Casting for your favourite poets

[Pecksie]

Hey,

What with the soon-to-be-released movie about Keats and all, I've been thinking about the movies I'd like to see made about my favourite poets, and which actors would do these poets justice.

I think, for instance, that Shelley's life would make a great movie, but I don't know which actor would fit the role...

Do you ever think about such matters, or is it only me? :lol:

[JBI]

I would like to see a Leopardi movie, which may exist, I haven't checked.

[mayneverhave]

The life of William McGonagall, perhaps?

Jokes aside, Marlowe's short life would make a fantastic movie, along with the political escapades of Ezra Pound.

[blp]

I can't bear biopics. Can hardly think of a single one that's worked.

Poets are particularly ill-served by central casting. Anyone for Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes, Gwyneth P as Sylvia P, Leo Di Cap as Rimbaud or Willem Dafoe as Eliot? No, thought not.

The guy who played Ginsburg in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch worked OK, possibly partly because it wasn't a realist movie, but, generally, the idea of simply trying to represent these people in semi-factual narratives is inescapably shot-through with absurdity, which can never be acknowledged within the movies themselves. Much more satisfying to see poetry used well in films: the Eliot quote from four quartets at the beginning of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil or the Christina Rossetti poem 'Remember' running as both clue and thematic motif through Robert Aldrich's hallucinatory film noir Kiss Me Deadly.

[Pecksie]

I can't bear biopics. Can hardly think of a single one that's worked.

Much more satisfying to see poetry used well in films


Well, I disagree with the first part -- I've actually enjoyed some, such as the one that featured Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde...

But I agree that poetry well used in movies is satisfying... "Wit", with Emma Thompson, comes to mind... (gave me yet further reasons to love John Donne).