09/21/2007
Roger Avary Excited for the Director's Cut of Beowulf
Beowulf, the Robert Zemeckis' CG-animated film coming to theaters in December, has already been written up for the extensive amounts of CG-flesh in trailers that have been posted.
Screenwriter Roger Avary talks to Entertainment Weekly about where he got his inspiration for the title character and demonstrates his gift for metaphor.
EW: "Were there any concerns that the MPAA might have problems with you depicting a naked Beowulf?"
Roger Avary: "When I wrote it, I envisaged the character of Den in the Heavy Metal comic. Den was a character by Richard Corben, who was easily one of my favorite artists. [Den] was this muscular guy with a gigantic schlong. He would always go into battle and beat the hell out of people, totally in the buff. He never wore clothes. That kind of stuck with me. I love it when somebody takes something like a fight — or really any event — and twists it to the point where you're naked doing it. Also, there was a proud tradition of berserkers going into battle naked. It just shows how fearless you are. I don't know about you, but if someone came at me, like, 'Aaaaargh!' naked, I'd be, 'Whoa!' Had we done it [like] Richard Corben's Den, the MPAA would have had huge, huge problems. As it is, I think the movie is going to have to achieve a more tempered rating. I don't think that we're going to be [seeing] Beowulf's gigantic, you know, baby's-arm-holding-an-apple-sized schlong onscreen. However, because this is performance-capture, it's not inconceivable that, at some point down the road, they simply re-render, widen-out shots, move things out of the way and put together a hard-R or NC-17 version of the movie."
Read the full interview here.
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 12:10 PM EST by Andy in Film, News | Permalink
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Fingers crossed...
Posted by: Michael W. | Sep 21, 2007 12:22:44 PM
This movie looks really fucking awful... except for the fact that Avary's co-screenwriter is Neil Gaiman, who is brilliant.
Posted by: crispy | Sep 21, 2007 12:29:18 PM
Riding the success of "300" as much as possible with manflesh I suppose. Also, in the comics, I should think the naked warrior is a metaphor for being vulnerable and brave. Then there's the scene from Jarhead...
Posted by: anon (gmail.com) | Sep 21, 2007 12:29:35 PM
These movies look like cartoons or video games to me. The people don't look real and neither do the monsters. And what's with Angelina Jolie and her Transylvanian accents?
Posted by: db | Sep 21, 2007 12:34:26 PM
OOO! I want a 'hard R.'
Posted by: MT | Sep 21, 2007 1:03:26 PM
The CG is awful. It's sad when video games have considerably better graphics than a Hollywood movie. The PS3 can put out higher quality graphics. It'll be a shame to see a great story ruined by a subpar medium.
Posted by: Iko | Sep 21, 2007 1:18:32 PM
Roger Avary is a moron ("Thanks Academy...Now I gotta go take a piss"), and the script is lousy, too (or at least the 8th draft I read was).
Posted by: anon | Sep 21, 2007 1:22:58 PM
No, the PS3 certainly cannot render better graphics. However, this movie looks really frickin cheesy simply by the off-ness of the rendered characters and the "Whoa, violent to the X-TREME!" attitude in the trailer. I found a very interesting article the other day on how humans generally have a negative response toward something that is almost (but not quite) convincingly human: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=853
Posted by: scientitian | Sep 21, 2007 1:26:52 PM
No, the PS3 certainly cannot render better graphics. However, this movie looks really frickin cheesy simply by the off-ness of the rendered characters and the "Whoa, violent to the X-TREME!" attitude in the trailer. I found a very interesting article the other day on how humans generally have a negative response toward something that is almost (but not quite) convincingly human: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=853
Posted by: scientitian | Sep 21, 2007 1:28:20 PM
Neil Gaiman is an overrated gasbag. His short stories are positively awful. Was really looking forward to a good read, and didn't get it.
Posted by: Stan | Sep 21, 2007 1:37:35 PM
This doesn't seem to bare a lot of resemblance to the original story.
Posted by: Meeg | Sep 21, 2007 1:50:18 PM
Heh, Corben's Den made quite an impression on me when I was a teenager. A near-naked Beowulf seems silly, however, the saga is set in the frozen north for a start. He'd be dead of hypothermia before he could even find Grendel.
The 13th Warrior was a pretty good lateral adaptation of Beowulf. The story was ruined with bad editing but it's a decent movie for all that and Antonio Banderas is nicer to look at than this new guy.
Posted by: John C | Sep 21, 2007 1:51:54 PM
Flashbacks to my independent study of Preheroic Medeival Poetry in college..... except, that didn't have naked men in it.
Posted by: kitchenbeard | Sep 21, 2007 1:57:12 PM
LOL at Stan. You base your opinion on a highly acclaimed author from reading a short story?! Wow, you're an enormous retard.
Posted by: crispy | Sep 21, 2007 2:04:27 PM
Crispy, is that you?
What are you doing here?
Posted by: CF | Sep 21, 2007 2:06:37 PM
Wow, he sure knows how to draw peen:
http://www.postmodernbarney.com/images/dennude2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/33q8j3
Posted by: Mike | Sep 21, 2007 2:08:52 PM
Highly acclaimed? Meh. And I'm not as retarded as the studio execs who greenlighted Gaiman's Mirrormask and Stardust. PS I can't WAIT to see Teri Hatcher and Dakota Fanning in Coraline...
Posted by: Stan | Sep 21, 2007 2:14:04 PM
This only further confirms my belief that Avary wants the cock very badly.
Posted by: Jack | Sep 21, 2007 2:24:16 PM
you're all too high class for me.
"I personally believe" all movies should have big, hot naked men in them, it sure would put a different spin on all those 70's tv shows turned into features.
Posted by: rich | Sep 21, 2007 4:18:15 PM
it's all very BORIS VALLEJO
...tho not in that St.Marks Baths kinda way.
Posted by: A.J | Sep 21, 2007 5:28:42 PM
Funny looking at this remembering Ray Winstone as paunchy Mr. French in The Departed.
Posted by: Keith | Sep 21, 2007 6:18:47 PM