Read This: Alan Rickman’s diaries reveal his less-than-flattering opinions about Harry Potter
Alan Rickman nearly quit playing Severus Snape several times over the course of filming the Harry Potter movies
Aux News Alan Rickman
Severus Snape was always (no Harry Potter pun intended) a controversial figure in the HP fandom. He was a spiteful bully of children and former wizard Nazi, but he also had a big crush on Harry’s mom and dedicated his life to fighting evil in her memory. It’s hard to imagine any actor pulling that off with the kind of gravitas and grace of Alan Rickman.
Rickman documented his journey with Snape—which was apparently almost cut short several times—in his diaries, excerpted ahead of publication by The Guardian. J.K. Rowling famously convinced the late actor to take on the role by (“nervously”) spoiling the Lily love story years before it appeared in the books, something he later described as “a cliff edge to hang on to.”
And yes, he almost fell off that cliff a few times. Before beginning filming Sorcerer’s Stone in 2000, he described “feeling a bit nothing about HP which really disturbs me.” He wrote of decent working relationships with the films’ directors, but can be highly critical of the results: Sorcerer’s Stone, on the big screen, “acquires a scale and depth that matches the hideous score by John Williams,” with the afterparty being “much more fun.” After seeing Half-Blood Prince, he complained of “the need to bang the three Davids’ heads [Harry Potter producers David Heyman and David Barron, and director David Yates] against the nearest wall. I get the character development and the spiffing effects (dazzling), but where is the story????”
His favorite of the bunch seemed to be Prisoner Of Azkaban, praising future Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón as doing “an extraordinary job.” “It is a very grown-up movie, so full of daring that it made me smile and smile,” he wrote. “Every frame of it is the work of an artist and storyteller.”
He tried to quit several times, including after the second film in 2002 (“Reiterating no more HP. They don’t want to hear it”), and after feeling “shafted” on Goblet Of Fire, but was convinced to stay on to the end (“See it through. It’s your story”). But filming the final films wasn’t smooth sailing: while Snape’s death was “all a bit epic and Japanese,” his last scene with “the Golden Trio” was hampered by what sounds like over-direction from Yates, during which “a small piece of something creative caves in.”
“I found it unsettling to watch,” Rickman wrote of Deathly Hallows Part 2. “[It] has to change horses midstream to tell the Snape story and the camera loses concentration. Audience, however, very happy.”
For more of Rickman’s incandescent opinions—including on his young co-stars (Daniel Radcliffe might not be “really an actor but he will undoubtedly direct/produce” while “Emma [Watson]’s diction is this side of Albania at times”), politics of the day, and his many famous friends and acquaintances (Meryl Streep “turns out to be fun and gossipy. But it’s hard – who else looks like Meryl Streep? So you can’t quite lose the stare”)—check out the excerpt of Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman in The Guardian.
221 Comments
Alliterative Alan played Severus Snape in money-making magic movie!
Hey Spider! I gotta headline for ya: alliteration’s awful!
Lick my labia!
Now now, no need to nitpick.
There is such political naivety in the US that it only takes one image of five Palestinians dancing in the street to obliterate the bigger picture. John Major said: “You have given us so much enjoyment.” “I wish I could say the same of you,” was the unstoppable reply. He had the grace to laugh.Dammit, we lost a great one.
Snape would have been an unbearable character with almost any other actor in the role
Truly, the man who could keep one of Hollywood’s worst wigs from wearing him. Truly, who put that same wig on him eight times and said “yup, no notes” every time?
The wigs in HP are bad. Not as ghastly and fake as the MCU, but still terrible. One wonders if there aren’t enough homosexuals around to advise these (straight male) directors what constitutes a good wig?
It’s not a bad wig in terms of wig quality, but it’s terrible styling. Maybe the point is that he’s so uncool that he’d pick that hairstyle with that facial structure, but that hairstyle with that facial structure looks so costumey and dopey to this viewer.
To be fair, you may be right, and it’s the styling that’s shit. All that said, I actually really like the Malfoy wigs, which are so OTT that I can’t help but embrace them.
Helen McCrory rocked the hell out of her look, though.
Right- it’s just a damn hot look, and she made it work.
I would have guessed she passed this past spring, but it was Spring 2021.
I have long believed it is a tribute to Jason Issacs’ handsomeness that he can rock that Malfoy wig and not look like a damn Afghan Hound. I always in my mind saw him as the Mad King for Game of Thrones because of it and was privately disappointed nobody read my mind and cast that bit part accordingly.
Is that rug, or did they bleach Jason Isaacs’s hair that color after telling him to grow it out?If that’s the case, it’s kind of amazing his hair doesn’t shatter like glass if he shakes his head too hard….
I think a lot of it is less that the wigs are bad themselves (they’re wigs, and often they look like wigs, but there’s a difference between looking like a fine wig and fine hair), and more that the directors don’t know how to film the wigs to make them look real.I read an interview with the hair designer who did the wigs for Black Panther and a number of other Marvel movies, and I think there’s really an element of the wrong lighting can make some of the world’s most expensive wigs look party city.
Ah yes, that old tired stereotype…
As a gay man who cares about wigs, and whose gay friends care about wigs, I’m here to unapologetically represent that stereotype.
You still don’t represent all gays though
Agreed! Never have and never will, which is why I never claimed such a thing.
You want wigs of horror? Check any Tyler Perry character (especially poor, poor Shemar Moore). Somehow, Madea is the only one who gets a pro lacefront install.
I do want wigs of horror. My favorite carnival attraction.
Not enough gays in Hollywood?Say it ain’t so, Joe!
Hollywood seems to have a consistent issue when it comes to men’s wigs. See, also: Rings of Power, House of the Dragon
I’m intrigued by what Tim Roth could have done with the role. Alas he read Tim Burton’s PotA script and still decided to make that instead.
He would have been good. As horrible as that POTA movie is Roth is still good in it … really the only good thing in it.
In Burton’s defence, the apes were all pretty good in that film. It’s just the whole story was a mass of nothingness.That nonsensical ending was tacked on to give the audience something to talk about when leaving the cinema.
Not sure I can defend the “fuckable” Michael Jackson Vera character as a way to go.
Movie Snape (and Rickman’s being amazing) almost retconned the book character from scumbag to anti hero in people’s minds I feel like.
Daniel Craig has certainly done well portraying a character who is icy and condescending, but secretly cares. He was in his mid 30s when the Harry Potter movies started, and maybe a bit young to play a contemporary of Harry’s parents. That said, Rickman was in his mid-50s at the time of the first movie, which is older than the character should be, and did well nonetheless
Oh, the movie folks just fucking threw out the proper ages for those characters. James and Lily didn’t waste any time after school in starting their family. They were barely in their 20s when they died. So, Snape, Pettigrew, Sirius and Lupin all should have been mid-30s.
Sirius and Lupin were basically supposed to be Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, but they were too busy with their Welfare Program for British Character Actors.
The timeline’s a bit muddy, but in the books Lilly Potter dies at the age of 21, so I think the proper age for a contemporary of theirs is supposed to be 32 or so at the beginning of Philosopher’s Stone. Oldman, Thewlis, and (if they’d gotten him) Roth would have worked because they’re all roughly the same age, even if that age is a decade older than the characters were in the books. It might say something about Rowling’s influence on the movies that these guys were generally the right age for their roles when she started writing the books and in the years the books are set. (Rickman was older, being born in 1946.)Anyway, Craig might’ve still worked as Snape—he’s only 5 years younger than Thewlis and 10 younger than Oldman.
I feel like Gary Oldman woulda been just fine, though I think his range would’ve been wider than Rickman’s on both the evil end and the compassionate end. Rickman played it pretty stoically througout, and Oldman definitely has a lot more scenery-chewing tendencies in him, but I think he would’ve been good as Snape.
No, because Oldman has no center—he’d be ranty as fuck, but you wouldn’t feel there was anything worth saving under that.For as great a villain as Alan Rickman can play, he’s better able to put some underpinning of moral ambiguity under most of his roles…….except for the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which he rightly played as high camp!
Snape was also an unbearable character without any actor in the role. Having to suffer through all his bullshit in the novels was absolutely not worth it (also, the novels themselves weren’t worth it, but that’s another discussion.)As a kid I didn’t think much of it, but in retrospect it’s kind of fucked up how Rowling has this character emotionally abuse a child for six novels only to justify it in the seventh by going “it’s okay, he’s doing this because he really wanted to fuck Harry’s mom.”
How about Dumbledore leaving Harry at his abusive Aunt and Uncles house for 11 years. Like the weaselys couldnt have taken him in? Here is the kid of two well known and powerful wizards, lets leave him with his non wizarding family who will actively abuse him emotionally while neglecting him. England has an equivalent for CPS, no way that goes un noticed. Dudsley has a big mouth, he would have mouthed off about his loser cousin having to live under the stairs. They looked like they were middleclass , some teacher in the school would have heard that and followed up or something. Its a kids book, its not high writing.
Plenty of kids’ books have proven themselves to be great literature. Harry Potter just ain’t one of them.
I cant think of too any kids books that go over 6 books, with that level of page counts to compare them to.
Made even worse when you know the character Snape is well aware that Harry has been raised by his abusive aunt and uncle. So he shows up to school after living in an abusive house since before he can remember and he ridicules him as if he’s been living the high life.
Kevin Sorbo would have nailed it. Missed opportunity.
When I read the books I envisioned Richard O’ Brien for some reason
“Emma [Watson]’s diction is this side of Albania at timesUh, I guess I’m a dummy, can someone explain what this means??
Sure as hell feels like a burn, but I’m not sure how.
Guess you have to be British.
It really does have a Nigel Powers “I hate the Dutch!” sense of randomness to it.
It’s like the old Albanian saying:“Molla nuk bie larg mollës”or, The apple doesn’t fall far from the apple.
It’s an inelegant way of saying that she don’t talk real good.
Oh no, it was absolutely elegant. The kind of whoosh that people don’t get until they’ve already bled out.
Here’s the full quote: “Alfonso [Cuarón, director] was quietly ballistic with me. I love him too much to let it last too long so I wailed offset and we sorted it out. He’s under the usual HP pressure and even he starts rehearsing cameras before actors, and these kids need directing. They don’t know their lines and Emma [Watson]’s diction is this side of Albania at times. Plus my so-called rehearsal is with a stand-in who is French.”Honestly, it doesn’t sound like a compliment. I’ve never been a fan of Emma Watson’s acting, though, so I could be biased.
Acting chops aside, I always found her diction to be, if anything, overly perfect. Maybe that’s just onscreen, I guess…
“the usual HP pressure”
He was being pressured by a condiment?
I feel like this is only really a widely known condiment in the USA, as everywhere with taste wouldn’t ruin a good piece of beef with it.
Or by the American computer company?
A saucy situation indeed
No one like’s feeling the pressure of this bloke’s gravy:
No, but it sounds like a sort of droll remark that’s meant more for his own amusement than as an actual put down. He’s talking about kids who are I think 12 or 13 during production, so it’s no wonder he thinks they’re shitty actors. But he was wrong about Radcliffe who is currently quite close to being a great actor and probably will be before long, so it’s not like it’s a huge burn on Watson (who I haven’t seen a whole lot of recently, but is still unaccountably better than she was early on in her career) for being young and not knowing how to convincingly pronounce hippogriff.
I know everyone understandably loves Rickman; but it most certainly does sound like a put down of a child actor to me.
Radcliffe has turned what could have essentially been a teen idol situation into a pretty eclectic and interesting career. And him reading the real Deadspin’s Worst Tweets for a few years will always be amazing to me.
I think Radcliffe is brilliant in Miracle Workers.
“Honestly, it doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
It’s obviously not one. Are you kidding?
Her delivery throughout the HP films could best be described as always breathless and over-annunciated. Maybe that’s what Albanians sound like?
Albania is a long-way from the UK and they tried to give her a more formal British accent during some of the films.The joke is that her diction was atrocious.
Albania!Albania!It borders on the Adriatic…….Credit to Ernie Pantusso.
Coach!
What are Albania’s chief exports again? LOL
I can’t hear Albania without this song popping into my head.
I’ll remember that song till my dying days, along with “Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly…..K-E-L-L-Y-why?”
I didn’t get it until your explanation. Rickman worded his insults brilliantly
I mean, those are his personal diaries. Maybe it’s an in-joke?
Hmm…well, in relation to the UK, ‘this side of Albania’ would be Montenegro. Or Bosnia Herzegovina. Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Luzembourg, Belgium. That’s a lot of diction to choose from.
This side of Abania, from the perspective of a Brit, would be the Adriatic Sea. I’m sure there’s an insult in there somewhere.
I’m wondering what a “Japanese” death is.
honorable and solemn by the sounds of it. He might’ve also been talking about the direction of the scene being quiet and lingering. I can’t quite remember if that’s how Snape’s death was shot but that could be the meaning behind what he wrote.
Replace with “reminiscent of a death scene in Japanese cinema.”
I assume he means his sacrifice was done out of a (perhaps misplaced) sense of honor, akin to Japanese ritual suicide.
The original draft of the script had Snape being eaten by Godzilla, but they couldn’t work out the rights with Toho.
Suicide in a forest?
she no speak good…he’s basically saying she can’t talk in a british accent well enough, which i’m guessing there are many different accents for british people, just like there is in america.
It means that it’s out in the woods, nobody knows where. It couldn’t be found with (as one of my Irish friends used to say) “A compass, a map, and a small dedicated team of experts”. She’s a dreadful actress— she has three emotions: pissed off, smiley, and frumpy.
I’m guessing it means that she says her lines in a stilted way, like someone who speaks English as a second language.
It means that her words sound like like just on the [english] side of Albanian. That is, if her diction were any worse, it might as well sound like Albanian to him.
I wonder if it has to do with Albion, which is an old toponym for Great Britain, derived from Greek and later Latinized as Albania—sometimes still used in poetic language to refer to GB. If that’s the case, my best guess is that he means she was laying it on a bit thick with her English diction.
He’s basically snarking that her diction when trying to act is rather stilted and unnatural, as if she has never spoken English before and is reading her lines out phonetically or something. To illustrate, imagine a map of Europe. There’s a line separating the United Kingdom from the rest of the continent. ‘This’ side of the line is the side that Rickman, Watson, the cast and crew of Harry Potter and, by extension, the population of the UK are on. If Rickman was to have said that her diction was ‘this side of (say) Dover’, the implication would be that if you were to choose someone at random from ‘this’ side of the line to read out Watson’s lines, there is a pretty good chance that you would choose someone who would be able to do so while sounding natural, confident and as if English is a language they have spoken their entire life, or at least that they have learned sufficiently well to communicate with while in a predominantly English-speaking nation (and that, by extension, Watson herself is able to do so).Now, start pushing the line out, so that more of the continent of Europe is included on ‘this’ side of the line. The further you do, the more this means that ‘this’ side of the line no longer includes a majority of English speakers, and will include many more people to whom English is a second language at best, and who may not even speak it. Ergo, the greater the chance that if you were to again ask a random person from ‘this’ side of the line to read out Watson’s dialogue, they would be unable to do so without sounding uncomfortable, awkward, stilted and unnatural. Albania, for context, is an Eastern European nation about 2,339 km (1,453 miles) from the UK — it’s on the other side of the continent, basically. That means a lot of people who don’t speak English are now on ‘this’ side of the line. Rickman’s purposes the line stops at Albania to emphasise how unnatural Watson’s line-readings sound; to wit, she sounds as if she has come from the other side of Europe and has barely spoken English before (though it could still be worse; he could have said ‘this side of Siberia’).
It’s so atrocious it’s tough to believe she’s a native speaker of English at times.
Snape isn’t controversial. He’s very simple.He’s a fucking scumbag incel who “honored” his childhood friend by becoming obsessed with her and mercilessly abusing her son and his friends.
Does anyone honestly think that if there was a portrait of Lily somewhere that could talk to Snape, she’d be like, “Aww… you said ‘Always.’ That’s so sweet. I hope lots of dingbats reading about this story someday get that tattooed on their arm or their ass”?
No, she’d be like, “Jackass, quit messing with my son.”
I wish Tim Roth had gotten the role. He would have given us the true Snape.
If ‘Always’ is tattooed on someone’s ass, I doubt it is a Harry Potter reference.
Everything he says here is pretty much correct imho.
Yeah, I was surprised to see his opinions of the HP films’ storylines tracked so close to my own. I sat thru them all and thought they had their moments, but a lot of their plots all blended into one for me, a lot of the time.
Objectively the source material is a pastiche of a lot of better material, that’s why it’s not horrible but is pretty homogeneous.
Except for the John Williams diss, but nobody’s perfect.
I honestly don’t even think he’s too far off the mark on that one. Williams’s music had gotten kind of generic by the time he did the HP scores. They weren’t close to the same level as the Star Wars score, for example.
Though of course that’s a matter of personal taste.
Even the weird “Albanian” crack? If so can you explain it? Because no one else here seems to even get it, let alone consider it as correct or otherwise.-An Anonymous Nerd
Severus Snape was always (no Harry Potter pun intended)
…where’s the pun here?
Same thought.
https://www.mugglenet.com/2019/11/the-significance-of-always/
Still not a pun.
Ugh. After re-reading I get it. There’s a moment where Dumbledore asks Snape, “Still?” after seeing his patronus, and Snape replies “Always.” It’s in reference to him still being in love with his unrequited crush (Harry’s mom) and his patronus matches hers because of it or whatever.So the “pun” is literally just that they used the word always and Snape said “always” that one time.
“Always” is Snape’s line in the last book and movie that communicates that he loved Harry’s mother and always will. It’s super famous in Harry Potter fandom.
““Always” is Snape’s line in the last book and movie that communicates that he loved Harry’s mother and always will. It’s super famous in Harry Potter fandom.”
Ok, so it’s confirmed there was no pun.
This is Snape’s response to Dumbledore when asked, “After all this time?” in regards to his love for Lily.
I’m assuming that it’s referring to the key line that Snape says about Harry’s mother (“Always”), but I don’t think that qualifies it as a pun.
It’s a reference, not a pun..
Yeah that’s just a reference, not a pun.
Sounds like the author was so amused at their own brilliant wit, that they forgot to actually write it down. How Albanian of them.
I really enjoyed the books and really hated the movies after 2. I get what people see in 3 as an independent movie, but if felt like such a departure from the established universe of the first two, I still see it as a misstep. That said, Rickman was one of the best things about them. The adult casting was always pretty top notch, but he manages to stand out even among some really remarkable talent. The child actors were sometimes tough to watch, but they were all cast as really young kids and had to tentpole a 8 movie series while they were growing up, so I cut them some slack.
I suspect I will be buying the book. The excerpts in The Guardian are great, and I’ve been quoting them at my wife over the last couple of days.The article above focuses (understandably) on the times when he was a bit bitchy about the people he worked with. But as you read more of it, that stuff comes across as the kind of thing you would write in a diary at the end of a long day, but revisit if you looked at things with some perspective. That’s why I’m looking forward to the book, as that will come out more as you read his opinions changing over time.
If you’re keeping a diary you’re going to write down what MOVES you (one way or another).I get the pissy “I have to work with children who have no experience or direction!?” He’s even critical of woman he absolutely loved as actors – but of their PROCESS – because it’s not his so he doesn’t understand it. Acting is weird. How we get into someone else’s head is weird. And hard – and people do what it takes to get there – how they get there. And it’s craptastically hard to stay there. When you’re acting with other people their acting affects yours (and damn well should). It helps if you can figure out a little bit of where/who they are (the character). This is a terrible description. I apologize.
“Hideous score by John Williams”?!?How. DARE. He!!!!I shall hunt Rickman down and….OK. I still love him and miss his acting. He was entitled to his opinions, but don’t be disrespecting The Maestro! 😉
I’ll admit that aside from the wonderful Hedwig’s Theme, his Sorcerer’s Stone is not among my favorite scores. Certainly not as good as the Prisoner of Azkaban. But ‘hideous’? No.
Late career John Williams is less about a full great score and more about getting that couple second hook they can reuse forever. He is not a terrible composer by any stretch and the HP score is pretty good but its no Superman theme
As much as I love both Harry Potter and John Williams, I’m pretty indifferent to his HP music. It’s just throwing his Home Alone and Hook score leftovers in a microwave. It’s his “Danny Elfman scoring The Flash (1990) TV theme by just changing a few notes from Batman”:
John Williams is to scoring what Ron Howard is to directing.
That’s unfair. Name pretty much any memorable orchestral track from a movie and there’s like a 90% chance John Williams wrote it — the theme from Jaws, the Star Wars themes, the Indiana Jones theme, the E.T. theme, the Jurassic Park theme. Ron Howard is a middling director without any real vision. Sometimes his movies are decent, sometimes not, but rarely memorable either way.
I’m on board with him. Late stage John Williams is nothing like his early days. Even the last three Star Wars movies, outside of Rey’s theme, are pretty bland and generic.
Weirdly, I feel a bit bad for Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe. I am sure they looked up to Rickman, especially as brand new actors. To hear after the fact that he thought they were kind of shit has to be a little deflating.
I have always thought that they were both pretty flat to be honest, I agree but yes, it must be hurtful to hear.
I suppose that’s why he kept those thoughts private.
The other excerpts in the Guardian show him softening toward Radcliffe and even occasionally meeting with him outside of shooting the films. They seem to have had a mentor-mentee relationship by the end. It does not appear he liked Watson much at all. He writes that he read in Vogue while receiving medical treatment that she got a vintage Rolex from the producers when filming wrapped on the final movie and was not pleased.
IIRC, Rickman went to one of Daniel’s stage shows years ago. I think it was How to Succeed in Business. I could be wrong though.
If it’s the excerpt I’m thinking of, he sounded more dismissive of the watch than her to me.
That’s fair. It seemed to me that he was unhappy she got a watch and he got nothing, but that’s not necessarily a statement about her.
I think the leads in the Harry Potter series have acknowledged publicly that their acting in the early films is pretty bad. I don’t think that’s a knock against them, per se. If you look back at the stuff you were doing at 12, you likely were not doing that stuff at an adult level of quality, and don’t feel bad about that fact. There’s a reason why we don’t normally ask kids to be the lead actors in movies.
Sorcerer’s Stone is pretty dicey across the board, but Chamber of Secrets irons most of it out–to the point that it’s my favorite of Radcliffe’s performances across the series.
Just the fact that it needed to be changed from Sorcerer’s Stone from Philosopher’s Stone because they thought Muricans were too dumb and would think Philosopher meant boring says alot about Murica.
Watson hasn’t really improved. I think Grint is probably the best because he just relaxed about it.
I heard that Greta Gerwig wanted Emma Stone in Little Women, and when she wasn’t available Amy Pascal decided Watson should replace her, and Gerwig cut down the part as a result.I don’t think I’ve seen Grint in anything since Sorceror’s Stone.
Grint is currently in a show called Servant. He’s easily the best thing about it.
I hope this is true, and that Pascal literally couldn’t be bothered to flip through her rolodex, instead opting to just pick the very next person (Who I guess would actually be Emma Thompson, but that might be a hard sell for a little woman).
Grint has been in a couple of TV shows that aren’t very good but he was good but they still aren’t worth looking up and watching.
Emma Stone to Emma Watson represents a *huge* downgrade in anybody’s book but in fairness I think Stone might have been too similar to Saoirse Ronan’s Jo to have that effective contrast between the characters. The very bland Watson might actually have been a better fit in that sense.
I think consensus is that these movies got incredibly lucky with the child actors they picked when they were 10-11 years old to have 1. turned out to be decent actors while 2. not going off the rails before completing the series. I know they did a LOT of research (screened photos of parents when they’d been the kids’ ages, siblings, etc.) but to have no material misfires is pretty amazing.
There was the one hiccup of Goyle landing himself in prison and getting replaced by the Zabini character. And that was it. They managed to make eight movies with the same core cast, and even Radcliffe’s drinking problem during the filming of five and six didn’t derail things.
Actually it was the guy who played Crabbe but yeah, IIRC he spent a couple of years in jail. The Goyle actor went on to fight MMA for a while.Don’t be a Slytherin.
I’ll have you know my Microsoft paint skills at 12 were top-notch.
I actually thought it was pretty good.-An Anonymous Nerd
I would even argue the directors could have done more to help get a better performance out of them.
I said above but these are diary entries that he wrote daily. So while these may have been opinions, at the time, they were not always his opinion and its clear that after doing 8 movies with these kids he was proud to see them grow into their careers. At least with Radcliff and Watson, he never mentions Grint at all which may be telling
Does he ever really have any scenes with Grint in the movies? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them but I can’t recall any notable moments between the two characters off the top of my head.
Never mentioning Grint seems to be the definition of *not* telling …
Just got my copy – Grint is only listed twice in the index, and both entries just list him as being present in a scene being filmed.I don’t know if the book is a complete reprinting of his diaries, or if they’ve edited them down. Though it’s quite massive, so wouldn’t surprise me if it is everything.
“By Grabthar’s hammer, these children can’t act”
Don’t know how old he was when Rickman wrote it about him, but I’d say Radcliffe has acquitted himself quite well in his adulthood, from his various Broadway roles (we saw him as the lead in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, and he definitely held his own in a cast of Broadway lifers) and now going on to do more esoteric stuff like the Weird Al biopic. He may have lucked into it at an early age, but that kid has since earned his fame.
I saw him in Lifespan of A Fact with Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale and he more than held his own on stage.
I’m sure they can permit him an opinion or two in his own diary? Especially since they worked with him for years and by all accounts would have had enough positive experiences to outweight the shock of reading that….yes, he thought they needed a lot of coaching and direction as 11-year-olds.
Just to be clear – I don’t think Rickman’s opinions are even necessarily unwarranted. Those kids, at young ages, were not great actors even by their own admissions. Maybe those opinions were true at the time and maybe Rickman ended up having a different perspective later – all of that is fine and makes sense. I don’t think Rickman was trying to stir up any shit. That being said, they were 11 and new actors. Yes they sucked, but it still must be a bit of a bummer to hear that a well respected actor isn’t even willing to grade on a curve.
Was it part of his estate plans for these to be published? Seems kind of ghoulish if not- I would be mortified at the thought of my private writings being published after my death.
Couldn’t agree more! I think it’s horrible they are publishing this. Those were his private thoughts. It’s not like he had a chance to go back and add notes or explain the full context.
They probably just shouldn’t have printed those quotes…it was his private diary after all. It’s not like he ever publicly spoke negatively about the children. Furthermore, just because you have a negative thought about something or someone does not mean you resent them or hold it against them. In the context of the quote, it seems he’s just painting a picture of how much of a drag the shoot was.
Aside from Dan Schneider, NOBODY likes with kids *or* animals.
For more of Rickman’s incandescent opinions—including on his young co-starsThose kids were not world-class actors, in his defence.
Yeah, I mean, Daniel Radcliffe went on to really stretch and improve, and now he’s one of our more interesting stars…but any accomplished actor at Rickman’s level would have seen this gig as daycare back then.
I mean very few kids are great actors at 12
Sure, and you’d probably get a bit snarky about it in your diary if you had to work with them as well.
Well, I mean, I was…
Sure you were, Doogie.
And his main bitch (if people actually do read his dailies) was that the direction was focused mainly on the movement of the cameras and the blocking. He felt the cast could have used more direction (and this was typical for many of his films/plays). I would imagine with inexperienced kids you’d expect (as an actor) that they’d be supported. And as an experienced stage (until Die Hard) actor and director he probably felt badly for them.
I hope there is some Prince of Thieves content in the diaries, would love to get some Costner chronicles.
Its worth noting that these are short diary entries he wrote all the time. So some of the items are not really out of context, but of a certain time. For example he wrote that thing about Daniel Radcliffe while filming the first movie(I believe). He later has entries of going to lunch with him as an adult and how much he has grown. I do wonder about this line though “acquires a scale and depth that matches the hideous score by John Williams,”John Williams Harry Potter score is quite good. I mean its a late period Williams score and he is a bit of a one trick pony but overall it still captures the mood very well. Maybe Rickman was just a snob 🙂
Well he was an ac-TOR. Perhaps ‘hideous’ meant ‘unsubtle, not very adventurous but really sweeping’ – a fair note for the movie and the score
If only people rose-colored my comments that much. I need to start every conversation from now on with “As an actor…”
“Over the top, bombastic, simplistic…” I agree. While it “fit” I certainly won’t be listening to it outside of its intended use – and I will if it’s a Big “C” classic.
Watson’s diction was no Bill Clay, I’ll give you that.
After Rickman’s performance in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, and well damn near everything else he’s ever done; he gets to have this opinion. Hurtful to the young cast or not, posthumously or not. The man was a damn genius…
I loved hearing Kevin Smith’s stories about their friendship post-Dogma. When Kevin and Ralph Garman took their podcast to a UK tour, Alan showed up to one of them, which, I want journal entries about their show skits like Inappropriate Toys and Your Town’s Got a Fucked Up Name.
It’s also interesting to see Rickman’s take on Linda Fiorentino and her acting process given all the other stuff said about her too.
What stuff is said about Linda Fiorentino beyond her being a treasure?
Per IMDB: “According to Kevin Smith, Linda Fiorentino was very difficult to work with. Some days, she wouldn’t even speak to him. He later said that he wished he’d offered the role to Janeane Garofalo instead.”Apparently he spoke to her post-heart attack a few years ago and they patched it up.
1999 is rightfully considered one of the best and most influential years in cinema history (Being John Malkovich, Office Space, Virgin Suicides, Magnolia, Election, Eyes Wide Shut, Sixth Sense, Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, Talented Mr. Ripley) – and I’d argue any self-respecting top 10 list from that year NEEDS to include Galaxy Quest.
What’s funny is his Galaxy Quest character felt the same way about that role as Rickman seemed to about Snape.
It’s a common trend among “serious” actors to slag on their mass market roles. Alec Guinness hated that to people under a certain age he was only known as Obi Wan, and often criticized the Star Wars movies in interviews.
To be fair, the only person on the Star Wars set happy with the dialogue was George Lucas himself. Harrison famously told him that just because he could write it doesn’t mean that people could say it. In Leia’s scene with Tarkin, where she inexplicably has a British accent, Carrie said that between the dialogue itself and being a little intimidated by Peter Cushing, putting on an accent was the only way she could actually get the words out.So while to my understanding he softened on it later, Alec Guinness lamenting that it’s what he was best known for is understandable.
If it helps him rest easier, I’m that certain age and I know he played Hitler and Jacob Marley.
“I WON’T SAY THAT STUPID LINE”God, he’s so great in that movie. Just a perfect level of self-loathing. This is one of the greatest line deliveries in any movie, regardless of genre.
“I played Richard III.”“Five curtain calls…”“I got five curtain calls.”
So you are just gonna leave off Wild Wild West???ok….OKAY
I mean, as someone who was 11 in 1999, Wild Wild West, Phantom Menace, and The Mummy would have been the TOP of my list (Of these, The Mummy is unironically good and I’m still always happy to watch it.)
And ROBIN HOOD!!!
Some of those movies are meh at best though.
Harry Potter sucks
Had no idea he was dead.
Bit of a shame as he was a good actor.
More than slightly hyperbolic – he’s snarky about almost everything and everyone else’s process – because his is different/his own. Until he gets where the person (actor or director or friend) is coming from. His love for his fellow humans shines through his entries though.
love seeing that Alfonso Cuarón praise
While this article did mention it, it didn’t include the very next line, which was so good I had to take a snapshot of it when I came across the Guardian article this weekend:
God, I just love him. That is all.
Does he have any diary entries from November 1987 to March 1988?
Makes me think the real life personality of Alan Rickman was even more suitable for the prickly character of Severus Snape than I originally felt.For the record, I loved Alan Rickman in everything I ever saw him in. Always had the feeling that most of those film parts were somewhat ‘beneath him’ and he knew. It was part of his charm.God bless him.
Why are we reading Alan Rickman’s diaries?
Because he didn’t have the decency to leave an audiobook version?
I pity the person who has to do the audio book version of the diary though.
Because he didn’t have the kind with a lock on it!
Because they’re about to be published in the U.K.
Because he wanted people to
Because he didn’t write “ALAN’S PERSONAL DIARY KEEP OUT!” on the front.
Because we finished Kurt Cobain’s.
He gave them to his wife, telling her that he wanted them to be published one day, years after he passed away. Alan Taylor did the editing. I read about this years ago, that ‘one day’ they’ll be published. And here we are.
Because the lock was easy to pick.
this world wasn’t good enough for Alan Rickman
why go through the guy’s diaries? leave his privacy
This is a project he’d been working on with his wife while he was alive, I don’t think he’d have minded
Just out of curiosity does it say anything about his time as the alien in Galaxy Quest?
Rickman is as wonderfully bitchy as I hoped he’d be.
who else looks like Meryl StreepIf Streep was a man and a hockey player, here’s your answer.
I have to agree with him; “Prisoner of Azkaban” was the best of the movies.
There’s a lot of disappointment in the comments, but keep in mind that this is his personal diary. We all feel less than stellar about our friends and colleagues from time to time and it’s usually at our lowest that we have to write stuff down into a diary to get it off our chests somehow. The shit I write about my loved ones in mine I just hope nobody every reads. I do it specifically so I don’t have to carry it around in my head.
“Truly, Madly, Deeply” was still one of his best works in his career.
“hideous score by John Williams”
Yikes, agree to disagree.
Did he ask to have his diaries published before he passed? If not, seems gross to do so.
According to this article he’d been planning to publish them and his wife’s involved Alan Rickman’s personal diaries set for posthumous release (avclub.com)
After seeing Half-Blood Prince,
he complained of “the need to bang the three Davids’ heads against the nearest wall. I get the character development and the
spiffing effects (dazzling), but where is the story????”
He gets it. The big reveal that he’s the prince comes out of friggin nowhere.
Even as big a fan/apologist for the movies as I am, they really dropped the ball on that bit. Either do the proper legwork to make it as significant a reveal as it was or simply drop the reveal entirely.(That said, it’s still probably my favorite movie of the 8, ironically despite the book being my least favorite of the 7)
Yes. To be honest, “Half-Blood Prince” is the film that probably reads the most like a movie of the cliff notes of the book rather than the book itself! All the main details are there, but with most of the story and context that links it together completely missing.
I feel like that was Prisoner of Azkaban. Cut alot out and added talking shrunken heads for some reason to the Knight Bus!!!
All actors except Rickman did pretty bad thanks to lame writing, he gave much personality to the short appearances of Snape, that he was well liked before the epic finale for him.
Any Rickman article is as good a place as any to repeat this old story:In 1995 or so I was at the Century City AMC theaters seeing a movie with my dad. I don’t remember what it was, but the theater was packed. Anyway, it ends, and we’re getting up to leave when my dad notices Alan Rickman in the crowd, having just seen the movie. As we’re crowding out through the doors, my dad gets his attention and says, “Hey, we loved you in The Barchester Chronicles.” Rickman blinks, kind of nonplussed that some rando American would be familiar with that show, but politely thanks him. (My parents were always into obscure British TV, well before it was easy to get that kind of stuff over the Internet.)Anyway, we head home. My mom comes home a couple hours later from shopping, and says, “You’ll never guess who I ran into at the mall!”My dad and I look at each other, and in unison say, “Alan Rickman?”Her jaw drops and she says, “How did you know?” We relate the story of having run into him. She then tells us that she was in Macy’s and saw him on the escalator. So she gets his attention and says to him, “We loved you in The Barchester Chronicles!” We calculated (based on when she’d left for the mall) that this had happened about five minutes after we’d run into him. “That explains why he looked terrified!” my mom said, since this was probably the first time any American had mentioned that show to him, much less having two (apparently unrelated) sets of Americans praise him for the same show using the same words inside of five minutes.
I love this. I am sure he loved it too after the initial shock. 🙂
and yet he’s not wrong.
Knowing that he was only there for a paycheck makes me respect him even more.They were always shit books for kids made into even worse movies. Rowling got lucky. That’s it
He’s right, Arry Potter (both the books and movies) is terrible. I’ve been saying this since day 1, and I will die on this hill. The most uncreative and unimaginative fantasy world I’ve ever come across.
You dont seem to actually understand what a pun is. Because that is, in no way, a pun.
I am not sure I agree with publishing all of this after he died. Yes, his wife says he always intended to, but he did not personally get around to it, and we don’t know what he might have edited out had be been there to do so. Comments like Williams atrocious score, Radcliffe’s acting, Watsons diction, and so on seem kind of cruel to just put out there, and he apparently never voiced them otherwise.I do enjoy these kinds of insights works, but this one seems a little too open with him unable to have the final word on what stayed in it. In the end of course she has FAR more right than I do to make that call, so perhaps I am out of line.
Reading this kind of feels gross. Clearly, these were his private, uncensored thoughts that were never meant for mass consumption, let alone for the people he is talking about to hear his brutally honest opinions.Why are we picking over this poor man’s corpse? No good can come of this and it can wind up hurting a number of real people.