Latest / MUBI Podcast / GRAND THEFT HAMLET — How Shakespeare’s Danish prince conquered the movies

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GRAND THEFT HAMLET — How Shakespeare’s Danish prince conquered the movies · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Heads up, this episode includes adult language, Shakespearean language, and spoilers.
• 0:09
  Hello, how are you checking?
• 0:09
  1-2-3, 1-2-3.
• 0:13
  That's-- looking forward to this.
• 0:13
  Like nothing, and...
• 0:18
  And that is my awesome dad, Frank Gagliano.
• 0:21
  Back in the 60s he was an Off-Broadway playwright of some renown.
• 0:24
  He was also a drama professor for 40 years.
• 0:27
  And his hero: Shakespeare.
• 0:29
  And his hero: So the other day in his office, I was very excited to show him this new movie on my laptop, even if his hearing's not what it used to be.
• 0:37
  And his hero: Grand... what is this?
• 0:38
  And his hero: Grand? What?
• 0:39
  And his hero: - Hamlet.
• 0:39
  And his hero: - Grand Theft Hamlet.
• 0:41
  And his hero: Grand Fest Hamlet.
• 0:43
  And his hero: - No...
• 0:43
  And his hero: - Oh, theft.
• 0:46
  And his hero: Theft is what you're trying to say.
• 0:49
  And his hero: Grand Theft Hamlet.
• 0:51
  And his hero: Yes. What, what do you think that it might be?
• 0:53
  And his hero: I don't know. Theft?
• 0:55
  And his hero: Well, stealing from Hamlet or, or...
• 0:59
  And his hero: It's based-- so here's the deal.
• 1:01
  And his hero: It's kinda documentary about some theatre people trying to stage a production of Hamlet within an online video game called Grand Theft Auto.
• 1:12
  And his hero: Oh, oh.
• 1:14
  And his hero: And it takes place totally inside the game.
• 1:16
  And his hero: Do you even know about online video games?
• 1:18
  And his hero: No, I don't, that's the problem.
• 1:20
  And his hero: - Argh!- I don't want to die. Except maybe a few minutes into the movie.
• 1:22
  And his hero: That wasn't a problem for Dad.
• 1:26
  And his hero: A bit of mindless violence. I mean, I actually had a super hard time explaining Grand Theft Auto as a game, since it mainly involves just roaming around a city, stealing cars and shooting people for no reason.
• 1:38
  And his hero: I mean, it sort of takes you away from the...
• 1:40
  And his hero: what you'd cheerfully call the crushing inevitability of your pointless life.
• 1:44
  And his hero: It's fine. Yeah.
• 1:45
  And his hero: But once Dad understood that the digital avatars he was watching were controlled by real people and that he was hearing their real life voices, he actually liked watching them perform scenes from one of his favourite plays.
• 1:57
  And his hero: - To be or not to be...- Ah!That is the question. It's fascinating going back to it this way, though.
• 2:05
  And his hero: It's so interesting how much Hamlet has played a part in everything.
• 2:10
  And his hero: So many titles have been taken from that one.
• 2:13
  And his hero: I hadn't realised you could almost-- every phrase could be a title for something.
• 2:19
  And his hero: Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.'Sea of Troubles' is a good title.
• 2:27
  And his hero: It really is an amazing play.
• 2:32
  And his hero: Yeah, and one of the most amazing things about it is that you can stage it in an online game, and even a Shakespeare fan who's never seen an online game doesn't blink an eye.
• 2:42
  And his hero: Because anyone who loves Hamlet knows filmmakers have always run amok with it.
• 2:59
  And his hero: I'm Rico Gagliano.
• 3:00
  And his hero: Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 3:02
  And his hero: MUBI's the streaming service that champions great cinema.
• 3:05
  And his hero: On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 3:07
  And his hero: I will soon be travelling the planet to bring you a globetrotting season eight.
• 3:11
  And his hero: But while you prepare yourselves for that, here's a special episode inspired by Grand Theft Hamlet, which is now playing exclusively on MUBI all over the world.
• 3:19
  And his hero: I decided to dive into the wild history of Hamlet on screen.
• 3:23
  And his hero: From silent era Hamlet...
• 3:25
  And his hero: It's based on the idea that Hamlet actually was a woman.
• 3:30
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: in the most notable conspicuous scene, the 'to be or not to be' speech is played out in a video store.
• 3:35
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: That, by the way, is Michael Almereyda.
• 3:37
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: He directed the version back in 2000, starring Ethan Hawke and set on Wall Street.
• 3:42
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: And I talked to him, Shakespeare scholars and the makers of Grand Theft Hamlet to figure out why this is the most filmed Shakespeare play and the most messed with.
• 3:51
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: So suit up in black and prepare for bloodshed.
• 3:55
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: It's the story of Hamlet at the movies.
• 4:06
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: I'm going to start in a dark age full of fear and misery.
• 4:10
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: Five years ago...
• 4:11
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: Good evening.The latest UK case of coronavirus is the first to be contractedwithin the country rather than abroad.
• 4:16
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: The man... I think we were in an extraordinary time in history, weren't we?
• 4:23
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: That's Penny Grylls.
• 4:24
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: She co-directed Grand Theft Hamlet along with this guy, her husband, Sam Crane.
• 4:28
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: - 2020, that was.
• 4:28
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: - Yeah, that was 2020.
• 4:31
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: You know, the whole of the world was being afflicted by a pandemic, and everyone was locked inside.
• 4:36
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: And Sam and I both have jobs which are very out in the world.
• 4:40
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: I'm a documentary filmmaker and Sam is an actor mostly on the stage.
• 4:45
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: And actually, he had just started rehearsingHarry Potter and the Cursed Child in the West End, and he'd been rehearsing for one week in March 2020.
• 4:53
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: He came back one day in tears and said "We're not going back tomorrow." That's it.
• 4:58
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: Theatres went dark.
• 4:58
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: An emotional roller coaster ensued.
• 5:01
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: You might remember UK society tried to reopen a couple times, only for Covid to roar back and shut everything down again.
• 5:08
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: Among the few things Sam and Penny looked forward to was a daily walk to hang out with their kids.
• 5:13
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: You know, we talk about what you've been doing, just chatting, and obviously most of what they've been doing is watching YouTube and playing video games, because that's what you can do.
• 5:25
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: YouTube and video games.
• 5:27
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: Sam and Penny's kids told them all about what was happening in both those worlds, like how some YouTubers posted videos of their gaming adventures using their avatars to act out little stories.
• 5:39
  To 00s hipster Hamlet: Meanwhile, turns out Sam's acting buddy Mark Oosterveen was also way into games,
• 5:43
  especially one: Grand Theft Auto Online, also known as GTA.
• 5:48
  especially one: From their respective homes, Sam and Mark started meeting up virtually in the game.
• 5:52
  especially one: Having a lot of fun actually as a game to play, but also as a way to kind of hang out with a friend who I wasn't able to see in real life.
• 6:01
  especially one: So it was a really nice social thing to do as well.
• 6:03
  especially one: And after a while.
• 6:05
  especially one: I found a way of recording the feed of what we were doing.
• 6:08
  especially one: Just thinking, okay, we're going to do some kind of, I don't know what, some kind of funny little videos.
• 6:15
  especially one: There's some footage of this at the beginning of Grand Theft Hamlet, like Sam and Mark standing on a virtual beach wishing they could go to a real one.
• 6:22
  especially one: This make me quite, quite envious. Or the two of them bouncing through a virtual desert in golf buggies, trying to outrun cops.
• 6:30
  especially one: Whoa!You caught some wicked air there. But then one day...
• 6:37
  especially one: Look at this.Look at what? They stumbled on a part of the game they'd never seen.
• 6:43
  especially one: It's like a massive kind of arena.
• 6:47
  especially one: It was a virtual outdoor amphitheatre.
• 6:50
  especially one: My God, this is so cool.
• 6:52
  especially one: And something in Sam's thespian mind clicked.
• 6:54
  especially one: I mean, it's only when you found the theatre, the Vinewood Bowl, that you were like, oh, this could be...
• 7:00
  especially one: I remember you saying, oh, this could be theatre we could do actual theatre here.
• 7:02
  especially one: Like Shakespeare, you know.
• 7:04
  especially one: Because it's funny, you see this very traditional looking theatre space inside this game and you think, okay, yeah, well why not?
• 7:14
  especially one: A lot of actors have, like, a little bit of Shakespeare up their sleeve from, like, auditions and stuff.
• 7:18
  especially one: So that's what I said to Mark.
• 7:20
  especially one: Just, you know, do like an audition speech, you know, here.
• 7:22
  especially one: And he did this bit from Macbeth, that pretty famous soliloquy.
• 7:26
  especially one: Life's a walking shadowa poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stageand then is heard no more.It is a tale told by an idiotfull of sound and fury,signifying nothing. And I was just immediately like, wow, that looks incredible.
• 7:50
  especially one: It's fascinating.
• 7:50
  especially one: I think we should do something.
• 7:52
  especially one: Except right after that, Sam, Penny and Mark decided not to do a Grand Theft Macbeth.
• 7:58
  especially one: Like a century of artists before him if they were going to do a radical take on Shakespeare...
• 8:04
  especially one: it had to be Hamlet.
• 8:08
  especially one: In 1900, Sarah Bernhardt was the first person to play Hamlet on film.
• 8:14
  especially one: So the very first Hamlet was a woman.
• 8:17
  especially one: Tony Howard is a professor, now retired from the UK's University of Warwick.
• 8:20
  especially one: His speciality is Shakespeare on film, starting with the silent era.
• 8:24
  especially one: For the producers and the marketers, it was a special, extraordinary thing that the new Hamlet in the new medium is not going to be the same sort of Hamlet that you saw in the 18th century.
• 8:37
  especially one: It's a woman.
• 8:37
  especially one: It's this extraordinary woman.
• 8:39
  especially one: So right from the start, Shakespeare on Film, and especially Hamlet on film was about breaking conventions, really doing extraordinary things.
• 8:47
  especially one: That's also 'cause the silent medium's limitations meant producers had to try extraordinary things.
• 8:52
  especially one: Especially with a super wordy play that is five acts long.
• 8:55
  especially one: Once you've decided that I'm going to put Hamlet into the cinema, given that you don't have sound, and given that the reels are very short, you've got to be adventurous, you've got to take risks.
• 9:06
  especially one: And it's a question of whether you feel guilty about that because you can't, you haven't got any words or you really relish it.
• 9:12
  especially one: And take Shakespeare as far as you can in your own direction.
• 9:16
  especially one: Early on, this apparently involved a lot of gender reversal because hot on the heels of Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet...
• 9:21
  especially one: An actress called Asta Nielsen produced her own film of Hamlet, in which she played Hamlet.
• 9:27
  especially one: And it's based on a book written by an American critic back in the 19th century who looked at Hamlet and said, well, actually, he's not a really very manly man.
• 9:38
  especially one: Why do you think that is?
• 9:39
  especially one: Well, obviously it's because he isn't a man at all.
• 9:41
  especially one: He's a woman.
• 9:43
  especially one: I mean, in its own way, that's kind of sexist, but...
• 9:46
  especially one: It sounds like a ludicrous idea.
• 9:46
  especially one: And it was.
• 9:49
  especially one: But Asta Nielsen is a fantastic actress and it's a great film.
• 9:53
  especially one: But really, pick almost any screen Hamlet and you'll find it takes massive liberties with the original.
• 9:58
  especially one: I'm pretty sure only one version is ever adapted the whole play as written.
• 10:02
  especially one: That would be Kenneth Branagh's version in 1996, clocking in at four hours.
• 10:07
  especially one: The rest tend to chop the story to ribbons, and even the versions we might think of as dusty standards today...
• 10:15
  especially one: were pretty punk rock in their time.
• 10:17
  especially one: Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,that youth and observation copied there.And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain,unmixed with baser matter.Yes, by heaven! That is Laurence Olivier as Hamlet and the version he directed himself in 1948.
• 10:38
  especially one: O villain! Villain.
• 10:41
  especially one: Well, by the time a young Tony Howard saw it in the late 60s, he says, it already felt kind of played out.
• 10:45
  especially one: I found Olivier very wooden, really kind of miscast because there wasn't any sensitivity.
• 10:51
  especially one: But he says in '48, that was Olivier's whole point.
• 10:55
  especially one: Unlike another Shakespearean star, he wanted to play a Hamlet with guts.
• 10:59
  especially one: He was seen as absolutely the new guy, and he was quite consciously rejecting the Hamlet that John Gielgud had been playing for ten years.
• 11:09
  especially one: Gielgud stressed the beauty of the language and the sensitivity of this young man, agonising with a responsibility for which he wasn't fitted, whereas Olivier played a determined figure.
• 11:21
  especially one: The point envenomed too?Then, venom, to thy work. So it was, in a way Olivier's performance was a rebellion against...
• 11:33
  especially one: This was a rebellion, very much.
• 11:35
  especially one: Gielgud had actually said he didn't want to make a film in the 1930s, the great producer Alexander Korda wanted to film his Hamlet and he declined.
• 11:45
  especially one: He said he didn't think that film was a good medium for Shakespeare.
• 11:49
  especially one: Bad call.
• 11:54
  especially one: Olivier's Hamlet became a cultural event.
• 11:56
  especially one: American school kids got taken to see it on field trips.
• 11:59
  especially one: For people like my dad, who was a Brooklyn teenager at the time.
• 12:02
  especially one: It was a revelation, and he remembers it sparking a whole new kind of moviegoing.
• 12:06
  especially one: That's the first Shakespeare anything I ever saw.
• 12:10
  especially one: When that first came out, you know.
• 12:10
  especially one: As a matter of fact, I saw it many times, and then I got tickets for my parents who weren't into that stuff at all, you know?
• 12:18
  especially one: Yeah, they're all like Italian immigrants.
• 12:20
  especially one: And I had gotten the tickets in advance.
• 12:22
  especially one: It was one of those things that was starting then, it played at an art movie in Manhattan.
• 12:28
  especially one: It was one of those first times that the movie houses were serving coffee, and all that stuff was a whole big thing.
• 12:37
  especially one: Recent Hamlets haven't had quite so much impact, but that hasn't stopped movie studios from taking on the play again and again.
• 12:45
  especially one: Last time anyone did an official count back in 2013, there had been at least 50 major Hamlet movies.
• 12:50
  especially one: There have been more since.
• 12:50
  especially one: That's not counting made for TV versions.
• 12:53
  especially one: In fact, Sam Crane says this is one reason he picked Hamlet to stage inside Grand Theft Auto.
• 12:59
  especially one: GTA is this massive cultural phenomenon that everyone knows about.
• 13:04
  especially one: Even if you've never played it, you have some idea of it.
• 13:07
  especially one: It's probably the video game that is most known in that sense by people who don't play it.
• 13:14
  especially one: It's in the culture, you know, as something that people have some conception of.
• 13:20
  especially one: It might be a misconception, but they have some conception of it.
• 13:23
  especially one: And I think the play that is the equivalent of that is Hamlet that has that equivalent cultural weight.
• 13:32
  especially one: It's the most famous play.
• 13:34
  especially one: Which leads me to ask, how'd that happen?
• 13:38
  especially one: How did this of all Shakespeare plays become the breakout hit and a movie staple since basically the minute movies started being made?
• 13:46
  especially one: Like, I asked Sam and Penny to give us a refresher course on Hamlet's basic plot, and it starts out coherently enough.
• 13:52
  especially one: So Hamlet's father has died.
• 13:52
  especially one: Who's the king of Denmark.
• 13:58
  especially one: His uncle has taken the throne and married his mother, Gertrude.
• 14:03
  especially one: Then this ghost of Hamlet's father appears-- To Hamlet.
• 14:08
  especially one: The ghost tells him what's happened to him, that he was murdered by his uncle and says, you've got to revenge me.
• 14:14
  especially one: So far, so good.
• 14:15
  especially one: A kid wants to kill his stepfather as payback for killing his actual father.
• 14:19
  especially one: Could be a Tarantino movie.
• 14:19
  especially one: But that's just like act one.
• 14:22
  especially one: And then he kind of dithers around a lot, going, oh, I should really avenge my father and doesn't for ages.
• 14:28
  especially one: And does a lot of amazing speeches.
• 14:31
  especially one: Yeah, a lot of speeches.
• 14:32
  especially one: Between which Hamlet does a bunch of questionable, seemingly superfluous stuff.
• 14:37
  especially one: Like these actors come to town and then Hamlet has this idea.
• 14:41
  especially one: Okay, how I'm going to prove that my uncle's guilty, I'm going to get them to perform a play where they do something like the murder of my father, and then I'm going to watch him and see his reaction.
• 14:54
  especially one: But Hamlet already knows his uncle's guilty.
• 14:56
  especially one: His father's ghost told him. he's just avoiding doing anything about it.
• 15:00
  especially one: And then, he also then decides, I'm going to pretend to be mad.
• 15:05
  especially one: Why does he do that? Just because he does.
• 15:07
  especially one: Meanwhile, Hamlet causes the death of just about every character except the guy he's supposed to kill, including his girlfriend's dad.
• 15:14
  especially one: He accidentally kills Polonius, then he has to run--- Which happened a lot in Grand Theft Auto.
• 15:18
  especially one: - It's not accidental.
• 15:21
  especially one: Accidental murdering happens all the time in the game, so that was quite good.
• 15:24
  especially one: So that's another good reason why Hamlet.
• 15:26
  especially one: Because, you know, accidental killing is good for GTA.
• 15:29
  especially one: Anyway, my point is, on its face.
• 15:32
  especially one: Hamlet's the last script you'd think would get greenlit.
• 15:35
  especially one: It's like the opposite of a Hollywood script.
• 15:38
  especially one: Instead of a hero's journey, full of action it's about a guy who spends most of four hours avoiding the journey while talking to himself.
• 15:46
  especially one: It's really weird.
• 15:47
  especially one: It is really weird and like the fact that he has become like this archetypal protagonist.
• 15:52
  especially one: And he's not. He shouldn't be. He really-- And that's what's kind of what's so amazing about it that it has-- Because you just think if you were pitching that now, people would say, no, no, no, this guy is so boring.
• 16:03
  especially one: He never does anything, you know?
• 16:07
  especially one: Meanwhile, Shakespeare's got plenty of more obviously cinematic stuff.
• 16:11
  especially one: Henry V is basically a political thriller that ends like a big old war movie.
• 16:16
  especially one: Kenneth Branagh's hit version in 1989 put him on the map.
• 16:20
  especially one: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.Or close the wall up with our English dead. So I asked Tony Howard why we haven't seen 50 Henry Vs.
• 16:33
  especially one: Because it's a patriotic nonsense.
• 16:33
  especially one: Henry V: it's propaganda.
• 16:39
  especially one: It's goodies versus baddies.
• 16:41
  especially one: Now, Shakespeare wasn't above that stuff.
• 16:43
  especially one: Whereas in Hamlet, Howard says the Bard gave filmmakers a big, irresistible bank of dark, complicated themes that sadly makes sense in many settings.
• 16:53
  especially one: In many times.
• 16:54
  especially one: It's about a castle which is holding people under.
• 16:59
  especially one: It's about a regime which has achieved its power through murder and is maintaining control through repression and spying.
• 17:08
  especially one: It's a world which is against action, and if you're not careful it's going to eliminate you as a way of ensuring that you're kept silent and kept inactive.
• 17:18
  especially one: It's about tyranny.
• 17:20
  especially one: And wherever there's a sense of tyranny, a sense of injustice, people say that's a play about us.
• 17:27
  especially one: Which might explain why a Hamlet movie from 25 years ago reverberates especially hard today.
• 17:35
  It's directed by this guy: Michael Almereyda.
• 17:35
  It's directed by this guy: I'm a filmmaker.
• 17:38
  It's directed by this guy: Whose first exposure to Shakespeare, ironically, was more Henry V than Hamlet.
• 17:44
  It's directed by this guy: I read Shakespeare early.
• 17:45
  It's directed by this guy: I think it was through Marvel Comics, to be honest.
• 17:48
  It's directed by this guy: So if you know Marvel Comics early on, they really were Shakespearean.
• 17:53
  It's directed by this guy: They borrowed plots.
• 17:54
  It's directed by this guy: Thor, the God of Thunder, was heavily borrowing language from Shakespeare.
• 17:58
  It's directed by this guy: So my Shakespeare inauguration was pretty, let's just say it wasn't exactly highbrow.
• 18:04
  It's directed by this guy: That could be why his Hamlet's as stripped down as a Marvel tale.
• 18:07
  It's directed by this guy: A lean two hours.
• 18:08
  It's directed by this guy: But it's set in the opposite of a fantasy world: modern day Wall StreetNow follows, that you know.Young Fortinbras,holding a weak supposal of our worth.
• 18:17
  It's directed by this guy: He hath not failed to pester us. Instead of a Danish castle, the action goes down in the offices of Denmark Corporation.
• 18:28
  It's directed by this guy: Hamlet's murderous uncle Claudius is Denmark's CEO.
• 18:31
  It's directed by this guy: He's played by Kyle MacLachlan as the kind of guy who flashes a winning smile at a press conference while ripping a picture of his business rival in half.
• 18:39
  It's directed by this guy: So much for him. So the tyrannical world here is the world of corporate capitalism.
• 18:46
  It's directed by this guy: Maybe not a stretch today, but pretty prophetic for a movie that was shot in in the go-go late 90s when the tech boom was minting millionaires all over the place.
• 18:54
  It's directed by this guy: Well, maybe it was my own perception that that wasn't necessarily a glorious tidal wave of achievement.
• 19:00
  It's directed by this guy: And there is something about the movie, when I think about it, that feels anticipating 9/11.
• 19:07
  It's directed by this guy: There's something in the movie that has a sense of dread.
• 19:10
  It's directed by this guy: The pride before the fall.
• 19:11
  It's directed by this guy: And Almereyda's Hamlet kind of predicts another looming dystopia: the internet.
• 19:18
  It's directed by this guy: In this movie, Ethan Hawke's Danish Prince is a film school kid, and the movie opens with him delivering a soliloquy into his pixelvision camera, like a prototype YouTuber.
• 19:27
  It's directed by this guy: What a piece of work is a man.How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving.How express and admirable.And action.
• 19:38
  It's directed by this guy: How like an angel in apprehension.How like a god. There are long scenes where Hamlet's crashed out in his apartment, staring at videos as if maybe a reason he can't bring himself to take action in the world is because he's too busy watching it unfold on screens.
• 19:53
  It's directed by this guy: And then, of course...
• 19:55
  It's directed by this guy: To be here, not to be.That is the question. In the most notable conspicuous scene, the "to be or not to be" speech is played out in a video store.
• 20:05
  It's directed by this guy: A Blockbuster Video, to be specific.
• 20:06
  It's directed by this guy: He wanders past the shelves of VHS tapes like he's overwhelmed or disgusted.
• 20:12
  It's directed by this guy: ...there's the rub.For in that sleep of death what dreams may comewhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,must give us pause. It was easy to think about Hamlet in modern terms, confronting a world of images overtaking reality.
• 20:26
  It's directed by this guy: That one of the big themes in Hamlet is about the nature of authenticity.
• 20:32
  It's directed by this guy: What does it mean to be a real person?
• 20:34
  It's directed by this guy: Claudius is a smiling villain.
• 20:37
  It's directed by this guy: He's pretending to be a nice guy, and the world around Hamlet seems corrupt in all of its aspects, and that corruption is embodied by the glut of imagery that we're surrounded by advertising specifically.
• 20:50
  It's directed by this guy: But everything turns into an ad, and everything turns into a kind of hollow version of itself.
• 20:56
  It's directed by this guy: You want to know why Hamlet spends so much time retreating from the world?
• 21:00
  It's directed by this guy: That might be your answer.
• 21:01
  It's directed by this guy: And thus conscience does make cowards of us all. But good news, where Shakespeare doesn't necessarily show Hamlet a clear way out of this corrupt world, Almereyda kinda does.
• 21:16
  It's directed by this guy: And Tony Howard says it's a path Grand Theft Hamlet totally takes to heart.
• 21:21
  It's directed by this guy: We have the word to be.But what I propose is the word to interbe.Interbe. See, there's this moment in Almereyda's movie where Hamlet takes a break from the 00's equivalent of doomscrolling and instead watches a video of a real life guy named Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and peace activist.
• 21:41
  It's directed by this guy: Who says the issue is not to be or not to be.
• 21:44
  It's directed by this guy: The issue is to interbe or not to interbe.
• 21:49
  It's directed by this guy: Interbe meaning kind of like the question of whether to like be part of a community and...
• 21:53
  It's directed by this guy: - Exactly.
• 21:53
  It's directed by this guy: - Be with other people or not to, to isolate yourself.
• 21:56
  It's directed by this guy: Exactly.
• 21:57
  It's directed by this guy: Because it's not possible to be alone, to be by yourself.
• 22:03
  It's directed by this guy: You need other people in order to be.
• 22:06
  It's directed by this guy: You need other beings in order to be.
• 22:09
  It's directed by this guy: And that's what I think Grand Theft Hamlet proves is actually very, very true.
• 22:16
  It's directed by this guy: Yeah, when I watchedGrand Theft Auto with my dad.
• 22:19
  It's directed by this guy: I expected it to be a lark.
• 22:19
  It's directed by this guy: And it is.
• 22:22
  It's directed by this guy: But what I didn't expect was for it to be a pretty moving look at people coming together.
• 22:28
  It's directed by this guy: Like the world of Grand Theft Auto isn't built for people to stage Hamlet in it.
• 22:32
  It's directed by this guy: At various points, the actor's avatars accidentally fall off a virtual blimp to their deaths, plunge into the virtual sea, and drown.
• 22:39
  It's directed by this guy: At one point, other players show up and start trying to kill them mid-performance because you know that's what you're supposed to do in Grand Theft Auto.
• 22:47
  It's directed by this guy: And then meanwhile, in the real world, the actors are dealing with the loneliness of Covid, one of them emotionally nosedives when his last surviving relative dies.
• 22:56
  It's directed by this guy: Actually, there's great pain in it as they begin to feel it's impossible.
• 23:03
  It's directed by this guy: Too many people come in and kill them.
• 23:06
  It's directed by this guy: But despite that, people do come forward and help.
• 23:10
  It's directed by this guy: And that sounds kind of a cliché in itself, but it's not.
• 23:14
  It's directed by this guy: It's something true.
• 23:16
  It's directed by this guy: And for me, that really demonstrates the correctness of that monk's comment and why you do need to have it when you're thinking about Hamlet.
• 23:25
  It's directed by this guy: Ladies and gentlemen, our revels now are ended.Well done guys. We got there! At the end, after the performance, the avatars celebrate by dancing around and shooting each other.
• 23:39
  It's directed by this guy: They shoot each other. While their human controllers laugh their asses off.
• 23:45
  It's directed by this guy: Even after 125 years of crazy Hamlet movies, it feels like a stand out moment in a super scary, violent world.
• 23:53
  It's directed by this guy: These artists have still figured out a way to be.
• 24:06
  It's directed by this guy: And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week.
• 24:08
  It's directed by this guy: Once again, Grand Theft Hamlet is showing exclusively on MUBI in the US, UK, Latin America and many other countries.
• 24:14
  It's directed by this guy: Check the shownotes of this episode for details.
• 24:16
  It's directed by this guy: And hey, speaking of breaking out of isolation next season, I'm going to take you around the planet for a look at how people love movies in five different cities on four different continents.
• 24:27
  It's directed by this guy: That's coming this summer.
• 24:27
  It's directed by this guy: Follow us so you don't miss it.
• 24:30
  It's directed by this guy: Meanwhile, let's roll credits.
• 24:31
  It's directed by this guy: This episode was hosted, written, and edited by me Rico Gagliano.
• 24:35
  It's directed by this guy: Ciara McEniff is our producer with assist from Kat Kowalczyk.
• 24:38
  It's directed by this guy: Mastering by Stephen Colon.
• 24:38
  It's directed by this guy: Original music by Martin Austwick.
• 24:41
  It's directed by this guy: The additional track Blueprint by Jahzzar came courtesy of Tribe of Noise.
• 24:45
  It's directed by this guy: Thanks this week to Joe Dobkin and David Harper for taping our guests.
• 24:48
  It's directed by this guy: This episode was executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
• 24:54
  It's directed by this guy: And finally, to see the best in cinema, head to mubi.com to start watching.
• 24:58
  It's directed by this guy: Thanks for listening.
• 24:58
  It's directed by this guy: Go watch some movies.
• 25:01
  It's directed by this guy: Stay together.