One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play’s dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It’s one of my favourites for two reasons:
It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and
Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn’t catch you.
the lord of the rings is so honest. so raw. so sincere. so unabashedly from the heart. no snide fourth wall jokes, no attempts to alleviate the heaviness. it is is wholeheartedly earnest in its dedication to portraying hope and love and faith and loyalty and courage, and that is what makes it feel like home to so many of us. it’s true to itself. it doesn’t pretend to be cool and care less. it cares, a lot, and that is a rare, beautiful thing. it warms our hearts to care for a piece of fiction that was made to care about and be cared about
and we know we aren’t going to be punished or ridiculed by the work itself for loving it! no characters killed off cruelly, no plotlines abandoned, no shrugging of shoulders and “well real life is like that. get used to it.” we have always needed escapism, and we always will. and middle earth will always be there to escape to
How do you feel about self-pitching me? On Tom. — Well, as a manager, I think I’m simple. I squeeze the costs and juice the revenue. Follow the boss. I digest strategy and implement. It’s pretty simple, really. I give the customer what he wants. I don’t think it’s my place to offer dietary advice. You know, if they want red meat and boiling tar, then bon appetito.
