{"id":2583,"date":"2014-01-05T07:50:42","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T12:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2014-01-05T22:30:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T03:30:17","slug":"hollywood-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2014\/01\/05\/hollywood-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Reads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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There’s an old chestnut in Hollywood about how no one in the town reads. \u00a0If that’s the case, Saving Mr. Banks\u00a0<\/em>is the exception that proves the rule. \u00a0The depth of Emma Thompson’s understanding of P.L. Travers’s character is astonishing, and it’s clear that she took the role seriously enough to read, while the scriptwriters actually did research. \u00a0It’s heartbreaking to hear what one of the scriptwriters reported–and the brilliant Tom Hanks has just the right antidote to the sadness:<\/p>\n

Last night, when we were doing a Q. and A., Kelly [Marcel] said [Travers\u2019s] grandchildren had said she\u2019d died not loving anyone and nobody loving her. At which point, Tom burst into song.<\/em><\/p>\n

You sang? Tom, what did you sing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Tom Hanks<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cLet\u2019s Go Fly a Kite.\u201d I needed to Disney-fy up the sad ending. [Laughs.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And here’s Tom Hanks in that same interview about\u00a0Saving Mr. Banks<\/em> in the\u00a0NYT,\u00a0<\/em>with fascinating insight into how Disney came to make the film.<\/p>\n

Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, called and] said: \u201cLook, we have a bit of a circumstance here. We have to make this movie about Walt Disney. We didn\u2019t develop it. It came to us from somewhere else. It\u2019s a great script, and if we don\u2019t do it, that means somebody else might be able to do it, and we\u2019re going to look heartless. But if we quash it, we\u2019ll look like we\u2019re trying to hide something. So will you play Walt Disney?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/indexes\/2014\/01\/04\/movies\/awardsseason\/index.html<\/p>\n

Jerry Griswold reviewed the movie, and he reveals a darker side to the feel-good ending, which enables the corporate to triumph over the creative. \u00a0Included in the review is a link to his extraordinary interview \u00a0with P.L. Travers in\u00a0The Paris Review.<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/sdsuchildlit.blogspot.com\/2013\/12\/saving-mr-banks-but-throwing-pl-travers.html<\/p>\n

 
\nThe odd thing about\u00a0Saving Mr. Banks\u00a0is that in this contest between the creative side and the corporate side, we\u2019re supposed to sympathize with corporate. We\u2019re supposed to join in patronizing the writer. Over all, someone seeing the film would reasonably conclude that Travers was an extraordinarily difficult person and Disney a nice guy. And alas, given their reach, it may be the Disney folks who get the last word.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  There’s an old chestnut in Hollywood about how no one in the town reads. \u00a0If that’s the case, Saving Mr. Banks\u00a0is the exception that proves the rule. \u00a0The depth of Emma Thompson’s understanding of P.L. Travers’s character is astonishing, and it’s clear that she took the role seriously enough to read, while the scriptwriters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2586,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}