I haven't seen or read TCoM, but just commenting on bowdlerization in general -- it's interesting how so-called "bad words" are always censored in the name of protecting children. I've heard, even from people not inclined to censor things at all, that swears sound bad coming from those younger than we are, but not from people your own age or older, unless they are a lot older[*]. However, this is true for children too, from what I remember. I was never upset when my parents swore (although they tried not to) or when my friends did. The result is that children are rarely shocked by profanity, unless they've been carefully taught to be shocked, and so if the rationale for bowdlerization is to shield the children, then the whole thing is a circular argument.

[*] I suspect his is because those raised in the early 20th C. were taught more firmly not to swear, so we're not accustomed to hearing profanity from them. This vague generality should not be taken to apply to any particular person, and may (for all I know) be U.S.-specific.

Another thought: the words we have for profanity nearly all sound either childish or musty, possibly excepting 'profanity' and 'expletive.' We can curse, cuss, blaspheme, or "utter oaths," a phrase so quaint it needs quotation marks. We can use bad language or bad words, some of which are the dreaded four-letter-words, and all of which are strong, foul, and dirty. There are execrations and imprecations and muttered maledictions (you have to mutter them, like with anathemas). When we want to swear without swearing, we delete our expletives in so many words. Phooey.

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My parents disapproved of swearing without reason; to quote my dad: "If you eff and blind all day, what have you in reserve to relieve your feelings when you hit your thumb with a hammer?"

If teens in the street are anything to go by, I don't think the occasional "bastard" on TV is going to deprave and corrupt. The only thing about what I overhear is how monotonous it is.

We've lived in Ireland for about 20 years, where "f" and its variants often seem to have no more value than punctuation - so much for the silver-tongued Hiberians; potty-mouthed more likely - but I've still managed to keep (mostly) from casual swearing (come to that, I haven't picked up an Irish accent from our neighbours in all that time - or a New York one from Diane, either.)

There's always the hammered thumb, or the crystal vase onto the tiled kitchen floor, or much more rarely, an escalation of anger that's still well short of something physical. Next stage there is either calm down or leave the area. It works well.

As for Colour of Magic what got me was not merely changing the "bad" word - despite filming it being said - but doing the substitution so badly. Come on, there are better ways around the problem, and what I suggested is just one of them. The best place to fix dodgy dialogue is on the page...

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Yeah, my parents had the "hammered thumb" exception too, and they weren't strict about enforcement even in other situations. They just told me not to say things like that, or to calm down and start over.

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I agree with your parents' theory of swearing. Why not be creative in one's exclamations, until it's really necessary to use the short and sharp ones? (Phrases like Beast's "my stars and garters" always amuse me, not to mention they aren't the same old "sh*t." Heh.)

I'll be very excited to see CoM when it finally gets stateside. Maybe as more are made, they will continue to improve over each other. My hope is that someday, when they are really polished, we'll get to see Vimes. But not unless it's really polished! I would be very sad if Vimes didn't get an awesome movie to accompany him. See also, Granny Weatherwax.

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When it happens, I'll be interested to see who's cast as Vimes; Terry's opinion in The Art of Discworld is that

Paul (Kidby) always makes him look a bit like Clint Eastwood, (as in your current avatar) but I've always imagined him as a younger, slightly bulkier Pete Postlethwaite.

It's going to be a close-run thing between the creator and the visualiser, because Wardrobe clearly designed Sean Astin's Twoflower costume with Kidby art as a reference (it's in the same Art of Discworld book). Casting decided not to use it, wisely I think, since though the Kidby interpretation is amiable enough (and the character is from the Counterweight Continent, confirmed as the Aurient by Interesting Times), it's also a leeetle bit close to a toothy-grin Japanese caricature. Better not go there.

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Yeah, I honestly don't know who I want as Vimes, actor-wise. For me, I don't care too much what he ends up looking like, so long as he can embody the character of Vimes. Vimes is so good as a complex character that I've never spent too much time trying to imagine his looks (as opposed to, say, Angua or Carrot or, heaven forbid, Nobby).

For example (I just re-finished re-reading an X-Men comic, as you may be able to tell from today's analogies), from the X-Men movies, Hugh Jackman doesn't look a whole lot like the well-documented comic book and cartoon Wolverine - he's a whole foot taller, for one thing! And of course much less bulky. On the other hand, in some of the best movie scenes (the one in X2 where he jumps from a balcony of the mansion to kill several soldiers in minutes, or the woods fight scene in X3, not to mention his excellent timing and personality in the banter) he really gets Wolverine - so I can accept the size difference, or the fact that he doesn't really have such a growly voice.

On the other hand, I've never seen Vimes as being quite as conventionally good-looking as Clint Eastwood, so I guess I have some visual preferences. I'd love it to be an actor who's not unattractive but not a totally gorgeous man. And he has to have dark or greying hair. :)

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P.S. And now that I've refreshed my memory on what Pete Postlethwaite looks like, I can say he's closer to what I'd imagine Vimes to look like than Eastwood. I don't remember if I've seen anything he's in, though, so I have no idea what kind of actor he is.

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Off the top of my head, he's been in The Usual Suspects, Jurassic Park II, Mann's Last of the Mohicans, Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet, Sharpe, the upcoming Solomon Kane (swords, sorcery and gunpowder, huzzah!) a bunch of other stuff, and my all-time favourite book adaptation, the Charlton Heston Treasure Island.

About this last one: it's hard to find, there's an active petition to have it released on DVD (I have a clunky old VHS tape) but if anyone can catch one of its occasional outings on TNT/Turner Classics/TCM or whatever, then on my wholehearted recommendation WATCH IT and see how book-to-screen should really be done. The soundtrack (by the Chieftains) doesn't hurt either: what is it about Irish music that lends itself to period derring-do and cheerful villainy? Watch it, record it, enjoy it, it's grrrreat! (Thank you, Tony the Tiger.)

Ahem. Sorry about that. We now return you to our scheduled blogging.

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OH. I remember him from The Usual Suspects and Romeo + Juliet, now that you mention them. I saw Last of the Mohicans but it was about 10 years ago! If I come across Treasure Island, I'll check it out. (Sidenote: I have a great CD of James Galway and the Chieftains that I love.)

I am SO excited about Solomon Kane. I think James Purefoy is going to be fantastic in the title role.

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"...Unlike "wearing a wet copper armour and shouting all gods are--" (at which point the production had second thoughts about Rincewind's line.)"

due to background noise I had the subtitles on - and they had "bastards" - the word idiots to me sounded like another voice.

Stupid SKY - if they watched 30 seconds of Podge and Rodge they'd melt away

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Bowdlerised soundtrack but untouched subs? That is just so peculiar. (And I agree wholeheartedly about Podge & Rodge...)

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Maybe the subtitler was a fan, who put in what he thought he should have heard.

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More likely the subtitles were prepared from the original soundtrack, before that clumsy redub. As I mentioned, what David Jason actually says (watch his mouth) is "bastards!"

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I haven't bothered with a soundbite of the mucked-about dialogue, but this is definitely what the subtitles say:

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I don't know whether Terry comments about this anywhere, but Vadim Jean remains too fond of admiring the view whether real or CGI, unwilling to cut an over-lengthy close-up, reluctant to alter a good line "taken straight from the book": maybe he's still a bit too respectful of the original material.

I've seen comments in recent interviews of Terry where he's quoted as saying that he's commented to Vadim about Vadims tendency to be too faithful to the book sometimes.

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Hah! Thought so! It's good to be king right.

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we liked the bit in the credits "mucked about with by Terry Pratchett" :-)

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If I remember correctly, he "mucked about" with Hogfather as well, which makes me wonder if this is his preferred credit: I wonder what (besides "created by") his credit on the animated adaptations looked like.

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On the whole, I thought it was great. I'm somewhat saddened by the ranting going on in some communities. (FaceBook is the one I watch where it's been most virulent.)

Apart from not looking like the conventional vision of Rincewind, I thought David Jason was fine. Not perfect, but fine. Sean Astin was great for me, but then again, when I first read The Colour of Magic (back in 1985), that's exactly how I saw him.

As you say, pacing was a bit off here and there. The business of them camping in the troll's mouth was dropped on us with absolutely no build-up, f'rinstance.

More accessible to non-fans than Hogfather, I think. It's difficult for a fan to judge, because we just see the missed bits, edited lines and jarring notes. That said, we took a friend of our daughter's with us to the Premiere, and she (who's never read any of the books) really enjoyed it, and said she had no difficulty following the story.

But yes, on the whole, great.

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When I read this I thought "Let's go see what the ranters are on about." Then I thought, "Let's not." I hope my comments were constructive; rants usually aren't.

Even with a limitless budget and The Very Best in the Business working on it, there's no way any book with a massive fan-base is going to become a screen adaptation to please everyone. Leaving out something will annoy some, including everything will bore others, and (with Terry's work in particular) so much of the entertainment value is in language and word-play that's almost impossible to translate into a visual image. Take the Elucidated (no, sorry, that's the Illuminated) Brethren's clubhouse door in Guards! Guards!:

...a grim and forbidding portal. No mere doorway got that grim without effort, one felt. It looked as though the architect had been called in and given specific instructions. We want something eldritch in dark oak, he'd been told. So put an unpleasant gargoyle thing over the archway, give it a slam like the footfall of a giant and make it clear to everyone, in fact, that this isn't the kind of door that goes "ding-dong" when you press the bell.

Without some imagination, it's likely that what you'll see on-screen is exactly the sort of Dread Portal that Terry's just made fun of. Giving it a doorbell that does go "ding-dong" is a start.

Placing it in an ordinary street is another. The camera tracks along front doors with ivy, rose-bushes, pot-plants etc. like so: Bide-a-Wee, The Laurels, Dread Portal 1, Our House, Number 47, The Gloats, Dread Portal 2, Dunroamin'...

Shopfronts would work too: Meat, Bread, Eldritch Horrors, Fruit & Veg, Shoes...

But this still leaves out the pertinent observation that Dread Portals don't just happen, and certainly aren't an off-the-shelf item at the local DIY store even in Ankh-Morpork - or maybe they are: two in the same street, without much change in the design? And retail or residential, what do the neighbours think? Brian Cox was doing a fine job of narration (the man has a good voice) so letting him add the various comments in VO would certainly work - and if there are those who cry, "Aha, the Voice of the Book in Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy!", there were opinionated narrators before that, and opinionated narrators afterwards, too. Get over it.

As for Old Grandad the Troll, never mind no build-up, the whole business as shown could have been snipped without loss. The TV version is so severely truncated from the same episode in the book (I checked) that it has no real impact on plot development - Rincewind and Twoflower are captured, Old Grandad comes to life, Rincewind and Twoflower escape, avoid squashing through a timely sunrise* and a minute later (61 seconds by my watch) are captured again, putting them right back where they were before the troll sequence ever happened. That time and money could have been used elsewhere.

*I just re-ran the recording to confirm a sudden suspicion and, yes indeed, there is no explanation for why the troll just froze. None at all. Fans know why, but non-fans deserve a line or two explaining what happened.

I agree absolutely that Colour of Magic is much more accessible to non-fans than Hogfather, but someone let that sunlight business slip by unnoticed (and yes, I didn't notice it myself until now; the censored dialogue in the scene was giving me more trouble.) Was it the writer? Vadim Jean is a fan, and it's already been mentioned in this thread that he's too respectful of the original material. He hadn't time to put in the whole "troll sequence", but couldn't bring himself to drop it completely, despite how little impact the abbreviated version had on the plot.

Perhaps Going Postal needs two story-editors: one who knows all the minutiae of Discworld...and one who knows how to cut.

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Your comments were perfectly reasoned and reasonable, just as I would expect.

Mostly the ranting on FB was along the lines of "OMG! David Jason looks nothing like Rincewind. It will be crap. How could they? And Sean Astin was crap in LOTR! And Twoflower should be Japanese (which I don't necessarily agree with, as it happens)!"

There was more effing and blinding though, and many of them seemed to miss the point that Terry approves of this.

Re: Dread Portals - I would say that I like the way your mind works, but I knew that anyway.
It's interesting to get the perspective of a writer on this, in addition to the mass of consumers. I know I enjoyed it, but I'm just a humble code butcher whose imagination is largely passive.

(You were right first time, by the way, is the Elucidated Brethren.)

Re: Old Grandad, I'm afraid I found myself wondering if they'd left that little bit in just for the cool CGI troll. You're right that there was absolutely no buildup or explanation. Trolls turning to stone in sunlight is a basic fantasy plot device I'll admit, but it's primetime satellite TV. There will be non-geeks watching.

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Actually the Dread Portal™ as described was indeed that of the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee (because of a mix-up with the fretwork club* over in Treacle Street.) The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night's Dread Portal™ was three doors down.

(returns copy of Guards! Guards! to shelf.)

* No-one has adequately explained why a fretwork club needs a Dread Portal™. Best not to inquire, I suppose. Those little saws can hurt.

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OK. That'll teach me...

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It's a bit of a jump from CofM to Postal though!
I've yet to see it, not being a subscriber to SKY. However I did enjoy "Hogfather". I'll reserve judgement until I see it though my mind is still boggling at David Jason being cast as Rincewind - long and thin and built for running???

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Scuttling, more like. Much use of knees and elbows, not much in the way of escape velocity.

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Damn I now have a mental image of Dangermouse in Rincewind's hat!

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However, Penfold's level of courage would be more appropriate.

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Cue Episode 85 "There's a Penfold in my Suit" for casting then.

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Try to approach it with an open mind, and ignore the fact that he doesn't really look like anyone imagines Rincewind would look.

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*commenting on this entry again*

So I just realized that I should probably mention to you if you don't know already that I, Anna (our guest liason) and Lee (our chair) from the NADWCon will all be at the UK Con in THREE WEEKS (so excited). Where you will also be! It would be lovely if we could say hello and y'know, meet for a few minutes and things before we host you at our con next year. :)

I know Anna and Lee and I are supposed to be on a panel on...maybe Sunday?...re: the NADWCon. I think? I don't think we have that much info on it yet. But other than that I think we are pretty much going to be free to roam around, so I assume we'll be able to run into each other. :) Anyway, hope to see you there!

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