When you do something (like talk about Shakespeare) for 20 years, you realize that over time, you’ve really explored all the options. Write a book? Did it, twice. Make an app? Did it, twice (though neither is still available). Sell merchandise? Check. Start a Shakespeare podcast … hmmmm. Haven’t started a podcast yet.

Enter Bardfilm, aka Keith. I met Keith here on the blog back in 2008, and we talk online nearly every day. Whenever I have a new idea for a project, he’s one of my staunchest supporters. He knows I lost my job recently and have time on my hands. This time, he’s the one who said, “Hey, wanna make a podcast?”

Infinite Variety: The Shakespeare Rewatch Podcast

Podcasts need structure. Nobody will listen to us geek out over Shakespeare for an hour a week. Besides, that’s what the blog and social media are for. Bardfilm asked if I was familiar with how “rewatch” podcasts work. In a rewatch podcast, the hosts agree on a show they’ve both seen, and then they independently watch it again, taking notes on what is most interesting to them. Then, they get back together and walk through the show, comparing notes and talking about the parts they find most interesting.

That’s where the “infinite variety” comes in because we’re not just talking about Shakespeare adaptations; we’re talking about anything and everything inspired by Shakespeare.

Slings & Arrows Season 1 Episode 1

For our inaugural episode, we’ve chosen the Canadian TV show Slings & Arrows, which many Shakespeare geeks have undoubtedly seen. Over three seasons, it told the story of a theatre troop struggling to balance “theatre as art” and “theater as business.” Each season focuses on a particular Shakespeare play (season one being Hamlet), but with plenty of other references galore.

By choosing a highly regarded TV show first, we can learn the ropes of podcasting and get our feet under ourselves about what we will make here. Of course, there are some bugs to work out. For starters, I’m not proud of the audio in this first one, but that’s easily remedied.

We mostly want your input, our loyal readers (turned listeners). What do you want us to talk about? Movies, or tv shows? Lots of Shakespeare or only hints of inspiration? As we get going, we’ll start taking listener questions and address them directly on the show.

But to do that, we need subscribers! If I set us up correctly, our new podcast should be available on all the major services – Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, PocketCasts, iHeartRadio. If I’ve missed the one you use, let me know and I’ll see if can get us added.

Do people remember Rain Main (1988)? Given the subject matter—Tom Cruise discovers that he’s got an autistic older brother, played by Hoffman, and immediately kidnaps him to go scam casinos—and the time period (1980s), I wonder if it’s one of those movies that, as they say, “didn’t age well.”

That doesn’t mean some stuff isn’t funny, though. I’d forgotten all about this scene until I tripped over it in one of those movie trivia “improvised scenes that made the final cut” lists. Cruise has Hoffman, his brother, trapped in a phone booth with him so he doesn’t wander away. Dustin, ever the method actor, needed to fart. So he went with it. Cruise’s response is about what you’d expect. It’s cinematic gold like this that surely helped Hoffman score the Best Actor Academy Award that year. He’s been nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award 7 times and won twice.

But why, may you ask, am I suddenly writing about it? Here, now, on a Shakespeare blog? Because what I didn’t know is that Hoffman himself has given interviews where he claims that he’s more proud of this scene than his Shakespeare work!

“And it’s one of the high moments of my life. I have done Shakespeare, and I have done plays by Arthur Miller, but nothing can touch the fart scene.”

Among other works, Hoffman played Shylock in Peter Hall’s 1989 Merchant of Venice, for which he was nominated for the Best Actor Tony.

There you go, all you Shakespearean actors out there looking to break free from the pack. The next time you want to play a little prank on a costar, especially if you find yourself trapped in tight quarters, go ahead and let it happen. It’s Dustin Hoffman approved.

The very welcome trend for A-list celebrities to get on a West End stage and test their Shakespeare chops continues with some exciting announcements!

https://deadline.com/2024/07/sigourney-weaver-west-end-tempest-1236026153

First, we have Tom Hiddleston and Haley Atwell taking on Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. “You had me at Tom Hiddleston,” as the saying goes. If that’s not a saying, it should be. I don’t know if Haley Atwell (perhaps most well-known as Peggy Carter in many of the Captain America movies) has much Shakespeare to her credit already, though I do see a short Cymbeline in her IMDB history (as Innogen).

But what really caught my eye was Sigourney Weaver as Prospero?! Nice. The last time I saw a female Prospero was Helen Mirren in Julie Taymor’s movie adaptation. I assume they’ll do a similar thing where they gender-swap the role and make “Prospera” the mother figure, which, for my money, drastically changes the family dynamic of the play. But maybe that’s just because I’m a father.

I’m excited about the potential here because I never thought of Weaver as a Shakespearean. But apparently she’s got some credits to her name. She played Goneril in a 1979 King Lear while in college, and then Portia in a 1986 off-Broadway Merchant of Venice. What I found really neat, though, is her quote about bringing some Shakespeare to her break-out movie role in Alien:

The star once revealed that she pretended “I was doing Henry V the entire time” she was playing Ripley in Alien. “I thought, ‘Well, as a woman, I’ll never be cast as Henry V, so this is my Henry V,” Weaver told New York magazine in a 2012 interview. 

I’m fascinated because that movie came out in 1979. When presumably she was either just out of college, or even still in. Shakespeare must have been completely new to her. But she still saw it as the source to build her character.

I hope she crushes it as Prospero. I also hope that the trend of taping these silly things continues. It’s not like all of us can just zip on over to the West End and get a ticket, especially when big celebrity names are the draw.

I probably last saw the rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally when it first came out in 1989. As a Gen-X nerd, I go back to a lot of “classics” from that era, but I’m more into stuff like Wargames and Short Circuit.

Well that changed recently when we were reminded of the movie in the presence of our now college-aged daughters and we thought, oh, we have to watch that again. Long story short they’d still rather play Minecraft with their brother – no amount of calling them back into the room to laugh at the funny 80’s hair or to not miss the iconic lines would catch their interest. No matter, my wife and I sat and re-watched it anyway.

And what’s this? Where exactly do they bump into each other? I pause and rewind. Because, unlike in 1989, I can do that now. Something about this scene looks familiar …

They’re actually in Shakespeare & Co! In New York, of course, not Paris. I would never have recognized that on first watch. But it leapt right out at me almost 40 years later.

https://www.businessinsider.com/when-harry-met-sally-details-might-have-missed-easter-eggs-2022-12

What I also didn’t realize is that this scene is the inspiration for the whole “You’ve Got Mail” movie, where big box stores like Barnes & Noble shoved little indie bookshops out of existence. Now I’m going to have to go re-watch that one for Shakespeare references. Guess it’s Meg Ryan Week at Shakespeare Geek’s Place!