R.I.P. George MacDonald Fraser
He wrote Lester’s THE THREE MUSKETEERS and THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, which are two of my very favourite movies. Apart from all the filmic and performance stuff, I was very influenced by Fraser’s dialogue, which is forever descending beautifully from the elegant and high-flown into the vernacular and slightly vulgar, then swooping back up.
January 4, 2008 at 12:28 am
Also probably the most entertaining writer of historical fiction that I can think of.
http://simonfraser.livejournal.com/12603.html
January 4, 2008 at 11:37 am
Well, Dumas was no slouch either!
I like Fraser’s stuff a lot though, was really sorry to hear that he was a bit of a horrible old racist. I wrote about the FIRST Flashman film, the one that never happened, in my blog piece on The Greatest Movies Never Made.
January 4, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Was he really a horrible racist? That’s disappointing to learn. I mean, the Flashman books are chock-full of it, but I’d always assumed that it was being presented at a distance–Flashman being of course dishonorable and horrid and of his time.
Still, sad to see the man go, since he was still working away and publishing.
January 4, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I think Flashman’s opinions are all just Flashman’s opinions, and we shouldn’t impute them (impute? is that right?) to Fraser. No problem with the books.
But he did interviews where he said he preferred the company of people of his own race and didn’t see anything abnormal about that, and so on. It was kind of creepy, though I suppose not extreme by the standards of some people of his generation. But I don’t want to fall into the trap of excusing him.
It’s also a shame he didn’t write more films. OCTOPUSSY is bad but I’m not inclined to blame him overmuch since I don’t know the story behind its making. The first two Musketeers flicks are sublime and he should have been snapped up for other projects. The last one is disappointing alright but not as bad as everybody says. ROYAL FLASH somehow misses the tone of the books, even though he was adapting…a bolder, braver British film industry would starts a series of Flashman movies or TV specials even.