on (be it habits, demeanor, "resolutions" or particular projects) how do you stay strong?

This week's timely question and answer (via poet and oracle Taisia Kitaiskaia* of The Hairpin):

(Originally posted at The Hairpin HERE)

Ah - this answer is just so perfect for me as I try to create a new - and better - balance after the unkind year that was 2014. "...let wishes gather around you... sit with the crumbs... be for a while a poor queen, but a queen nonetheless." I'm going to try to do this exact thing. Thank you Baba!

What do you think of Baba Yaga's advice?

Want to ask Baba Yaga a question of your own?

You can!

There's now an email address where you can send your questions

directly to Baba Yaga herself.

AskBabaYaga AT gmail DOT com

To encourage Baba Yaga to continue imparting her no-bones-about-it wisdom (ok, there may be some gristle in there... bones too), I suggest we not to leave her box empty... 

Thank you Baba Yaga (& Taisia).

* Taisia Kitaiskaia is a poet, writer, and Michener Center for Writers fellow. Born in Russia and raised in America, she's had her poems and translations published in Narrative Magazine, Poetry International, and others.