FaBiAxey here, determined to serve once more (as all men must), bounding to you with a dearth of not-quite-news, some of which is bound to make you wonder why you even clicked on this page.
First off, the good: We lucky fools here in LA-LA Land will be getting an exclusive screening of Game of Thrones season 5 episode 1! On Thursday, April 9, GoT writer/producer Bryan Cogman, partnered with Larchmont Charter School, will be showing the season opener to a hundred or so fans at the United Talent Agency. Tickets are $40 and go to benefit Larchmont Charter. I will be going there, and will be asking some questions of Bryan Cogman, who will be fielding ’em after the show. If you’re not in L.A. (I realize most of you are not), toss up some questions, and I’ll try to throw a few at the Cogmeister. If you’re interested in attending, here’s the link!
Secondly, a nice new interview with Kit Harington has surfaced (thanks, snuu!), courtesy of the Los Angeles Times and Emmy Contender Chat. It’s pretty meaty, a half-hour long, though no spoilers were given. (The interviewer tried.) Interview after the cut!
Thirdly… Thirdly is a jester. But that’s a long story.
And now it gets weird.
Fourthly, It’s Always Sunny in Westeros! TMZ recently caught up with David Benioff and Dan Weiss, and they revealed that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day have been trying to get cameos on the show. And it may yet happen! Benioff and Weiss revealed they’d penned an episode of IASIP, so… hey. Turnabout’s fair play, right? And I’d love to see Charlie die a gruesome death. His screams would be especially strident.
But come on. Kaitlin Olson for Val the Wildling Princess! Let’s get this thing done, people! (Danny DeVito was born to play Patchface, but he’s been sadly omitted from the series.)
Fifthly, IGN (as well as Ary News and Entertainment News Service of Mumbai) states that Sony Entertainment Television will be producing an Indian television show “inspired by” Game of Thrones. Which, okay, that sounds fine; success breeds this sort of thing, and clearly they’re not going to actually copy–
Actually it seems they are. The article goes on to say that the actress in question has been tabbed for the role of Daenerys Targaryen. Another Indian actress will be playing Cersei Lannister, and some dude from MTV will be playing Jon Snow.
Assuming they don’t get asses sued off, I kind of want to see that Bollywood’s answer to Jon Snow is. Right? Like who doesn’t?
No idea if HBO or Time Warner are raking any Bollywood money under the table, or if they’re just rolling their collective eyes, or lawyering up. (Or if this article has even one shred of any truth at all.) Should this be one of the questions I ask Cogman?
Lastly (and leastly) I leave you with… this:
Y’all have less than one week to get off the internet in order to avoid this train wreck. Godspeed.
Annnnnd the embed is wonky. Please Stand By.
Fixed. Thanks, Sue!
Please ask Cogman if he got to write a bathtub scene again, and what he brought to it this season. I assume he did since there was one in the trailer.
Also please ask him about the etymology of his name, and if he feels any affinity for seafaring characters as a result. (This is the question I always ask.)
BTW here’s a lovely quote from GrrM on people calling some of the show’s inventions fan-fiction.
He has spoken! From now on, as Stannis said, “Let no man claim ignorance as an excuse.”
Ask Cogman, what is his favorite storyline in A Dance with Dragons? Or what storyline was the most exciting to adapt from A Dance with Dragons?
…so it’s got a running track of “Goodbye Horses” in the background and lots of hand lotion?
I would do unspeakable things in exchange for Danny Devito as Patchface, next to Stephen Dillane in a scene or two. If there’s one insignificant minor character I’m pissed about them leaving out, IT’S PATCHFACE!
Excited for the trial! Will we get R’hllor’s blessing if they burn? I am assuming they are guilty.
A very simple question for Cogman:
What happened to The Eyrie in the credit sequence in season 4 ?
I’m trying to picture the Bollywood of Thrones…any chance of lots of kitsch musical numbers? The Night Watch doing a choreographed version of their vows in Castle Black’s courtyard, led by Ser Alliser with Master Aemon playing the drums? Cersei and Jamie singing their love to each other in a candlelit room with a backdrop of King’s Landing by night? Cos I might just have to watch. (Well, if it ever gets made, which would astound me.)
Speaking of weird stuff, has anyone else seen this video of NCW giving a ‘book reader’s only’ spoiler for Season 5? (at the end of the video)
http://nikolajfangirlteam.tumblr.com/post/114673732527/hbo-nordic-q-a-with-nikolaj-coster-waldau-thanks
Is he just hardcore trolling or what?
Colty,
It’s just a weird non-sequitur joke. Nothing more.
This. I was about to come here to ask a question about the opening as well.
Otherwise, I’d just like to know if they at least consider once, at some point, to have the Battle of Castle Black earlier in the season (ep 5/6) to cover the rest of Jon’s chapters in season 4.
OR ROLLY DUCKFIELD!
YG confirmed, get hype.
Kit says “I(‘ve?) loved working with him” when he talks about Ciaran Hinds (around 17.30 minutes).
There’s a South American version of Breaking Bad, which was given the blessing of Gilligan and co. Maybe this Indian thing is similar. Hollywood remakes foreign movies all the time, this is the reverse.
the woman interviewing jon snow is a complete tool. “what’s going to happen in season 5?” over & over again
How absolutely charming is Kit Harrington? Here’s to a long and very successful career to this deserving young actor!
Greenjones,
Except he basically says the opposite. He says GoT is a licensed adaption, not fan fiction, and that he is opposed to actual fan fiction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVUyovTvMCw
An example of how Indian Soaps look…
Can’t wait for the desi GOT melodrama 🙂
Jaqen H’ghar leading Arya out of Harrenhal through song and dance! xD
A man must dance!
Yeah, but they don’t do it without consenting and for some reason, this feels as if there wasn’t any form of consent.
Tom Snow,
That’s what Greenjones means.
I imagine the brothel scenes looking like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVPh2bgN1R8
Luka Nieto,
Yeah, saw I misread his post but couldn’t edit my own after. Managed to miss out “on people” and read it as him saying there was a GRRM quote saying the show was fan fiction, haha. My bad.
He also talks about Iain Glen in the past tense “He’s been in the show since the start”, so I don’t think he necessarily slipped here.. Also, they basically work together for a few months and then split again, it could well be that he just referenced the period they worked together in the past tense.. Kind of how you’d talk about the 3rd quarter of a match in past tense while the game is still ongoing..
Just started watching the Kit-interview.. Dat interviewer.. You just reference that Jon Snow went to the Wall in S1, and then say that he doesn’t mix it up with the Lannisters, while quite clearly, Tyrion went up with him and he had a few scenes with Dinklage in S1.. I mean in the overall plot you can forget about it, but not when you just referenced said journey.. -.-
Also.. She asks if he’s done shooting.. 17-18 days before the show starts airing..
I really hope that Bollywood thing gets made, because I love to watch trainwrecks! Especially trainwrecks with choreography.
Adapting popular shows in other countries is a very common thing. There were at least 3 South American versions of “Desperate Housewives”, countless versions of “The Office” in Europe, Asia, (and actually the US version was a “copy”, too), and “Betty la Fea/Ugly Betty” has been adapted 22 times, one of those also being a Bollywood version.
dee,
Well, it was very probable that
I’ve been hoping for a musical episode in Game of Thrones for months now. If an unlicensed illegal copyright-humping Bollywood version is how it happens, then so be it. Sometimes knock-offs are the best. Look at Turkish Star Wars, or the Bollywood version of Thriller.
Yeah, basically this Robert Fiorentino person is guilty of a classic strawman: take Someone’s statement, change the definition of one of the words, and then claim that Someone is a hypocrite. Adaptation and fan-fiction differ fundamentally in that the goal of one is to tell the same story and the goal of the other is to, um, well, I have no idea if fan-fiction ever has any real goals. Talisa is not fan-fiction: Talisa is recognizing that Jeyne Westerling is a literary gill and will not only not work on the terrestrial screen, but would actually be detrimental there. Fan-fiction is writing stories about Jeyne Westerling sneaking off to give birth to Robb’s son, and then raising that son to go south to kill the Lannisters in revenge: storyless-plot usually contradicting the original plot (sorry, but mummy was doping her with an abortifacient, not fertility drugs), and not relevant to what the original author is trying to do. Adaptation is trying to do what the original author did but allowing that the rules/laws of the media are different.
BeautyBrinne,
I’d never heard of Turkish Star Wars before! That is awesome. Until now, I thought the Star Wars Holiday Special could not be topped, but it appears there may be a contender…
Wimsey,
There are degrees of fanfiction. At the heart of it, fanfiction is taking another’s characters and setting and creating something. It appears that Martin makes the distinction between fanfiction and an adaption with the consent of the originator. Which is odd. There are plenty of authors out there who sanction fanfiction. Some encourage it. Does that suddenly make those creations not fanfiction? Linda Antonsson has called HBO’s adaption fanfiction, yet Martin characterizes people who regard TWOIAF as fanfiction “moronic”.
Like I said, it’s odd.
It is not at all odd. GRRM is distinguishing between B&W trying to tell GRRM’s story in a different way (adaptation) and other people trying to tell different tales using his characters, place-names, etc. (fan-fiction). That is the distinction that the Strawman-Maker did not understand, I think: my bet is that he is one of those fans that does not understand that using a novel as a script almost guarantees failing to tell the same story as the novel did. (The first two Harry Potter films demonstrated that “spectacularly.”) Alternatively, he might be one of those fans who is much less interested in stories than he is in plots, details, etc.
Why is there a “yet” in that statement? 😀
Seriously, as I have noted before, Linda Antonsson is the type of fan who would fail a literature test based on Game of Thrones spectacularly. In fact, I don’t think she would even understand what the questions are asking. Given that the goal of adaptation is to communicate the same story, someone oblivious to (or at least indifferent to) “story” is not going to be able to understand the difference between fan-fiction and adaptation.
That’s cool that Kit is a fan of Ursula LeGuin. He’s much too young to be Winston Smith in 1984 though. Give yourself another 20 years Kit!
I honestly don’t believe that LA Times interviewer who is also a TV critic for the paper is as big a fan as she claims or even watches anything more than the first four episodes HBO sends out each year for review. She gets peoples names wrong in the video, thinks they’re still shooting the season like 3 weeks before it starts, doesn’t seem to realize it’s location based shooting and think they’re all in some LA studio somewhere and gets certain parts of the story wrong when asking questions.
This is a media phenomenon I’ve never understood and have seen this countless times with this show, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos back in the day. Have people who are clueless about the show do the interviews. Why?
A TV critic has to watch nearly every show on TV. He/she is not going to retain specific details like character names, etc. for any one show because he/she is evaluating all of shows for the more general stories, plots and developments of primary characters. Details that do not contribute much to those things get lost. (This probably is true for the general viewer, too.)
Also, many TV series are still shooting when the season starts. So, it is not that odd of a question. (And for these sorts of series that do not always adhere to “1 a year rules,” shooting for the next season often commences by now.)
Tim,
Shes done a lot of videos on LA Times discussing the show, and has done several articles claiming it is the greatest show of all time. Shes also read the first book, but stopped because she just wanted to judge the show.
Or they might also but die? Jorah Mormont and Mance Rayder?
Perhaps because it is a much better alternative than having die-hard fanatics do the interviews? People who are TV critics do this as part of their profession, so they can look at the broader picture, evaluate one TV series amongst many, many others, and take an objective view. They don’t spend all their available time going over minutia.
Luka Nieto,
It was. Thank you.,
The Indian guy playing Jon Snow is a shitload hotter than Kit Harrington. Not as broody though. Hmmmmm. I think the IGN article reversed the pictures for the actresses playing Daenarys and Cersei, though.
Tim,
I’m usually in your corner, highly critical of dumb interviewers. We saw some of those in both the London and SF premieres. But somehow this time around I was not so bothered. In fact, I enjoyed the interview.
I don’t think she is inexperienced or forgetful. To me, she played the nice super excited card, but all the time she was trying to get more info from him and he did not balk.
Axechucker,
Do you know if there is a dress code for the Larchmont screening on Thursday?
but I love my father too and he missed a great part of mine and my siblings life because he was a part of this group that started off with my aunt