Pinter, Paul Weitz and Shakespeare

If you missed Harold Pinter on Charlie Rose, go here.
If anybody, it is Pinter who can handle Charlie’s obnoxious questions and turn them into gold. (See my previous post on Pinter – Master and the Caretaker)

The Lovers – Clip from 1963 TV Play by Pinter

Harold Pinter without dialogues? Vivien Merchant, Pinter’s first wife
plays the character. (She was great in Alfie. Got nominated for the Oscar but did not win – not winning is almost an honor).

Yesterday was a day of connecting the dots in today’s film/theater pop culture world, I found out from Hal that the playwright he introduced me as his neighbor in the early 90’s is Paul Weitz who later directed “About a Boy”, “In Good Company” and others.
I have seen two of his films and did not know that he was the director.

Hal, Masayo and Paul Weitz by Fung Lin Hall
Here is a bad picture at Paul’s apartment of Hal, Masayo, and Paul with one of Hal’s paintings in the background. I have another picture somewhere in the pile of my old photos of them in exactly the same position and pose with dark glasses off.

The only thing I remember from the meeting was that Paul Weitz did not like Gus Van Sant’s sudden foray into Shakespeare in the middle of “My Own Private Idaho”. Paul Weitz is a sweet guy, and his films shows the same goodness.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I came across this article.
Playwright of the Globe

From all around the globe—from Frankfurt to Tokyo, from Prague to Moscow—we have testimony to Shakespeare’s power, his ability to move people of all nations, to inspire them, to shake them out of ingrained modes of thought and feeling, to give them the strength to question and challenge authority. Above all, we see how Shakespeare remains politically relevant to a wide variety of situations around the world; he seems to be taken most seriously by people who find themselves in the middle of a crisis and, in particular, who feel their liberties threatened.

I have seen Maximilian Schell playing Hamlet in German with Japanese subtitles. I was introduced to the greatness of Shostakovich’s film scores through the Russian Hamlet film.

La regina , mio signore , è morta (The Queen, my lord is dead).
Here is Macbeth in Italian from dlsan, the web artist who was a
part-time Shakespearean actor.

(Maximilian Schell is the prominent collector of Josef Albers squares. How revealing!)