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Jan. 26th, 2004 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaThe good news is: Tom Stoppard is writing the screenplay for His Dark Materials.
:
"With a skittish eye, perhaps, on the power of religious groups in the United States, New Line's executives say they will probably insist that the books' repudiation of religion be softened into more of a meditation on the corruption of power in general. Mark Ordesky, executive vice president and chief operating officer of New Line Productions, said in an interview that "the real issue is not religion; it's authority-- that's what's really the driving issue here."
Mr. Ordesky pointed out that the figure who most represents God in the books is known as "the Authority" and said that the core of the story is about "people who are striving to be free and have free will, who are in conflict with forces of authority and totalitarianism."
What the studio likes about the trilogy, Mr. Ordesky said, is the same thing it liked about "The Lord of the Rings": the story. "Big-budget, big-spectacle, visual-effects movies are in themselves of no interest to audiences," Mr. Ordesky said. "What resonates is when you take all that and have a compelling human story beneath it."
New Line--we hatess it, we hatess it forever.
(Quoted passage is from NY Times Arts & Leisure section p. 5, Jan. 25, 2004)
:
"With a skittish eye, perhaps, on the power of religious groups in the United States, New Line's executives say they will probably insist that the books' repudiation of religion be softened into more of a meditation on the corruption of power in general. Mark Ordesky, executive vice president and chief operating officer of New Line Productions, said in an interview that "the real issue is not religion; it's authority-- that's what's really the driving issue here."
Mr. Ordesky pointed out that the figure who most represents God in the books is known as "the Authority" and said that the core of the story is about "people who are striving to be free and have free will, who are in conflict with forces of authority and totalitarianism."
What the studio likes about the trilogy, Mr. Ordesky said, is the same thing it liked about "The Lord of the Rings": the story. "Big-budget, big-spectacle, visual-effects movies are in themselves of no interest to audiences," Mr. Ordesky said. "What resonates is when you take all that and have a compelling human story beneath it."
New Line--we hatess it, we hatess it forever.
(Quoted passage is from NY Times Arts & Leisure section p. 5, Jan. 25, 2004)
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Date: 2004-01-27 05:01 am (UTC)(I personally thought he got rather too heavy-handed about the religion aspect; it weakened the books for me, and I'm a godless heathen.)
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Date: 2004-01-27 06:19 am (UTC)But the thought of some lily-livered coward at New Line bowdlerizing a text loved by millions for fear of offending people who won't want to go see this movie no matter what (because, youknow, witchcraft, satanism, etc.) brings out the militant in me.
On reflection, I do think there is a difference between Authority = Evil and Religion = Evil. I'm no libertarian: I don't assume that authority is by nature corrupt, though it is easily corrupted. Often the corrupting agent is religion, come to think of it.