Written by G.M. F.

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Schemer#1: If I blundered like you, my head would roll.
Schemer#2: I dare say from a greater height than mine.
Schemer#1: You would?
Schemer#2: Yes. From the height of vaulting ambition.
Schemer#1: You have none?
Schemer#2: No.
Schemer#1: (Pause) Do you fear me, Rochefort?
Schemer#2: Yes, eminence. I also...hate you.
Schemer#1: I love you, my son. Even when you fail.

comment #1

Mgmax says ...

A welcome, if a little late, remembrance. The Flashman books are great reading, and his novel Mr. American is very fine indeed.

Coincidentally, I just happened to watch-- or try to watch-- The Bed-Sitting Room, Richard Lester's disastrous mistake of following up Petulia with a potted Waiting for Godot by Spike Milligan full of very insular English humor. Its failure helped kill Lester's hopes of filming Flashman, but then led to the film(s) you quote and, later, Royal Flash.

comment #2

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Mgmax: Flashman?

comment #3

Mgmax says ...

Yes, what about Flashman? That's what G.M.F. is famous for (along with writing Octopussy). There's quite a brethren of Flashman readers out there (turned Patrick O'Brien readers in many cases).

Lester's original intention was to film the first book in the series, called Flashman, which is about the First Anglo-Afghan War in the 1840s. That was around 1969-- right when the notion of Lawrence of Arabia-like epic road show movies collapsed. (The failure of Tony Richardson's Charge of the Light Brigade-- an event which turns up in another Flashman book, by the way-- probably didn't help.) The Three Musketeers proved an easier sell for Lester and Fraser, and then after those films were successful, they were able to finance Royal Flash, the second Flashman book (with a more salable plot based on The Prisoner of Zenda). But I would have loved to have seen an Afghan war movie with the Flashman sardonic-antiheroic spirit.

comment #4

Griff says ...

The Three/Four Musketeers, which cry out for restoration/special edition DVDs. Jeff, whose arm can you twist?

comment #5

SergeantHudson says ...

Mgmax - The new year started off horribly when I read GMF's obit in the L.A. Times.
His final book "The Reavers" is due out in the USA soon and I will read it eagerly, but reports from the UK where it has already been published rate it well below Flashman - or even Pyrates - level. We can still pray that somewhere in a trunk on the Isle of Man is the unpublished manuscript of Flashman's oft hinted at adventures in the American Civil War...

comment #6

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Griff: Jeez...somebody finally got it. Yes, from Lester's The Three Musketeers. Charlton Heston's Cardinal Richelieu to Christopher Lee's Rochefort. I'm not as much of a fan of The Four Musketeers as the first one, but yes, they should be restored and given the whole blue-chip treatment on new DVDs with commentary, making-of docs...the whole shot.

comment #7

Mgmax says ...

"but then led to the film(s) you quote"

I was trying not to give it away completely in the first post...

comment #8

dcc77 says ...

I was going to guess White Lines because when I see GMF I think Grand Master Flash. Maybe that's just me, though.

Speaking of restored epics, I watched Lawrence of Arabia on my new LCD screen and the colors are sumptuous -- even if too many shots resemble postcards to a 2008 viewer. Forty-six years later the best subtextual discovery for me was the love affair between O'Toole and Sharif. I wonder if a restored Three Musketeers would be similarly homoerotic...My guess is yes but I haven't seen the film since I was seven.

comment #9

JoeGreenia says ...

GMF died just a month or two ago. The Flashman stuff is great. I understand there is an effort to do some BBC/PBS television movies based on it.

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