Blue Sky Casting #3
I’m always kind of dissatisfied with adaptations of Lewis Carroll. The Svankmajer ALICE is pretty good, but as an adaptation I never felt it caught the tone of the book, that calm, dreamy feeling, where Alice perceives things as strange alright, but not VERY strange. I like Jonathan Miller’s BBC version, especially the dignified cast and the decision not to use big prosthetic makeups, but the Ravi Shankar score seems like a fashionable gesture rather than a shrewd artistic choice. I can remember as a kid being put into quite an odd state by the Disney version, but looking at it now it’s more HELLZAPOPPIN’ than Charles Dodgson. DREAMCHILD, scripted by Dennis Potter, is nice, but not all it should be.
Wouldn’t it have been great if some far-thinking British producer had brought Luis Bunuel to the UK, just after L’AGE D’OR, to film both the Alice books, back-to-back?
He could have had the cream of British stage and screen working for him – probably some of the same names Miller had in the sixties : Gielgud, Finlay Currie — as well as people like Ernest Thesiger (The Mad Hatter), Alastair Sim (The Duchess), Charles Laughton as the ultimate Humpty Dumpty…
But we can only dream of this, and if we are going to dream, we should dream of absurd and baffling things, so I give you:
SAM PECKINPAH’S
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
The White Rabbit — L.Q. Jones
The Dodo — Randolph Scott
The Caterpillar — Emilio Fernandez
The Duchess — R.G. Armstrong
The Cheshire Cat — Ernest Borgnine
The Mad Hatter — David Warner
The March Hare — Warren Oates
The Dormouse — Slim Pickens
The Queen of Hearts — Ida Lupino
The King of Hearts — Robert Preston
The Griffin — Kris Kristofferson
The Mock Turtle — Bob Dylan
Alice — some Mexican whore.
Dylan = Turtle. You can see what I mean, right?
“Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia — OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”
December 11, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Ooh, Borgnine as the Cheshire Cat. Now that’s inspired.
I’ve often enjoyed imagining an Alice where Don Knotts got to play the Mad Hatter. The Hatter would instantly become more sympathetic, even sad, confused in his madness. Alas, like my dream of Frank Sinatra recording Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, ’tis never to be.
December 11, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Borgnine has the grin alright. Someone should hurry up and cast him.
Knotts would be nice. We don’t really HAVE Don knotts in the UK, but I’ve seen bits on youtube.
Visually, the most perfect Mad Hatters might be Kenneth Williams (whom you don’t really HAVE in the US, although he nearly played the painter in Welles’ THE TRIAL) or George Arliss (a figure lost in the mists of time: nobody HAS him). But sympathy wouldn’t really enter into it with either of those.
Oh, the other great Humpty Dumpty would be Charles Gray, best known as Blofeld in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and the criminologist in ROCKY HORROR. Like Humpty, he has no neck.
Hey, i like your blog!
December 13, 2007 at 12:56 am
I’ve never understood why Paramount, having the Marx Brothers under contract in 1933, didn’t cast Groucho, Chico and Harpo as the Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse respectively. You’d need to reassign some parts - Harpo could do the butter-in-the-watch business, and Chico could take over the Dormouse’s dialogue:
“But they were IN the well.”
“Atsa right. Well in.”
December 13, 2007 at 11:29 am
Margaret Dumont for Queen of Hearts! Yay!