Richard Flynn :: no comment

Quentin, my main man:

Hope you're well. I haven't heard from you for a while: I've been getting a bit worried. I sure do hope you weren't too offended by all that Quentin's-sold-out-and-betrayed-his-indie-roots stuff. We were just messin' with you. Anyway, I went to the theatre a couple of weeks ago and had an awesome idea for your next project. This thing's pretty much written for you. That's right. I'm suggesting you produce Hamlet.

Remember what Romeo + Juliet did for Baz Luhrmann? Well, that shows there's a market for this Shakespeare stuff done right, right? The audience is there, and ripe for the picking in the usual T-man style.

I know you like to mix things up a bit chronology-wise. That's where you and the Bard differ slightly: he was more of a start-at-the-beginning-and-move-forward-to-the-end kind of guy. Nevertheless, it's entirely possible for you to unravel the play and fiddle with the narrative order. See, at the end, Hamlet tells Horatio,

O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, I leave behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

So, you've got your narrator right there: according to Shakespeare himself, Horatio was 'ordained' narrator by the protagonist! Horatio is present for so many of the play's events that he is precisely in a fine position to 'tell my story'. Poor guy, he just has to stand there 'observing' much of the time when the play's performed on stage. You can fix that in your version—make it perfectly clear that the whole film is being told from the point of view of this Horatio guy. It'd probably just be too twee—and definitely not your style—to have him literally narrate in voiceover, but you can work something cool out to handle the details. You always do.

Anyway, my suggestion is that you start at the end of the play, i.e. the fight scene, where everyone who isn't dead already finally dies (except our man Horatio, of course). You can really up the gore, perhaps by killing off unimportant extra characters introduced solely for the purpose of adding to the bloodbath who just 'unfortunately' get in the cross-fire between Hamlet and Laertes. I'm thinking something along the lines of the Bride's triumph in Japan in the middle of Kill Bill vol. 1, where she comes out with that classic speech—in Japanese (inspired!)—

Those of you lucky enough to still have your lives, take them with you. But leave the limbs you've lost: they belong to me now.

Now, I'm not going to tell you how to do your job so I leave it to you to work out how to rearrange the play for your film into the different 'acts'. Perhaps it'd be cool in each of the acts to focus on a different character, where each of the acts ends in that character's death. So, let's see, in no particular order, we have:

1. Hamlet
2. Ophelia
3. Gertrude
4. Polonius
5. Claudius
6. Laertes

Hmm, that's quite a lot of acts. Perhaps the studio would want you to chop this one in two 'volumes', too: three deaths per film would make sense. Let's not forget that there's also Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: they die off-stage in the play, but you could develop a whole plot for them on their way back to England. That'd be pretty cool. I don't think anyone's ever done much to develop them.

You'd probably want to leave Hamlet's act/death till last? Or perhaps not, since that's what everyone would be expecting. Kind of like the way Vincent Vega gets killed in the middle of Pulp Fiction but then appears, right as rain, in the following act. I know, I know, it's with stuff like that that the audience just totally gets owned by you. Yeah, that's right, you da man.

Casting. This needn't be too difficult. The only problem is Hamlet himself. You're gonna need someone really iconic. Or rather, someone who is going to become iconic because of his rôle in your film. Or should I say our film?

You definitely want to get Uma back, I know. You guys seem to be pretty tight. She'd be awesome as a slightly drippy but ultimately powerful Ophelia. You'll definitely want to be concentrating on her feet. It just wouldn't be a Q.T. movie without Uma's feet. We had her as Mia Wallace walking barefoot across the floor (with appropriate closeup) in Pulp Fiction, and then you really made a thing out of the Bride very gradually regaining feeling in her legs—starting with the tips of her toes, natch—as she escaped from Hospital in Kill Bill vol. 1.

I dunno if you're still in touch with Samuel L. I think he'd be good in this movie, and would definitely pull in the crowds. Perhaps he'd be good as the traitor-king Claudius—you could probably modify a line or two to allow him to say to Gertrude, 'I want your mother-f***ing son out of this mother-f***ing palace' or something like that.

I've been trying to think of a cameo for you to play. Maybe Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern? Or Laertes? But how about this… You play Horatio! Remember what I was saying about how the film can be framed as being seen through Horatio's eyes? Well how would it be if the director himself was playing Horatio? That'd just be so meta. You know it.

I know you like the extended, slightly irrelevant (from the point of view of the film's plot) conversations, especially conducted in vulgar slang. So, you gave us the conversation about tipping restaurant staff at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs, and the 'Quarter Pounder with Cheese' conversation in Pulp Fiction. Shakespeare's got you covered here, man. I mean, the gravedigger scene could have been written by you:

First Clown: What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged. Could he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself—

Second Clown: Go to.

First Clown: What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

Second Clown: The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

And so forth.

Anyway, Quentin, it's just a thought I had. I think we'd do well with this. Let me know what you think. Next stop Cannes, right?!

Richard

Inspired by a recent student production of Hamlet performed at the Old Fire Station in Oxford. My seat had a limited view and was somewhat uncomfortable, so my mind wandered just a little. I couldn't work in a reference to Jackie Brown—if you can think of one, then put it in a comment below…