#I once read a review that said they felt like they were just watching Plummer in a Sherlock Holmes costume

[theimpossiblescheme]

The one thing that immediately strikes me about “Silver Blaze”!Holmes as played by Christopher Plummer is the fact that… to put it plainly, he is not a well man.  His makeup makes him look downright cadaverous, and he has this constant nervous energy like he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days and is keeping himself upright through sheer force of will.  He doesn’t quite have the exuberance of somebody like Brett or Rathbone, but every closeup on the man’s face shows you the cogs constantly whirring in his head, distracting him from his own body.  At some points, you get the impression he’s only half-listening to the people around him, he’s so inside his own head, and it gives him a very detached and almost somber quality.  All brain, the rest appendix, as the man himself would put it.  But Watson’s presence brings him back down closer to earth, and he even gets some genuine laughter out of Holmes, which I really love.

Between this and the Holmes we see in Murder by Decree, you get the effect of Holmes becoming healthier and better adjusted over time.  In Decree, his face is fuller and has more color in it, and his body language doesn’t have quite so much tension.  He’s also more engaged with the people around him—not just Watson, but the people directly involved in and affected by his investigation—and his demeanor becomes less cold and reserved all the time.  It’s a nice, if probably unintentional, arc for the character.

[qscvgyum]

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[klstheword]

In the pecking order of Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol is second only to the baby Jesus. Even if you’ve never read it, or had it read to you, you know about that flinty-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemption during one long dark night of the soul.

Bill Murray, Albert Finney, Michael Caine and Alastair Sim have all played Scrooge in one of the endless film remakes and reboots there have been over the years. Now comes the story behind the story, The Man Who Invented Christmas: a heavily fictionalised biopic with Dan Stevens playing Charles Dickens, bashing out A Christmas Carol in six weeks after contracting a nasty dose of writer’s block in 1843. Thanks to the success of Oliver Twist, Dickens is literary-rock-star famous. But at 31, after a handful of flops, he has a gnawing anxiety that his powers are on the wane. And with four kids, another baby on the way and debts piling up, he needs to make some serious cash, fast.

The film is a Quality Street treat for the holidays, with a gooey sweet centre – daft but immensely likable, and performed with pantomime gusto by a top-notch cast. Dickens yomps about London, meeting people who inspire the creation of Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the gang. These characters then literally come to life in his study as he writes, and they’re an unruly bunch, ruthlessly mocking his failure to finish his comeback. (Christopher Plummer is terrific as Scrooge.)

And with his flamboyant star turn as Dickens, there’s Stevens, a man who finally looks to be laying to rest his own ghost of Christmas past. Cast your mind back to 2012, when the shock death in the Downton Abbey Christmas special of his beloved character Matthew Crawley had the faithful crying into their sherry glasses.

Unlike many actors, Stevens is not at all uptight when chatting about the character who made him famous. Nevertheless, in the past five years, he has done everything possible to distance himself from Crawley, the interloping heir to the Downton pile. He has cross-dressed in the cult favourite Vimeo show High Maintenance, murdered with psychopathic charm in The Guest, freaked out on the Marvel TV spin-off Legion and locked up Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast. He even looks different these days. Gone is the floppy blond hair, and the once boyish face is chiselled into sharp angles. Stevens credits the weight loss to moving to New York where he finds it easier to look after himself, working out at the gym and cutting out dairy.

Different, too, has been the reception granted Stevens’s post-Downton work. A pleasantly surprised tone crept into reviews, a perceptible sound of critics retracting knives and grudgingly acknowledging that, oh hang on, he’s actually a bit good, isn’t he? Stevens throws his head back laughing when asked how he feels about this change in critical fortunes. “It’s interesting. You do one show that goes everywhere, and people associate you with that. Do I think Downtown is my best work? Probably not. But if people enjoy it, or if that’s what they think of when they think of me, so be it. It served me well.” If he is offended by the question, he is too polite to say. Dan Stevens is scrupulously polite, so careful with his words that he often leaves you wondering what he really thinks.

Stevens studied English at Cambridge and was a Booker prize judge in 2012, reading 146 novels in seven months (the Downton costume team stitched secret pockets into his jackets for his Kindle). But he shrugs when I ask about historical accuracy, or the lack of it, in his latest film. (The Man Who Invented Christmas has been criticised by experts for, among other things, the inaccurate size of its newspaper headlines.) “Frankly, whether it’s historically accurate I’m not that concerned about. I was interested in that moment of the creative process, watching a great man struggle – to me, that’s dramatically and comedically interesting. Certainly I was keen not to play Dickens as a bearded old sage.”

He tells me that one of his co-stars, Miriam Margolyes, has a theory that Dickens was bipolar. Does Stevens buy that? “It’s a very interesting interpretation. I think there’s something to be said for it…” he tails off.

Needless to say, the film does not dwell on Dickens’s iffy relationships with women. (A year before publishing A Christmas Carol, he had this to say about his wife in a letter to a friend: “Catherine is as near being a donkey as one of her sex can be.”) “I think he was a good father and a terrible husband,” Stevens says diplomatically. “But yeah, I think it being a Christmas film, we wanted it to be fairly full of laughter. I don’t wish to take anything away from the man, and therefore you have to address the dark side of his nature and his work. There were moments when he was bleak and depressive. But I think there were moments when he was great fun to be around, very silly and playful.” I must say that, having watched the film, I’m still none the wiser about which yuletide customs Dickens has bragging rights on. Pudding, definitely. Turkey? Mistletoe?

Stevens loves Christmas, unironically, in a full-on, festive jumpers and stockings-hanging-on-the-fireplace kind of way. “I always have. Our house is pretty lively at Christmas,” he says. He is married to the singer Susie Hariet and they have three children. Family festivities at their gaff kick off on Christmas Eve, watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. Who does the cooking? “My mum and I usually team up. We’re quite a formidable duo in the kitchen.”

Stevens is well-spoken but not as posh as he seems. Now 35, he was adopted at seven days old, and raised in Wiltshire, Essex and Brecon in Wales. He spent his early teenage years rebelling against anything and everything, but still got the grades to win a scholarship to a prestigious boys’ boarding school in Kent at 13. He wasn’t happy, feeling isolated and as if he didn’t fit in with the other kids. What was going on? “I dunno. I guess I didn’t always toe the line,” he answers a tad testily, and with a definite air of finality.

I mention that going to a top university from a comprehensive, I always felt envious of the privately educated kids who never questioned whether they were talented enough to be in the room. “The entitlement thing is a problem,” Stevens says. “It’s interesting, living in America and seeing a different system. It’s definitely got as many flaws, but there is a sense that your own achievement and drive and curiosity can achieve great things, in a way that I think is stifled in Britain.”

By the time he landed Downton, Stevens had already toured the US opposite Rebecca Hall in a production of As You Like It, and appeared on stage in the West End with Judi Dench. Did he feel any disgruntlement at the time – being a Serious Actor suddenly lumped in with a Sunday night soap opera? He shakes his head: “I never felt that people weren’t taking me seriously. I did appreciate that some people were watching Downton with a kind of ironic appreciation – perhaps the Guardian readership particularly…” he shoots me a grin, adding: “and my friends, too. But no. There was no resentment. I still see a lot of the guys. It changed all of our lives. It had a seismic effect on all our careers.”

It goes without saying that appearing in a show watched by 12 million people opened doors that appearing in off-Broadway Shakespeare never could. But as soon as he left the show he bolted for New York. What was that all about? Did the comparisons to the young Hugh Grant scare him out of the country? “No! I was just very excited about the work I was afforded over there. People there were prepared to see me do something dark and weirder. Or something action-y and mental. Or something big and silly, like Night at the Museum. It couldn’t have turned out better.”

As for Dickens, he got his instant classic. A Christmas Carol sold out its first run of 6,000 copies before Christmas Eve. The tale melted hearts of even the most dyed-in-the-wool cynics – one American businessman gave his staff an extra day’s holiday. Not that Dickens made the killing he’d hoped for. After getting carried away with gilt lettering and fancy paper, he never trousered the £1,000 he had banked on. God bless us, every one.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is out in the US; released in the UK on 1 December

[aion-rsa]

How Looking For Alaska Channels (and Doesn't) The O.C.

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We talked to Looking For Alaska creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage about the connections between Looking For Alaska & The O.C.

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Tonally and structurally, Hulu's new teen drama Looking For Alaska and that mainstay of teen television The O.C. have little in common. One is a more grounded coming-of-age drama, the other is a (very good) teen soap. One is an eight-episode limited series, the other ran for four seasons on Fox. One is set in the woods of Alabama, the other takes place on the sunny beaches of Southern California.

But these two projects—one set in 2005 but made in 2019, and the other set in 2003-2007 and made during that same time period—have some fascinating connections that can give the Looking For Alaska viewing experience a meta layer for anyone who was also a contemporary fan of that teen drama classic The O.C. 

Both The O.C. and Looking For Alaska were created by Josh Schwartz (his producing partner, Stephanie Savage co-created the latter). Schwartz was showrunning The O.C. when he optioned the film rights for first-time author John Green's Looking For Alaska, and it's not hard to understand why the manuscript might have piqued 2005 Schwartz's interest: Both The O.C. and Looking For Alaska are stories about (teen white boy) outsiders coming into a tight-knit, privileged community.

Schwartz said that it was Green's writing that initially drew him to the book all those years ago, and the ways in which it allowed him to connect to the characters of Looking For Alaska, which is told from protagonist Miles "Pudge" Halter's point-of-view in the novel. 

read more: Den of Geek's Best Fiction Books of 2017

"Miles aka Pudge, was the guy I definitely identified with," said Schwartz of that initial reading experience. "And I think that idea of everyone has had in Alaska who's come into their life, whether it's been the exact same, it's played out in exactly the same way it did for Miles, but somebody who teaches you... let's just say growth through pain."

The book (and series) follow Miles as he begins his junior year at private boarding school Culver Creek Academy in rural Alabama. In the series, Miles is played by Charlie Plummer (Boardwalk Empire, All the Money in the World). Unlike the novel, the adaptation is more of an ensemble drama, giving just as much narrative space to Miles' roommate Chip "The Colonel" Martin (Denny Love) and object of Miles' affections Alaska Young (The Society's Kristine Froseth), both scholarship kids from working class backgrounds. Miles, Chip, and Alaska's found family dynamic is the basis for the joy, humor, and heartbreak of the story.

"I also thought the book was just really, really funny," said Schwartz, elaborating on what initially drew him to this world. "The relationships that all these kids had with each other. Their nicknames and their codewords and their smoking holes and their ambrosia. It was a whole world that, even though it was loosely inspired by John's experience and obviously by his imagination, I felt like it had happened to me."

Schwartz has evolved professionally since he first optioned the rights to Looking For Alaska 15 years ago. In 2010, Schwartz and Savage formed Fake Empire, a production company for the development of TV and feature films. Fake Empire has made series like Gossip Girl, Chuck, Hart of Dixie, The Carrie Diaries, Dynasty, Marvel's Runaways, and now Looking For Alaska. (They are also behind new CW show Nancy Drew, and are developing a Gossip Girl sequel series for HBO Max.)

read more: Nancy Drew Pilot Review (Spoiler-Free)

Speaking about the difference between making a show about 2005 in 2005 and making a show about 2005 now, Schwartz said: "The O.C. was very much of the time when we made it. It was very contemporary and all of the fashion and the music was of the moment. What the kids were talking about or dealing with... it was very deliberately a show designed to reflect the times that we were living in."

Looking For Alaska, on the otherhand, says Schwartz, is not meant to reflect the interests or anxieties of 2005 specifically, even if it may have some of the aesthetics of 2005.

"We want to looking for Alaska to feel timeless," said Schwartz. "So part of setting it in 2005 [was] because that's when the book was first published. [For] the first generation of readers who read the book, that was the context that they were experiencing it. And the same for us. But [that setting] also allowed the show to have a certain timeless quality. It's not an obvious period piece, but it's the last moment before people got smartphones. There is an innocence and a timelessness to it."

read more: Marvel's Runaways — What Sets This Superhero Show Apart

Fake Empire gets its name comes from a The National song that was featured in Season 2 of Chuck, a nod to how important indie music has been to their success and brand of the company. Looking For Alaska includes many songs that originally appeared on The O.C. or other Fake Empire shows. Savage and Schwartz have brought in frequent collaborator Music Supervisor Alexandra Patsavas (The O.C., Chuck, Gossip Girl) once again for Looking For Alaska.

"Selfishly, it allowed us to go back and pull out our old O.C. playlist," said Schwartz of Alaska's 2005 setting, "and revisit with old friends and listen to some of this music, use some of the music, but then also get these new covers from contemporary artists of those songs."

Not all references are intentional or even objective: When Miles first sees Alaska in the Looking For Alaska pilot, it is through a car window, as he is driving by on his way to Culver Creek. The music swells and time seems to slow down, the rest of the world fading away for Miles, as the two characters see each other for the first time.

read more: Fleabag Season 2 Review

The moment is reminscent of a similar shot in The O.C. pilot, which sees Ryan making eye contact with Marissa through a car window to the dreamy strums of Joseph Arthur's "Honey and the Moon" as Sandy drives him away. (When asked about this shot construction, Savage brings up Serena's introduction in the Gossip Girl pilot, which sees Blake Lively staring forlornly out of the train window to Pete Bjorn's "Young Folks" as she returns to NYC.)

"We like shows where people look out the window," Schwartz jokes before adding more seriously: "When you're a teenager, a lot of the ways you see the world is out the window, when somebody else is taking you somewhere."

In addition to all of these meta moments, The O.C. gets a more explicit shout-out in Looking For Alaska. In Episode 6, Miles and Lara (Sofia Vassilieva) are watching the show on a laptop (they must have the DVD?). It's a tangible connection between the worlds of these two shows: the show that defined—at least pop culturally—what it meant to be a teen in the mid-aughts and the show that is loosely using that setting to wonder what it means to be a teen coming-of-age now, when, perhaps, teenagers are asked to grow up sooner and faster.

While the moment may be an explicit The O.C. reference, it has its own meta element because cast members Froseth and Plummer were watching The O.C. while filming Looking For Alaska.

read more: Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell Review & Discussion

"Kristine Froseth is like, hardcore, the biggest fan of the original show," said Schwartz. "I thought she was joking when we first started talking about it. She watched the show four times in a row, from beginning to end, and then she gave Charlie the show and so he started watching it and then they would come to set with questions. And then Kristine is like, 'Charlie, we just have to watch up until the point where Marissa dies,' and Charlie goes, 'Marissa dies?' She basically spoiled it for him."

Schwartz said that inherent in these conversations was the curiosity from the young stars of Looking For Alaska about what it was like to be a teenager or adult during this just-past time period. (Froseth was born in 1996, and Plummer was born in 1999.) 

"We were being asked a lot 'What were the aughts like like?'" said Schwartz, "which also made us feel very old." It's an interesting question to ponder, though not one that Looking For Alaska spends a lot, if any, time on. This isn't a series about then or maybe even now; it's a story hoping to be about always, about the ways in which those first, unfathomable encounters with devastating loss and grief change us. How they always have and they always will.

All eight episodes of Looking For Alaska are now available on Hulu.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature

Books

Kayti Burt

Oct 18, 2019

Looking For Alaska

Hulu

Josh Schwartz

Stephanie Savage

from Books https://ift.tt/2MSdCvJ