Much Ado About Anonymous

I often tell people how we used to keep ourselves awake during Overknights by watching movies. It wasn’t an altogether irrelevant activity as it often had something to do with armor and the history it was our duty to educate – even if it was the mossy gilt in Excalibur, the on and off again accents in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves… or the still green rolling hills at the opening of Braveheart. It’s not like we hadn’t watched those movies a dozen times before. What kept us awake was the giddy lampooning and impish shredding of Hollywood’s total fail at accurately representing history.

It was a fun game to keep myself awake at 4am, quite possibly after 6 hours of entertaining cub scouts in my own anachronistic character. And I know it isn’t something I’ve entirely outgrown. Ask my friends. Get enough wine in me and I’ll give you a treatise on the costume plot of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

So… this week… well I guess it’s this week else why would there be all this hullabaloo… a movie that would be excellent fodder for the wee hours of an Overknight or my wine drenched reverie is opening. And all across the wires – even the distinguished New York Times and the BBC – people are spoiling the game for me before I even get a chance to see Anonymous.

I want to see it. And I suppose I have to make the disclosure that I’m an agnostic when it comes to the authorship question – though I know that phrase is pretentious. But no more pretentious than all the ridiculous debate and protests that are erupting over… a movie.

I’ve read a bit on both sides of the subject. I’m not convinced either way. I don’t… I don’t want to be. And maybe that makes me a Shakespeare heathen – but um, have you seen the way I direct Shakespeare? If you did, maybe you might realize I just decide to leave the identity issue in nebulous so my conscience doesn’t ever have to be distracted by how I completely bastardize his stories… but, well, I’m in good company in that attitude.

Or maybe… I’ve spent enough time reading about history to recognize the fact that… um… none of us were there. So what do we really KNOW? I mean… even with the internet and television and Facebook we still can’t get into cerebral comprehension what has been happening to the economy. So… why are we suddenly blessed with clear headed omnipotent knowledge of what happened 500 years ago when people fudged record keeping if they even bothered to write it down?

But what did last are the plays. And when it comes to Shakespeare, I really don’t give a fig for the traditionalist approach. I don’t live in the early 17th century, so I don’t much care for seeing Juliet bemoan Romeo under the weight of a corset and farthingale. I want Horatio to be a female. Those words speak to me because of the emotion and the beauty, not because it's uttered with distracting emphasis on the beat of iambic pentameter.

I also know that annoys people. People who think Shakespeare is a heightened language, so brilliant it needs to be put on a pedestal. Not much unlike that collection of words and stories written by a bunch of Jewish men a couple millennia ago. I suppose it’s no small coincidence that when I started questioning who wrote Shake-speare, I also started questioning who wrote and edited those parables. And… I don’t know… I actually think I pay better attention and have more appreciation for Biblical lessons now that I’m not so wrapped up in the author.

But wait a minute, Jessie. Am I not an author? A Leo? Would not my ego be flustered and insulted if some enterprising upstart decided to bend and twist my stories into something different… all while supposing she knows more about me and my life than I do? Actually… no. Because if that is happening 500 years from now… well that means someone is talking about me 500 years from now. And I’m not just a quintessence of dust or food for maggots. Then again, I’m not a balding middle-aged man who wore cod pieces and horsehair in my hose… so maybe I have a different attitude to immortality.

‘Sblood. I don’t give a crap. I want to see the movie. It will be fun. For the fact of Rhys Ifans alone.

And, yes, I will probably have a mini critique running in my brain. Because I am smug enough to think I know what’s wrong… but I like to think I’ve learned enough in the ten years since I left Higgins to recognize that I don’t know everything… and acting like I do just proves I don’t.