‘She knows the heat of a luxurious bed<\/em>‘\u00a0 is a great Shakespeare line by Claudio as he rejects his bride Hero for not being virginal. I still get surprised by the beauty, the poetry and the wit of Shakespeare, you act in one of his plays, luxuriate in the language and then forget what a cutting, funny & magical wordsmith he was.\u00a0 The reason I fell in love with this line again was that I finally got around to watching Joss Whedon’s fantastic ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.<\/p>\n One reviewer had said that he had never had as much fun watching Shakespeare before\u00a0 but still I have dragged my feet on this. I love Shakespeare but oftentimes film versions don’t work, made worse by the fact that I saw the trailer and the film is black and white. Plus Shakespearean iambic pentameter done in an American accent can kill it, I know I have been the meter murderer myself on occasion, for example playing Hippolyta in Midsummer Nights Dream. What finally pushed me to watch Much Ado despite the fact that I love Joss Whedon’s work such as Buffy, Angel and Firefly was that I was reading an\u00a0interview<\/a> with Joss Whedon for Fast Company where Joss talked about using some of David Allen’s Getting Things Done\u00a0principles<\/a> to get the film made in a two week slot whilst he was mid edit of ‘The Avengers’.
\nSpeeches such as ‘Four days will quickly steep themselves in night’<\/em> delivered in a New York accent was a choice by my director, that is my only defence….<\/p>\n
\nApparently Joss had been having Shakespeare read throughs at his home for a decade with many of his actors from Buffy & Angel, who are scattered through the film. Finally though he used David Allen’s question of ‘What next?’ to get the project moving and out there with great award winning success.
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