Casting

Discuss the television and film adaptations of Enid Blyton's stories.
missjetset
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Casting

Post by missjetset »

Hello I am a film producer and wondered how forum readers would feel if The Famous Five was updated to include a more international looking cast to help make the story accessible to children all over the world? I would love to know your thoughts and who you might want to see cast in these iconic roles. Thanks
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Moonraker
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Re: Casting

Post by Moonraker »

Good grief no! Enid's books are already read world-wide, it is a series (Famous Five) of quintessentially English stories, set in England in the post war (WWII) years and to change all of this would ensure that all of the special atmosphere created by Enid Blyton would be lost.

As the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
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Eddie Muir
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Re: Casting

Post by Eddie Muir »

Moonraker wrote: As the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Hear, hear!
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Katharine
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Re: Casting

Post by Katharine »

Nigel, you've managed to say exactly what I feel about the idea, but I didn't know how to express it properly.
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Re: Casting

Post by Daisy »

And another "hear, hear" from me. Well put Nigel.
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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Casting

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

missjetset wrote:Hello I am a film producer and wondered how forum readers would feel if The Famous Five was updated to include a more international looking cast to help make the story accessible to children all over the world?
Moonraker wrote:Good grief no! Enid's books are already read world-wide, it is a series (Famous Five) of quintessentially English stories, set in England in the post war (WWII) years and to change all of this would ensure that all of the special atmosphere created by Enid Blyton would be lost.
I agree with others who have posted. As Moonraker (Nigel) suggests, a truly great Famous Five film would capture the essence of Enid Blyton's originals. Children are perfectly capable of understanding stories from earlier periods and from other countries and I think adults do them an injustice when they say that such stories need to be made "accessible" by being "updated". As a child in the 1970s I read many old-fashioned books and watched television adaptations of them (they were based on the works of authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Johanna Spyri, Frances Hodgson Burnett, E. Nesbit, Susan Coolidge, L. M. Montgomery, Noel Streatfeild, C. S. Lewis and Enid Blyton) and I loved the fact that the society portrayed in each story was different to the one in which I was growing up. I was fascinated, and while I was watching I learnt some history (and geography too, if the story was set in a foreign land). Why deprive today's children of that rich experience by updating everything?

Including "a more international cast" would be to misrepresent the period in which the Famous Five books are set, especially as the Five's adventures take place in rural areas rather than big towns and cities which would have been more multiracial. If I watched an adaptation of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves I'd find it strange if Ali Baba didn't look Middle Eastern. Chinese Cinderella wouldn't feel right if Adeline didn't look Chinese, and a film version of Uncle Tom's Cabin would surely require a black Uncle Tom. I'd have felt just the same when I was a child, and I'm sure today's children are no less discerning. Once you start altering the basics you have to keep on tweaking details all the way through, losing the integrity of the original story.

I would very much like to see a Famous Five film of quality though, set in the right period and done straight, without any irony.
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Re: Casting

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

Nice posting there from Anita, and I fully agree with what everyone else has said. The Famous Five were children set in an era of innocence and nostalgia and should be kept that way. :)

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Tony Summerfield
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Re: Casting

Post by Tony Summerfield »

Looking at your website, I wondered if this was the sort of thing you had in mind, Missjetset?

http://www.jetsetfilms.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Moonraker
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Re: Casting

Post by Moonraker »

to include a more international looking cast to help make the story accessible to children all over the world?
Further to my recent post, the website, http://www.famousauthors.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; has this to say:

Her books which reach about 800 in number are still read with enthusiasm and have sold innumerable copies all over the world in over 90 translated languages.

It seems to me that they are already accessible to children all over the world!
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Re: Casting

Post by Poppy »

I agree with everyone here... Unless you want to cast us for all the leading roles!?
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Re: Casting

Post by Ming »

Pity, I was hoping I could play... I don't know, a gypsy or something! Or maybe a brown Anne. ;)
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Re: Casting

Post by MJE »

     I guess I'm uber-conservative about this sort of thing, and wouldn't favour such changes. If you want to change the characters that much, what's the point of pretending they're the Famous Five, and calling them that, and giving them the names Julian, Anne, etc.? - just calling a character by the same name is not enough to make them the same character.
     You might as well devise your own characters, and be independent of Enid Blyton; and that will also give you the liberty to do exactly what you like with the plot.
     A couple of times, I contemplated (but did no more) writing a Famous Five follow-on, when ideas for that occurred to me that seemed just right: one of them, "Five Return to Smuggler's Top", I actually summarized in a post on this forum; the other was in the minutes after waking up after a vivid dream about a Famous Five adventure, when maybe I still wasn't fully awake, and maybe not quite yet in my right mind. But if I did write such a story, I would be very conservative indeed, keeping as close as possible to the spirit, if not exact style, of Enid Blyton's original novels. The only changes I might deliberately make would be to tone down possible instances of sexism, racism, and the like. But on the whole, I feel much better about making any work based entirely on my own characters and plots, and being quite independent of any other pre-existing work.

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Casting

Post by Wayne Pyer »

I agree totally with my learned friends. A film of this ilk should be treated as all other "Period Pieces", which is the flavour of the month at the moment.
Wayne, living in an Enid Blyton world.
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Re: Casting

Post by Katharine »

Maybe Julian Fellowes would like to produce a version when he's run out of plots for Downton Abbey?
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Carlotta King
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Post by Carlotta King »

Or perhaps we should all get together and make one of our own? I'm sure we could allocate parts to everyone here, hehe ;) :D
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