Rock Music in Gerwig's Narnia and Other Film News

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Hello and welcome to Mythmakers.

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Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.

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My name is Julia Golding and I'm joined by my podcast partner, Jacob Renecker, who is sitting over the other side of the...

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The Atlantic from me.

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And we are today going to be discussing like a roundup of the latest film and TV news in the world of fantasy, but majoring mostly on the Narnia, the magician's nephew, Greta Gerwig.

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So Jacob, welcome.

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Thanks.

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Good to be here, Julia.

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So we have both run out and got ourselves a copy of the Empire magazine article with Greta Gerwig and from the set.

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And we both have just been discussing how we couldn't find a physical copy.

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Shows you how much the sort of magazine world has changed since...

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I suppose last time I bought copies for the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films.

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But we both have managed to secure digital copies.

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And it really was a very interesting from the set explanation of what's going on.

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So, Jacob, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you gleaned?

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Yeah, there was a lot.

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It was really the first sentence of it is Gerwig asking, you know, where are the vibes?

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So in terms of vibes or ambiance, theming, there's a lot in the article about

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the feeling that she's going for with this particular film.

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And I think, and it's, so like the headliner is kind of rock opera vibes or something that's like, so, and by that, I think she means by the pictures and the way that they're describing it, what we've seen is, you know, bright, bright colors, something that is, I think, I don't want to say like,

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upbeat, up-tempo, something that has a lot of energy to it, kind of maybe unbridled energy and enthusiasm to it.

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So, yes, there was a lot of mention of rock music, music.

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in there, but it's also, which it looks like will be woven in there, but also it's more of kind of like the essence of this, this coming out of, and she's setting it kind of contextually, with World War II, the people that, like David Bowie, who are growing up to become these kind of iconic pop music authors, they're growing up in World War II, the rubble of World War II, is how they describe it in the articles.

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So what she's doing, and this is where the director's author, she is rewriting a take on The Magician's Nephew.

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She's decided to set it in 1955, which is the year it was published, not the year it is set.

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And she is coming at it with the idea that for her as an individual,

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Her windows of perception, her doorway into imagination was through rock musicians, the Paul McCartneys, the David Bowies and Robert Plants, that kind of thing.

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But she then thought about their childhoods.

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These were children who were either born just after or some during, but a lot just after the Second World War in a bombed out landscape.

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And their escape from that was through the rock music coming in initially from the States mainly.

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And then they sort of had this explosion of creativity, which was the swinging sixties and the

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Dazzling 70s.

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I'm not sure what we call that.

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And so she thought, right, this is the journey.

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So we've got purposely make our world bleak and bombed out.

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And they've had to rebuild the sets because it's not like that anymore.

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Yeah.

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You know, so they've gone for that.

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And then the world of Narnia and Chan, because we mustn't forget Chan, is the contrast, the place you escape to.

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uh so one of my favorite bits in the article is she refers to the wood between the world as being based on the london underground map it's an iconic design feature which anybody from the uk and possibly a lot of people globally knows the idea that you can pop up in regent's park or you can pop up in

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Victoria, just by going, connecting.

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So I love that idea.

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That's a really, I thought, oh yeah, that's really fun.

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So she's not saying...

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She's admitting to this or enjoying the idea of this lair, which will annoy like crazy the ones who want – because we've never seen a magician's nephew, so we've not seen the late Victorian period from the book with Queen Jadis riding a chariot like some kind of Babylonian queen, which is what Lewis had in mind.

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She's moving it to this context.

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And just to bring into the design idea, Chan is like a Barbarella 60s...

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It's like a broken pinball machine.

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Yeah.

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So it's like flashing lights and really kind of garish colors.

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Pulp fiction.

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It's that stuff.

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So...

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So it feels like one of those films made from the era, the kind of Flash Gordon type special effects.

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So that's what was outlaid in, well, both in the sort of rumours coming in advance, but also very clearly in this article, which I thought was well worth a read out there if you want to sort of dig into the details.

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So thinking of all of that, yeah.

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What is your response, Jacob, to this?

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Does this work?

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Do you think it's going to work?

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Yeah.

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So...

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I think so.

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What impressed me was Greta finding emotional touch points for her own life and kind of like translating those, finding points of resonance.

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Like, okay, what was, for me, what opened up my imagination and made life seem like wildly full of possibilities for her?

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Like you mentioned, it was this rock music.

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And she said, it saved my life, whatever that means.

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So it was very important to her.

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It's a bit hyperbolic, I think.

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But, you know.

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Right.

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Right.

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So she's finding that point of resonance and then finding something in the story of Magician's Nephew, and she's finding a way to marry those two.

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So I think anything that's written out of a place of emotional truth for the author is going to come across as being more resonant for the audience.

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Because if you don't care about the material and you're just kind of doing a paint-by-numbers technique,

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strict adaptation if you don't have a personal investment in it then i think it's easier to see those stories films shows when people don't really care as much um she even mentioned with what something was funny with the the charn her design there she said it was um in the article inspired by a childhood trip to las vegas which is bright and shiny you know on the on the outside so she got lost and ended up in like the back alleyway beyond the the strip which is like the

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curated, dazzling lights, clean, everything is meant to grab your attention.

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And then she ended up going behind the buildings accidentally and seeing this like broken down things.

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And so seeing on the other side of this like glittering, glamorous world, there was something that showed it's like emptiness inside.

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And that for her wasn't like an emotional experience as a child that she's bringing to her.

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how she's dealing with charn itself.

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So the points of emotional resonance, like that's really inspiring to me for how the story can turn out and unfold.

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She clearly has a unified vision for what this world is and finding points of personal connection emotionally.

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I think that's very promising for me.

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Yeah, so the slightly odd thing, I'm just thinking about it.

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I mean, I've had fun thinking about what 70s rock songs would I use as my soundtrack.

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She's presumably going to cherry pick her way through these.

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So obviously, is this a real thing?

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Is this just fantasy?

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You know, the Bohemian Rhapsody.

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It's going to be in there, surely.

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Things like that.

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So I can have fun like she has making my playlist.

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The odd thing about it for me is, well, there's quite a few odd things about it.

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I'm excited by the vision.

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And if someone's going to do this, let's jump straight in and see if it stands.

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You know, if it works as a film, it works.

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She doesn't have to apologize.

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Right.

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But it's not her generation's experience.

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It's actually the experience of my parents' generation.

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So the Paul McCartneys of this world are actually in their 80s.

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And she's also not British.

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So she's leaning into something which is very specific

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to a sort of British memory of the time, the Festival of Britain, and all sorts of other points of reference, which I guess she's probably clever enough to know about and informed herself about.

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But it'd be interesting to see...

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how this works because her saying, oh, Paul McCartney, David Bowie saved my life, that stuff seems, she's a bit young.

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So she must have come across these people later in her own, you know, how old is she?

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She's not my age, she's younger than me.

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I think she's in her 40s, yeah, must be like early 40s.

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She was that kid in school who was listening to stuff from almost

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So that's really odd.

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But fine, because the other thing to remember, she is going to carry, if she's going to carry on doing Narnia film, she needs somewhere to go.

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So she can't, she has to set it far enough back so that the Professor Diggory grows up and becomes, you know, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if she does that, is contemporary, which would be fun to see what she does, because if you do the math, it works out.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, interesting.

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I think one of the things, so obviously looking at the book, so she has mentioned in that article that the whole spread of the series is from creation to the end of the world.

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So she's aware of the arc.

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There was no mention of the sort of spiritual message there.

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Right.

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So that's, yeah, which is interesting.

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And I think this, so this is interesting.

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So she said, yeah, when she's describing her vision for the series, she's describing it to Netflix, the head of film at Netflix at the time that she was talking with it.

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It's about the creation and destruction of an entire universe.

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And so seeing it set in the rubble of World War II, its creation is...

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in the like seedbed of destruction, right?

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So it's cyclical.

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So there's hope.

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So she's talking about this like locating hope, which I think is interesting.

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But yeah, regarding this, like the spiritual lack of like spiritual core, what I was thinking, I was actually thinking about,

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C.S.

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Lewis, his essay, Sometimes Ferry Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said.

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And I think here's a quote that I think is worth reading in full.

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So this is Lewis talking about his some of what he's doing in writing, reimagining

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ideas that are rooted in his religious worldview in fantasy or the fairytale kind of mode of communication.

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So he says, I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood.

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Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ?

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I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to.

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Kids never want to do what they're told to, right?

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An obligation to feel can freeze feelings, and reverence itself did harm.

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The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical.

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But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world,

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stripping them of their stained glass and Sunday school associations.

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One could make them for the first time appear in their real potency.

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Could one thus not the steel past those watchful dragons?

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I thought one could.

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So what I see, so interestingly, I think that she's, what she can do here is take Narnia out of a, you know, maybe primarily through,

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a particular religious lens or spiritual lens.

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And in a landscape where, especially like Lewis was deeply Christian, where in an age where Christianity has become so politicized on both ends of the spectrum and polarized, that this is perhaps a way to kind of steal past

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our own kind of modern watchful dragons for the ideas or knee-jerk reactions we have to ideas of spirituality, which like, again, like, so like the world as a whole, and people are on different sides of the fence on different issues.

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And the people who are even like people who are religious versus non-religious, this, this perhaps is a way to kind of like cut through and say is here's, here's this story.

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And maybe this is giving people a chance to experience the core

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their kind of like natural defenses against a story like this.

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So in some ways that actually seemed kind of Lewisian in its approach to, which is kind of ironic, right?

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Like what C.S.

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Lewis was trying to do with kind of his Christian story or story of morality and ethics was,

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she almost seems to be doing something similar with his story, which has achieved a sense of reverence and on.

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Perhaps people are looking at it too rigidly in some ways or feel like they know exactly how it is and become solidified.

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And so C.S.

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Lewis is an author.

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I feel like he was a very generous reader, not just as an author, but as a reader.

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So in the notes that he's writing and books, he wants to take the book as it was written, try to understand it, give it the benefit of the doubt.

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And so I feel like Lewis would probably be...

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Pickled by, whereas I think Tolkien would have, I feel they would have very different reactions to interpretations of their work.

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I feel like Lewis might... Just on the point of how to treat Lewis's...

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book, I think one of Tolkien's problems was there was too much more obvious messaging in it because his own policy was to strip away, strip out the obvious religious messaging in order to have Christianity, in his case, more present.

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And I'm actually quite relieved that she's not actually talking about the sort of spiritual messaging of it for similar reasons to you in that you can't

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So either you offend a lot of sort of, you know, Sunday school teacher type people.

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Right.

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Or you put off a global audience who don't want to go and see a Christian film.

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So just don't talk about it.

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Let the material be the story and just get on with it.

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So I think that's.

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That's a wise choice.

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Yeah.

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Because, you know, it's not a plot spoiler now, is it?

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But it reruns the Garden of Eden, a version of the Garden of Eden.

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So it's there and it's about resisting temptation.

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And because Lewis had a sort of preoccupation with can you avoid a fall?

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And in the way the fall happens in Narnia, but it's by accident.

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It's bringing Jadis into Narnia by mistake.

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So that's what produces evil there in a way.

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It's not so much the Apple moment, though, of course, that's running a Garden of Eden parallel very clearly.

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So, no, I'm interested.

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I think it would be fun to see.

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And it leaves space, just to sort of put it, you know, the book remains.

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The book has a Victorian atmosphere and feel.

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It leaves space for that to still exist in its own world, leaves space for other people to tackle it again in the future.

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might be quite a shot of energy.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Which is what I think is interesting and I think could help.

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Again, people usually are familiar with Magicians and the Narnia books because their parents read it to them.

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They have these experiences or they've even seen the films.

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The films are...

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how many, 20 plus years old at this point.

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And so they might've seen those films and they have a very particular feeling.

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And those feelings, so the original, or not the original, because there were other adaptations of Narnia before that, but the most recently Disney, Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that one was produced after the success of the beginning of the Lord of the Rings film.

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So it very much has that same kind of like subdued, kind of high fantasy, medieval,

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uh, tone and then filmed with like a sort of like medieval reverence.

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Right.

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Um, in, in a sense.

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And so it's very similar there.

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And so seeing, and, and they're, they're different, like Lewis, not that Tolkien didn't have joy in his work.

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He clearly has fun with the songs and moments, but there is like, uh,

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Tolkien, in his mind, the long defeat is something that's always kind of like looming in the background.

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And so like, these are moments of brightness, but this inevitable kind of decline is coming and what people can do in the light of that.

206
00:18:39.976 --> 00:18:47.139
And Lewis, to me, and reading the story is like, it seems more joyful in many ways.

207
00:18:47.159 --> 00:18:51.241
I don't know if that's the audience that he's particularly writing for there.

208
00:18:51.321 --> 00:18:54.943
And so the sense like the way that you could have trying to adapt to

209
00:18:55.795 --> 00:19:01.119
magician's nephew as if it were Lord of the Rings, I think that's a mistake because they're in different tones.

210
00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:06.984
So we have these conversations about Lewis's world building, if you can call it that.

211
00:19:07.285 --> 00:19:10.007
He's kind of piecemeal, kind of bringing things together.

212
00:19:11.188 --> 00:19:13.270
Some might say that that's sloppy world building.

213
00:19:13.290 --> 00:19:23.058
Lewis, I think, was doing it joyfully in terms of bringing everything and inviting all of these different sources together and having fun with them, whereas Tolkien is more fastidious in making sure everything.

214
00:19:23.558 --> 00:19:29.021
Everything is connected just so, and every tree has a history and who planted it and when.

215
00:19:29.041 --> 00:19:32.502
So there are different approaches to world building.

216
00:19:32.522 --> 00:19:39.385
And I think Lewis's is more open, is more kind of like flexible in many ways.

217
00:19:39.465 --> 00:19:42.227
And so I think that this type of approach lends itself well.

218
00:19:42.247 --> 00:19:44.828
Like you tried to do this to Lord of the Rings, I think is a mistake.

219
00:19:46.669 --> 00:19:47.930
I don't think you could do it as well.

220
00:19:47.950 --> 00:19:51.772
I would actually love to see that, to see what generates from that.

221
00:19:51.793 --> 00:20:08.184
But I think given Lewis's kind of playfulness and his ability to, again, play with ideas and put them into conversation with each other, that he does so well in so many different settings, in a fantasy, in a sci-fi setting, I think, yeah, I'm excited to see...

222
00:20:09.024 --> 00:20:11.226
how the whole thing shapes out here.

223
00:20:11.266 --> 00:20:22.915
I think it is a positive way, a completely legitimate way to approach the source material, and I'm excited to see how it actually turns out.

224
00:20:23.816 --> 00:20:36.906
Yeah, I think there's a couple of, sort of looking at the cast, within this rock opera world, it's going to be quite tricky for David McKenna, who's playing Diggory, and Beatrice Campbell, who's playing Polly Plummer,

225
00:20:40.012 --> 00:20:41.533
Be cool in that world.

226
00:20:42.514 --> 00:20:48.759
You know, because they're young and they look like 1950s kids.

227
00:20:49.600 --> 00:20:51.181
They're very sweet looking.

228
00:20:52.122 --> 00:20:58.107
And one of the things about the Narnia stories is the children do become the heroes, right?

229
00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:09.102
So it does be interesting to see how they balance out this We Are All Rock Gods type feel with Emma Mackey as the White Witch and Meryl Streep as Aslan.

230
00:21:10.243 --> 00:21:17.084
Interesting to see how they come through that to be, you know, if it should be their film.

231
00:21:17.844 --> 00:21:21.065
It should be their film, not the adults.

232
00:21:21.125 --> 00:21:25.506
Daniel Craig as Wicked Uncle Andrew, I think, is going to be a great film.

233
00:21:29.608 --> 00:21:37.137
she's very cleverly picked the one person still riding a horse-drawn vehicle in the 1950s.

234
00:21:37.397 --> 00:21:39.060
Well, maybe there were some...

235
00:21:40.627 --> 00:21:41.428
beer deliveries.

236
00:21:42.648 --> 00:21:45.751
The breweries use horses for longer.

237
00:21:46.131 --> 00:21:49.213
But Cobb and Holbrook Smith is playing, I think, Albert.

238
00:21:49.273 --> 00:21:50.654
Is that the name of the character?

239
00:21:50.794 --> 00:21:51.254
The cabbie.

240
00:21:51.374 --> 00:22:03.063
Anyway, the cabbie from the story also gives a sort of bit of diversity as well, which is great to see that happening, which would have been harder to have put in, I suppose, in an early Victorian...

241
00:22:04.584 --> 00:22:08.206
a late Victorian piece because this is after the Windrush generation.

242
00:22:08.346 --> 00:22:09.887
So it all fits.

243
00:22:10.407 --> 00:22:23.656
Windrush, for American listeners, is the name for the larger amounts of immigration for work from the Caribbean coming into Britain.

244
00:22:23.957 --> 00:22:27.679
It was called the Windrush after the boat that brought lots of people across.

245
00:22:28.099 --> 00:22:30.181
So I think that all sounds good.

246
00:22:30.221 --> 00:22:31.302
And I'm actually having...

247
00:22:32.242 --> 00:22:40.228
read the explanation in the Empire magazine, thank you, Empire, I actually feel, oh, okay.

248
00:22:41.309 --> 00:22:46.573
Maybe we're not heading for a complete car smash of a film and maybe this will work.

249
00:22:47.033 --> 00:22:56.440
I just think it's going to be holding such an explosive idea with these two little kids is going to be interesting.

250
00:22:56.460 --> 00:23:00.323
Can I ask you what you think of the lion in the room?

251
00:23:01.173 --> 00:23:01.713
Oh, Meryl.

252
00:23:02.134 --> 00:23:02.954
Well, in the article...

253
00:23:02.974 --> 00:23:04.755
Yes, what are your thoughts there on the explanation?

254
00:23:04.875 --> 00:23:10.558
In the article, it says she chose a voice because she wanted room for other voices.

255
00:23:11.699 --> 00:23:18.122
So I wonder if she does more films, if she actually recasts Aslan, doesn't have the same voice.

256
00:23:19.943 --> 00:23:22.224
A bit like Doctor Who regenerating.

257
00:23:22.464 --> 00:23:23.425
Yeah, right, right.

258
00:23:24.538 --> 00:23:25.780
I have no idea.

259
00:23:26.181 --> 00:23:30.667
I would have to see the visual of Aslan with the voice coming out of it.

260
00:23:30.687 --> 00:23:31.248
The voice, yeah.

261
00:23:31.709 --> 00:23:33.570
Because who knows what they're going to do digitally to the voice.

262
00:23:34.010 --> 00:23:34.290
Yeah.

263
00:23:34.850 --> 00:23:35.190
Yeah.

264
00:23:35.470 --> 00:23:55.837
And so, again, when she says she wanted the tone or, again, to draw on her words at the beginning of the article, the vibe of Aslan that she was looking for, she said she wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness, someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight.

265
00:23:56.117 --> 00:23:57.438
And so that language was very...

266
00:23:58.378 --> 00:24:01.380
G.K. Chesterton, in my mind, right?

267
00:24:01.400 --> 00:24:16.528
This kind of like these paradoxes holding this like grandness, but also this like childlike, you know, like omniscience, but as well as this like childlike joy and exuberance that you want like both of those in as an and typical like so with Liam Neeson, great quality of voice.

268
00:24:16.588 --> 00:24:20.651
He's a very, you know, like subdued, sometimes angry, but they're

269
00:24:21.611 --> 00:24:24.933
there isn't like a sense of like sparkling joy, like lying underneath the surface.

270
00:24:24.953 --> 00:24:30.196
So that erupts occasionally, but you do see when Aslan in mind, which word are, when he's like,

271
00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:33.521
playing around with the girls.

272
00:24:33.842 --> 00:24:36.563
And so I think, so that to me was interesting.

273
00:24:36.583 --> 00:24:46.609
I kind of find a voice that wasn't just that you would think of a James Earl Jones, kind of a severe voice of your character who's kind of representing God.

274
00:24:46.629 --> 00:24:54.153
But this is somebody who's like, has wonder, who has like, yes, gravitas, but also like joy and delight.

275
00:24:54.334 --> 00:24:59.977
And then, so that's really interesting to find again, like short circuiting, kind of stealing past our watchful dragons of what we think,

276
00:25:00.457 --> 00:25:04.100
a voice of, you know, cosmic significance could be.

277
00:25:04.140 --> 00:25:09.825
Is it a serious, is it a Sunday school, like you were saying, like type of voice, does it need to do that?

278
00:25:09.845 --> 00:25:17.551
Or is there room for different types of voices to express that idea of what kind of lies at the core?

279
00:25:17.571 --> 00:25:22.355
So that was interesting to me, again, like you were saying, like from the way Gret is describing it in the article.

280
00:25:22.655 --> 00:25:26.779
Because Aslan comes in quite late in the story, and he comes in singing.

281
00:25:29.792 --> 00:25:33.254
But his singing is magical singing because it's creating a world.

282
00:25:34.314 --> 00:25:41.157
So it's realizing something which works on the page, actually having to make decisions how you realize that.

283
00:25:42.263 --> 00:25:45.905
on the screen is what she gets the big bucks for, I suppose.

284
00:25:46.785 --> 00:25:59.652
And when you think about Benedict Cumberbatch being a dragon, what they do is they put his voice through a lot of layers of sort of, I don't know, whatever their magic jiggery-pokery is going on in the background.

285
00:26:00.433 --> 00:26:00.593
Yeah.

286
00:26:00.673 --> 00:26:04.735
But it's still his performance with all this other element added in.

287
00:26:04.755 --> 00:26:07.617
I don't know what a lion sounds like.

288
00:26:08.157 --> 00:26:09.157
I guess for me –

289
00:26:10.839 --> 00:26:13.801
If I can hear Meryl Streep too much, it will be distracting.

290
00:26:13.981 --> 00:26:14.801
Yeah.

291
00:26:14.861 --> 00:26:19.304
Because I'll be thinking that's Meryl not... And also it's just a gender thing as well.

292
00:26:19.704 --> 00:26:21.645
You know, it should have been a lioness kind of thing.

293
00:26:23.726 --> 00:26:27.228
But if they are good at it and if the performance is good, they're going to sell it.

294
00:26:27.709 --> 00:26:31.231
And also I think it's probably deliberate because in terms of...

295
00:26:32.391 --> 00:26:35.393
getting the outrage going online is part of the marketing.

296
00:26:35.413 --> 00:26:37.114
Yes, yeah, people are talking about it.

297
00:26:38.015 --> 00:26:39.676
And I refuse to be outraged.

298
00:26:40.777 --> 00:26:57.468
Right, yeah, and somebody made a really good point that I heard talking about this was that in the movie The Exorcist, right, the movie about demonic possession, the voice of the demon devil was actually voiced by a woman.

299
00:26:57.568 --> 00:26:58.388
You couldn't tell it.

300
00:26:58.548 --> 00:26:59.469
It was like, it seemed...

301
00:27:00.580 --> 00:27:02.301
very sinister.

302
00:27:03.161 --> 00:27:07.482
It didn't seem, you know, like female coded necessarily, but it did.

303
00:27:07.502 --> 00:27:08.943
So equal opportunity.

304
00:27:09.983 --> 00:27:12.224
Women can be just as scary as men.

305
00:27:12.244 --> 00:27:13.584
It's terrifying.

306
00:27:13.984 --> 00:27:14.564
And vice versa.

307
00:27:14.584 --> 00:27:16.285
It's probably more an issue if you can...

308
00:27:17.617 --> 00:27:21.260
if you're picturing Meryl Streep, so that's what I mean.

309
00:27:21.280 --> 00:27:29.306
It's the, when your brain is sort of firing into Mamma Mia mode and the screen is Aslan.

310
00:27:29.646 --> 00:27:31.288
But I know that they will have...

311
00:27:32.164 --> 00:27:33.504
They would have considered all of that.

312
00:27:33.565 --> 00:27:39.887
It would be up to the sound team to make sure it's processed in such a way that we don't get any of that.

313
00:27:39.947 --> 00:27:46.669
Well, and part of what I'm interested in seeing is how the reaction, how the actors were able to react against it.

314
00:27:46.689 --> 00:27:51.431
Because Meryl Streep was there sometimes on set reading lines.

315
00:27:51.471 --> 00:27:52.771
And so they were actually reacting to it.

316
00:27:52.791 --> 00:27:57.113
They said they had like a puppet, you know, a large Aslan head that they were...

317
00:27:57.913 --> 00:27:58.654
that they were looking at.

318
00:27:58.794 --> 00:28:04.217
But Meryl Streep said that at one point she was up on a ladder reading with her script, reading to them.

319
00:28:04.458 --> 00:28:13.824
So they're actually interacting with the voice itself, whereas I know with the original Mind the Witch and the Wardrobes, Liam Neeson's voice was brought in in post-production afterwards.

320
00:28:13.844 --> 00:28:24.391
They would have had somebody else there delivering the lines, but having the person whose voice is that they're actually responding to there and interacting with the actors, I think that can...

321
00:28:26.652 --> 00:28:35.578
that I think creates an environment for a better response from the actors, allows you to actually enter into that imaginative world more easily.

322
00:28:35.598 --> 00:28:37.980
So yeah, I'm hopeful.

323
00:28:38.200 --> 00:28:42.703
Yeah, and going forward, if she does more Narnia films, it'd be, and if this sort of,

324
00:28:43.903 --> 00:28:55.714
glam rock era, 60s rock as well, works, then you could imagine that each of the Narnia films could have a different sort of musical genre.

325
00:28:56.054 --> 00:28:58.897
You know, the line of witch and the wardrobe can be, I don't know.

326
00:28:59.317 --> 00:29:18.591
whoever moves her in prints or somebody, some kind of 90s type stuff going on or whatever, you could imagine that she can pick different eras to give each film a sort of different flavor and leaving this sort of the previous generation's rock music for this first one.

327
00:29:18.611 --> 00:29:20.212
So it's quite clever, I think.

328
00:29:20.912 --> 00:29:25.414
Okay, so we are both refusing to clutch our pearls and be upset about it.

329
00:29:25.474 --> 00:29:25.754
Right.

330
00:29:26.054 --> 00:29:28.035
We are both thinking, oh, that sounds interesting.

331
00:29:28.495 --> 00:29:29.175
Yeah.

332
00:29:29.915 --> 00:29:30.296
Good luck.

333
00:29:31.076 --> 00:29:31.276
Yeah.

334
00:29:31.336 --> 00:29:49.423
I think there are some ways it could fail, and my biggest worry is about how the children match up because the children look like more regular casting, how they match up to sort of more sort of, you know,

335
00:29:52.586 --> 00:29:57.948
huge sort of orchestral, loud rock music world.

336
00:29:58.028 --> 00:29:58.548
But we'll see.

337
00:29:58.708 --> 00:29:59.048
We'll see.

338
00:30:00.368 --> 00:30:03.469
Okay, so just sort of briefly touching on some other news.

339
00:30:04.850 --> 00:30:10.371
There are some stills from the Hobbiton set that was published by Warner Brothers.

340
00:30:10.391 --> 00:30:19.694
I don't know if you've seen those, but this is for filming for the Andy Serkis, The Hunt for Gollum.

341
00:30:20.314 --> 00:30:22.035
Did you notice those at all?

342
00:30:22.527 --> 00:30:23.448
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

343
00:30:23.488 --> 00:30:29.497
I saw the one, the official one, and then another one of, I can't remember if it was a director of photography or something.

344
00:30:29.517 --> 00:30:30.938
There's a whole spread of them.

345
00:30:31.479 --> 00:30:37.908
There's one which looks like Frodo, an older Frodo going into Bag End.

346
00:30:38.008 --> 00:30:39.350
That's one that I saw, yeah.

347
00:30:39.530 --> 00:30:44.154
There's one that could be Rosie and Sam or a couple who looks like Rosie and Sam.

348
00:30:44.795 --> 00:30:48.077
There's some with pumpkins and children.

349
00:30:48.498 --> 00:30:54.903
And there's one of Andy Serkis standing outside Bagshot Row with a long camera in front of him.

350
00:30:54.923 --> 00:30:56.805
He's obviously filming some kind of wide shot.

351
00:30:57.587 --> 00:31:09.053
The point of these, I think, for what it's worth, is that they are picking autumn as the tone for this opening.

352
00:31:09.153 --> 00:31:09.893
It looks wet.

353
00:31:10.193 --> 00:31:14.355
It's not the happy summer of the previous Hobbitons.

354
00:31:15.436 --> 00:31:19.918
They presumably filmed it in the New Zealand autumn slash winter.

355
00:31:21.579 --> 00:31:23.640
So I think it's saying something.

356
00:31:24.040 --> 00:31:25.661
My suspicion is it's...

357
00:31:27.973 --> 00:31:31.155
That could be the venue for the retrospective.

358
00:31:31.175 --> 00:31:39.339
You know, we survived and now looking back, this is what happened at the moment just before Frodo departs.

359
00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:47.163
But it also could be when they set out because they set out on the 22nd of November.

360
00:31:48.724 --> 00:32:10.563
September in the autumn so it's also useful for filming from that point of view so that's what I gleaned from that and of course we all know what Hobbiton looks like I did check in have a look at Hobbiton as a result and they've added since I went there you can now do a wild walk and meet some stone trolls

361
00:32:11.602 --> 00:32:11.962
Oh, wow.

362
00:32:12.062 --> 00:32:14.784
Those prop stone trolls or a version of them have been put.

363
00:32:14.845 --> 00:32:16.426
So there's an extra thing to go and see.

364
00:32:16.826 --> 00:32:21.670
I don't think I'll be flying back to New Zealand just to see those, but it looked very fun.

365
00:32:22.070 --> 00:32:22.250
Yeah.

366
00:32:23.416 --> 00:32:24.477
So that was the news there.

367
00:32:24.797 --> 00:32:41.395
Oh, and the other sort of tiny little fragments was that Jamie Dornan, who is playing Aragorn, is getting on well, according to Andy Serkis, because it will be his film, as is the one hunting.

368
00:32:43.137 --> 00:32:44.698
And then, of course, you've got the...

369
00:32:47.497 --> 00:32:54.283
there's a sort of glimpse of Gandalf having, you know, Ian McKellen in his Gandalf makeup.

370
00:32:54.343 --> 00:32:55.845
So he's obviously gone back to reprise.

371
00:32:56.906 --> 00:32:58.848
What do you think they're doing with the autumn setting?

372
00:33:00.452 --> 00:33:03.894
Yeah, I think that's interesting tonally, right?

373
00:33:03.934 --> 00:33:13.338
So this film, I think, isn't going to be, I think, if you had thought that it was going to be set in the Shire, and it would be like an optimistic film.

374
00:33:13.558 --> 00:33:17.300
But I don't know if that's setting the tone for the rest of this.

375
00:33:17.320 --> 00:33:18.260
This is kind of like a fall.

376
00:33:18.280 --> 00:33:21.902
This is like going into the winter that will shortly happen.

377
00:33:23.901 --> 00:33:29.323
fall over all of middle earth with Sauron and the ring, um, to, to kind of set.

378
00:33:29.363 --> 00:33:29.583
Yeah.

379
00:33:29.603 --> 00:33:34.485
So either there's a part perhaps tonally, but then also to set it apart from the films themselves.

380
00:33:34.545 --> 00:33:34.806
Right.

381
00:33:34.946 --> 00:33:39.367
To, to show like, Hey, this is Hobbiton in a slightly different light.

382
00:33:39.588 --> 00:33:47.151
And so perhaps that is a way to kind of prepare people, uh, for the difference that this is a slightly different film.

383
00:33:47.191 --> 00:33:50.732
It's set in the same universe, but it's not, uh, same timeline technically.

384
00:33:50.812 --> 00:33:51.032
Right.

385
00:33:51.292 --> 00:33:52.013
Uh, uh,

386
00:33:53.013 --> 00:34:00.335
cinematic universe, cinematic adaptation of Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson's vision, but slightly different.

387
00:34:00.355 --> 00:34:01.455
So we're turning it at a different time.

388
00:34:01.495 --> 00:34:06.177
So, yeah, I'm interested.

389
00:34:06.617 --> 00:34:08.037
I'll go watch it.

390
00:34:08.797 --> 00:34:11.078
Yeah, I suppose I'm just trying to work out where the Hobbiton

391
00:34:12.455 --> 00:34:12.835
sits.

392
00:34:13.316 --> 00:34:21.502
It's easier to see how it sits for the Stephen Colbert film, which is the Hobbit story.

393
00:34:21.982 --> 00:34:27.266
I'm guessing here it could be about the fact that the Rangers are looking after the Shire.

394
00:34:28.454 --> 00:34:36.481
So it could be almost like seeing their interaction with the Shire and how they're sort of standing on the outside of the Shire keeping bad guys away.

395
00:34:37.062 --> 00:34:51.175
Or it could be what I was suggesting if these are the older characters looking back, it could be the idea of Lord of the Rings is it's written with the reports, with the contribution of friends.

396
00:34:51.975 --> 00:34:52.895
telling them what happened.

397
00:34:52.915 --> 00:34:55.916
So it could be whilst Frodo is writing it down.

398
00:34:55.956 --> 00:35:00.797
So, you know, you start with a book and, you know, Gandalf taught me that, you know.

399
00:35:01.117 --> 00:35:03.517
So that's the sort of connecting tissue there.

400
00:35:03.897 --> 00:35:05.117
I don't know.

401
00:35:05.778 --> 00:35:10.558
But I think the autumn is really important for the Hobbits.

402
00:35:10.718 --> 00:35:12.259
It's the birthdays.

403
00:35:13.039 --> 00:35:18.000
It's when people set out on adventures and when they return.

404
00:35:18.020 --> 00:35:18.120
Yeah.

405
00:35:19.661 --> 00:35:22.023
So it has that feel.

406
00:35:22.843 --> 00:35:23.504
Anyway, we'll see.

407
00:35:23.524 --> 00:35:29.349
I think the release date for that is sometime at the end of next year, isn't it?

408
00:35:29.389 --> 00:35:39.878
Yeah, and it also just happens to match the release window, the season around which the movie would probably be released as well.

409
00:35:41.320 --> 00:35:42.141
Yes, okay.

410
00:35:42.781 --> 00:35:55.011
Yes, that's right, because quite often it's really weird if, say, you're watching a film and the timeline has slid and you're suddenly finding yourself in Christmas because they've decided to put it out in, you know, May.

411
00:35:56.292 --> 00:36:06.060
They did that with the Sherlock retellings where clearly, clearly it'd been time to be released at what we have over here is like a fireworks night, bonfire night.

412
00:36:06.240 --> 00:36:06.741
It was a big...

413
00:36:07.461 --> 00:36:09.301
But of course, it ended up in New Year or something.

414
00:36:09.321 --> 00:36:11.242
You're thinking, why are they talking about Bonfire Night?

415
00:36:12.562 --> 00:36:14.943
It was, yeah, so that does happen when things shift.

416
00:36:15.463 --> 00:36:21.244
Okay, so that's the news so far on Lord of the Rings, extra films.

417
00:36:22.485 --> 00:36:30.786
Stephen Colbert said when he came over to get his, what did he win, an Emmy or something, that he's working full time on it.

418
00:36:31.887 --> 00:36:36.348
So he seems to be enjoying himself writing the film after this.

419
00:36:37.588 --> 00:36:44.570
I wonder how much the fortune of that film is tied to the success of The Hunt for Gollum.

420
00:36:44.750 --> 00:36:45.290
Anyway, we'll see.

421
00:36:47.071 --> 00:36:47.451
We'll see.

422
00:36:48.791 --> 00:37:02.476
I just wanted to also mention, because we've not ever talked about it, another big sort of UK fantasy franchise that's sort of coming along, which I don't know that much about, though I do know the author.

423
00:37:03.236 --> 00:37:06.077
That's Catherine Rundle's Impossible Creatures.

424
00:37:07.397 --> 00:37:12.118
which has been bought by Disney for, I think, a multi-movie deal.

425
00:37:12.438 --> 00:37:14.599
They've really thrown lots of money at it.

426
00:37:15.979 --> 00:37:20.920
And she's writing it with her partner, who's also representing her.

427
00:37:20.960 --> 00:37:33.183
So there's a sort of a team where they've managed to sort of get some power for themselves in what is quite hard to do against these sort of film studios.

428
00:37:34.814 --> 00:37:37.617
The reason I'm mentioning her is because she's another Oxford author.

429
00:37:37.997 --> 00:37:41.020
And as the Oxford Central Fantasy, we should mention her existence.

430
00:37:41.941 --> 00:37:51.850
She is also an academic and wrote a very respected biography of the poet John Donne, which is very good.

431
00:37:53.251 --> 00:37:55.934
She's an unusual...

432
00:37:57.902 --> 00:38:00.743
Her backstory is full of all sorts of unusual things.

433
00:38:02.384 --> 00:38:05.906
And she is based in one of the most bizarre colleges in Oxford.

434
00:38:05.926 --> 00:38:08.567
So she basically lives in a fantasy world.

435
00:38:09.267 --> 00:38:13.809
And she described her politics as being closer to Philip Pullman than J.K. Rowling.

436
00:38:15.410 --> 00:38:17.371
Anyway, that's what's happening there.

437
00:38:17.631 --> 00:38:19.572
Have you come across her writing at all?

438
00:38:19.632 --> 00:38:21.033
She made it all in the States.

439
00:38:21.980 --> 00:38:22.840
Yes, yes.

440
00:38:22.860 --> 00:38:28.883
I think she got the Barnes & Noble Book of the Year for children over here.

441
00:38:29.083 --> 00:38:32.404
And yeah, so I've read Impossible Creatures, and it is good.

442
00:38:32.504 --> 00:38:34.725
It is mythologically rich.

443
00:38:34.805 --> 00:38:39.867
You can tell that she knows and is honoring and appreciates classical mythology.

444
00:38:40.967 --> 00:38:44.068
And so that's something that I appreciated.

445
00:38:44.088 --> 00:38:44.629
It does...

446
00:38:46.613 --> 00:38:55.183
It is tonally closer to his dark materials than it is to Harry Potter, to the Wizarding World.

447
00:38:56.124 --> 00:39:00.109
But I think, but it's still, but it isn't quite as...

448
00:39:01.783 --> 00:39:04.965
I don't want to say cynical sometimes.

449
00:39:06.045 --> 00:39:11.608
I think it comes across in Pullman's writing for children.

450
00:39:11.628 --> 00:39:13.910
I think that it is more...

451
00:39:14.470 --> 00:39:16.931
There is the ending of the book.

452
00:39:17.011 --> 00:39:21.634
And so there's a mixture of comedy and tragedy.

453
00:39:21.754 --> 00:39:24.135
And even in the midst of tragedy, there is hope.

454
00:39:24.155 --> 00:39:24.295
Yeah.

455
00:39:26.297 --> 00:39:28.399
and explicitly.

456
00:39:28.419 --> 00:39:30.402
And so I think, yeah, I enjoyed it.

457
00:39:30.502 --> 00:39:32.064
I picked it up actually after.

458
00:39:32.084 --> 00:39:33.105
I hadn't had a chance, right?

459
00:39:33.125 --> 00:39:34.046
It had been on my list.

460
00:39:34.126 --> 00:39:40.334
And then when I learned about Disney, picking up the rights for it, I said, I need to look at this now.

461
00:39:40.374 --> 00:39:42.897
And apparently, and looking into it, so she, it was initially...

462
00:39:43.560 --> 00:39:48.402
planned as a trilogy of books.

463
00:39:49.283 --> 00:39:57.227
But after some of these developments and talks about kind of fleshing things out, it's now become a five book planned series.

464
00:39:57.267 --> 00:40:01.989
The third book just came out, I believe, or is either coming out or just came out, the third book.

465
00:40:02.009 --> 00:40:03.910
So of a planned five.

466
00:40:04.190 --> 00:40:04.871
And after...

467
00:40:06.211 --> 00:40:11.733
talking about with Disney about really they want to kind of develop this into an IP in itself.

468
00:40:11.773 --> 00:40:16.714
And so she's slated to write the first two scripts with her creative partner.

469
00:40:17.555 --> 00:40:23.517
And she also has plans beyond those five books now that she kind of has plotted out or planned.

470
00:40:23.917 --> 00:40:30.579
She wants to write some like prequels, spinoff stories to kind of further enrich the world, similar to what has been done with the Wizarding World.

471
00:40:30.599 --> 00:40:34.080
This is fascinating because we saw what happened to Fantastic Beasts.

472
00:40:34.940 --> 00:40:43.270
Do you think it has the charm and the humor and the sort of child-centered adventure to carry it?

473
00:40:43.410 --> 00:40:47.434
Or does it have the Philip Pullman problem, which is it's not that charming?

474
00:40:48.135 --> 00:40:48.876
For children, yeah.

475
00:40:48.936 --> 00:40:49.977
It isn't as...

476
00:40:50.738 --> 00:40:57.466
Yeah, it didn't have the same sense of whimsy and wonder.

477
00:40:57.546 --> 00:41:07.377
In the story, there's two children as the main characters, one is a native to this magical world that exists kind of.

478
00:41:08.474 --> 00:41:17.524
not a lot like not inside or within ours, like the wizarding world with Harry Potter, but this is like a separate realm where there's entrance into a different world.

479
00:41:17.884 --> 00:41:21.048
And so there's the boy from our world who comes in here.

480
00:41:21.068 --> 00:41:26.073
So you do get the sense of wonder through his, through his perspective.

481
00:41:26.193 --> 00:41:27.014
But it isn't,

482
00:41:27.735 --> 00:41:34.201
it isn't as whimsical and fantastic as the early Harry Potter books and even the later Harry Potter books where you still have that kind of like edge of whimsy.

483
00:41:34.221 --> 00:41:35.062
And so, yeah.

484
00:41:35.082 --> 00:41:46.153
So the, and then the issue, I think when, when, uh, the golden compass came out, when it was adapted into a film starring Daniel Craig, ironically or unironically, wicked uncle, wicked father, right.

485
00:41:46.833 --> 00:41:48.234
Wicked father instead of wicked uncle.

486
00:41:48.294 --> 00:41:48.515
Yeah.

487
00:41:48.535 --> 00:41:49.515
So typecast for sure.

488
00:41:50.576 --> 00:41:58.663
But he, so that film, I know that like, you know, this is coming out around, it came out after Narnia, I believe, right?

489
00:41:58.743 --> 00:42:00.845
The Golden Compass film adaptation.

490
00:42:01.205 --> 00:42:05.669
So again, so there's different, I think that one appealed.

491
00:42:06.581 --> 00:42:12.767
more to adults or there were more adults I know who wanted their children that they were like, they're excited.

492
00:42:12.787 --> 00:42:14.809
This was there for some people, right?

493
00:42:15.450 --> 00:42:17.852
His dark materials is like the anti-Narnia for them.

494
00:42:17.872 --> 00:42:19.434
So they're like a reaction to it.

495
00:42:19.474 --> 00:42:24.999
They see it as like a personal identity, a statement as like Narnia is, this is how I feel about Narnia.

496
00:42:25.079 --> 00:42:26.681
Narnia is presenting this world and

497
00:42:27.341 --> 00:42:29.602
which is tied to religion.

498
00:42:30.162 --> 00:42:36.664
And his dark materials is clearly kind of like anti-establishment, anti-institutional religion.

499
00:42:36.924 --> 00:42:38.365
And so they'll identify with that one.

500
00:42:38.385 --> 00:42:44.227
And so it appealed more, I think, to adults philosophically than it did to the children.

501
00:42:44.267 --> 00:42:45.207
I had actually just...

502
00:42:45.908 --> 00:42:51.395
And anecdotally, the person lived in an apartment or a room in somebody else's house.

503
00:42:51.756 --> 00:42:54.820
He had two young children, elementary school-aged children.

504
00:42:55.621 --> 00:43:01.149
And he was very excited for the film to come out because he liked the book.

505
00:43:01.169 --> 00:43:02.631
And I think it's somebody who identified himself.

506
00:43:03.488 --> 00:43:15.430
as kind of like anti-Narnian in his worldview and wanted his children to be exposed to that and was really wanting them to, you know, become like awakened, alivened by that view.

507
00:43:15.710 --> 00:43:17.171
And they went and saw it.

508
00:43:17.671 --> 00:43:27.413
But the children, like it just didn't seem like it connected in the same way to them, the children, from their perspective, as it did to him as an adult.

509
00:43:27.453 --> 00:43:27.693
So yeah.

510
00:43:28.293 --> 00:43:31.495
It could be something similar.

511
00:43:31.515 --> 00:43:55.693
I do think it isn't as, like I said, it isn't as, if you're putting his dark materials on one end of the hole and like Narnia, those sentiments there, I would see Wizarding World Harry Potter kind of being in the middle, but as in the earlier books, leaning more towards the Narnia sense of like wonder magic, whimsy, and then later as the protagonists grow older

512
00:43:56.658 --> 00:44:03.603
leaning maybe a little bit more into like the reality, like maybe more like political realities, kind of edging more towards Pullman.

513
00:44:03.703 --> 00:44:17.553
But of course, I think Impossible Creatures, at least the first book, I haven't read the other ones yet, but Impossible Creatures, I think, is sitting kind of right there in the middle to begin with, whereas the early Harry Potter books, I think, are leaning more towards the whimsy and wonder side.

514
00:44:17.593 --> 00:44:21.155
So I think, and the characters aren't children.

515
00:44:21.195 --> 00:44:23.397
They're really like characters,

516
00:44:24.885 --> 00:44:27.812
three teens, almost teens.

517
00:44:28.273 --> 00:44:31.661
And so I think it's not going to be like children, like a Harry Potter movie.

518
00:44:32.879 --> 00:44:36.181
could appeal to some elementary school age children at that world.

519
00:44:36.201 --> 00:44:43.747
I think this is probably going to be one they'll want to because Disney will want to try to, I think, push it for a younger audience.

520
00:44:44.087 --> 00:44:45.688
I think it's slated to be PG.

521
00:44:46.669 --> 00:44:55.376
So there are those in the film adaptation could perhaps do something different because it is being produced and promoted by Disney that Disney could have some

522
00:44:55.926 --> 00:44:59.268
notes like Want It to air on the side of the wonder.

523
00:45:00.029 --> 00:45:02.471
And Wimstein emphasized that in the film adaptation.

524
00:45:02.511 --> 00:45:03.111
That's my guess.

525
00:45:03.451 --> 00:45:04.552
It's kind of what will happen.

526
00:45:04.592 --> 00:45:12.658
But it's definitely needy enough to attract an adult audience in terms of mythology and...

527
00:45:13.419 --> 00:45:14.880
And even like ecology, right?

528
00:45:14.900 --> 00:45:19.543
So it's dealing with fantastical creatures and their world is kind of like slowly dying.

529
00:45:19.563 --> 00:45:22.105
The magic is being kind of drained from their world.

530
00:45:22.145 --> 00:45:27.730
So they're kind of facing a magical slash ecological threat.

531
00:45:28.470 --> 00:45:53.421
to their world and this boy is coming over and trying to find out what the source of that is and and return it so there's definitely like modern like relevant themes for the world that we live in today but I think yeah so so I think you're right that the trick is with some of these books and it can be difficult with adults writing for children that

532
00:45:54.734 --> 00:46:00.661
Very often, it's the concerns of adults as adults that can make their way into children's literature.

533
00:46:00.961 --> 00:46:16.398
But for those special, blessed authors who are able to either remember what it was like when they were a child or have close relationships with children today and understand what they're concerned about, what they're afraid of.

534
00:46:16.734 --> 00:46:17.534
What do they love?

535
00:46:17.635 --> 00:46:20.296
What enlivens them right now as a child?

536
00:46:20.816 --> 00:46:25.119
But those are the authors that seem to be able to capture the vibrancy of youth.

537
00:46:25.179 --> 00:46:26.540
And I think that's what C.S.

538
00:46:26.560 --> 00:46:29.522
Lewis did with Narnia really well.

539
00:46:31.010 --> 00:46:33.212
Well, that means I have to go away and educate myself.

540
00:46:33.272 --> 00:46:35.393
I have read other books, but not this series.

541
00:46:35.453 --> 00:46:39.876
So, yeah, I will go and do that before the films come out.

542
00:46:40.096 --> 00:46:41.177
She's a very fine writer.

543
00:46:41.237 --> 00:46:48.782
I'm just intrigued because this secret sauce of what it is that makes something a good IP, I sometimes fear that...

544
00:46:49.783 --> 00:47:07.557
studios think they've got it and actually they're missing something and I don't and we'll see if this this is the thing it would be fascinating to see and of course they might do what they did with Cressida Cowell is you take an idea and the films are completely different from the books.

545
00:47:08.518 --> 00:47:08.998
Great.

546
00:47:09.258 --> 00:47:19.529
Yeah, well, the fact that the author is writing it, is writing the screenplay, to me, it says it'll probably queue closer to the book itself.

547
00:47:19.810 --> 00:47:21.752
So, yeah, I don't know.

548
00:47:21.792 --> 00:47:22.272
Interesting.

549
00:47:22.553 --> 00:47:23.774
Yeah, it is interesting.

550
00:47:23.794 --> 00:47:27.898
And I think just really quickly on this, so I know some of our chats we haven't seen.

551
00:47:28.539 --> 00:47:34.927
given recommendations on things lately, but there was a book that I just read that is directly relevant to this about writing for children.

552
00:47:35.567 --> 00:47:46.260
Mac Barnett is an award-winning children's author, and he had a book that came out this past year called Make Believe,

553
00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:48.662
the subtitle on writing for children.

554
00:47:49.242 --> 00:47:50.984
Um, and it's, it's, it's phenomenal.

555
00:47:51.024 --> 00:47:57.169
And I think it's good for like storytelling in general, but especially for people who want to write to a younger audience.

556
00:47:57.669 --> 00:47:59.430
Um, he, and I didn't know this about him.

557
00:47:59.470 --> 00:48:06.636
I, I was exposed to him, um, reading his children's books to my picture books to my child and was just delighted.

558
00:48:06.696 --> 00:48:06.976
He writes a

559
00:48:16.584 --> 00:48:20.228
And just some like, just like delightful books, but also are like offbeat.

560
00:48:20.248 --> 00:48:21.509
They're not saccharine.

561
00:48:21.890 --> 00:48:26.935
They're just like completely original and captivate children and myself.

562
00:48:27.296 --> 00:48:28.817
And he wrote this book.

563
00:48:28.897 --> 00:48:35.945
He was chosen as kind of the children's literature laureate for the United States for I think last year or whatever.

564
00:48:35.965 --> 00:48:38.848
And so he, this is what he did during his kind of

565
00:48:39.308 --> 00:48:45.132
year of being the laureate was writing this book for adults about writing for children.

566
00:48:45.493 --> 00:48:46.473
It's very engaging.

567
00:48:46.533 --> 00:48:47.314
So it's a children's author.

568
00:48:47.614 --> 00:48:58.862
I found out that he, I think I need to find out this, but it sounds like he went to grad school for Norwegian medieval Scandinavian court poetry.

569
00:48:59.522 --> 00:49:00.203
So I can deep like...

570
00:49:00.323 --> 00:49:07.209
academic background, but who's writing these like, silly, wonderful stories for children that are just delightful.

571
00:49:07.229 --> 00:49:17.699
And so his, his way of talking about storytelling, and engaging with your audience and understanding an audience, especially for children, I think is well, well worth anyone reading.

572
00:49:18.780 --> 00:49:21.563
It's just Yeah, it's and it's a short, it's a very short read.

573
00:49:21.603 --> 00:49:23.805
If you're like, he does the audio book, and it's like,

574
00:49:25.561 --> 00:49:26.643
two and a half hours long.

575
00:49:26.663 --> 00:49:28.025
Okay, so that's special.

576
00:49:28.065 --> 00:49:28.265
Yeah.

577
00:49:28.726 --> 00:49:36.617
It's very short, and it has a printed book with some nice little whimsical illustrations in it, but it's for adults written well, and his theory, he does the greatest...

578
00:49:38.604 --> 00:49:48.933
like a literary analysis of Margaret Weiss Brown's Good Night Moon, American classic book, this like phenomenal literary analysis of it.

579
00:49:48.973 --> 00:49:52.036
That's worth the price of admission just for this children's book.

580
00:49:52.056 --> 00:49:54.538
Like how he's seeing like philosophically what's happening there.

581
00:49:54.639 --> 00:49:56.080
Anyway, that's my recommendation.

582
00:49:56.100 --> 00:49:58.722
So that was Make Believe by?

583
00:49:58.762 --> 00:50:04.467
Make Believe by Mac Barnett, B-A-R-N-E-T-T, I believe.

584
00:50:04.808 --> 00:50:04.908
Okay.

585
00:50:04.928 --> 00:50:05.088
Okay.

586
00:50:05.838 --> 00:50:17.986
So just on book news, I was very excited that I received the proof copies for my children's book, which is coming out on the 31st of December in the UK, called The Mystery of Treason Castle.

587
00:50:18.246 --> 00:50:18.906
Children's Castle.

588
00:50:19.187 --> 00:50:20.087
Treason Castle.

589
00:50:20.728 --> 00:50:28.433
And what's really fun about the proof copies here, which are very nicely produced, thank you, Usborne, is that there's two versions.

590
00:50:29.460 --> 00:50:30.521
And they're sending them out.

591
00:50:30.941 --> 00:50:35.043
One of them, it says on the front, you are on Team Innocent.

592
00:50:35.604 --> 00:50:40.566
And the other one says you are on Team Murderer, which, of course, is the thing of the game.

593
00:50:41.987 --> 00:50:47.270
And it's got some of the interior artwork in place.

594
00:50:48.631 --> 00:50:50.152
But I've just received today...

595
00:50:51.653 --> 00:50:58.019
The PDF of the final artwork in the interior, which is always really exciting to see.

596
00:50:58.399 --> 00:51:09.529
And so we're cooking up, taking these round to – because proof copies go to sort of bookshops and, you know, people who have influence in the industry.

597
00:51:10.029 --> 00:51:13.192
They're going to be doing some proof drops but in costume.

598
00:51:13.733 --> 00:51:14.614
Oh, fun.

599
00:51:14.714 --> 00:51:16.655
This is when being an author becomes –

600
00:51:17.496 --> 00:51:23.798
gets out of your imaginary world in your study and you have to go in the real world and make a complete idiot of yourself.

601
00:51:23.818 --> 00:51:26.579
But that's part of the job.

602
00:51:26.599 --> 00:51:27.440
That's exciting.

603
00:51:27.480 --> 00:51:29.520
So I have questions for you about that.

604
00:51:29.541 --> 00:51:33.142
So for those proof copies, are those going to be the final copies?

605
00:51:33.162 --> 00:51:38.944
They'll have two different A and B covers there or is that just kind of promotional for the advanced reading copies?

606
00:51:39.204 --> 00:51:42.825
That is the promotional copy.

607
00:51:43.066 --> 00:51:46.847
The final cover is on the back.

608
00:51:48.140 --> 00:51:48.521
Oh, okay.

609
00:51:49.042 --> 00:51:50.664
Which is a sort of dynamic castle.

610
00:51:50.684 --> 00:51:52.907
I think it would be just the one cover.

611
00:51:53.508 --> 00:51:58.536
But I haven't quite, we can probably lean into it.

612
00:51:59.016 --> 00:52:00.118
There is going to be another one.

613
00:52:00.619 --> 00:52:02.602
I'm writing the follow-up at the moment.

614
00:52:03.302 --> 00:52:04.603
So I don't know.

615
00:52:04.623 --> 00:52:05.484
We'll see how it goes.

616
00:52:05.804 --> 00:52:10.407
But it would be quite fun to have something in the interior that is a kind of URL.

617
00:52:10.947 --> 00:52:14.490
We can probably do some point-of-sale material.

618
00:52:14.990 --> 00:52:15.290
That's great.

619
00:52:15.310 --> 00:52:16.471
Yeah, yeah.

620
00:52:16.551 --> 00:52:19.453
I was going to say, yeah, some bookmarks, some other.

621
00:52:19.753 --> 00:52:20.974
Yeah.

622
00:52:20.994 --> 00:52:23.736
So when's the shelf date for that one will be available?

623
00:52:23.756 --> 00:52:27.178
It's a January book, which means it comes out on the 31st of December.

624
00:52:27.198 --> 00:52:27.398
Yeah.

625
00:52:27.738 --> 00:52:42.261
So the idea here is that you don't want to put something out in the Christmas market because it gets cluttered by either really big sellers or, you know, sticker books with nativity scenes or Father Christmas.

626
00:52:42.281 --> 00:52:50.483
So we have a sort of slot in the earlier part of the year, which is in the run up to World Book Day in end of Feb, beginning of March.

627
00:52:50.523 --> 00:52:52.704
So that's a good slot to be in.

628
00:52:57.966 --> 00:53:15.745
doing it then maybe doing a little tour of schools and that kind of thing and that's fantastic or being on the who knows i might be on the the summer festival circuit as well we'll have to see it all depends how well it sells and that's yeah i don't know so buy coffee folks

629
00:53:16.626 --> 00:53:18.047
Yes, everyone by a copy.

630
00:53:18.107 --> 00:53:19.389
Free order now, yes.

631
00:53:20.169 --> 00:53:24.473
And it's, of course, going to Frankfurt, which is happening very soon.

632
00:53:24.493 --> 00:53:25.334
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's happening.

633
00:53:25.354 --> 00:53:26.475
Yeah, that's happening in October.

634
00:53:26.495 --> 00:53:28.997
Yeah, that's the first, second week of October.

635
00:53:29.017 --> 00:53:29.317
Yeah.

636
00:53:29.478 --> 00:53:34.322
So what happens behind the scenes, if you're interested, is so my agent is representing this book.

637
00:53:34.422 --> 00:53:35.923
She is representing the foreign rights.

638
00:53:35.983 --> 00:53:38.385
So her team who do the foreign rights will take it there.

639
00:53:38.405 --> 00:53:38.546
Mm-hmm.

640
00:53:40.247 --> 00:53:45.390
And so we'll try and get it into as many territories as possible.

641
00:53:45.510 --> 00:53:52.635
And I've sort of said, go to the territories where they've got, because it's sort of inspired by the traitors TV program.

642
00:53:52.695 --> 00:54:00.120
That's the same kind of game is happening in the book to what that is, except as a layer of a real murder that happens within that context.

643
00:54:01.021 --> 00:54:09.229
And so it's already a sort of known idea because of the TV program in many, many territories.

644
00:54:10.050 --> 00:54:14.995
And then there was also the audio rights were separate this time.

645
00:54:15.015 --> 00:54:17.617
So it's just been sold for the audio rights.

646
00:54:17.657 --> 00:54:18.318
So that's nice.

647
00:54:19.019 --> 00:54:19.339
Excellent.

648
00:54:19.499 --> 00:54:20.460
And so it's great for...

649
00:54:20.600 --> 00:54:21.801
Sort of begins to build.

650
00:54:21.841 --> 00:54:22.462
Begins to build.

651
00:54:22.482 --> 00:54:22.923
Yeah, yeah.

652
00:54:23.859 --> 00:54:37.603
And so when it's at, say it's at the Frankfurt Book Festival, is that where your agents and publishers will be like hoping to get to sell rights for international for different translations of the book?

653
00:54:38.003 --> 00:54:38.523
Yeah.

654
00:54:38.963 --> 00:54:47.166
So what happens at Frankfurt is publishers will go with like, or agents in my case, will go with sort of books they're promoting online.

655
00:54:48.486 --> 00:54:53.530
And it's a series of meetings that you don't normally hear until sometime afterwards.

656
00:54:53.550 --> 00:55:00.695
Because what happens is people take their books back to their, you know, home and say, oh, this sounds like a book that would fit on our list.

657
00:55:01.336 --> 00:55:01.556
Right.

658
00:55:02.156 --> 00:55:03.577
Sometimes you do sell there and then.

659
00:55:03.637 --> 00:55:05.198
It just varies.

660
00:55:05.318 --> 00:55:06.259
Yeah.

661
00:55:06.519 --> 00:55:13.805
And sometimes if you're, say, like a, you know, a big seller like Richard Osman is, there'll be people competing for the rights.

662
00:55:13.865 --> 00:55:15.106
That's unlikely to be my case.

663
00:55:15.126 --> 00:55:15.246
Right.

664
00:55:15.266 --> 00:55:15.426
Right.

665
00:55:16.186 --> 00:55:18.889
So it just depends what the buzz is around a title.

666
00:55:19.890 --> 00:55:24.394
But it's still done by lots.

667
00:55:24.454 --> 00:55:30.939
I've been to Frankfurt once back in the 2010s with a German publisher.

668
00:55:33.001 --> 00:55:39.847
And it's still done in this sort of way of you all go to this massive conference center and,

669
00:55:41.068 --> 00:56:07.478
it's it's crazy it is a overwhelming world it's definitely not somewhere to go as an author unless you're invited by a publisher because you're such a small small little minnow in a massive massive right massive pool yeah i was very close very close to going to frankfurt book festival um this year so the book my book quest of wonders that just came out is in uh the they'll be featuring their robinsberger press the one that published it they'll

670
00:56:08.138 --> 00:56:09.419
It is in German.

671
00:56:09.459 --> 00:56:14.502
So people who are actually German can get a copy of it already translated for them.

672
00:56:14.522 --> 00:56:16.063
So they're doing some things there.

673
00:56:16.083 --> 00:56:17.723
And it sounded like very interesting place.

674
00:56:17.744 --> 00:56:19.905
Like I felt like I would want to like go and wander.

675
00:56:19.925 --> 00:56:28.850
If you've got something like that, where you've got a book that's actually that that's fine to go because you've got someone you can go up to up, you know, you've got a home base.

676
00:56:30.510 --> 00:56:35.472
But just wandering up because you want to talk to publishers or whatever as an author, it's really difficult.

677
00:56:35.732 --> 00:56:38.113
People do that at the London Book Fair.

678
00:56:38.153 --> 00:56:38.933
I know they do that.

679
00:56:39.254 --> 00:56:39.794
Okay, okay.

680
00:56:39.934 --> 00:56:40.594
The London Book Fair.

681
00:56:40.614 --> 00:56:41.715
When is London Book Fair?

682
00:56:42.015 --> 00:56:45.296
That's in usually April time.

683
00:56:45.516 --> 00:56:45.816
April.

684
00:56:46.136 --> 00:56:48.237
And that usually has a program for…

685
00:56:49.600 --> 00:57:07.696
writers and authors like separate seminar type thing so there's a reason for going but i'm just sort of saying if you're out there thinking oh i'll go there and pitch my book it's not a very good place to pitch because it's professionals pitching to other professionals unless it's organized there's a sort of

686
00:57:09.280 --> 00:57:10.961
we're open to see you kind of thing.

687
00:57:12.922 --> 00:57:19.604
Otherwise, you just feel very depressed, I think, even by the time you got back because you'll be thinking, wow, there's a lot of books in the world.

688
00:57:21.845 --> 00:57:26.847
So I went because I was on a shortlist for a prize, so that was fine.

689
00:57:26.867 --> 00:57:30.669
You know, there was like a presentation and a dinner and all that kind of thing.

690
00:57:31.249 --> 00:57:34.651
But I did come away thinking, gosh, that was an interesting experience.

691
00:57:35.911 --> 00:57:38.052
I met Sarah J. Mars on that visit, so that was fun.

692
00:57:38.212 --> 00:57:39.313
Oh, thanks.

693
00:57:39.513 --> 00:57:44.034
He was coming up as the new, young, fresh-faced, rising author.

694
00:57:44.255 --> 00:57:46.275
So that was, you know, you do meet people.

695
00:57:46.315 --> 00:57:55.139
But, yeah, so that's the wonderful world of these huge book fairs.

696
00:57:56.007 --> 00:57:58.108
Right, Jacob, we should probably end it there.

697
00:57:59.289 --> 00:58:04.772
Thank you so much for talking through this wide range of news of me.

698
00:58:04.792 --> 00:58:05.592
It's been great fun.

699
00:58:06.433 --> 00:58:15.478
And, yeah, fingers crossed that Greta Gerwig gets her vision actually really works because I've got high hopes now.

700
00:58:16.368 --> 00:58:17.128
Yeah, yeah.

701
00:58:17.148 --> 00:58:26.234
So we'll find out February 12th in cinemas and then on Netflix in April, I believe, is when you can view it from the comfort of your own couch.

702
00:58:26.814 --> 00:58:28.715
Yeah, Netflix Films, I suppose, is going to come out.

703
00:58:29.035 --> 00:58:31.276
I will definitely try and see it in a cinema, though, I think.

704
00:58:31.377 --> 00:58:31.537
Yeah.

705
00:58:31.557 --> 00:58:33.578
Particularly with all that rock music going on.

706
00:58:34.198 --> 00:58:34.518
Right.

707
00:58:35.519 --> 00:58:37.260
Okay, thank you very much for joining us.

708
00:58:42.967 --> 00:58:45.548
Thanks for listening to Myth Makers Podcast.

709
00:58:46.288 --> 00:58:49.048
Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.

710
00:58:49.708 --> 00:58:53.469
Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun.

711
00:58:54.169 --> 00:59:01.091
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712
00:59:01.811 --> 00:59:07.172
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