Hey, Narnia Fans! Welcome to “Behind the Wardrobe” an Interview Series with Douglas Gresham. Join me as we find out about CS Lewis, Narnia and more in this interview series.

Special thanks to Paul Martin (The Webmaster for NarniaFans) and to Mr. Douglas Gresham himself for this amazing opportunity. And an even bigger thanks to Mr. Gresham for putting up with a few of my impossible questions. Thanks for being such a great sport about it!

For this week: On Jack’s Life, “The Dark Tower”, and other matters.

JS: I read your book,Jack’s Life. I have to admit it was one of the best biographies I’ve read about him.

DG: Thank you.

JS: I felt at times while reading it that I was reading on of Jack’s own stories as it felt a lot like one in terms of how you wrote it. Was that your intention?

DG: Not at all, but it is a very fine compliment and I thank you for it.

JS: I’m assuming you used secondary sources to get the information on his childhood and everything up to the point of his meeting with your mother. What sources did you use?
DG: The Hooper/Green Biography, The George Sayer Biography, and the Companion and Guide by Hooper, but mostly merely to check dates and details for accuracy.

JS: How come no one has yet to make a “good” bio-pic on CS Lewis, meaning a film that accurately portrays his life?

DG: How do you accurately portray 65 years in less than 65 years? But I think that someone sooner or later will attempt to do so and when they do I hope I am still around to help.

JS: I read one of Jack’s short stories ” The Dark Tower”. Are you familiar with it?

DG: Of course.

JS: There is a huge controversy about that story as there is some debate as to whether or not it is a “true” Lewis tale. Do you think it was?

DG: Of course it was. The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons by a lady who is now dead. Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited.

JS: Do you ever remember him talking about it?

DG: “The Dark Tower”? No, but another of her targets, “The Man Born Blind” (originally working titled “Light”) Jack read to me when I was but a lad.

JS: I have read “A Man Born Blind” as well as the rest of Jack’s short stories and that they would make great made-for-TV movies ( or episodes of a TV show like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits). Have you ever given much thought into having those adapted from stories to the screen? I know I’d enjoy them!

DG: I haven’t actually thought of that, partly I suppose because I am not exactly short of projects already.

JS: Another one of his short stories that intrigued me as “After Ten Years”, a fragments of a novel about the journey of Menelaus and Helen of Troy. Why didn’t he finish it?

DG: He died first.

JS: Do you think it needs to be?

DG: Not unless Jack comes back to do it.

JS: So, I take it if a currently living author were to approach you asking if they could complete “After Ten Years” or even “The Dark Tower”, you would decline the offer?

DG: Absolutely.

JS: A bit of a trend in Christian fiction is for writers to do a book “in the style” of The Screwtape Letters (meaning a correspondence between a senior devil and a more inexperienced tempter) such as Randy Alcorn’s Lord Foulgrin’s Letters. Are you familiar with that book or any others like it?

DG: I am actually a fan of Randy Alcorn’s work, but I haven’t as yet read that particular one. The Screwtape styled books I have read I have not found to be particularly encouraging.

JS: One book I have in my library is a comic book adaptation of The Screwtape Letters that was put out by Marvel Comics and Thomas Nelson back in 1994 ( they had done similar with Bunyans’ Pilgrim’s Progress and Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps). Did you serve as a consultant for it?

DG: To be honest, I actually don’t remember.

JS: Is there the possibility Narnia Fans could ever see graphic novels ( or comic books)of all seven Narnian Chronicles and the Space Trilogy? Again, it is something many fans would enjoy. Would you encourage or endorse such a project?

DG: That would depend very much on the quality and standards of the project concerned.

JS: One of my friends wants to try and get his four year old brother into reading by reading him the Narnian Chronicles, however the lack of pictures doesn’t interest his brother. I recommended The World of Narnia series by Deborah Maze ( the four volume series based on TL,TW,TW ) as a good introduction. ( He didn’t want to use the movie story books as he felt then he may as well show him the movie). Are there any other children’s books based on Narnia that you’d recommend as a means of introducing younger readers to the world of Narnia, and thus perhaps get them more interested in reading at a younger age?

DG: He could try The Giant’s Surprise by Hyawin Oram. But the Chronicles themselves would be best read as bedtime stories one chapter at a time when he is a bit older. Four is probably a little too young for them.

JS: I’ve heard that there is a film version of The Screwtape Letters in the works. Is this true?

DG: Yes. I am one of the Producers.

JS: How are they going to adapt it into a film ( if they are in fact > doing this)? The book is largely a collection of letters!

DG: We are working that out right now.

Come back next week when we discuss the Narnia Film project!

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James McAvoy, the actor who played Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has been nominated for the “Most Stylish Scotsman” award. The award is given to the man “whose truly inspirational personal style is an important factor in their celebrity.” The award is chosen by a panel of judges and presented at an awards ceremony on October 26.

McAvoy is running against fellow actor Kevin McKidd, goalkeeper Craig Gordon, cultural entrepreneur Mutley, and comic book/screenwriter Grant Morrison.

However, McAvoy is the favourite to win the competition. His citation states, “This 28-year-old Scotstoun-born actor exhibits an admirable sense of distinctive yet effortless style in his downtime. Sharply-suited and booted, however, he cuts an especially dashing figure on any red carpet occasion.”

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There is magic in the last line of The Lord of the Rings. To recap: the stolidly courageous Sam Gamgee, having watched his best friend, Frodo Baggins, sail towards the Grey Havens and into a kind of death, is left to walk back to the Shire where he finds his wife and children waiting with the promise of a quiet life far from the slaughter of the War of the Ring. J. R. R. Tolkien finishes with the sentence: “‘Well, I’m back,’ he said”. It is a touchingly understated conclusion which returns the prose to the homely simplicity of the inaugural chapters after the archaic epic mode of The Return of the King.

However, as Diana Pavlac Glyer tells us in her scholarly and perceptive study The Company They Keep, this is not how Tolkien originally intended to finish his trilogy. He had in mind a further epilogue, set sixteen years after the events of the rest of the book, which would have provided another, superfluous glimpse into Gamgee’s domesticity. In this ultimately excised version, a grey-haired Sam reads stories of his adventures to his children, spinning them tales of wizards and orcs and walking trees. There is even the faint suggestion that Sam has been narrating the story of The Lord of the Rings itself, before, at last, we depart the Shire for good, leaving Sam and Rose in a state of connubial bliss, tale-telling by the fireside.

What stopped Tolkien from publishing this ending was his membership of the Inklings – that renowned circle of Oxford writers and academics who met for seventeen years from 1932 and which counted C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and E. R. Edison, the author of The Worm Ouroboros, among their number. It was they who pointed out the glutinous sentimentality of the scene, marshalling their forces to argue that it added nothing of substance to a narrative which had already swollen far beyond the “second Hobbit” requested by his publishers. Glyer suggests that this incident typifies the way in which the Inklings affected one another’s work, despite the fact that in later years its members were frequently to insist that their meetings acted more as a social club than a writers’ circle, brushing aside any suggestion of real influence.

Down the pub with Tolkien and C. S. Lewis

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We’ve acquired some concept art from Prince Caspian. This art features character designs done by KNB EFX group, I believe. It’s really awesome stuff.

My favorite of them is this Satyr design. Very regal and very thoughtful.

Here is another Satyr.

And another.

Here is a Hag.

Here is a WereWolf.

See more Caspian art and images.

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Hey, Narnia Fans! Welcome to “Behind the Wardrobe” an Interview Series with Douglas Gresham. Join me as we find out about CS Lewis, Narnia and more in this interview series.

Special thanks to Paul Martin (The Webmaster for NarniaFans) and to Mr. Douglas Gresham himself for this amazing opportunity. And an even bigger thanks to Mr. Gresham for putting up with a few of my impossible questions. Thanks for being such a great sport about it!

For this week: On The Shadowlands…

JS: What was your opinion of the play The Shadowlands?

DG: I think it a wonderful play, but then I am biased. I have been a consultant to Shadowlands in all its varying inceptions ever since Brian Sibley and Norman Stone first wrote the concept script about 20 odd years ago. Incidentally the play is being revived and will shortly open again in London’s West End. I don’t know though whether there are any plans to move the production to America though.

JS: How did you feel about how they portrayed Jack?

DG: I have seen so many productions in which the portrayals always depended on the actor playing the role that it is hard to remember a specific portrayal. The play itself portrays not C.S.Lewis, nor Jack, but a fictional character based on him. Remember that Shadowlands is not supposed to be an Historical documentary, but is a very beautiful love story based on real events in the lives of some real people.

JS:Thank you for the clarification that The Shadowlands is not a historical documentary. In a class I took in college it was, more or less, portrayed as a historical documentary to us.

DG: It was never intended to be so, and I would have though that it is pretty obvious. After all there are only four characters based on real people in the whole movie, all the rest are entirely fictional.

JS: Have most people mistaken the play for a historical documentary?

DG: I don’t think so, I haven’t come across too many folk who have.

JS: Notably one of the major differences was the absence of your brother David. How did you feel about this change?

DG: This change was made for very straightforward theatrical and dramatic reasons and so when I fully understood the reasons I had no problem with it.

JS: Would you be able to elaborate a bit on what the theatrical and dramatic reasons for the exclusion of your brother from the play were?

DG: It is very simple really, first, if you have two children each reacting differently to the same situations, you automatically have two subplots. In the first TV version of Shadowlands this was done, and on studying it later, it was discovered that having the two subplots actually detracted from the main theme of the piece rather than complementing it, so it was decided to drop one child for the Stage play version. Also contributing to that decision was the fact that for stage work each child character has to be played by two child actors as there are legal restrictions on how many performances a child actor may make without a break. This was seen to work very well and thus for Dick Attenborough’s version the one child policy was adhered to.

JS: How about some of the other changes they made to the story? For example Lewis driving, your character asking for Jack to sign a copy of Magician’s Nephew, of Jack as a Roman Catholic.

DG: As far as I know Jack was never portrayed as a Roman Catholic, but as for the rest I didn’t care hoot.

JS: How did you feel about Anthony Hopkins’s and Debra Winger’s portrayals of Jack and Joy in the film version?

DG: Tony was faithfully presenting the role he found in the screenplay, and not trying to be C.S.Lewis or Jack, and I think that is a pity because I think Tony could have portrayed the real Jack very well indeed. Debra on the other hand was superb as my mother. However if one is going to talk about the film, one has to say that Dick Attenborough is one of the finest directors ever to walk the planet (and one of the finest English Gentlemen as well) , and his fine touch and gentle hand made what I consider to be a classic movie with which I am very proud to have been associated.

JS: How well did Joseph Mazzello do at portraying you in the film?

DG: Very well indeed, but as I told him on set one day, for him it was easy, after all he had a script to follow, I had to ad-lib the whole thing.

JS: The funny thing for me with the film of “The Shadowlands” is that I forever associated both director Richard Attenborough and Joseph Mazzello with their roles as John Hammond and Tim Murphy in Steven Speilberg’s Jurassic Park.

DG: Knowing them both personally made a big difference I suppose.

JS: Though it could be worse. I even had a friend who had a hard time watching the film as she associated Anthony Hopkins with Hannibal Lecter!

DG: I think that a lot of people had that reaction to him in Remains of the Day rather than in Shadowlands, but I know what you mean.

JS: Have you ever considered playing Jack in a production of The Shadowlands?

DG: I really don’t think I could do it justice (the role I mean), I am too emotionally involved in the whole thing.

That’s it for this weeks installment. Come back next week when we discuss Douglas’s book Jack’s Life , CS Lewis’s unfinished novels “The Dark Tower” and “After Ten Years”, the film of The Screwtape Letters and some other matters.

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It appears that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader may have just been pushed a year back. The word comes from Box Office Mojo, and is followed up by ComingSoon.net with this.

On the heels of yesterday’s awesome Prince Caspian poster, Walt Disney Pictures has pushed back The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader from May 1, 2009 to May 7, 2010.

They’ve filled Dawn Treader’s previous May 1, 2009 slot with the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced live-action/CGI family feature G-Force. If you’re wondering just what G-Force is: it follows a group of intelligent animal commandos working for a government agency trying to prevent an evil billionaire from taking over the world.

We’ve confirmed it with Disney, and it is absolutely true that it will be released on May 7, 2010.

Official Statement: In consideration of the challenging schedules for our young actors, Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media have chosen to delay the start of production for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” until summer 2008. The new release date for this highly anticipated third entry in the “Narnia” series will now be May 7, 2010.

Does this mean that the final product will be better? I don’t know if it will benefit from this push in the way that we hope. There are a couple reasons why it may not.

Cost
For one thing, it would drive up the production cost. More time means more money. A lengthier shoot means spending more on the film. I heard somewhere that a low cost day would be around $25,00-$50,000. And that is being conservative with the numbers.

CG may look the same
Regardless of how much more time they have, they’re going to make it as realistic as they can. Sure, technology will get better, become more advanced, but we’re seeing CG hit superb levels of realism that we’ve never imagined possible.

I’m sure that Walden and Disney are going to do everything they can to make this as spectacular a film as we’ve ever seen, and they’ll spare no expense in doing so, but I think we need to take a step back and realize that, regardless of time, they wouldn’t have given us any less than the great film that we’re going to see. I hope that it is a better film, but we’d only know for sure if we got a 2009 release, followed by a 2010 release of the same film. Then we could compare both products.

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Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures, Cinematical is happy to bring you the first official one-sheet (click here for larger image) for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

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Hey, Narnia Fans! Welcome to “Behind the Wardrobe” an Interview Series with Douglas Gresham. Join me as we find out about CS Lewis, Narnia and more in this interview series.

Special thanks to Paul Martin (The Webmaster for NarniaFans) and to Mr. Douglas Gresham himself for this amazing opportunity. And an even bigger thanks to Mr. Gresham for putting up with a few of my impossible questions. Thanks for being such a great sport about it!

For this week: On Jack…

JS:Thank you so much for your time it is a real honor to speak with you, espcailly as your step-father’s work had been so important and infleuncial to my own life.

DG: You’re welcome.

JS: First I just have to ask ( though you probably get this question a lot) what was it like growing up with CS Lewis?

DG.I do get asked that question frequently but it is in fact almost impossible to answer. You see my childhood was what it was and it was the only one I ever had so I have nothing with which to compare it. Growing up with Jack was simply the way things were. It was a time of sorrow, joy, turmoil, heartbreak, pain, delight, comfort and all the things that affect all little boys on the journeys towards manhood.

JS: How was Jack the person and step father different from CS Lewis the writer?

DG: Again that is a very difficult question to answer, because I never really knew “C.S.Lewis the writer” but knew Jack very well indeed, and my having known him has coloured my knowledge of “C.S.Lewis” ever after. It does protect me from the myriad of misunderstandings that have been presented and promoted about Jack ever since his death though.

JS: What was Jack like as a stepfather to you and your brother?

DG: Once again I have only ever had the one stepfather and thus have nothing with which to draw any comparisons. However I doubt that had I been able to search the world and choose I could have found a better one.

JS: What was he like as a husband to your mother?

DG: You would have had to have asked my mother and I have no doubt she would have told you to mind your own business.

JS: What was his relationship with Warnie like?

DG: They were brother and friends and remained so all their lives.

JS: Perhaps you could share with our readers your favorite memory of him.

DG: Jack or Warnie?

JS:Of Jack.

DG:The answer is to be found in my book Lenten Lands (HarperCollins).

JS: I do apologize for the more “impossible questions”.

DG: No problem, but try to imagine how you would answer them. What was it like growing up with your father as your father? Now you have two options, one is to write a book about it (which I have done) and the other is to give up. You can’t really describe what it was like without comparing it to something in your own experience.

JS: Would I take it that the best way for one to find out about Jack’s life be to read the biographies and autobiographies ( the good ones, of course.)?

DG: Absolutely. If I were to talk for as long as it would take for me to read you a good biography of him, why then I could tell you as much about his life as you could read in one, but I would be out of voice long before we got halfway through the story.

JS: Would there be any in your opinion that you’d strongly recommend reading ( save your own )?

DG: It depends a bit on what you are looking for. If you are after a good scholarly work about C.S.Lewis, either the Hooper/Green Biography or the George Sayer one, if on the other hand you want the life story of Jack, then I would actually recommend my own effort.

JS: Was his house anything like Professor Kirke’s in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

DG: No, not at all. Our house was small and unobtrusive.

JS: Of his seven Narnian Chronicles which one was your favorite growing up?

DG: Why was that one your favorite? Do you have a new favorite?

JS: My favorite of The Narnian Chronicles it is, has been, and always will be The Last Battle, and for one reason: it has the best “Happily Ever After”.

DG: A lot of folks feel that way. I always felt that the last Narnian book was tainted by my disappointment that it was the last. As a child and now, my favourite Narnian Chronicle was always whichever one I was reading at the time that somebody asked me, and right now, that means The Silver Chair.

JS: Can you comment on Jack’s friendship with JRR Tolkien?

DG: Can’t add very much to the things that have already been said and written, quite a lot of which is inaccurate. Jack and Tolkien were fast friends for a very long time indeed, right up until Jack’s death. They disagreed on many things and argued incessantly as good friends often did back in those wiser times.

JS: Did you ever get to meet Tolkien or any of the other Inklings? What was your impression of them?

DG: I met Tolkien several times, Austin Farrer, Humphrey Havard, Lord David Cecil, Hugo Dyson, and several others they were all charming men, of great character, and of varying depths of intellect and heights of intelligence, they all had much in common with each other of course, and one characteristic that they all seemed to share as well, was that as far as I could tell, they were all good men.

JS: Most people I talk to always ask ” when did he die” or are surprised to hear it as if they expected him to be still alive Why do you think most people aren’t aware of his death?

DG: Most people aren’t aware of most people’s deaths, but Jack’s death was particularly occluded by the death of Jack Kennedy on the same day, you will find that often when great one of God departs this Earth, the enemy will make sure that a great notable of the secular realm goes also to cover the death of the servant of God.

Be back next week for part two when we discuss the play The Shadow Lands.

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A new survey’s found Roald Dahl remains the most popular children’s author among young adults.

Second and third places were taken by C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia series and Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is only the fourth most popular author.

Top 10 authors: 1 Roald Dahl, 2 CS Lewis, 3 JM Barrie, 4 JK Rowling, 5 Anthony Horowitz, 6 Jacqueline Wilson, 7 Dr Seuss, 8 Philip Pullman, 9 Francesca Simon, 10 Enid Blyton.

There are two problems that I can see with this list. One is that J.R.R. Tolkien does not appear (although his Lord of the Rings might be just a bit too age-less, but it’s debatable). The other is that Philip Pullman DOES appear (his books do not belong anywhere near the children’s books; but that’s a story for another day).

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With all of this strike business happening around Hollywood, a list of films to be made has surfaced, and there is one very interesting item of note to be found there. Under the Walden heading, there are two Narnia films listed. You’d think to yourself, okay, that must mean Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. You’d be only half correct. They finished shooting Prince Caspian within the last few weeks.

Here’s what the Strike Memo says:

WALDEN
NARNIA 3 – DAWNTREADER D: Michael Apted
NARNIA 4 – SILVER CHAIR D: tba

This is from a list that is being circulated around major talent agencies in Hollywood. It includes all the movies that the studios are making a priority before the impending Writers Guild, Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild strike next year. The strike, I have heard, will probably begin in June.

What this means is that there is no director yet attached to The Silver Chair, and that Walden Media and Disney are making it a priority to complete the filming before the strike begins. This is very important as the length of the strike can and probably will effect film releases. With Dawn Treader scheduled for May 2009 and Silver Chair for May 2010, this would give them plenty of time to complete both of those films, and prepare The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle for filming after the strike ends.

This is good news, but not great, as we haven’t received any word yet on whether or not Silver Chair has officially been given the green light. They have, however, already signed Ben Barnes to reprise his role as Caspian.

The only question that remains is: who will direct? Will Andrew Adamson have time to direct? Probably not, with the release of Prince Caspian in May, he’ll be busy with press conferences, interviews and premieres. Will Michael Apted direct it then? Perhaps. Given the timeframe for filming Dawn Treader, starting in February, he just might be ready and willing to direct them back to back, keeping the story going. However, with a fairly new cast for Silver Chair, save for Eustace, a new director could begin pre-production while Dawn Treader is being filmed, and then jump right in shortly after it wraps production.

This is all speculation at the moment, but we’ll ask around to learn whatever we can about it.

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