Shakespeare final:Mind doc rev
3/7/08
16:24
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Hollywood ere’s a thing: Shakespeare is partly responsible for the film career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger got his first part in an American film (Hercules in New York) because Joe Weider, his friend and promoter, convinced the film’s producers that Arnie had been a great Shakespearian actor in Austria, which, of course, he hadn’t. As it turns out, Weider’s claim didn’t end up being so far from the truth: in 1993, in the film The Last Action Hero, the world’s biggest fan of the world’s best action hero imagines Schwarzenegger as a Terminator-style Hamlet. The boy is watching Laurence Olivier in the 1948 Hamlet: Hamlet is about to kill Claudius – but hesitates, ponders the situation. ‘Don’t talk. Just do it!’ the boy mutters at the screen. Suddenly, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger has replaced Olivier:
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H AMLET : Hey Claudius? You killed my father … [He picks Claudius up] Big mistake! [He throws Claudius through a stained-glass window; Claudius’ body falls down a cliff]
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