'Excalibur' - Classic or Dud

Those hairstyles are historically inaccurate, crimpers weren't invented till the 1970s

a guy gets so horny he successfully gallops atop a mist and it's like the 50th wildest thing that happens in this movie

way funnier than monty python

without doubt the coolest Merlin in any King Arthur movie as well

without doubt the coolest Merlin in any King Arthur movie as well

It's the chrome skullcap that does it.

the Merlin actor (Nicol Williamson) was originally meant to do the seemingly cursed role that Ian McKellen eventually took in Apt Pupil. From what I can gather from imdb, first James Mason was approached for it but he shortly after died of a heart attack. Then Richard Burton was considered and died of a cerebral haemorrhage before he was approached. then Nicol Williamson (who was a boozer and smoking 80 a day at one point) is listed for the role on the abandoned Apt Pupil production!

I presume it was abandoned cos he died that year.

Might’ve mentioned this years ago upthread but Boorman’s commentary on the og dvd is great. Also, Mirren and Williamson didn’t like each other and that tension was there throughout the filming.

need to hear that commentary

boorman would be a good candidate for the "people who have figured out how to live" thread

also I assume Ned already knows about this but:

Then there are the ones that got away. The hits (such as Rocky and Alien) he turned down because the scripts left him cold. Or the passion projects he was forced to abandon. Boorman estimates that he spent more time on the films that didn’t get made than on those that did.

In the early 70s, for instance, he corresponded with JRR Tolkien about a screen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, a full 30 years before Peter Jackson brought it safely home. Boorman wanted to shoot the whole saga as a single three-hour picture. “I saw it as this big dystopian story,” he says. “And in this house, upstairs, we papered the walls with each scene. We’d look at it, stare at it and try to get some sense out of it. And I had all sorts of solutions. I was going to cast nine- or 10-year-old boys as the hobbits. Put them in makeup; beards and things. And then dub them with adult voices.”

Jesus, I say. It would have been a disaster.

“Yeah well,” he chuckles. “It might have been.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/13/john-boorman-you-think-the-holy-grail-is-lost-no-i-have-it-on-my-piano

so many hoofbeats