[HPFGU-Movie] Wood/Quidditch

Sun Mar 9 21:14:54 UTC 2003

THANK YOU!!!!

glad to know there are at least a few other reality-based thinkers on 
this list.

:)

thalia

"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!"  -Albus Dumbledore

-----Original Message-----
From: GulPlum <hp at plum.cream.org>
To: HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 15:09:42 +0000
Subject: [HPFGU-Movie] Wood/Quidditch

> <html><body>
> 
> 
> <tt>
> I'm not quoting anyone. Just putting my oar in with a few
> thoughts...<BR>
> <BR>
> First, regarding the suggestion that Wood might be introduced into PoA
> <BR>
> electronically. Please note what Biggerstaff said on his site:<BR>
> <BR>
> "Oliver Wood will not feature in Harry Potter and the Prizoner of
> Azkaban. <BR>
> Obviously this means that I won't feature in it either. When putting a
> <BR>
> novel of the scale of PoA into a two hour movie, cuts have to be made.
> This <BR>
> time Oliver was one of them."<BR>
> <BR>
> Cause and effect are clear: his reasoning is not "I wasn't asked
> to be <BR>
> involved and thus assume that there's no Wood", but
> "there's no Wood, so <BR>
> I'm not involved". I think that's a pretty clear and
> conclusive statement <BR>
> that Woiod will not appear in the movie in any form, other than perhaps
> <BR>
> referred to in dialogue.<BR>
> <BR>
> Second, regarding petitions.<BR>
> <BR>
> As someone who has been involved in social/political activism on one
> <BR>
> subject or another for most of my life, petitions are only good as a
> <BR>
> gimmick. In themselves, petitions have no effect on decision-makers
> <BR>
> whatsoever. They are, however, very good at focusing mass attention on
> a <BR>
> particular issue or increasing a campaigning organisation's mailing
> list <BR>
> (!), but in the case of pen-and-paper petitions, they are usually used
> as a <BR>
> physical object to be handed over at mass rallies, meetings, etc.<BR>
> <BR>
> The popularity of online petitions astonishes me, and what astonishes
> me <BR>
> even more is that their authors seem to think that whoever they are
> <BR>
> addressed to will take a blind bit of notice (apart from anything else,
> the <BR>
> addressees need to know of their existence!). And from another angle,
> <BR>
> considering the online population, any petition will only make sense
> and <BR>
> come to public attention if a *MASSIVE* number of people sign it. In
> the <BR>
> case of HP, with several millions of copies of each book sold worldwide
> and <BR>
> several million more cinema tickets sold, such a petition would only
> start <BR>
> developing wings once it had, as a round number, one million
> signatories.<BR>
> <BR>
> Considering the worldwide online HP community, a little over 4,100 <BR>
> signatories in the couple of days since that petition was launched is,
> <BR>
> frankly, laughable. If you want a comparison, in the first 24 hours of
> my <BR>
> Borough Market filming report's going live, it had over 5,000 distinct
> <BR>
> visitors. The next day, once Mugglenet and a couple of other popular
> sites <BR>
> linked to it, that went up to about 18,000. In other words, at this
> stage, <BR>
> if people felt strongly about this issue, I would expect *at least*
> 10,000 <BR>
> people to have heard about the petition. Why have fewer than half of
> them <BR>
> signed it?<BR>
> <BR>
> The only kind of protest that has any kind of sense in these kinds of
> <BR>
> circumstances is writing to the decision-makers by snail mail (e-mail
> is <BR>
> pointless; first there's no real way to determine exactly how many
> people <BR>
> have sent in e-mails without examing each and every one very
> carefully), <BR>
> and an electronic inbox is easy to overlook. However, sackfulls of mail
> are <BR>
> not.<BR>
> <BR>
> In other words, my advice to anyone who feels strongly enough
> about this <BR>
> to be heard is to write to Leavesden by snail mail, and not even to
> bother <BR>
> with electronic communication. Furthermore, writing to Warner Brothers
> is a <BR>
> complete waste of time. It's in the production team's hands, not the
> <BR>
> executives'.<BR>
> <BR>
> Third, my feelings on this issue in general, and why I won't be signing
> any <BR>
> petitions, writing to Leavesden or even getting hot under the
> collar.<BR>
> <BR>
> Movie-making is a collective enterprise which starts with a script. We
> have <BR>
> no idea what that script contains. At a rough estimate, in order to
> make a <BR>
> ~2.5 hour movie (plus credits) out of PoA, the book's narrative has to
> be <BR>
> condensed into something half its size. Some characters have to be <BR>
> compounded, some characters have to disappear, some characters need to
> swap <BR>
> lines, and half of the events described in the book have to disappear
> by <BR>
> the wayside.<BR>
> <BR>
> I repeat: we have no idea what the script contains and which shortcuts
> were <BR>
> made. I agree that Wood's function in the book is very largely to be
> the <BR>
> driven and obsessed Quidditch captain who pushes Harry to find a way to
> <BR>
> deal with the Dementors. Considering Wood in the first two movies was
> <BR>
> reduced to less than a cameo (his main function was to describe the
> rules <BR>
> in PS/SS to an audience which hadn't read the books) and there was no
> great <BR>
> indication of his obsession (except for one line in CoS:
> "You can't cancel <BR>
> Quidditch, Professor!"), introducing it now would require beefing
> up his <BR>
> character, for which we simply do not have time. I'm sure that few
> would <BR>
> disagree with me that Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew are far more
> important.<BR>
> <BR>
> Wood's drive for the Gryffindor team to win can easily be transferred
> to <BR>
> Ron (and the Twins). They're already around, they have more of a
> connection <BR>
> with Harry than movie!Wood has ever had, and their interest in the
> sport, <BR>
> and Gryffindor's status against Slytherin, has already been
> established.<BR>
> <BR>
> I know that (fan)girls of a certain age want to see as much of Wood as
> <BR>
> possible, and I can't say that I blame them. However, as Biggerstaff
> <BR>
> himself said, something has to give, and this time it's him. whilst the
> HP <BR>
> movies are being made as little more than eye candy, there *is* more to
> <BR>
> them than that, and you can't have *all* the eye candy in the
> world.<BR>
> <BR>
> In any event, just what does anyone think that venting their spleen
> will <BR>
> accomplish? The script is finished and filming is underway. Apart from
> a <BR>
> few tweaks here and there, no amount of ranting at Cuaron & Co will
> change <BR>
> the structure of the movie.<BR>
> <BR>
> Four, as to the suggestion that no Wood equals no Quidditch, I find it
> <BR>
> frankly bizarre. Except for saving a couple of goals in the first two
> <BR>
> movies (and a "look out, Harry!" in the second, which I found
> especially <BR>
> out of place - what was he doing away from the goal hoops?), we saw
> none of <BR>
> him on the pitch, so it's perfectly possible to focus on Harry's
> problems <BR>
> with the Dementors without showing Wood.<BR>
> <BR>
> I'm slightly disappointed that this means that there will probably only
> be <BR>
> one match (and I'm prepared to guarantee that there will be *some* <BR>
> Quidditch; see my old posts), and I will be bitterly disappointed if we
> do <BR>
> not see Harry missing the Snitch and Gryffindor losing a match. <BR>
> Movie!Harry's enough of a superhero already without the implication
> that <BR>
> Gryffindor have never lost. However, I'm prepared, albeit reluctantly,
> to <BR>
> wait and see just how Cuaron and Kloves have got around this.<BR>
> <BR>
> If I don't like what I see next year, then I shall certainly be venting
> my <BR>
> spleen at Heyman, Kloves and Cuaron (and JKR for letting them do it),
> but <BR>
> until I know what's in the movie, I'm adult enough to accept that it is
> <BR>
> counter-productive (and indeed churlish) to complain *in the absence of
> ALL <BR>
> the facts*.<BR>
> <BR>
> --<BR>
> GulPlum AKA Richard, who is getting just a little tired of the
> moaning.<BR>
> <BR>