Pick a director; any director...

[shaxper]

Cinematically, interpretations of Shakespeare are consistanly becoming more "creative", while at the same time moving closer towards the mainstream.  What if famous contemporary film directors (not normally associated with Shakespeare) were to take a crack at the bard's plays.  what directors could you see doing which plays?  Here are some of my thoughts for uniqe interpretations:

Tim Burton (Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands): A Midsummer Night's Dream - four inexcusably boring and annoying lovers find themselves thrust into a wonderful, yet frightening gothic world of ghostly fairies and benevolent monsters, which changes them forever.  Burton would also have a lot of fun with The Winter's Tale, I suspect.  The horrific, surreal begining contrasts with the awe and wonder of the second half in just such a way that seems to echo Burton's balance of terror and wonder.

Stephen Speilberg (ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc): The Tempest - No Shakespeare play better lends itself to astoundingly expensive special effects and heart-manipulating scores.

Kevin Smith (Dogma, Clerks, Chasing Amy): Two Noble Kinsmen - Why not?  I think Smith showed a lot of potential in Dogma for portraying playful, stupid young characters in an incredibly serious situation.  That sort of treatment would be priceless for a play like this, where two stupid, love-struck brothers end up trying to kill each other over a girl.

Cameron Crowe (Say Anything, Singles, Almost Famous): As You Like It - Say Anything, Singles, and even Jerry McGuire have proven that Crowe is a master of young romantic comedy.  He finds incredibly unique ways to establish his characters as anything but typical, and yet essentially familiar (which is a great way to see Rosalind, in particular) and has a masterful way of working music into his films, and music seems to be an incredibly important part of the Forest of Arden.

Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful): Taming of the Shrew - Only Benigni's charm and unusual sense of romance could make me see this play in a heart-warming, charming light.

Joel Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona): King Lear - Coen's odd manipulation of what the audience sees and hears always makes for that rich uncomfortable balance between funny and horrific, safe and mind-bogglingly insane.  It would make for an amazing portrayal of Lear, showing the sanity of his world dissolving, sometimes into rich humor, and sometimes into insanely moving tragedy.

Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry): Romeo and Juliet - In so many ways, Boys Don't Cry WAS R&J, and it captured that perfect mix of sweet young love and horrific tragedy in an incredibly honest way.  I'd like to see her give it a try.

[Desdemona]

Billy Bob Thornton: he'd direct Twelfth Night, but most importantly he'd play in it himself. He's so good at disguising himself --in every movie he looks completely different (see The Man Who Wasn't There, Armageddon, Monster's Ball, A Simple Plan, U Turn, Sling Blade, ...). Having the same actor play different characters would make the play even more confusing; I guess he'd be Orsino, Viola and Olivia at the same time (although I'm not sure he would look all that well as a woman...).

Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown): I think he'd like to do 'Hamlet', since everyone dies in it... of course Tarantino would have everyone get shot and the characters would be cursing all the time. He himself would maybe play Horatio, the good guy. Like in Pulp Fiction.

Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, A Life Less Ordinary): Macbeth of course! And naturally he wouldn't use the original shakespeare text, but a vulgar Scottish version of it.

Charlie Chaplin: any comedy; mime and slapstick, I guess.

Alfred Hitchcock: maybe Titus Andronicus? I don't know why, but I have this feeling that he would have liked to do that play... And since he liked to appear for a moment in his films, he would be the one cooking the meal for Saturnine and Tamora, with her children mixed in it.

David Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks): I think he would direct any tragedy or history, as long as it's a complicated one. And maybe also Twelfth Night, because of the many disguises; in that case at least it would be explicable if one character suddenly changed into another (see Lost Highway). And right at the point where the plot gets a little complicated, he'd start leaving parts out and changing the order of the scenes so that you go home and don't have a clue about what really happened.

[nolablue]

Desdemona said:

David Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks): I think he would direct any tragedy or history, as long as it's a complicated one. And maybe also Twelfth Night, because of the many disguises; in that case at least it would be explicable if one character suddenly changed into another (see Lost Highway). And right at the point where the plot gets a little complicated, he'd start leaving parts out and changing the order of the scenes so that you go home and don't have a clue about what really happened.

That just got me thinking, what would a David Lynch version of "Comedy of Errors" be like...

[shaxper]

Desdemona said:

Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown): I think he'd like to do 'Hamlet', since everyone dies in it... of course Tarantino would have everyone get shot and the characters would be cursing all the time. He himself would maybe play Horatio, the good guy. Like in Pulp Fiction.

Alfred Hitchcock: maybe Titus Andronicus? I don't know why, but I have this feeling that he would have liked to do that play... And since he liked to appear for a moment in his films, he would be the one cooking the meal for Saturnine and Tamora, with her children mixed in it.

Man, those two make perfect sense to me.  It's scary how well a Tarentino Hamlet would work, especially