While perusing YouTube the other day, I stumbled across an interview with the late writer/director Anthony Minghella. While at the 2006 Denver Film Festival for the American premiere of Breaking and Entering, he ended up in some very insightful territory after being asked a fairly generic question about how the film came to be.
"Films have this wonderful ability to enable you to think outside of your own skin for a while. You can look at the same story from many points of view. You can perhaps reserve judgment. It can nudge you a little bit towards compassion, and for me, films are like the moral gymnasium. You know, you go to the gym to work out. You go to movies to work out your heart, and your head, and your thoughts, and I love movies like that, and I want to make movies like that, and I aspire to making movies like the movies I’ve loved myself watching. . ."
While it's terribly sad to think that Minghella's voice has been silenced forever, I've had the opportunity to listen to various interviews that he gave. He seems to have been a very astute, thoughtful person. I'm honored to know that to know that the man was a kindred spirit.
2 comments:
He wrote all the episodes for a TV show that was on here awhile back called "The Storyteller" it was done by Jim Henson and I believe aired on HBO here in the states.
Basically it was a live-action adaptation of classic European legends/myths with now A list Brit stage actors and the occasional Henson creature. If you like The Dark Crystal or Labryinth then this one is right up your alley as Brian Froud did the pre-production work, I believe.
Very well done for a children's show, worth checking out for sure. I really wish that they had more shows like that out there for kids now.
Some basic info on it.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Storyteller
They changed it to Greek Myths in the second season and as much as I like Micheal Gambon he lacked the charm of John Hurt as the narrator. Minghella also didn't have anything to do with that season.
I think the reason why I prefer the first season better is because almost everyone knows the Greek myths but the European Fairy Tales often have gotten sugar coated over the years and have become diluted from their source material so its nice to see the prototypical take on the story of Cinderella or something.
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