Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Odhanan wrote:That's what too many people get so wrong: Arthurian legends have literally nothing whatsoever to do with history or historicity or reenactment or any such things. Arthurian legends are myth. Myth ultimately of the best, purest kind precisely because they are a patchwork of influences with different versions and takes and sidetreks contradictions and so on and so forth. It's the kind of Myth that reaches for what's within, and thereby, what's without. It's eternal truth in sheep's clothes. It's brilliant.

Wanting to reduce the whole thing to a question of whether or not Arthur or Merlin came from historical people, and whether the myth is historically accurate (as well as the edgy counterpoint that tries to make the legend more fantastical or anti-establishment or non-christian as it can be), is completely missing the point IMO.

T. Foster wrote:

AxeMental wrote:

T. Foster wrote:Plus, remember that John Boorman was on board to direct the D&D movie that Gary Gygax & Flint Dille co-wrote the screenplay for, and that Orson Welles was going to co-star in, but which got canceled when Gary had to rush back to Lake Geneva to save TSR from the Blumes. Talk about things that could've been...

Foster, you are a font of useless facts -Haha just kidding. Seriously, I hadn't heard any of that. Its pretty cool Orson Wells was going to be in that. Has anyone ever released the screen play. Curious to know what the plot was supposed to be.

It supposedly still exists in the Gygax archives. Various people asked him if there was any chance he'd release it and he always shot the idea down. The plot apparently involved a quest across multiple worlds/planes gathering pieces of an artifact -- some of which may (though EGG never verified this) have later been recycled into parts of the Gord series.

What I was talking about back then, was with another fellow who’s pretty well known in computer gaming circles, we sat down and created a proposal and the script outline and in fact the first act of a movie – the first couple of acts, actually. We had it ready to go. I had a meeting with Orson Welles, whom we wanted to play the main supporting character – it was a villain – and we had a great meeting…

B: Did you play a little D&D?

G: <laughs> No, we ate a nice lunch and talked a hell of a lot, for a couple of hours. He took it, and got back to me on the phone and said “This is great, this is too good.” We said, “Well, good, it could be maybe a TV movie,” but he said “No no, this has got to be a feature film! I’d be delighted to take the role.” So we did a little more and got as far as presenting the proposal to Edgar Gross who was then the executive VP for John Boorman’s production company, who I wanted to produce and direct. Edgar Gross after some time said, “Well, you know you don’t expect control of this,” and my response was “No, I understand the role of the writer in the motion picture industry – bottom of the food chain.” I told him I respected that fact but we would want some control over purely game elements, just as I had when we were producing the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. I had control of the scripts, and would make sure that they didn’t go far afield from the game. But it was a delight. The Marvel people and CBS said, “You’re great to work with.”

Anyway, Edgar Gross said, “Okay, I’ll take it to John and I’ll see.” We had a second meeting, and he said they’d take the project but the needed to know more details, but then problems started in Wisconsin, I had to go back and then that was it. That also ended a spin-off for the cartoon show, too, that was in the works. There was one script written and another two working.

B: That’s a shame.

G: Yep. TSR said, “No, you’ll work with us back in Lake Geneva.” Marvel said “We’re not interested.” And that was that.

B: Again, that’s a damned shame. Was your movie set in Greyhawk or any particular campaign world we’d be familiar with?

G: Yes, it started set in Greyhawk with two characters, a main protagonist and his antagonist (also a protagonist in her own right), both hired by the villain (Welles), to bring him the six missing parts (he already had one) of the “Scepter of Seven Souls”, and each was the soul of a world, and when he had them all, he could rule these multiple parallel worlds. So they were trying to find each part, and each part would of course be found in a different world, and would not immediately be recognizable. So they would have to search among potential objects, and move in to different genres – not all the action would be fantasy. That’s all I’m going to say on that topic. <chuckles>

Falconer wrote:Am I alone in seeing Geoffrey’s contributions to the Arthur legend as inconsequential in comparison with Chrétien’s… and in seeing almost zero influence of the one upon the other — i.e., understanding Chrétien’s romances as not only pre-Galfridian in origin but also essentially non-Galfridian (to coin a phrase) in execution? I will start a new thread on this subject when I have a chance to gather my thoughts together more coherently, but in the meantime I welcome any intelligent remarks.

Falconer wrote:Am I alone in seeing Geoffrey’s contributions to the Arthur legend as inconsequential in comparison with Chrétien’s… and in seeing almost zero influence of the one upon the other — i.e., understanding Chrétien’s romances as not only pre-Galfridian in origin but also essentially non-Galfridian (to coin a phrase) in execution? I will start a new thread on this subject when I have a chance to gather my thoughts together more coherently, but in the meantime I welcome any intelligent remarks.

Falconer wrote:Any serious attempt to make an Arthurian epic almost HAS to be called “a remake of Excalibur.”