Le Guin Peeved About Earthsea Miniseries 880
Several readers have written in with unhappy opinions on the Legend of Earthsea miniseries just aired on the Sci-Fi channel. Ursula Le Guin has also chimed in, with a short but highly critical blurb on her website, and now this dissection on Slate.com.
Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:5, Interesting)
I admit, I wasn't much of a fan of the book, but watched the miniseries anyway. I've seen worse adaptations, but I can certainly see why fans (and the author) are unhappy. I taped it for a good friend of mine who _worships_ Earthsea, so I really want to see the look of horror on his face when I show it to him (yes, I am that evil).
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just so I don't get flamed, the episode where Dylan Hunt notices a scar on the body of Rhade that shouldn't be there, his longtime friend (and seemingly) his betrayer. Done through a series of flashbacks, it was directed rather well (one of the few instances where flashbacks have ever been done well on a TV series that I have ever seen), not to mention an excellent story that does time travel only done better by B5.
**SPOILER WARNING STOP READING NOW**
As it turns out, Rhade actually succeeded in killing Captain Hunt at the beginning of the story (episode 1), only to be trapped in time dilation 300 years himself. It isn't obvious at first that the only reason he does so, is because he believes the commonwealth incapable of defeating an unbelievable threat, and his own species the saviors of the galaxy, should they take control. 300 years in the future, it's obvious that they only staged the rebellion because they are warmongers, who end up making the galaxy even more vulnerable. Following the same course that Dylan will (later, already???) take/took, he tries to restore the commonwealth through diplomacy, humanitarianism, and any other avenue available to him.
The scene where he has the engineer create a holographic AI "version" of the friend he himself killed, seems particularly sad. Especially because the actors manage to keep all traces of emotion out of it (they could easily have hammed it up so bad it would be awful).
When a freak temporal/dimensional accident (which until now, has only been used twice, unlike every other star trek episode) gives him the option of going back in time, he takes it... even knowing that it will mean his own death (this for a species for whom personal survival is *always* priority #1). He kills the younger version of himself, takes his uniform, and loses a fight with Dylan that obviously he could always have easily won. Still not sure... was it because he now knows that only his friend can save everyone? Or is it at least partly because he has felt guilty ever since that betrayal, and it's the only way to atone?
Also funny, for those that watch it semi-regularly. Dylan Hunt is always trying to appeal to the (non-existent) good nature of Tyr, who continually betrays him (in smaller ways). Rhade sees right through it, and when the final, unallowable betrayal comes, has already outsmarted him and just shoots him dead, barely even wasting any words on the lowlife.
Of course, the latest season is just awful. Much like with Earth: Final Conflict, another roddenberry series that started off fantastic, and went downhill. Well, dropped off a cliff, in that case.
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Interesting)
I watched the movie before I ever read the books (years in fact) and I felt it was a relatively well executed production. Made some cuts in some important areas, perhaps, but as a piece of entertainment, ov
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the Sci-Fi adaptation was actually better than David Lynch's version in that it was more faithful to the source material (Wierding modules? WTF!?!). I think that (some) of the casting choices were better as well (even if the acting isn't as good), because the characters were portrayed more like they were in the book.
Patrick Stuart is an excellent actor, but he's far too refined to make a belivable Gurney Halleck, Stink^Hg is *NOT* Feyd Rautha, and Vladimir Harkonnen is an EVIL GENIUS, not the stupid disgusting perverted sadist Lynch portrayed.
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I get past the dunes and other modestly executed sfx shots is to think of it as a theatrical production--makes it much more palatable. Backdrops are AOK in theater!
Now, as for the follow up mini-series, The Children of Dune (Actually an adaptation of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune books), I thought was far superior..and parts borderline fantastic. The only teeth grinding were at some of the Leto II scenes.
Please, even if you were turned off by
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oi, you beat me to it.
In fact, I am convinced this isn't just "the way to enjoy it", but "deliberately how they made it". The opening scenes clued me into this; the monologue by the Baron, well, "monologue" is just the right word and that's more a theatre thing. With that clue up front I quite enjoyed the series, plus I just watched it on DVD straight which usually
It's Ursula LeGONE Now (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot has no business linking to "normal" sites.
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm - couldn't help but notice that 90% of her complaints were about the fact that they changed the story into all white people. I didn't get the impression that race was a huge issue in the novels - it was just part of the *colour* of the setting, if you'll pardon the pun. While it certainly isn't nice to lose that part of the story, it seems kinda odd to obsess over it. On the other hand, the scuttlebutt is that Ender's Game is being made with a less international cast, which really hurts the story.
At any rate - after reading her comments, I suddenly don't feel so bad that I missed it.
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think to her, having fought hard to even get the covers of her books right, it was an example of how ridiculous the changes got. I mean would it have killed them to hire some actors that looked like the characters for the most part? Were they afraid that people wouldn't take to a less
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:4, Interesting)
As she brought up, the current state of Sci-Fi leaves very few candidates of color with a tagline like Ashmore's. She can't really criticize the casting of Kreuk since she basically fit the description from the book and is, in fact, half Asian. Her criticisms of the casting of Vetch and the lack of minority bit parts and extras make a lot more sense since those characters could easily have been played by a minority actors with no significant difference in ratings.
As it is, I don't think she should be too upset with it. There is now likeley to be a whole new group of people who saw the mini-series and will now go out and buy the books. When they read them, they will discover that they are so much better than the mini-series and their images of the characters will be replaced by those from the book simply because they are so different from those portrayed in the mini-series.
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, I think you must have read a different article/post/something/WTF? She doesn't say anything like that at all!
Here's a copy of what she posted. You show me where she says anything like that:
"Earthsea"
11/13/2004
"Miss Le Guin was not involved in the development of the material or the making of the film, but we've been very, very honest to the books," explains director Rob Lieberman. "We've tried to capture all the levels of spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical messages. Throughout the whole piece, I saw it as having a great duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female duality. The final moments of the film culminate in the union of all that and represent two different belief systems in this world, and that's what Ursula intended to make a statement about. The only thing that saves this Earthsea universe is the union of those two beliefs." Sci Fi Magazine, December 2004
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..." would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"?
Ursula K. Le Guin
13 November 2004
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the rest of us read the Slate article [slate.com] that is 80% about how race was a big thing in the Earthsea (and other Le Guin) books.
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Insightful)
My bad!
I figured the Slate article was a rehash included for bandwidth purposes and went straight for the "true word".
Of course now I've read the Slate article and see that she wrote it as well and it is indeed all about color (funny she didn't mention that at all in the post on her site).
However, many people who see a movie will read the book just to see what got left out. This could be a good thing! I'm sure there's a segment of the population t
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand someone not seeing that. The more subtle the message, the more powerful the art, I guess.
LeGuin is not happy about the whitey cast because of two things.
1) Race is a big deal in her work because it wasn't a big deal.
2) Race is (sometimes) a big deal in her work because it's really (or also) referring to gender. (or visa versa)
The thing that (at least in the sixties and even seventies) that was important was that her p
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Insightful)
My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill
... That's funny, when reading "Out of the Silent Planet", "Martian Chronicles", "Dune", "Stranger in a Strange Land", etc.. I don't ever recall thinking "Damn, I'm glad these guys are
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, if the reader is initially distracted by the character's skin tone, that is likely to interfere with the reader's ability to identify with the character. The strategy of letting the reader discoverer a character's differences (which may be as subtle as race or as extreme as species) later on in the story has long been used successfully in SF. Heinlein also used this device for a nonwhite character.
how exactly do whites have the privilege of being colorblind ?
Whites have the privilege of being colorblind because they only rarely have to take into account the possibility that the people whom they have to deal with in their day-to-day existence may be prejudiced against them because of their race.
Isn't is also extreme arrogance to call ethnic imperialism the act of a white author speaking for a non-white people.? The word "ethnic" is a generic term, yet she uses it specifically to target white writers in her statement.
Uh, if you didn't know, Ms. LeGuin is white--the "white author" (singular, not plural) that she is referring to is herself
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:3, Insightful)
As we're about 10% of the world's population, it's actually the rule outside your enclave. (I live in Hong Kong, so I'm disabused of any idea that we're a majority of the population.) That was something UKL expanded on in her Slate piece; that it's absurd to think in the future most people in every place will be Caucasian, as they are in every single SF movie and TV series (p
Re:Did you slashdot the nice lady's website? (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of screen time, he had a more minor role than the characters whose race was changed.
I don't think it was at all "racist". I think it had more to do with popular actors and "looks".
If anything, it seems like it went the other way. The most prominent actors that they managed to recruit were Danny Glover and Kristin Kreuk. Is it coincidence that they are also the only characters permitted to deviate from the otherwise lily-white color scheme?
Race was obviously important to the author. But I don't think the suits even read her novels, they just went with what they thought they could package and sell to a predominately white audience (US & Canadian SciFi channel viewers). People use the racist label too easily.
It seems to me that eliminating mixed race characters in hopes of appealing to a "predominately white audience" is inherently a racist decision, even if the racism is driven by economics rather than bigotry. There is also a disturbing circularity in justifying such a decision based on the fact that the viewership is predominately white, when the systematic elimination of people of color from major roles helps to drive off nonwhite viewers.
I shut down the nice lady's website (Score:5, Informative)
Please get the article from Google's cache, or any of the mirrors mentioned in this thread.
I'll bring www.ursulakleguin.com back up later.
Jeffry Dwight
Ursula's Administrator (among other chores)
Re:Google Cache link (Score:5, Informative)
Legend of Earthsea (Score:2)
"highly critical blurb" (Score:4, Informative)
"Earthsea"
11/13/2004
"Miss Le Guin was not involved in the development of the material or the making of the film, but we've been very, very honest to the books," explains director Rob Lieberman. "We've tried to capture all the levels of spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical messages. Throughout the whole piece, I saw it as having a great duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female duality. The final moments of the film culminate in the union of all that and represent two different belief systems in this world, and that's what Ursula intended to make a statement about. The only thing that saves this Earthsea universe is the union of those two beliefs."
Sci Fi Magazine
December 2004
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..." would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"?
Ursula K. Le Guin
13 November 2004
Re:"highly critical blurb" (Score:3, Interesting)
huh?
She claims that the books are NOT about "a great duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female duality. The final moments of the film culminate in the union of all that and represent two different belief systems in this world."
She then claims the books ARE about "the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offeri
Re:"highly critical blurb" (Score:3, Interesting)
Quityerbitchin (Score:2, Funny)
(Name Withheld)
Since when (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when does the Authors opinion count!?
One of my sisters likes telling the store of how they had discussed a book in class in great detail. The teacher going to great depths about how the story originated, etc. Later the teacher was able to get the author of the story to appear before the class, where she dismissed every 'insight' into the story as being completely wrong and misinformed.
Re:Since when (Score:4, Funny)
One author was invited to speak to my English class and he talked about how people will read things into his writing that he never considered and about how a reviewer once make a comparison between his story and and King Lear. He had never even read King Lear.
At that point one of the English teachers in the back, who had invited him to speak, yelled "Don't listen to him!"
Re:Since when (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Since when (Score:2)
Re:Since when (Score:5, Interesting)
sPh
Re:Since when (Score:4, Interesting)
After these were listed, Scott pointed out that every one of the things Collings mentioned was there, they were all intentional, and, if anybody noticed them on their first time through the story, he was failing in his job as a writer.
Scott has also said that Collings knows more about the meaning in his work than he does himself. I don't think this is unusual.
Writing is a collaboration of the writer/reader (Score:3, Interesting)
The Slate article describes a perfect example of this. Le Guin said that most white readers don't even notice the racial/skin tone elements, whereas many minorities have praised her for those elements.
So, the meaning of the book for a typical white reader is different than the meaning for a minority.
We all, as readers, bring our o
Re:Asimov (Score:3, Informative)
Just a few weeks ago I saw another autobiography, written by Asimov shortly before his death and edited/annotated by Janet. This one seems to be a little more expressive on the human si
Re:Since when (Score:5, Insightful)
So of course we all said that we shouldn't be reading into the story, the author specifically said not to!
Years later, as an artist, I can honestly say that yes, 85% of the stuff people "read into" my work is totally random and stupid (or optimistic on their part). But the other 15% is either outright correct or something that rings very true even though I hadn't intended it.
So much of the creative process is subconscious that I have to grudgingly agree with my old English teacher that the author doesn't always realize (or even recognize!) all of the things they put into a work.
So even when an author says "I didn't mean to represent X as Y", it doesn't make it any less true that X is represented as Y, or that it tells us something about the story, the author, or the characters. it just means the author didn't intend it consciously (or wants to disavow it after the fact).
But of course, 85% of the theories are still utter crap.
Re:Since when (Score:4, Insightful)
Le Guin wrote a sci-fi series that was intended to complexify and breakdown the super-whiteness of sci-fi and fantasy, i.e. LOTRs, Vampires, etc. Look, I liked LOTRs but it got a little creepy how white everyone was, and how the only slightly non-white, Arab/African looking guys are bad guys. Le Guin knows she achieved her intended effect because people write to her telling her it did.
So big media wants to turn this written work into a widely viewed video work. Because they believe in the racism of the general public, they commit a racist act themselves (of course they may claim so only to deflect the accusations of racism to others). The theoretical discussion about authorial intent versus thematics is interesting but besides the point--what "unrealized" or "unintended" insights were brought into the film by white-washing it? That's the point.
Re:Since when (Score:3, Insightful)
Shakespeare almost certainly never put the consideration into almost every one of his lines that modern students study them with, but that's just an indication of the far-reaching and timeless nature of his work. "How should we stretch our eye when capital crimes, chewed swallowed and
Re:New Series (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. Witness:
The author of parent represents writing, in particular that of Ursula K. LeGuin, as a russian space opera in which elephants control an interstellar parliament whose primary concern is the equitable distribution of custard.
See, it's all well and good to note that commentary and criticism can carry content despite the author's conscious intentions. That taken i
80-20 Rule (Score:3, Informative)
Anything less than or equal to 20% can use the 80-20 Rule [wikipedia.org]
Quote:
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 Rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. Moreover, among those "top 20" it is also the case that 80% of consequences result from 20% of causes, and so on. Thus, for example, 20% of 20% of 20% is 0.008, or
Sci fi "original series" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's one thing to be low-budget in production (the original Star Trek was about as low budget as Sci Fi comes), but they could at least make an attempt to get decent writers. Someone should explain to them that people who watch/read a lot of Science Fiction are more interested in a decent scientific plot instead of their writer's latest flavor-of-the-week politically-correct-philosophy with "futuristic" stuff tacked on. I can think of at least three recent "original series" that may have been a series, but were original in all the wrong ways.
USA has better "Sci Fi" original series than the Sci Fi channel. What's up with that?
/me raises hand (Score:5, Insightful)
"No."No. Because they aren't interested in Science Fiction. They want the tech-fantasy crap.
The stuff that will be guaranteed to appeal to the 12 - 24 year old male audience.
This isn't even about "low budget". Look at Red Dwarf's first few seasons. They had no budget, yet they had great characters and amusing plots.
They haven't realized that going with the status quo will always result in mediocrity.
In order to produce something memorable, they have to push the envelope.
Watching their crap, I get the feeling that the actor's salaries, the FX, everything is calculated to the exact penny and matched against the ad revenues. They know exactly how many people will watch another rendition of the same-old same-old and they're not going to break a profitable formula.
Re:/me raises hand (Score:4, Insightful)
Free TV isn't about art. It's an advertising conduit, and nothing more.
But it isn't mass appeal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare The Matrix's revenues and popularity to any other Sci Fi channel's "original" movie.
When you aim for mediocrity, you hit mediocrity. Low popularity, etc. The sort of movie that is forgotten as soon as you finish watch
Re:/me raises hand (Score:3, Interesting)
Tolkien's "Great Myth"... well, there's a quote from an Amazon review I'd like to find, but (as it's not readily available) I'll need to poorly paraphrase from memory:
Most of the people complaining about this book are talking
Re:/me raises hand (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the reason why complaints about the removal of the correct ending from the Return Of The King movie are actually valid, and not just rantings of disgruntled nerds.
In the book, the black-robed master of incarnated evil was defeated just halfway through, but the "Scouring of the Shire" chapters served as a reminder that violence springs eternal. Wherever there is life, there will be animals (men or hobbits) competing for food and doing "evil" to each other
Here I go again. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the biggest mistake the W brothers made in Reloaded was to cram all of the important information into a single scene with a man whose face was more interesting than his droning voice, i.e. the Architect.
That scene is the single most important scene in the entire movie. If you weren't paying attention, you missed it.
First, there was no implication of matrices within matrices. The architect spoke of five previous matrices. Each time there was an anomaly that caused the matrix to implode (The anomaly was the dual creation of Neo-One/Smith-virus). Each time, the Architect had presented the One the choice of immediately merging with the Virus and in gratitude, the machines will spare 17 women and 6 men (sound familiar? Morpheus speaks in M1 of the 23 founders of Zion) of his choosing, or he can reject the offer and everybody dies.
In every previous Matrix, the One chose to save the twenty-three of his choosing and face/merge with the Virus. Until Neo. Sure, you can really get deep and discuss the Oracle's manipulations of the whole situation, but that's for another discussion. Neo, told the Architect, the Machines and everyone else to fuck off and go save his girlfriend. At this point, from the POV of the machines, the wheels fell off the cart. Because, the machines need Neo to stop Smith. They couldn't. They never could. They were screwed.
Because Neo rejected their offer, he was now in a position to dictate terms. Of course, it takes him a while to figure that out ("Not too smart, though."), which is most of Revolutions. I don't think Neo really understood his own decision when meeting with the Architect beyond saving Trinity. I don't think it occurred to him until much later that he could be dooming both the humans and machines into extinction by making the choice he did.
When it came down to it, Neo chose the chance for peace and coexistence. That's a resolution. And a damn fine one at that. The whole matrix within a matrix just perpetuates the endless loop and IMHO is a cop-out ending.
Yes, I agree, most people don't pay attention to plot anymore.
The Dangers of Adaption (Score:5, Funny)
First up was Barry Longyear, whose novel Enemy Mine was turned into a "B" movie. He rattled off a good-natured Hollywood horror story.
Next was Gary Wolf, whose book Who Censored Roger Rabbit was turned into what I recall was a rather popular movie a few years back. He was wearing the fancy jacket provided to the cast. He got to go to the Hollywood premiere and got very rich.
When he described getting to sit with Kathleen Turner at a celebratory banquet, Longyear got up and pretended to strangle him.
Re:The Dangers of Adaption (Score:3, Informative)
Another gullible victim. There is no Morgenstern, save Goldman. In the voice commentary on one DVD edition, he tells how he got the title: he asked his daughters what he should write about. "A Princess" said one; "A Bride" said the other.
My complaint so far... (Score:2)
It is like watching "Harry Potter of the Rings", with some good old Dune mythology thrown in...
The plot thus far is old, forumlatic and clique.
The other tragedy is that CG isn't even that good. When they did the fly over of the city/village, it was very very VERY obviously CG...
Who knows, maybe it'll get better?
Authors who... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Authors who... (Score:4, Insightful)
However one very rarely hears about them returning the money they received when they sold the rights.
Heh, you've obviously never looked into the publishing industry. 20 years ago it was pretty bad, you could publish your own works, which were never put in book stores, or available to the public and no one would ever read your work. Or you could sign a contract to give up the rights to your work and your next several works, and a publishing house would ship it to all kinds of stores. Most stories were then ignored but some became popular and the authors wrote more stories (already owned by the publisher) for the already negotiated fee. Today things are even worse. You see some authors, like Stephen King, developed a large following and then, were able to make money on their fourth or fifth novel, and dictate terms to publishing houses who wanted to make some profit. Now they pretty much make you sign away the rights to anything you want to write for the next 10 years if you want a shot at a mainstream audience. It is ironic that avoiding this exact situation in Europe was one of the primary concerns of the authors of our copyright law. Ben Franklin predicted this outcome which was why he railed against the passage of our copyright laws.
Simply the fact that one can make a movie based on and using the title of a copy-written work without consulting the author, is proof that our system is horribly broken. No author wants to give up rights to their creations, but if they want to be published, they have little choice.
Re:Authors who... (Score:3, Insightful)
Whereas I agree with the sentiment, that's not what irony means [tri-bit.com].
Simply the fact that one can make a movie based on and using the title of a copy-written work without consulting the author
That's not frequently true of well-known authors, or in fact of most book contracts with little-known authors. Pretty much the only publishing subindustries with that sort of conjoinder in their contracts standard-issue are science fiction and horror; if you try to run that sort of clause in a fiction con
Re:Authors who... (Score:4, Informative)
It's all about using borrowed money. If you dind't[sic] have to do that, you could retain absolute control.
Well, it is partially about using borrowed money. It is also about a legal system weighted towards the wealthy and without protections for the poor. I don't know anything about Miss LeGuin's financial status when she signed away the rights to her book (and probably simultaneously any future movie or TV series rights) but I seriously doubt even with twice the money a normal publishing house spends on the procedure she could have had her books in stores and available for purchase. You see book stores order from publishers, and are largely uninterested in self-published books or independent authors. If you want to be sold in stores, you have to sign your rights away unless you are absolutely a sure thing to make a whole lot of money (See Stephen King). Even he signed with a major publisher, but since he was a sure thing and a celebrity he could get the publishers to compete for his books.
I understand your point, but I think you are wrong to think it is all about money. If you are wealthy I'm sure you could pay to get your book in stores (very very wealthy). But I doubt you can do so for anywhere near what it costs a mainstream publisher, and I doubt that you will be able to make deals with as many smaller book stores and chains.
In order to address this very imbalance, laws were written to protect the rights of some artists, notably graphic artists, unfortunately the industry works around it by requiring all art to be created as "contract work" where the idea is "legally" the publishers and you are just a contractor doing the grunt work. The system is very, very broken.
What was she thinking? (Score:2, Interesting)
rj
Next Ursula Le Guin movie- (Score:3, Funny)
I can just picture it now, the Left Hand of Darkness: The Movie.
A romantic comedy about men and women, trying to find love together in a tropical paridise. Starring Julia Roberts as Estraven and Hugh Grant as the Envoy.
Re:Next Ursula Le Guin movie- (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Next Ursula Le Guin movie- (Score:3, Insightful)
another missive (Score:2, Redundant)
I have mixed feelings about her reactions. She seems a lot more peeved with the skintones of her characters being changed than with the entire plot being gang-raped.
Re:another missive (Score:3, Insightful)
You should read the entire article then. She's a pro. She didn't complain or attack the miniseries until the director decided to put words in her mouth and say what "she had intended by..."
A very understandable reaction, I believe.
Five minutes was enough (Score:4, Informative)
* People throwing around each other's true names (witness the girl talking to Ged).
* A hot-looking Kossil sleeping with some guy.
In the books, you *NEVER* spoke someone's true name out loud. And Kossil was a fat, dumpy, ugly woman who was high priestess of an order that shunned men.
Re:Five minutes was enough (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair...I thought so too, but I held my nose and watched a little longer. What actually was going on was (slightly) less stupid: they weren't throwing around true names, they switched Ged's true and use-names! Really! You knew when they said a true name, because those were weird and echoey (I guess to show that they were magic).
But when the gebbeth chases Ged, it shouts his use-name (Ged) at him, in probably probab
Re:Five minutes was enough (Score:3, Interesting)
What I don't get is, why make such a change at all? It serves no dramatic purpose, but it's jarring to those of us who read the books. Do they make changes just for the sake of making changes?
I am usually a pretty accepting type when it comes to these kinds of adaptations. I give the makers a lot of benefit of the doubt, and I really wanted to like it. I tried to like it. But I thought this thing absolutely blew. Very, very disappointing.
Re:Five minutes was enough (Score:3, Interesting)
* People throwing around each other's true names (witness the girl talking to Ged).
And, of course, his True Name is Sparrowhawk. ROTFLMAO.
* A hot-looking Kossil sleeping with some guy.
In the books, you *NEVER* spoke someone's true name out loud. And Kossil was a fat, dumpy, ugly woman who was high priestess of an order that shunned men.
What about the girls in the School? Women weren't allowed in the School, except as visitors, by special permission.
And, by tra
Re:Five minutes was enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing at all like the SiFi rendition.
True names (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:True names (Score:3, Informative)
I think if you've studied Judiac mythology, you'll find the idea is much, much older.
Re:Five minutes was enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Five minutes was enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Google Cache (Score:2)
Whitewashed Pointlessness and Artistic Abuse (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a big Le Guin fan, and I looked at The Legend of Earthsea simply as a diversion.
The mini-series was not awful, but it certainly wasn't very good, either. The actors were so understated as to be boring; the only reason I cared about Tinar is because she was cute. ;) As for the main character, he was a stereotypical pretty boy; his sidekick Vetch was the traditional pudgy geek. The best character was a dragon, who figures in about three minutes of screen time.
Le Guin should be upset, but not surprised. Publishers, TV execs, and movie makers have always twisted ideas to their own ends; even examples such as Jackson's LOTR do not prevent "the powers that be" from dumbing down artistic vision for mass audiences.
So why do creative people let their worlds be perverted by publishers and movie makers? Because you can't make money if your work doesn't get printed and sold. It's a myth that people will pay artists through online contributions; it just doesn't happen.
Some People Call Him "Dad" (Score:3, Interesting)
Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876-October 5, 1960) was one of the most influential figures in American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century.
Kroeber was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. He received his doctorate under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, basing his dissertation on his field work among the Arapaho. He spent most of his career in California, primarily at the University of California, Berkeley. The anthropology department's headquarters building at the University of California is known as Kroeber Hall.
Although he is known primarily as a cultural anthropologist, he did significant work in archaeology, and he contributed to anthropology by making connections between archaeology and culture. He conducted excavations in New Mexico, Mexico, and Peru.
Kroeber and his students did important work collecting cultural data on western tribes of Native Americans. The work done in preserving California tribes appeared in Handbook of Indians of California (1925). These efforts to preserve remaining data on these tribes has been termed "Salvage Ethnography." He is credited with developing the concepts of Culture Area and Cultural Configuration (Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America, 1939).
His influence was so strong that many contemporaries adopted his style of beard and mustache as well as his views as a social scientist.
He is noted for working with Ishi, who was claimed (though not uncontroversially) to be the last California Yahi Indian. His second wife, Theodora Kroeber, wrote a well-known biography of Ishi, Ishi in Two Worlds.
His textbook, Anthropology (1923, 1948), was widely used for years.
Kroeber was the father of the academic Clifton Kroeber by his first wife and the fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin and academic Karl Kroeber by his second. He also adopted the two children of his second wife's first marriage. Clifton and Karl recently (2003) edited a book together on the Ishi case, Ishi in Three Centuries.
No whining after profiting (Score:3, Insightful)
with Augusten Burroughs (author of Running with Scissors) that is relevant here:
INTERVIEWER: Are you going to write the screenplay?
BURROUGHS: He is. I'm not going to write the screenplay.
INTERVIEWER: Are you going to have an advisory role with it?
BURROUGHS: Yeah, but I'm not writing the screenplay. That's one of those things -- maybe my advertising background makes it easier -- but when you come up with an ad campaign, you come up with this vision, something you think is really smart, yet really entertaining, and then you give it to a director and he takes it to the next level. You learn early on in your career -- if you're going to have a long career -- that you need to let it go. You either need to have complete control over [a film], write the screenplay, choose the director, much the way John Irving did for Cider House Rules, or you need to let it go. But you can't option it, and then whine about it not being good, because the only reason you option it is for money. That's why you do it.
LeGuin has a color hang-up (Score:3, Insightful)
Who gives a flying fsck about skin color, anyway? I'd say "dinosaurs from the 50s," but I was born in the 50s! In the South, yet!
Besides, Caucasian though I am, leave me out in the sun long enough and I certainly turn "red-brown." In fact, if I had to describe the skin color of "white" people, it'd be pinkish-brown anyway.
Perhaps she's just trying to see if anyone noticed that.
Re:LeGuin has a color hang-up (Score:3, Informative)
She compares herself to Tolkein? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also don't understand, financial considerations aside, what would posess an artist to relinquish so much artistic control over their material, that such complaints ever need to be raised. With Tolkein or Heinlein, it makes sense that they might not be respected by a screenplay writer -- but this author is alive.
Does Stephen King have this problem?
You can't have your cake and eat it too, Ursula.
If you surrender your rights to control of your work, you pay the price.
Re:She compares herself to Tolkein? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does Stephen King have this problem?
Stephen King is the very very very rare exception. He wrote a number of books, under contract for very little money and whose rights he did not retain and became so popular that he had real bargaining power for the rest of his works (and was thus able to retain the rights to them). Most authors are not so fortunate. And most publishers now require even more lengthy contracts just to prevent this from happening again.
If you surrender your rights to control of your
gah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's leave alone the obvious deviations from the plot, and focus on more germaine aspects of the production.
First, acting. When you are producing something like this, having good actors is appropriate. The chick from Smallville (Kristin Kreuk) is good, as is the guy who plays Ged (Shawn Ashmore). Some of the others are decent, such as the Arch-Magus, the King (decent) and his whore(er.. preistess), Ogion (Danny Glover), High Priestess Thar (Isabella Rossellini) and even Vetch (Chris Gauthier). Ged's father? Terrible acting--wooden, poor delivery, obviously fake, and poorly written.
This (the father's acting) is TYPICAL of ALL the non-central characters. The sound is off too, but that could be a function of the tape I was watching it on.
The special effects are decent (the scene where Vetch is describing his island and using bits of sugar to represent them [the sugar turns into the islands breifly] is interesting), as is the scene where the Arch-Magus comes to talk to the king. But they are only decent. The fire shot out by the mages defending Roke? Pathetic. In fact, the entire seige of Roke is pathetic. They DO NOT tap into HOW difficult it is to find Roke, or the releationship between the king and his pet wizard.
Overall, I think it has been worth my time to watch the show, but I won't be keeping it on tape, nor will I be recommending it to anyone for viewing. This would be true EVEN IF I had never read Earthsea.
A final complaint--when Ogion and Ged meet, Ogion raises him, and then gives him his name. As I recall this was a much more lengthy and involved ritual than is shown. The whole treatment of names is done FAR too lightly from what I remember. This is characteristic of the show in general--there is NO real character or plot development.
Race Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does everything have to be about race?
Le Guin at the Agony Column - Chronolgy (Score:5, Informative)
1. Background: my (non)involvement with this production.
For people who wonder why I sold out to Halmi, or let them change the story -- you may find some answers here.
The producers (not yet including Robert Halmi Sr.) approached us with a reasonable offer. My dramatic agency at that time was William Morris. The contract of course gave me only the standard status of consultant -- which means exactly what the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. The agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as if they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film.
As I had scripted the first two books myself, with Michael Powell, years ago, and also worked with another scriptwriter to plan his script of the first book, I was in a position to be useful to them. I knew some of the difficulties in carrying this story over to film. And some of the possibilities that could be fulfilled, too, the things a movie can do that a novel can't. It was an exciting prospect.
They were talking at that time of a large-scale theater movie, although the possibility of a TV miniseries was mentioned. They said that they had already secured Philippa Boyen (who scripted The Lord of the Rings) as principal scriptwriter, and reported that she was eager to work on an Earthsea film. As the script was, to me, all-important, her presence was the key factor in my decision to sell them the option to the film rights.
Time went by. By the time they got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries -- and Robert Halmi Sr. had come aboard -- they had lost Boyen.
That was a blow. But I had just seen Mr Halmi's miniseries Dreamkeeper with its stunning Native American cast, so I said to them in a phone conversation, hey, maybe Mr Halmi will cast some of those great actors in Earthsea! -- Oh, no, I was told -- Mr Halmi had found those people impossible to work with.
Well, I said, you do realise that almost everybody in Earthsea is 'those people,' or anyhow not white?
I don't remember what their answer to that was -- it may have used that wonderful weasel word colorblind -- but it wasn't reassuring, because I do remember saying to my husband, oh, gee, I bet they're going to have a honky Ged. . .
This was in the spring of 2004. They moved very fast then, because if they didn't get into production, they would lose their rights to the property. Early in this period they contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew well that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters -- a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for over 30 years. To this they replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and changes to a book's story and characters were of no importance to them.
They then sent me several versions of the script -- and told me that shooting had already begun. In other words, I had been absolutely cut out of the process.
I withdrew my offered pronunciation guide (so Ogion, which rhymes with bogy-on, is Oh-jee-on in the film.) Having looked over the script, I realised they had no understanding of what the two books are about, and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic MacMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence. (And fai
She's played it pretty well, really (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much the consensus seems to be that the adaptation is as bad as she claims, but she did sign the rights away. No matter what she may have thought was going to happen, if it's not in the contract, it's not going to happen.
As soon as the line was crossed from not involving her to putting words in her mouth, though, she's got every right to complain as loudly as possible about what was done to her work. To her credit, she stayed quiet out of an honorable respect for the contract, and only began publicly making her feelings known once ideas and motives were attributed to her that weren't hers.
As sour grapes as her last salvo might come across, it's important to bear in mind that it was only caused by the producers clearly stepping over the line. They opened the floodgates, she's simply providing the water. Also note that she does not claim that the producers were under any legal obligation to stay true to her books, she simply claims that the books were better, and what the producers put onscreen is essentially unrelated to what she wrote.
*Yes, this is a shameless plug.
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you should be more familiar. Ursula Le Guin is one of the greatest living authors of science fiction and fantasy, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. Her novels include The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, and the EarthSea series. She is also the author of a wonderful interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Not a lot of other posts even mentioned this story.
I figured I'd chime in to point out that The Lathe of Heaven was also converted to a Made-for-TV movie, and I thought the transition was quite well done. Even if not a literal copy of the book, it was still effective at conveying the core concepts and displaying the changes in the world and its people through the shifts in architecture, costumes, technology, etc.
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Ursula LeGuin wrote two absolutely classic SF novels:
The Dispossessed, about an anarcho-syndalicist society formed when the founders of their political movement were exiled to their planet's moon, and whose first visitor to the a couple of hundred years later is the most brilliant physicist in known space: a man who has figured out a very, very important issue in physics (which I will not reveal), and has numerous adventures that illustrate the homeworld's society (and also has contact with an alien ambassador from a very familiar planet).
The Left Hand of Darkness, about an alien ambassador visiting a planet whose inhabitants naturally change sex with each mating season, and so have a very fluid concept of "gender" - and who consider someone who sticks with one sex throughout life to be a pervert. There's some political intrigue, too, and a journey across an ice field.
She's probably most famous for A Wizard of Earthsea and its related books, which formed the basis of the miniseries being critiqued.
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll let you sit and ponder that for a moment...
Let's say that I didn't leave the front of the class to a thundering round of applause. Did I mention that this was a catholic high school? Did I mention I didn't have very many friends at school? Can you guess I was a little bit of a loner and outcast? Describing latent hermaphrodites to a stunned crowd of adolescents. What was I thinking?
Nonetheless, it was (and is) a great book and Ms. Le Guin is a very, very good author.
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:3, Funny)
shes a well known sci fi author
Is her work better than L. Ron Hubbard's?
Re:Maybe I should be more familiar, but... (Score:3, Funny)
So, everyone, please continue to use it.
Re:SCI-FI is the most consistently disappointing T (Score:2)
That may change your mind.
And an incredible mishandling of .. (Score:3)
Turkey Day was so lonely without Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy, Cambot, Dr. F, TV's Frank, Mrs. Forrester, Brain Guy, Bobo and Joel and/or Mike. So very, very lonely.
Re:Okay (Score:5, Funny)
For real? You guys have books now?
Phil
Re:Okay (Score:3, Insightful)
> Funny joke
> -- Joke Comeback
> -- -- Joke Comeback pointing out movie origin
> -- -- -- Joke Comeback pointing out I know the origin
> -- -- -- -- Joke Comeback originating from the same movie
> -- -- -- -- -- Angry Comback misinterpretting the previous joke
No... is too much. Let me sum up.
> This could go on forever
Re:She must be kidding (Score:2)
If you think FOTR was mangled, just wait until His Dark Materials [bridgetothestars.net] hits the big screen. (A BBC article about the changes can be found here [bbc.co.uk]).
Re:it did appear (Score:2)
Re:She must be kidding (Score:3, Informative)
However, the gratuitous changes to the storyline, key plot elements, and key characterizations were totally unnecessary and unforgivable.
There is no reason _Wizard of Earthsea_ couldn't have been filmed, and successful, more or less as written.
sPh
Apolgies - bad link.... (Score:2)
Oh,yeah, also insert the standard "I submitted this story Tuesday" rant here, too.
Authorship & Symbolism (OT) (Score:5, Funny)
The teacher liked it so much, she had me type it up and she put included it on the midterm as a sample work for the other students to pick apart. I was an incredibly sloppy student and typing the thing up seemed like a horrible burden, but the idea that I'd ace the test was enough to motivate me. After all, I wrote the dang thing, didn't I?
When test day rolled around, though, she asked things about "what technique is the author using to suspend disbelief?" and "which passages are used to build foreboding for the ending?" In the end I was lucky to pass the thing by the skin of my teeth.
I won't pretend to be their equals, but I have to admit I vaguely know how Tolkien and Le Guin felt.
Re:I Robot (Score:3, Funny)
Yes. I'd be pretty pissed off if I were dead, too.
Re:LeGuin's race-obsessed Slate piece (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, my feelings about LeGuin's Slate piece remain. One would have expected her to be outraged by the way they butchered the books' plot and meaning -- instead, she focuses on the races of the actors in a rant made baffling by the fact that the boo