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This one's for Vlad. Mike Leigh was being slightly difficult in an interview with Dave Calhoun after a screening of Another Year. Dave asked him how similar or different his way of developing film projects is now compared to how it was when he started out. Previous answers had gone on forever. This time his reply was much shorter:
It's just the same
After an awkward pause, Mike went on:
'I can expand on that if you'd like me to.
Dave: Yes, please.
Mike: It's just the same (pause) thing.
B-)
Excellent advice for writers of all types from Darren Aronofsky (director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan, which is awesome btw) This quote comes from an earlier interview but he repeated it last week at the London Film Festival:
My mentor is Stuart Rosenberg, the guy who directed Cool Hand Luke and Pope of Greenwich Village and he said, 'You have to have a sign on your desk that says 'where's my audience now?' And I have that sign on my desk. I think about it all time - 'Where is the audience?'
Last week his focus was more on thinking about what was in the minds of audience members at specific moments as they viewed the film.
Billy
'Slang' is a word I think it's safest to avoid using. There are several different things it could mean, so you run the risk of misunderstanding when you use it. Following Emma Thompson's comments on schoolgirls using 'slang', there was an interesting discussion in the Observer between Doc Brown and Robert McCrum. They agreed with each other to a fair extent, but I think the article could be a useful starting point for work which aims to sort out the different things someone could mean when they talk about speakers using 'slang'.
Billy
Kermode and Mayo's Film Review podcast is one of my favourite sources for linguistic examples.
Who can forget Kermode ranting at his four year old daughter for describing Nanny McPhee as 'the best film ever' without checking whether she really thought it was better than Mary Poppins?
Or the discussion of pronunciation adULT (as opposed to ADult) as away of indicating pornographic material?
In the past few episodes, Dr. Kermode has been picking up on prepositions at the end of sentences and of course many listeners have been in touch to point out his error(s). My favourite was the one which pointed to Kermode himself praising Made in Dagenham for giving us 'strong female characters we can actually believe in'.
Billy
There's a nice example in the film Made in Dagenham which can be used to illustrate misunderstanding based on a mismatch between a hearer's contextual assumptions and a speaker's expectations about them. Rita (played by Sally Hawkins) is talking to Lisa (playe by Rosamund Pike). Rita is a factory worker and Lisa is Rita's boss's wife (this is from memory so might not be exactly right):
Rita: That's a lovely dress.
Lisa: Thanks. It's from Biba.
Rita: It's still nice, though.
That's the dress Sally Hawkins is wearing on the poster.
Billy