Save Our Morgan Freeman

When I first heard about Kickstarter, I wondered how long it was before someone used it for evil. Well, not pure evil, but getting $40,000 to make a potato salad borderlines on somewhat evil. And the slow news days that followed that allowed us all to focus on the fact that some dude just got $40,000 for a mediocre potato salad is just wrong. For that much, I’d expect it to be made from the very finest potatoes, grown in a special field in Ireland that uses only ground up Leprechauns as fertilizer. Or something like that.

Kickstarter isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s great for exposure, if nothing else. I was quite happy when the makers of Veronica Mars decided that it was time to make a Veronica Mars movie. They were able to use it to bring the adventures of a no-longer teenage detective to the big screen. And I hope they do something like it again. It was also used to bring some completely unnecessary CGI to Zach Braff’s latest movie, which was pretty good even without the scenes of his imaginary beep-booping robot sidekick. But I digress.

(Quick note: Yes, I know we’re all supposed to hate Zach Braff despite the fact that we loved his first movie, then we hated it because it became to popular. I missed that particular memo.)

The bottom line is, Kickstarter has been used for a lot. Some of it Veronica Mars good, some of it non-Leprechaun fertilized potato bad. But the thing is, for all the movie theater seats that need to be put in, comic books that are being done, and cool inventions that may or may not be made, I feel that there’s one main area that Kickstarter is ignoring.

Mostly, preserving our Morgan Freeman.

For you see, gentle folks of Bad Shakespeare, last weeks tragic passing of Robin Williams reminded me that our national treasures are only going to last so long. The loss of Robin Williams was tragic… and he had four movies in the pipeline. That means there will still be the ability to see Mr. Williams in four more movie roles. That’s fantastic. HIs comedy will live on. But his death was a wake up call that we must do what we can to preserve our national treasures.

The problem is, we still only have one Morgan Freeman. He is a true national treasure. A national treasure worthy of being stolen by Nicolas Cage attempting to solve something. But can you imagine a world in which something important needs to be explained… but it’s not by Morgan Freeman?

Think about it. In the future, documentaries will be made, and they’ll be forced to rely on the current crop of actors. Can you imagine the history of the hover car being narrated by a Seth Rogen or a James Franco? Both wonderful actors in their own right, but are they Freeman-worthy? No.

Can you imagine further still, when we eventually start exploring the galaxy and learn about space penguins residing on some ice asteroid in the far reaches of space and we learn about the great space penguin war? Who will narrate that documentary? North West? Some other celebrity’s child with an even sillier name.

Which is where Kickstarter comes in. We need to set up a Kickstarter to raise money to get Morgan Freeman to read every word in the dictionary to save for prosperity. This way, the plight of the Martians as they struggle for freedom against their oppressors from Planet X will have a properly narrated documentary.

Now this won’t be easy. And we’ll have to invent a few new words, just in case. Remember, everyone, it was 7 short years ago that “iPhone” became an acceptable word. And I’m still not sure what an Iggy Azalea is, but we’ll have to account for things like that as well.

My proposal is simple: for $10 dollars, we’ll send you a picture of Morgan Freeman with your name on it, so you can envision him saying your name. 

For a mere $50 dollars… the price of a nice meal… we’ll send you a picture of Morgan Freeman with him having written your name on the picture. Then you’ll at least know that his name was temporarily thought about, and possibly confirmed by Morgan Freeman.

For $100 dollars, you can get a picture with his name, and a recording of Morgan Freeman saying your name.

When you reach the $500 dollar level, Morgan Freeman will record your name in the outgoing message of your voicemail. Name only. For $1000, he will record the entire thing.

At $10,000, Morgan Freeman will personally narrate something you’re doing doing the day. Something mundane. Think about how great it would be to wash the dishes, the whole time Morgan Freeman describes what you’re doing.

If you can donate $100,000, we’ll be able to hire Patrick Stewart to get into a debate with Morgan Freeman about something, just for you. Think about that argument.

Please, everyone… don’t think about yourselves. Think about your children. We have to preserve our precious resources, not just for us, but for future generations. Do you really want your child to learn about the workings of Time Travel through a documentary NOT recorded by Morgan Freeman? Think about it. That’s not a future I want to put generations through. Dig Deep.

**Please note, this isn’t real, and Bad Shakespeare has no affiliation with Patrick Stewart, Morgan Freeman, James Franco, or Seth Rogen. However, they all seem like cool guys who would be in on the joke if the people who they have hired to Google for them find this page. Don’t actually send money, unless you really, really want to. 

No, Sir, That's a 10-82...

Many people don’t remember, but there was a time when the Internet wasn’t just to spread 1980’s and 1990’s nostalgia while new social media is slowly absorbed by the Facebook Monster. (I call him FACBOAR and he ate one of my friends. Now we fight nightly in a dream world once known as “Myspace” with my good friend, Google Plus.) No, once upon a time, it allowed people to share unused Star Trek scripts. In fact, one of my earliest experiences with the internet involved this new show called “Star Trek: Enterprise” and it was going to star that guy from Quantum Leap and HOW DARE HE TRY TO GET INTO STAR TREK!! NERD RAGE!! REALISTIC CHEWBACCA ROAR!!!

Lately, we’ve seemed to return to that mindset on the magical internet. We hear about a great new movie being cast... let’s say it’s Con Air 2: Con Air Harder. We find out that Nicolas Cage is returning (yay) but the bad guy is going to be a tough guy type... a former boxer that spews catchphrases and kicks explosions into submission. Immediately everyone’s minds turn to the only man who can do that: Bruce Willis. However, it’s been proven by Action Movie Scientists that putting both Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis on the same screen at the same time will lead to a collapse in society itself, devolving us into a feudal society where we’re ruled by king with no electricity, and instead it’s going to cast Channing Tatum, who can still spin kick explosions but sadly lacks a catchphrase. Well, not really a catchphrase so much as a look that says, “Hey baby... how you doing?”  But the internet explodes. “NAY!” it screams. “NAY YOU SHALL NEVER SEE THIS MOVIE BEING MADE!” And explodes, vowing never to see it until the first trailer, whereupon it makes a billion dollars and earns Nic Cage another Oscar.

This is a reminder that Nicolas Cage Oscars = 1. Leonardo Dicaprio Oscars = 0 Just sayin’.

That’s been happening a LOT lately. It happened most recently with the movie based on the “book” Fifty Shades of Grey, which, being based on Twilight Fan Fiction (That sentence made me sad. Know that there’s an hour gap between this sentence and the rest of the post where I’m sobbing into a bottle of scotch.) meant that everyone wanted it played by the “actors” who were in the other Twilight movies. It also happened with the recent casting of a certain Oscar winning actor, Ben Affleck.

This is another reminder: Ben Affleck Oscars = 2. Nicolas Cage Oscars... still 1.

As many of you may have heard, Ben Affleck has been added to the pantheon of actors to portray the Dark Knight, actors that have included Adam West, Val Kilmer, the one guy from Newsies, Beetlejuice, and George Clooney. And maybe you heard there may have been a little bit of backlash. Actually saying it was a little bit of backlash is like saying that Wooly Mammoths sounded just a little bit like Ray Romano. No, the internet itself threatened to explode, but thankfully a 20 year old woman danced in her underwear and everyone moved onto that for a little while.

So.. here’s my confession. I jumped on the bandwagon pretty early of the “I hate Affleck”... but I think he’s going to do a pretty decent job.

Now, before the internet explodes again, and I’m forced to show another picture of Miley Cyrus twerking to draw attention away from that, let me explain. He’s going to do a good job because of the good job he did in Daredevil. 

Wait... no... listen to my argument... I have a picture of her twerking and I’ll post it again, I swear to Tom Hanks... (We’re in Prestige Season, remember.) 

I think people tend to forget that back when Daredevil first graced our screens, movie studios weren’t legally obligated to release a comic book movie every other week, and the mere idea that someone could be nominated for an Oscar for playing the clown prince of crime was scoffed at. SCOFFED! We were treated to X-Men, which contained such wonderfully serious lines as “What should we wear, yellow spandex?” Hilarious. There was also Spiderman which changed the basic powers of the main character, and changed one of the defining moments that made Spiderman who he was. (That final scene was Gwen Stacey, and Spiderman killed her.)

But Daredevil... Daredevil stayed so true to the original source material, which is pretty dark. Take a look at Daredevil’s past, he’s kind of the hero that gets dumped on. He’s a lawyer, who works grew up and now works in the “bad part” of the Marvel Universe and tends to team up with Spiderman from time to time. (And once Batman, in this really cool crossover.. never mind.) He’s not a really “happy go lucky, quippy” kind of superhero, he’s dark. And Ben Affleck actually played him kind of well. Maybe a little over the top melodramatic, but that’s Daredevil. That’s the character. I’m not saying it was 100% perfect, but I’m saying that I enjoyed the movie. Most of it. The training montage was a little very unnecessary. (And of course, we know that Evanescence is still going strong to this day...) (Yes, I know that it still exists. But it never did hit that level of fame post-Daredevil. I credit Michael Clarke Duncan with all their success.)

The big defense a lot of people are going back to is the casting of Michael “Mr. Mom” Keaton in Tim Burton’s version of Batman, which looking back, was just as horrifying as you’d expect. (Not horrifying as in bad, but horrifying as in, “wow, if a guy is going to dress up as a giant bat to scare criminals, then Tim Burton should design most of the stuff.) With all the defenses now, Michael Keaton was the perfect Batman (and Bruce Wayne) for the director. Put him in Christopher Nolan’s “Hey Batman is real! Let’s invent a perfectly logical reason to put Anne Hathaway in black leather despite the fact that the best reason to put Anne Hathaway in black leather is Anne Hathaway” world and we’d be having a completely different discussion, one that involved how much Batman Begins sucked. 

(Instead he cast the guy from Newsies. Who has as many Oscars as Nicolas Cage. These are facts.)

I’m just saying: We need to stop with the armchair casting director. The truth is, we don’t know who is going to be capable of what. For all we know, Channing Tatum is waiting for that big break as Hamlet. And Patrick Stewart just hasn’t gotten a chance to play a kickboxing rocket scientist just yet. Yes, sometimes that faith fails. Sometimes we get Tom Cruise playing what’s supposed to be a six foot tall former Marine playing him with all the intensity of a four year old playing space man. My point is... we don’t know how Ben Affleck is going to do as Batman until a few years from now, when he dons the pointy ears and hopefully the nipple-less bat suit. 

My dirty secret: I’m looking forward to see what Ben Affleck is capable of. Now a message to him, as I’m sure he’s a big fan of my blog: Don’t Reindeer Games this up.

Teacher Appreciation Day, Today and Every Day!

    It is Teacher Appreciation Day! Hooray! The day that we celebrate everything that teachers do for us, and if you’re lucky, get an extra burrito at Chipotles!

    What has a teacher done for you recently? Well, pretty much everything, actually. The fact that I’m writing this is thanks to a teacher, and the fact that you’re reading it is thanks to a teacher, too. Or because you follow me on Facebook. Catch Shakespeare Fever. Teachers also put up with a lot, let’s face it. Not just from the students anymore, but from pretty much anyone with a megaphone and a belief that schools are indoctrination centers and teachers are all brainwashers.

    Sorry, I’ve wanted to get to that last bit ever since I saw it going around some ex-friends on Facebook. That was just obscenely harsh, and if it’s something you believe, you should probably go, now. I don’t mean from this post. I mean from wherever you are, and apologize.

    Moving on.

    The closer I get to being a real, live, teaching teacher, the more I realize that teaching is a very unique profession. Also, that “teaching” as a profession is very different than “instructing”. I know what you’re thinking, “this is going to be a long post.” Probably not. We’ll see. Just bare with me for a moment.

    “Instructing” is a unique challenge. We instruct all the time... probably in your job now at some point you’ve had to instruct on something to do. Instruction is easy, you get up there and you recite some facts, and hopefully they stick, like a handful of aspirin that’s tossed casually at someone’s mouth. “Teaching” as a profession requires so much more. It requires the ability to not just instruct someone in the basic facts or how to do something, you have to make them WANT to learn.

    Wanting to learn and being able to learn are just as different, and making someone want to learn is a very unique ability. It involves presenting the material in a way that doesn’t suck, and isn’t boring. Let’s take my love for example, Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare, but I’ll be the first to tell you that under the right light, it’s boring as hell. A bunch of old guys talking about old things and not even speaking English? What’s up with that? How are we supposed to relate?

    I was lucky. When I was learning about this Shakespeare guy, it was taught to me in a way I could relate to. Hamlet wasn’t a boring story about a guy trying to kill his father. It was one part ghost story, one part revenge story, and some deception thrown in there. King Lear isn’t just an old guy dividing up his land, it’s a tale of a father’s love gone horribly, horribly wrong. These are all relevant even today. I fell in love with Othello because Patrick Stewart did a version of it that turned everything on it’s head.

    Good teachers find the angle that will turn a student onto any subject, whether it’s the ghost story angle, the type of math, a section of history, or the Patrick Stewart factor. Let’s not forget the measure of Patrick Stewart in something... that can be the difference between it being awesome, or it just being a mere Wesley Crusher.

    Yeah. I know Wil Wheaton is cool now. Never. Forget. Wesley. Crusher. People.

    Never forget.

    So, let’s raise a glass of whatever to those teachers we appreciate today, May 7th, as part of Teacher Appreciation Day. Then let’s take some time to remember that teachers have to work harder and more creatively than most of us, and raise another glass to them tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.

    You get the idea.

Happy Birthday, Patrick Stewart.

     I would like to take this post in Bad Shakespeare would like to wish a most excellent Happy Birthday to one of my personal heroes and owner of the best voice in the world, Patrick Stewart.

    You all remember Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame. (Don’t pretend you don’t. Most of you instinctively said, “make it so” as soon as you saw his name.) I won’t pretend that I wasn’t introduced to Mr. Stewart (Can I all him Patrick? I’m going to call him Patrick.) through the world of Star Trek, but it was Patrick Stewart who also helped introduce me to the world of Shakespeare.

    My favorite story of Shakespeare and Patrick Stewart actually comes through a story of impossibility. One role that Patrick wanted to play was that of Othello. You all know Othello, one of the most famous parts ever written... for a black actor. Normally I’m all for colorblind casting (what does it matter if someone can act) but part of the story actually involves the racist reaction to the Moor of Venice. (Or not. You can interpret it in a few different ways, but... you know, this is a Patrick Stewart tribute, so I’m going to move on and analyze Othello another day.) Anyway, Patrick was told repeatedly he couldn’t do the part because he was white. One day he went to Michael Kahn (NOT the guy who killed Kirk’s son, but the famous director) and told him what he wanted to do. Michael’s response was simple, “Great. Let’s reverse the cast!” And thus Patrick Stewart’s white Othello was born.

    I like this story, because it, along with another one (I’ll share later) is a great reminder that if you want to do something, you should just do it.

    I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick Stewart at a celebration of Michael Kahn’s 25 years at the Shakespeare Theatre last fall. I also had the pleasure of hearing him perform the famous speech from Othello, just before he kills Desdemona, which was a personal dream of mine since I didn't get to see him perform as Othello. (As you can guess, it’s not the most uplifting play.) He couldn’t have been nicer. I’m still not sure what I said, but I’ve been assured by those around me that I didn’t make a fool of myself.

    So, Happy Birthday, Patrick Stewart. Thanks for the gateway to Shakespeare, thanks for the kind words when we met, and thanks for reminding me that no matter how crazy something is, I should just go for it.