Rowling 2007 Interview: Blast From Past

March 17, 2022 by Leave a Comment

I have no idea who Jonathan Ross is or was but he scores an interview with The Presence before the release of the Order of The Phoenix adaptation and the publication of Deathly Hallows in 2007. Rowling seems at ease if a little star-struck and he is clearly delighted to be in her company.

My three favorite moments?

(1) Her talking about the people who claim to have inspired the Harry Potter character in the context of Harry, Ron, and Hermione all being aspects of her own personality. Soul triptych, anyone?

(2) When asked about her relationship with the three child actors who play the Terrible Trio in the film adaptation she admits that it is a special, perhaps unique friendship: part maternal on her end but they share a bond because they are inhabiting characters that sprang from her imagination.

(3) Their hilarious exchange about her breakdown while writing the ‘Into the Forest’ chapter of Deathly Hallows. 

Well, I thought it was funny. Let me know what you think!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling-Fry Talk about Fantastic Beasts: An Annotated Transcript of Her Remarks

March 16, 2022 by 2 Comments

Last month, a conversation J. K. Rowling had with Stephen Fry about Fantastic Beasts was aired on the BBC. Our good friends at The Rowling Library posted those parts of the program in which Rowling shared her thoughts about two mythological creatures, about two of her own imaginative inventions, and to say repeatedly that this subject is important to her because, in it, one can learn “why we write stories,” even “what it means to be human.”

It is easy to overlook this conversation and its importance for grasping Rowling’s beliefs about writing and about the essence of “being human;” I certainly did when I first watched the video above and posted it here without comment as something of a filler. Today I have written out the transcript (and please check whether it is accurate; does she say the Lethifolds scare the “bejeebers” out of her or the “bejeesus”?) and shared three thoughts after the jump as annotations. Enjoy!

I think about this a lot — that we’re story-telling creatures — because to our knowledge we are the only animal that does this. And obviously it was an attempt, certainly with respect to myth and folklore, it was an attempt to explain the natural world, things that people didn’t understand.

I am very interested in story, inevitably. I am not just interested in writing stories but I am interested in why we write stories.

I’m even more fascinated by the fact that discreet cultures that had never met created such similar archetypes and such similar creatures. So we see the fire-bird, the Phoenix as I called it, but you see the version of a fire-bird throughout different cultures.

And what is that telling us about what it means to be human,  what lives in the back of our minds in our subconscious? We often see this, magical beasts, that magical beasts have been imagined by, after all, people who are living among different real animals. We’re talking about cultures across different continents That fascinates me because that’s telling us clearly about ourselves …

Mermaids… it’s very interesting because where did that myth come from? Even in Africa, these inland countries of course have great rivers, there is a form of mermaid, the jengu, so again this is something that has been created across these different cultures. Why were British sailors imagining fish-tailed women when people in Africa were imagining fish-tailed women? It’s just extraordinary….

I think it would be exceptionally difficult [to create a fantastic beast without any model in nature]. I created a creature in the original Fantastic Beasts, the Lethifold, Now that was my worst nightmare. There I went for something that would scare the bejeesus out of me. Although I was taking the idea from a cloak, when I stood back and looked at what I’d invented, well, that’s just a manta ray. [Fry: ‘Manta’ means ‘cloak’…] Exactly, so I’ve invented the manta ray who doesn’t live in water….

The Niffler is a bit of a favorite of mine. It’s a treasure seeker, likes everything that glitters, so it can locate treasure for you. So, for those of you who don’t know, the Niffler is a curious creature who is, I don’t know, a cross between a magpie in nature and a duck-billed platypus in appearance – and a mole, exactly. They used a platypus to get the snout-like appearance in the movie which I adore, I mean, they ran these things past me and I just loved it, It gave it such an endearing appearance…

So it’s exceptional difficult to invent something and often nature got there far better. Because you look at some of nature’s extraordinary creations and you think “CGI will never match this.”…

I was thinking about the creatures because I knew we were going to sit down and talk about this. And I realized that half those books [the Harry Potter novels] fold without those magical creatures. They’re so important. Hedwig the owl, and then we move through the Thestrals and dragons. They’re key plot points and obviously thematically they work in terms of life and death and power, struggle and treasure, but I realized when I focused on those creatures just how important they were. And that shows that we have a deep need to be connected to the animal world.

I share my three thoughts about the meaning of this conversation after the jump. See you there!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts, Hog Pro Notes

Rowling Response to Ukraine Invasion

March 15, 2022 by

The Russian Federation invaded Ukraine last month and the war there continues. I am no Russo-phile, but it is clear that there are no saints leading either country (or the greater powers that use these nations’ leaders as sock-puppets). What to do?

Jo Rowling Murray pulled out her check-book and challenged others to do the same to help “some of the most vulnerable children in Ukraine,” those in orphanages. She didn’t say anything about the injustice or Realpolitik of the invasion, she didn’t browbeat the decision makers in the UK and abroad about their action or inaction, she didn’t make sardonic comments about the vicious way of the world, in which, as Thucydides noted, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Not right away at least; she has since re-tweeted messages about the invasion and its attendant horrors. See here, here, here, and here for a sample of those. Her stand, though, what she has chosen to do when confronted by this tragedy, is in essence apolitical, just as her posting The Ickabog for children and families in Covid hysteria lockdowns for free on the internet (and donating all her income from the book sales to charities helping those most hurt by the lockdowns) was all positive and generous. Here Rowling is a challenging example of action in service to a cause without exacerbating or creating antagonisms. I could definitely take some notes here for my own reflection.

I post below re-tweets and responses she made that are about her offer to match all money contributed to Lumos, not to mention paying all their expenses so contributions do not go to charity overhead, to encourage all of us to help.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

‘Secrets of Dumbledore’ Japan Trailer – Revenge of the Giant Crab Manticore

March 6, 2022 by 8 Comments

Patricio Tarentino of TheRowlingLibrary.com sent me this Secrets of Dumbledore trailer just released in Japan. There are quite a few shots that were not included in previous previews but one in particular caught his interest — this one of the full sized manticore that is really a big scorpion.

As explained in Mr Tarantino’s ‘David Heyman confirms the creatures from the trailer of Fantastic Beasts 3 are baby manticores‘ and my ‘Beasts: Manticores or Poisonous Crabs?‘ post, this is a whacko departure from Rowling’s description of the XXXXX danger level Manticore in her Scamander Fantastic Beasts guide. I wrote then about the baby crabs being described by Heyman as “manticores” that maybe this was just a matter of the young beasts not having their leonine or human aspects:

This could certainly be a non-issue, i.e., baby manticores in Rowling’s presentation may just look like little crabs and their leonine aspects and human face with speech only manifest with maturity. The trailer, immediately after the dancing crab scene, features a giant scorpion tail swinging in at Newt and Theseus. We’re going to see a full-sized manticore, it seems, and I want to bet the brothers Scamander will have a conversation with it as well. I want to think that because, of course, any kind of dialogue with the creature will require that it have some kind of face and the ability to speak as humans do. At this point, it’s anybody’s guess.

After watching the trailer and taking a closer look at the screenshot above, nobody needs to guess. That isn’t a traditional Manticore or one that conforms even to Rowling’s previous description of them. I want to give Rowling the benefit of the doubt here and blame Kloves, the Davids, and the CGI mavens for this departure. If I’m right in this assumption, namely, believing that Rowling would not disregard what she has written in Scamander’s voice about a creature Newt confronts in the film and displays his expertise to save himself and his brother, then we have one more bit of evidence that Rowling wrote the original story and left all creative control to the Warner Brothers wily wizards of blockbuster mechanical formula and special effect overkill.

Your comments about the trailer and the Manticore issue are coveted, as always. Please do read, if you haven’t already,  Mr Tantino’s article explaining the background to this controversy, including his success in confirming what Heyman had said, and my longer notes about what this scene echoes from the first film. Cheers!

 

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts

The Secrets of Grindelwald Screenplay: Three Quick Notes about its Publication

March 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment

I get all of my news about Fantastic Beasts and Rowling, Inc., through The Rowling Library’s Daily Prophet, a publication available to all TRL supporters and one subscription feed I endorse with enthusiasm and without reservation. Sign Up today for their bi-weekly bulletins!

Through the TRL Daily Prophet’s reports, I have been following the news since December about the publication of a Secrets of Grindelwald screenplay. Only last week did an aside in a news release about the new Secrets trailer confirm that there would be a published screenplay — and announce that it would be available to readers on 19 July, three months after the movie premiere. “The screenplay of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore will be published in the English language by Little, Brown (U.K.), Scholastic (U.S.) and Pottermore Publishing (ebook) on 19 July 2022″ (Hat tip to Beatrice Groves). 

The TRL Daily Prophet noted:

The publication date for the original screenplay has been announced too: July 19th. Yes, you read that right: almost 3 months after the release of the film. Why? It hasn’t been explained (maybe they will wait to see the success of the film to know how many copies to print?). I hope the fact that the film will be well known by the fans at the time of the book release would make them include some extra material (maybe deleted scenes?)

Three Quick Notes:

(1) Why the Delay? The only idea I have heard that makes sense was one floated by the TRL Daily Prophet in January, namely, that MinaLima, the artists that designed the first and second Beasts screenplays, were not engaged in time and were working on other projects (including this one for the Beasts franchise). The subject of why this project did not result in the simultaneous publication of the book and the release of the film highlights the oddity of the whole exercise and the change of direction in Secrets of Dumbledore with respect to the screenwriting.

First, Rowling does not number the published screenplays among books she has written (see her October 2020 interview with Graham Norton for that list). She is openly acknowledging that, though she does the original plotting of the movie, the two Davids who run the show for Warner Brothers are going to, as she said Steve Kloves explained to her, “fit the woman to the dress,” i.e., re-write her story so it conforms to block-buster movie formula. This has resulted in a host of filmed scenes never being used or even included in deleted scenes (see this list with an addendum or two for the first film), relatively incoherent final products, and disappointing box office, for Wizarding World films at least. There may be no big push from Team Rowling to get the screenplay out there because it’s not her product. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts