GRAND THEFT HAMLET — How Shakespeare’s Danish prince conquered the movies

GRAND THEFT HAMLET tells the radical tale of a band of artists who stage a virtual production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the online video game Grand Theft Auto. But it’s hardly the first time filmmakers have messed with Shakespeare’s great Dane.

Host Rico Gagliano learns the history of Hamlet on screen, with help from the movie’s cocreators, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, director Michael Almereyda (HAMLET 2000), and Rico’s own playwright father.

GRAND THEFT HAMLET is now streaming exclusively on MUBI worldwide.

To stream some of the films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.

MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.

Transcript

0:00

Heads up, this episode includes adult language, Shakespearean language, and spoilers. Hello, how are you checking? 1-2-3, 1-2-3. That's-- looking forward to this. Like nothing, and... And that is my awesome dad, Frank Gagliano. Back in the 60s he was an Off-Broadway playwright of some renown. He was also a drama professor for 40 years.

And his hero: 0:27

Shakespeare. So the other day in his office, I was very excited to show him this new movie on my laptop, even if his hearing's not what it used to be. Grand... what is this? Grand? What?- Hamlet.- <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i>. Grand Fest Hamlet.- No...- Oh, theft. Theft is what you're trying to say.<i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i>. Yes. What, what do you think that it might be? I don't know. Theft? Well, stealing from Hamlet or, or... It's based-- so here's the deal. It's kinda documentary about some theatre people trying to stage a production of Hamlet within an online video game called <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>. Oh, oh. And it takes place totally inside the game. Do you even know about online video games? No, I don't, that's the problem.<i>- Argh!- I don't want to die.</i> Except maybe a few minutes into the movie. That wasn't a problem for Dad.<i>A bit of mindless violence.</i> I mean, I actually had a super hard time explaining <i>Grand Theft Auto</i> as a game, since it mainly involves just roaming around a city, stealing cars and shooting people for no reason. I mean, it sort of takes you away from the... what you'd cheerfully call the crushing inevitability of your pointless life. It's fine. Yeah. But once Dad understood that the digital avatars he was watching were controlled by real people and that he was hearing their real life voices, he actually liked watching them perform scenes from one of his favourite plays.- <i>To be or not to be...</i>- Ah!<i>That is the question.</i> It's fascinating going back to it this way, though. It's so interesting how much Hamlet has played a part in everything. So many titles have been taken from that one. I hadn't realised you could almost-- every phrase could be a title for something.<i>Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.</i>'Sea of Troubles' is a good title. It really is an amazing play. Yeah, and one of the most amazing things about it is that you can stage it in an online game, and even a Shakespeare fan who's never seen an online game doesn't blink an eye. Because anyone who loves Hamlet knows filmmakers have always run amok with it. I'm Rico Gagliano. Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast. MUBI's the streaming service that champions great cinema. On this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema. I will soon be travelling the planet to bring you a globetrotting season eight. But while you prepare yourselves for that, here's a special episode inspired by <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i>, which is now playing exclusively on MUBI all over the world. I decided to dive into the wild history of Hamlet on screen. From silent era Hamlet... It's based on the idea that Hamlet actually was a woman.

To 00s hipster Hamlet: 3:30

in the most notable conspicuous scene, the 'to be or not to be' speech is played out in a video store. That, by the way, is Michael Almereyda. He directed the version back in 2000, starring Ethan Hawke and set on Wall Street. And I talked to him, Shakespeare scholars and the makers of <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i> to figure out why this is the most filmed Shakespeare play and the most messed with. So suit up in black and prepare for bloodshed. It's the story of Hamlet at the movies. I'm going to start in a dark age full of fear and misery. Five years ago...<i>Good evening.</i><i>The latest UK case of coronavirus is the first to be contracted</i><i>within the country rather than abroad. The man...</i> I think we were in an extraordinary time in history, weren't we? That's Penny Grylls. She co-directed <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i> along with this guy, her husband, Sam Crane.- 2020, that was.- Yeah, that was 2020. You know, the whole of the world was being afflicted by a pandemic, and everyone was locked inside. And Sam and I both have jobs which are very out in the world. I'm a documentary filmmaker and Sam is an actor mostly on the stage. And actually, he had just started rehearsing<i>Harry Potter and the Cursed Child</i> in the West End, and he'd been rehearsing for one week in March 2020. He came back one day in tears and said "We're not going back tomorrow." That's it. Theatres went dark. An emotional roller coaster ensued. You might remember UK society tried to reopen a couple times, only for Covid to roar back and shut everything down again. Among the few things Sam and Penny looked forward to was a daily walk to hang out with their kids. You know, we talk about what you've been doing, just chatting, and obviously most of what they've been doing is watching YouTube and playing video games, because that's what you can do. YouTube and video games. Sam and Penny's kids told them all about what was happening in both those worlds, like how some YouTubers posted videos of their gaming adventures using their avatars to act out little stories. Meanwhile, turns out Sam's acting buddy Mark Oosterveen was also way into games,

especially one: 5:43

<i>Grand Theft Auto Online</i>, also known as GTA. From their respective homes, Sam and Mark started meeting up virtually in the game. Having a lot of fun actually as a game to play, but also as a way to kind of hang out with a friend who I wasn't able to see in real life. So it was a really nice social thing to do as well. And after a while. I found a way of recording the feed of what we were doing. Just thinking, okay, we're going to do some kind of, I don't know what, some kind of funny little videos. There's some footage of this at the beginning of <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i>, like Sam and Mark standing on a virtual beach wishing they could go to a real one.<i>This make me quite, quite envious.</i> Or the two of them bouncing through a virtual desert in golf buggies, trying to outrun cops.<i>Whoa!</i><i>You caught some wicked air there.</i> But then one day...<i>Look at this.</i><i>Look at what?</i> They stumbled on a part of the game they'd never seen. It's like a massive kind of arena. It was a virtual outdoor amphitheatre. My God, this is so cool. And something in Sam's thespian mind clicked. I mean, it's only when you found the theatre, the Vinewood Bowl, that you were like, oh, this could be... I remember you saying, oh, this could be theatre we could do actual theatre here. Like Shakespeare, you know. Because it's funny, you see this very traditional looking theatre space inside this game and you think, okay, yeah, well why not? A lot of actors have, like, a little bit of Shakespeare up their sleeve from, like, auditions and stuff. So that's what I said to Mark. Just, you know, do like an audition speech, you know, here. And he did this bit from Macbeth, that pretty famous soliloquy.<i>Life's a walking shadow</i><i>a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage</i><i>and then is heard no more.</i><i>It is a tale told by an idiot</i><i>full of sound and fury,</i><i>signifying nothing.</i> And I was just immediately like, wow, that looks incredible. It's fascinating. I think we should do something. Except right after that, Sam, Penny and Mark decided not to do a Grand Theft Macbeth. Like a century of artists before him if they were going to do a radical take on Shakespeare... it had to be Hamlet. In 1900, Sarah Bernhardt was the first person to play Hamlet on film. So the very first Hamlet was a woman. Tony Howard is a professor, now retired from the UK's University of Warwick. His speciality is Shakespeare on film, starting with the silent era. For the producers and the marketers, it was a special, extraordinary thing that the new Hamlet in the new medium is not going to be the same sort of Hamlet that you saw in the 18th century. It's a woman. It's this extraordinary woman. So right from the start, Shakespeare on Film, and especially Hamlet on film was about breaking conventions, really doing extraordinary things. That's also 'cause the silent medium's limitations meant producers had to try extraordinary things. Especially with a super wordy play that is five acts long. Once you've decided that I'm going to put Hamlet into the cinema, given that you don't have sound, and given that the reels are very short, you've got to be adventurous, you've got to take risks. And it's a question of whether you feel guilty about that because you can't, you haven't got any words or you really relish it. And take Shakespeare as far as you can in your own direction. Early on, this apparently involved a lot of gender reversal because hot on the heels of Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet... An actress called Asta Nielsen produced her own film of Hamlet, in which she played Hamlet. And it's based on a book written by an American critic back in the 19th century who looked at Hamlet and said, well, actually, he's not a really very manly man. Why do you think that is? Well, obviously it's because he isn't a man at all. He's a woman. I mean, in its own way, that's kind of sexist, but... It sounds like a ludicrous idea. And it was. But Asta Nielsen is a fantastic actress and it's a great film. But really, pick almost any screen Hamlet and you'll find it takes massive liberties with the original. I'm pretty sure only one version is ever adapted the whole play as written. That would be Kenneth Branagh's version in 1996, clocking in at four hours. The rest tend to chop the story to ribbons, and even the versions we might think of as dusty standards today... were pretty punk rock in their time.<i>Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,</i><i>that youth and observation copied there.</i><i>And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain,</i><i>unmixed with baser matter.</i><i>Yes, by heaven!</i> That is Laurence Olivier as Hamlet and the version he directed himself in 1948. O villain! Villain. Well, by the time a young Tony Howard saw it in the late 60s, he says, it already felt kind of played out. I found Olivier very wooden, really kind of miscast because there wasn't any sensitivity. But he says in '48, that was Olivier's whole point. Unlike another Shakespearean star, he wanted to play a Hamlet with guts. He was seen as absolutely the new guy, and he was quite consciously rejecting the Hamlet that John Gielgud had been playing for ten years. Gielgud stressed the beauty of the language and the sensitivity of this young man, agonising with a responsibility for which he wasn't fitted, whereas Olivier played a determined figure.<i>The point envenomed too?</i><i>Then, venom, to thy work.</i> So it was, in a way Olivier's performance was a rebellion against... This was a rebellion, very much. Gielgud had actually said he didn't want to make a film in the 1930s, the great producer Alexander Korda wanted to film his Hamlet and he declined. He said he didn't think that film was a good medium for Shakespeare. Bad call. Olivier's Hamlet became a cultural event. American school kids got taken to see it on field trips. For people like my dad, who was a Brooklyn teenager at the time. It was a revelation, and he remembers it sparking a whole new kind of moviegoing. That's the first Shakespeare anything I ever saw. When that first came out, you know. As a matter of fact, I saw it many times, and then I got tickets for my parents who weren't into that stuff at all, you know? Yeah, they're all like Italian immigrants. And I had gotten the tickets in advance. It was one of those things that was starting then, it played at an art movie in Manhattan. It was one of those first times that the movie houses were serving coffee, and all that stuff was a whole big thing. Recent Hamlets haven't had quite so much impact, but that hasn't stopped movie studios from taking on the play again and again. Last time anyone did an official count back in 2013, there had been at least 50 major Hamlet movies. There have been more since. That's not counting made for TV versions. In fact, Sam Crane says this is one reason he picked Hamlet to stage inside <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>. GTA is this massive cultural phenomenon that everyone knows about. Even if you've never played it, you have some idea of it. It's probably the video game that is most known in that sense by people who don't play it. It's in the culture, you know, as something that people have some conception of. It might be a misconception, but they have some conception of it. And I think the play that is the equivalent of that is Hamlet that has that equivalent cultural weight. It's the most famous play. Which leads me to ask, how'd that happen? How did this of all Shakespeare plays become the breakout hit and a movie staple since basically the minute movies started being made? Like, I asked Sam and Penny to give us a refresher course on Hamlet's basic plot, and it starts out coherently enough. So Hamlet's father has died. Who's the king of Denmark. His uncle has taken the throne and married his mother, Gertrude. Then this ghost of Hamlet's father appears-- To Hamlet. The ghost tells him what's happened to him, that he was murdered by his uncle and says, you've got to revenge me. So far, so good. A kid wants to kill his stepfather as payback for killing his actual father. Could be a Tarantino movie. But that's just like act one. And then he kind of dithers around a lot, going, oh, I should really avenge my father and doesn't for ages. And does a lot of amazing speeches. Yeah, a lot of speeches. Between which Hamlet does a bunch of questionable, seemingly superfluous stuff. Like these actors come to town and then Hamlet has this idea. Okay, how I'm going to prove that my uncle's guilty, I'm going to get them to perform a play where they do something like the murder of my father, and then I'm going to watch him and see his reaction. But Hamlet already knows his uncle's guilty. His father's ghost told him. he's just avoiding doing anything about it. And then, he also then decides, I'm going to pretend to be mad. Why does he do that? Just because he does. Meanwhile, Hamlet causes the death of just about every character except the guy he's supposed to kill, including his girlfriend's dad. He accidentally kills Polonius, then he has to run--- Which happened a lot in Grand Theft Auto.- It's not accidental. Accidental murdering happens all the time in the game, so that was quite good. So that's another good reason why Hamlet. Because, you know, accidental killing is good for GTA. Anyway, my point is, on its face. Hamlet's the last script you'd think would get greenlit. It's like the opposite of a Hollywood script. Instead of a hero's journey, full of action it's about a guy who spends most of four hours avoiding the journey while talking to himself. It's really weird. It is really weird and like the fact that he has become like this archetypal protagonist. And he's not. He shouldn't be. He really-- And that's what's kind of what's so amazing about it that it has-- Because you just think if you were pitching that now, people would say, no, no, no, this guy is so boring. He never does anything, you know? Meanwhile, Shakespeare's got plenty of more obviously cinematic stuff. Henry V is basically a political thriller that ends like a big old war movie. Kenneth Branagh's hit version in 1989 put him on the map.<i>Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.</i><i>Or close the wall up with our English dead.</i> So I asked Tony Howard why we haven't seen 50 Henry Vs. Because it's a patriotic nonsense. Henry V: it's propaganda. It's goodies versus baddies. Now, Shakespeare wasn't above that stuff. Whereas in Hamlet, Howard says the Bard gave filmmakers a big, irresistible bank of dark, complicated themes that sadly makes sense in many settings. In many times. It's about a castle which is holding people under. It's about a regime which has achieved its power through murder and is maintaining control through repression and spying. It's a world which is against action, and if you're not careful it's going to eliminate you as a way of ensuring that you're kept silent and kept inactive. It's about tyranny. And wherever there's a sense of tyranny, a sense of injustice, people say that's a play about us. Which might explain why a Hamlet movie from 25 years ago reverberates especially hard today.

It's directed by this guy: 17:35

Michael Almereyda. I'm a filmmaker. Whose first exposure to Shakespeare, ironically, was more Henry V than Hamlet. I read Shakespeare early. I think it was through Marvel Comics, to be honest. So if you know Marvel Comics early on, they really were Shakespearean. They borrowed plots. Thor, the God of Thunder, was heavily borrowing language from Shakespeare. So my Shakespeare inauguration was pretty, let's just say it wasn't exactly highbrow. That could be why his Hamlet's as stripped down as a Marvel tale. A lean two hours. But it's set in the opposite of a fantasy world: modern day Wall Street<i>Now follows, that you know.</i><i>Young Fortinbras,</i><i>holding a weak supposal of our worth. He hath not failed to pester us.</i> Instead of a Danish castle, the action goes down in the offices of Denmark Corporation. Hamlet's murderous uncle Claudius is Denmark's CEO. He's played by Kyle MacLachlan as the kind of guy who flashes a winning smile at a press conference while ripping a picture of his business rival in half.<i>So much for him.</i> So the tyrannical world here is the world of corporate capitalism. Maybe not a stretch today, but pretty prophetic for a movie that was shot in in the go-go late 90s when the tech boom was minting millionaires all over the place. Well, maybe it was my own perception that that wasn't necessarily a glorious tidal wave of achievement. And there is something about the movie, when I think about it, that feels anticipating 9/11. There's something in the movie that has a sense of dread. The pride before the fall. And Almereyda's Hamlet kind of predicts another looming dystopia: the internet. In this movie, Ethan Hawke's Danish Prince is a film school kid, and the movie opens with him delivering a soliloquy into his pixelvision camera, like a prototype YouTuber.<i>What a piece of work is a man.</i><i>How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving.</i><i>How express and admirable.</i><i>And action. How like an angel in apprehension.</i><i>How like a god.</i> There are long scenes where Hamlet's crashed out in his apartment, staring at videos as if maybe a reason he can't bring himself to take action in the world is because he's too busy watching it unfold on screens. And then, of course...<i>To be here, not to be.</i><i>That is the question.</i> In the most notable conspicuous scene, the "to be or not to be" speech is played out in a video store. A Blockbuster Video, to be specific. He wanders past the shelves of VHS tapes like he's overwhelmed or disgusted.<i>...there's the rub.</i><i>For in that sleep of death what dreams may come</i><i>when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,</i><i>must give us pause.</i> It was easy to think about Hamlet in modern terms, confronting a world of images overtaking reality. That one of the big themes in Hamlet is about the nature of authenticity. What does it mean to be a real person? Claudius is a smiling villain. He's pretending to be a nice guy, and the world around Hamlet seems corrupt in all of its aspects, and that corruption is embodied by the glut of imagery that we're surrounded by advertising specifically. But everything turns into an ad, and everything turns into a kind of hollow version of itself. You want to know why Hamlet spends so much time retreating from the world? That might be your answer.<i>And thus conscience does make cowards of us all.</i> But good news, where Shakespeare doesn't necessarily show Hamlet a clear way out of this corrupt world, Almereyda kinda does. And Tony Howard says it's a path <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i> totally takes to heart.<i>We have the word to be.</i><i>But what I propose is the word to interbe.</i><i>Interbe.</i> See, there's this moment in Almereyda's movie where Hamlet takes a break from the 00's equivalent of doomscrolling and instead watches a video of a real life guy named Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and peace activist. Who says the issue is not to be or not to be. The issue is to interbe or not to interbe. Interbe meaning kind of like the question of whether to like be part of a community and...- Exactly.- Be with other people or not to, to isolate yourself. Exactly. Because it's not possible to be alone, to be by yourself. You need other people in order to be. You need other beings in order to be. And that's what I think <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i> proves is actually very, very true. Yeah, when I watched<i>Grand Theft Auto</i> with my dad. I expected it to be a lark. And it is. But what I didn't expect was for it to be a pretty moving look at people coming together. Like the world of <i>Grand Theft Auto</i> isn't built for people to stage Hamlet in it. At various points, the actor's avatars accidentally fall off a virtual blimp to their deaths, plunge into the virtual sea, and drown. At one point, other players show up and start trying to kill them mid-performance because you know that's what you're supposed to do in <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>. And then meanwhile, in the real world, the actors are dealing with the loneliness of Covid, one of them emotionally nosedives when his last surviving relative dies. Actually, there's great pain in it as they begin to feel it's impossible. Too many people come in and kill them. But despite that, people do come forward and help. And that sounds kind of a cliché in itself, but it's not. It's something true. And for me, that really demonstrates the correctness of that monk's comment and why you do need to have it when you're thinking about Hamlet.<i>Ladies and gentlemen, our revels now are ended.</i><i>Well done guys. We got there!</i> At the end, after the performance, the avatars celebrate by dancing around and shooting each other.<i>They shoot each other.</i> While their human controllers laugh their asses off. Even after 125 years of crazy Hamlet movies, it feels like a stand out moment in a super scary, violent world. These artists have still figured out a way to be. And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week. Once again, <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i> is showing exclusively on MUBI in the US, UK, Latin America and many other countries. Check the shownotes of this episode for details. And hey, speaking of breaking out of isolation next season, I'm going to take you around the planet for a look at how people love movies in five different cities on four different continents. That's coming this summer. Follow us so you don't miss it. Meanwhile, let's roll credits. This episode was hosted, written, and edited by me Rico Gagliano. Ciara McEniff is our producer with assist from Kat Kowalczyk. Mastering by Stephen Colon. Original music by Martin Austwick. The additional track Blueprint by Jahzzar came courtesy of Tribe of Noise. Thanks this week to Joe Dobkin and David Harper for taping our guests. This episode was executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. And finally, to see the best in cinema, head to mubi.com to start watching. Thanks for listening. Go watch some movies. Stay together.