Gambledore

[Richard]

I've been extremely busy over the last week and haven't had the time to say 
anything, although I have managed to read all the posts. Although I'm going 
to address some of the comments made thus far on this topic, I'm not going 
to quote any original text, nor am I up to going through all the posts to 
establish who said what. Apologies.

Incidentally, as nobody here seems to be interested in discussing the 
movies in any depth (funny, I always thought the "GU" part of this group's 
name was meant to stand for "Grown Ups" rather than "Gambon's Useless"), 
I'll try to find the time to address some of JenD's points by email to 
avoid cluttering up the list with anything potentially meaningful.

Before I give some of my opinions, a few facts about the petition to oust 
Gambon (and petitions in general).

There are at least four different petitions demanding that Gambon be fired 
on the "Petition Spot" site alone (plus several others on other similar 
sites). I find it quite amusing (and indicative of the fandom) that none of 
the authors felt it appropriate to check what was going on before launching 
their own attempts.

The petition mentioned last week has set itself a target of 10,000 
signatories. Despite some fairly heavy plugging both here and in other HP 
forums, it had managed to collect 8 supporters in its first six days (up to 
last Friday). Having checked just now, the total remains at 8, despite more 
plugging over the weekend. The other petitions total about 150 signatories 
(I haven't looked at the details to see how many of those are the same 
people signing different petitions). This does not augur success very well, 
or indeed indicate the widespread dissatisfaction some people think it 
does. In fact, a petition calling for Robin Williams (!) to be given the 
Dumbledore role has more signatures than any of the anti-Gambon ones.

Let's think about the numbers (we are supposed to be adults, aren't we?). 
Businesses and politicians work on the assumption that for every complaint 
or petition signatory on a given topic, ten other "relevant" people feel 
the same way. Assuming that the petition *does* get its 10,000 signatories 
(by when, incidentally?), that represents about 100,000 disgruntled fans. 
Heck, let's up the ante and assume that each signatory represents a hundred 
people, so the production team is faced with a million dissatisfied 
customers. During its first weekend on release, GoF sold around 10 million 
tickets in North America alone (assuming an average ticket price of $10). 
Assuming that those 10 million tickets represent the assiduous fans, OotP 
will "only" make $90 million in its first weekend. Of course, that's on a 
further assumption that all of the signatories refuse to see the next movie 
because Gambon's in it - the petition makes no such demand of its 
signatories, and even if it did, how many people would actually see it through?

There have been dozens (if not hundreds) of online petitions relating to 
the HP movie franchise on a variety of subjects. The production team has 
taken notice of precisely none of them. Why should this one be any 
different? In any event, to my knowledge, no online petition ever has had 
any effect on its addressee's behaviour unless it's just one element of a 
wider campaign in the real world - petitions generally are not an end in 
themselves, they are just one small tool in campaigners' hands (I speak 
here as a veteran campaigner on a multitude of issues both big and small, 
all of them successful).

A nit-picky point: addressing the petition to "Warner Brothers Ltd" is 
pointless: the person ultimately responsible for hiring and firing is the 
producer, namely David Heyman. Warners are just putting up the money.

Which brings me full circle: the only way for any kind of campaign to have 
an actor fired to have an impact is to address the bottom line: what does 
the production team have to lose by pitting what appears to be a small but 
vociferous portion of the fandom against their contractual obligations 
towards Gambon, who's already signed up for OotP? Frankly, nothing. Perhaps 
a few hundred tickets to see OotP when it comes out, even if people 
remember the current scorn being poured on Gambon. Does anyone remember how 
badly Harris was accepted in some quarters when the first movie came out? 
Judging by the current flood of support for him, it seems not.

Frankly, I find the whole idea of this petition, and some of the comments 
made on this list, seriously disagreeable. They might have been amusing if 
they weren't quite so vitriolic. Some people bandy words about as if they 
didn't have a clue what they mean. The words "assault", "attack" and 
similar loaded terminology has been used about Gambon's reaction to Harry's 
name coming out of the Goblet. Come on!

As it happens, I don't much care for Gambon as a person (or rather, his 
public persona, considering I don't know the man personally), but I think 
he's streets ahead of Harris in the way he plays Dumbledore. Sure, 
Dumbledore is the old sage Harris portrayed, but he's so much more. Harris 
(who, let's remind ourselves, did not care for the role at all!) just 
played a stereotypical mage and didn't come close to showing Dumbledore's 
more wacky side. I rather like Clueless!Hippy!Gambledore: after all, 
regardless of his reputation, Dumbledore behaves fairly cluelessly 
throughout the books (that's a separate discussion which I refuse to enter 
at this stage).

The fact that Gambon doesn't take this role particularly seriously and 
hasn't bothered reading the books is neither here nor there. Neither did 
Harris, neither has Maggie Smith, nor most of the adult cast. For better or 
worse, Gambon considers this particular gig as little more than a job: he 
doesn't care for or about his character, and is doing the best he can with 
what he's given. I suspect that all the other actors in that age range are 
in the same boat. To put it briefly, no adult actor in the HP movies is 
going to be as passionate about it as some of the fans are, or want the 
actors to be.

As I've said before, I found his reaction in the Champions' room perfectly 
understandable and I can't believe that the best thing so many people can 
some up with is "that's not what he did in the book". Tough. This isn't the 
book, and this isn't book-Dumbeldore. Frankly, I find it quite admirable 
that with his directors' support (or perhaps even at their instigation) 
Gambon's prepared to take the character as far as he does from the 
stereotypical sage, and Harris's performance in particular. In many ways, 
he reminds me of Nicol Williamson as Merlin in "Excalibur", which also 
divided opinion 25 years ago.

I know some people are going to shoot me down for this and I may sound like 
a broken record, but I feel that much of the problem with the 
shoulder-grabbing sequence has nothing to do with Gambon, but with 
everyone's blind-spot-in-the-(lack-of)-acting-skills-department, young 
Master Radcliffe. I think he gets the tone of his physical and verbal 
reactions to Gambeldore quite wrong. By appearing defiant at the beginning 
of the sequence, he ends up looking scared of *Dumbeldore* rather than of 
what entry in the Tournament represents, which is what I suspect the 
intention  had been. Not to mention that this is also in the context of his 
baffling (baffled?) reaction to his name coming out of the Goblet in the 
first place. And talking of context, Dumbledore's physicality in that scene 
is part of a more general physicality among the teachers throughout the movie.

Then again, "context" doesn't seem to be a concept for which most people 
around here have any time, so I won't waste mine going into details.

I originally found it amusing, but now find it depressing, that some of the 
same people decrying Dumbledore's OOC physicality in that scene name 
Snape's physicality in the study-session scene as one of their favourite 
moments. To my recollection, Snape has never been physical with Harry or 
Ron at any point in the books, and in some respects, his whole persona in 
that scene was more OOC for Snape than anything Gambon did throughout the 
movie.

Yet I don't seem to be able to find any petitions to get Rickman kicked off 
the cast, or indeed a single word against this characterisation, anywhere 
in any of the forums I follow (and I've just looked).

So, can we have a little less of the hypocrisy, please?

--
Richard, who wouldn't be surprised if people think he sounds unhappy. 
They're right.