Hope Renewed: Princess Alyss Embraces Her Destiny - Part 4
Back in 2007, we collaborated with noted Alyssian historian Agnes MacKenzie to publish Princess Alyss of Wonderland, a stunning collection of letters, journal writings, and art from Her Royal Imaginer, Princess Alyss Heart. These breathtaking documents chronicled the incredible childhood of Wonderland’s exiled heir apparent and future hero of The Looking Glass Wars.
Part One spanned Alyss’ flight from Wonderland and how she survived her first days on the rough streets of London. In Part Two, Alyss recounts the horrors of the notorious Charing Cross Orphanage and her disappointment at being adopted by the unimaginative Liddells. Part Three follows Alyss' pain and indignation when she is betrayed by her good friend, Lewis Carroll.
When we last saw Alyss, she was slipping into despair over the gross falsehoods contained in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” She thought Lewis Carroll believed her when she told him about Wonderland, Redd, and Hatter. But he had just twisted her words and now she had to admit that “Alice” had won.
Yet Alyss wouldn’t be down for long. A surprising message from home soon arrived and helped remind Alyss of who she was meant to be…
(*As always, I am indebted to the tireless and exhaustive research of the eminent Wonderland historian Agnes MacKenzie. Her dedication has helped keep the true story of Queen Alyss alive!)
Diary Entry - October 19, 1865 Since the BETRAYAL, I have been in the darkest of moods, unable to smile or even enjoy a delicious toffee twist. Wanting to be alone and as far away as possible from any mention of “Alice,” I decided to walk to a meadow where I often go to think about Wonderland when a ray of brilliant, almost crystal, sunshine cut across the meadow and all of the flowers lifted their faces skyward and began to sing. It was the most wondrous sound I had ever heard. Unbelievable, perhaps, to anyone from this world but for me. I was immediately aware of the presence of Wonderland.
Diary Entry - October 19, 1865 (continued) I now realize that flowers are the link to Wonderland and that they are the purest receivers of Imagination. Everything and everyone else I have encountered has been rather lacking in spirit, form, and IMAGINATION compared to what exists in Wonderland. In this world, animals are treated as if they have no mind of their own and respond by being inarticulate while in Wonderland so-called animals hold public office and play instruments. And the buildings here are so SQUARE and SOLID. Who could bear to live in a box all of their life? Boxes are for transporting items, not a place to live, laugh and dream! My mind continued to race as I recalled the creatures and streets and shops of Wonderland. I became so dizzy with color and space and Imagination that I immediately began painting and by teatime had covered every inch of my bedroom walls with art.
Diary Entry - October 27, 1865 I was in my room today when suddenly and very clearly I heard Bibwit Harte’s voice call out to me, “Princess! You must check your pockets!” What could it possibly mean? Thinking hard all day I went to each of my pinafores and coats and dutifully checked every pocket. Nothing but one stale peppermint twist which I immediately ate. Hmmm? It was very puzzling. And then I knew! My birthday gown from Wonderland! I went to where it was stored in the closet trunk and pulled it out. I checked every pocket. NOTHING!!!
But wait…
Letter from Princess Alyss to Royal Tutor Bibwit Harte Most Honorable and Learned Bibwit Harte,
Of course, it would be you, the knower of all of Wonderland's secrets past, present, and future, who would find a way to contact me. Unfortunately, I possess no such knowledge so I am forced to use the British Post. Dear, dear Bibwit Harte you have no idea how thrilled I was to hear your voice and receive your message. But it wasn’t until I remembered the secret pocket sewn inside the right wristband of my Birthday gown for keeping treasures that must never be lost that I made my discovery. I unbuttoned the tiny pocket and immediately felt the cool, clear roundness of the Imagination Sphere! I remembered how you would leave the sphere on my pillow whenever you wished to summon me for Imagination Training. Now that I have found the sphere I will begin training immediately. Expect updates.
Your most promising student,
HRI Alyss
Diary Entry - November 22, 1865 After training all day with the Imagination Sphere, I fell asleep and immediately began to dream of traveling with Bibwit over Wonderland in an enormous illuminated bubble. As we floated to all seven corners of the land, Bibwit told me the Secret of Finding Your Imagination. I have tried to record them exactly as he told me because I am certain this information is vital for everyone.
The Secrets of Finding Your Imagination
What you see behind you is as important as what you see in front.
Do cartwheels twice a day while humming your favorite song.
Laugh very loud if you cannot remember something.
Walk backward if you are in a hurry.
Never hurry to something unpleasant.
Eat something delicious before bed.
Look out the window immediately upon waking and say hello to the twin suns.
Bid the Thurmite moon goodnight before sleeping.
Remember to dream.
Dream to remember.
Tickle your imagination when stuck.
Agnes MacKenzie Dear reader, you see before you one of the most valuable documents ever given to our world. It is with the utmost sincerity that I encourage each and every one of you to practice the secrets revealed here and be prepared to experience an imagination that has no bounds.
Letter from Princess Alyss to Royal Tutor Bibwit Harte Most Honorable and Learned Bibwit Harte,
I have been faithfully training with the Imagination Sphere three times a day and am very happy to inform you that my Imagination is becoming very powerful. The skies are bluer and the sun brighter and people smile much more now. When I see with my Imagination I see things that are hidden and I am able to assist others with their searches. For instance, Lorina lost her favorite doll and by simply imagining where she could possibly have left it I was immediately able to find it. And most importantly, I breathe in the air and imagine that it fills me so much that I can float above the trees and see all the best puddles. I will continue training each day and hopefully will find the puddle that will return me to Wonderland in time for my next birthday. I have also learned many new ways of imagining that are useful here in this world. Painting and drawing are very much like imagining in Wonderland, only here I use a brush with colored paints or a piece of lead to make what I need to see or feel or remember. My imaginings must stay on the page here in this world but they feel no less real to me than what I once imagined in Wonderland.
Your forever grateful pupil,
HRI Alyss
Diary Entry - January 1, 1866 When mother ordered Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan to take me away from Wonderland I begged her to let me stay. Her last words to me were “No matter what happens, I will always be near you, sweetheart. On the other side of the looking glass. And never forget who you are, do you understand?” Since arriving in this world I have spent much of my life staring into looking glasses and hoping to see my mother but it wasn't until my powers of Imagination began to increase that I finally understood what she had meant. I must first IMAGINE that I see her. Trembling and nervous, I approached the looking glass and imagined my mother smiling back at me, within moments a message appeared!
Aces, Spades, Diamonds and Hearts
Lost their princess off the charts
Your Majesty's subjects await your return
So the light of imagination can continue to burn.
Someday, sweet daughter, you'll find your way home,
Hurtling out of this mundane realm,
Even though I cannot tell you how far,
A way can be found if you remember who you are,
Regal destiny is yours to win
Take Heart and always remember to….Imagine.
Agnes MacKenzie Fascinating! What Alyss describes is an advanced form of 'mirror scrying' or receiving messages from other realms by images that form in your mirror. Known to every culture, 'magic mirrors' were used throughout history to enable one to see the present, the past, and the future. But the mind boggles at the concept of having a personal message written in such a lyrical manner suddenly appear in a looking glass. Some may question the authenticity of the message, but if not Queen Genevieve, who else would have sent this message of hope to a long-lost daughter? I wonder what messages await me in my own looking glass should my Imagination ever grow strong enough to see them.
Diary Entry - Undated Today upon waking I realized that I no longer cared about Lewis Carroll's book or what others believe to be true and that all that matters is what I believe. As soon as this thought flashed through my mind I felt incredibly confident and decided to go puddle hunting. Towards late afternoon, I saw IT, shimmering in the center of Queen's Lane, a puddle where no puddle should be! I am certain that, this is the puddle that will take me home to Wonderland. I will always remember my mother’s words: “You will be the strongest Queen yet. Your Imagination will be the crowning achievement of the Land.”
Go back and read Parts One, Two, and Three of Alyss' Letters to discover how the Princess of Wonderland adjusted to her rude awakening on Earth.
All Things Alice: Interview with Dr. April James, Creator of The ALICE Way
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have wellness educator and opera singer Dr. April James join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor Dr. April James, it's so nice to have you on the show.
Dr. April James Thank you. It’s so nice to be on the show.
FB Your approach to Alice in Wonderland and wellness is really interesting. The way you use Alice and the five steps is very clever. I’m excited to get into that.
AJ Thank you. I use them as they come to me.
FB I want to start with a question about your introduction to Alice in Wonderland. Your website states it was Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which is very unusual that his film would be the introduction, given how long Alice has been in pop culture. Most of the time, people either read the book when their parents introduced them or they saw the Disney animated movie. Before you saw Tim Burton's movie, what did you know of Wonderland?
AJ I didn't know a whole lot. I might have seen the animated Disney film when I was a kid. I'm sure it was on television and it might have flitted by my consciousness. But I never read the books as a kid. The only bit of Lewis Carroll I really knew before seeing the Tim Burton film was the poem “Jabberwocky.” I took a Victorian literature class in undergrad, at Queens College, and we had to read that for an assignment. I loved that poem because I was into medieval stuff. I had taken Arthurian literature classes, and I was really big on knights in shining armor. The mock Old English style in which “Jabberwocky” is written really appealed to me and I just loved that. But I didn't really know anything else about Lewis Carroll or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland until after that Tim Burton film.
FB Tell me about the experience of seeing the Tim Burton movie and relating that to “Jabberwocky” and its author. What was your reaction to the movie and where did you go from there?
AJ I almost didn't see the film. I was at a really difficult point in my life. I returned to New York after getting my doctorate up at Harvard. I moved back in with my mother because that's what you do when you can't afford to do anything in New York. I came to call it a “Decade of Awfulness.” I was trying to build an opera career, some kind of creative career, but my mother kept having health issues and we kept having family friction because I have an older brother who was creating havoc at a distance with her. By the time March 2010 came around, I was borderline depressed and nothing was really working. But I was a member of the Actors Work Program, which is part of the entertainment industry unions, and I'd met someone who was a member of SAG. She had passes to the then newly opened Alice in Wonderland and she invited me. I thought, “Well, I don't really know anything about Lewis Carroll. I don't really care about Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.” I hemmed and hawed but eventually, I decided to go. I’d not seen a 3D film and I figured it'd be worth the price of admission.
It just totally blew me away. The moment the music came up and the lights came up on the screen, I felt something reawaken in me. I'm a singer and a classical musician and the music caught my ear. There was some mystery and some magic and wonder and innocence in there. Then the visuals started to reach me and as Alice was going through her story, I kept finding resonances with my own life. Adults telling you what to do, “We think you should do this. Everyone should do that.” “What, I don't get an opinion here?” Then what really got me was the Mad Tea Party scene where Alice comes out of this clearing and there's a table with the Dormouse and the March Hare. Hatter’s at the end of the table asleep in his chair. As he awakens, he sees Alice coming out of the clearing and his face fills with delight. The moment his face filled the screen, I heard, inside my head, this British-accented voice go, “That's me.” I asked, “Me who?” No response. I just went back to watching the film and by the end, I came out of that theater and I felt this buzzing inside of me. Something reawakened in me. That's when I started being obsessed with Hatter, Lewis Carroll, and all things Alice.
FB Had other films evoked such a strong reaction in you previously?
AJ Not as strong as that. I had seen films that I just loved. When I was a teenager, I was really into the Beatles and I saw A Hard Day's Night. I'd sing the songs at the top of my lungs. Something like that.
FB Alice in Wonderland resonated with you to the point where you have a career built around wellness. You said you went back and started thinking about the Mad Hatter and all things Alice and Lewis Carroll. Where did the journey take you after the movie? Did you read the book? Did you see a documentary? What happened?
AJ I read all the books. I read both of the Alice books and “Hunting of the Snark” and Sylvie and Bruno. I read biography after biography about Lewis Carroll and the more I learned about him, the more I fell in love with him. Especially reading the collections of his letters, I felt like I was encountering a long-lost uncle. That's how I felt and still feel about Lewis Caroll. He gets me. He gets children. He gets people. If we're in a foul mood, he knows how to pull us out of it.
FB There are two camps when interpreting Lewis Carroll's books. There's the interpretation that it’s whimsical, very nonsensical, and magical. I suspect you subscribe to that interpretation because of the work you do. However, on the other side of it, people really look at Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as dark and twisted. The terror of being out of control in your body, growing and shrinking, and things like that. Were you able to see both sides of it reading the text? Did you have a really strong first impression of where Lewis Carroll was coming from?
AJ My impression has always been that he's coming from the whimsical, nonsensical side. The good side, the magical side of everything. He was very interested in imagination and he was very spiritual and connected to God. This love of life permeates his best works. Joy and love are positive emotions that connect us to the good that's in the universe. The good that lies at the heart of all of us.
FB I agree with you. The first word you used was imagination and that's what struck me about the text. As an adult, writing for adults and for kids, I always thought it was about keeping that childhood wonder and imagination going and how we lose it as an adult. In a lot of ways, Lewis Carroll was a very rigid man who taught mathematics, yet he was flipping to the other side with his writing. One part of your wellness program is about getting back to that youthful, imaginative joy that you always lived as a kid.
AJ Exactly. One of the sayings I like is, “It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
FB Excellent. I love that.
AJ Some people didn't necessarily have the happiest childhood, right? I had a good childhood but I had a rather responsible kind of childhood, too. “You're going to go to school and you're going to learn, and you're going to do this and this and this.” College was never a question. I was going to college. But I always wanted people to play with. My brother is way older than I am so he wasn’t around when I was a kid and there weren't any other kids my age in my neighborhood. So I really had to use my imagination a lot growing up. Creating worlds of wonder for myself. As we get older, for some reason, society tells us not to be playful, or we get this idea that can't be playful and do good work, which is absolutely not the case. I had to relearn that.
FB Kudos to your parents because education is really important. You went to Harvard, which is exceptional as well. Tell me what your household was like in terms of the educational part of it versus the playful part of it. You said that when you were on your own, you were imaginative. Was there a crossover, or did you carve that out yourself and your parents were by the book?
AJ My parents were both teachers. My mother was a special education teacher, and my father was an attendance teacher, which is like a truant officer, but you work for the Board of Education. So they were both really responsible and interested in learning. My mother comes from a family of teachers. Her mother was a teacher and her sisters were also teachers or librarians. It's a very educated family. I was always expected to go to school and do well, and it wasn't hard for me to do that. I liked learning. I loved reading. As a kid, I was in the library all the time, pulling out whatever interested me. I remember reading The Chronicles of Narnia series when I was a child.
Harvard was actually the first time I started to believe in myself and my ability to do anything. I'm a singer by inclination more than training. I've always loved music. I had these two tracks going in my life. There was the liberal arts education track, but I loved music, and I wanted to study music. However, I was discouraged from doing music as a major during my first bachelor's degree at Queen's College. I understood that, so I studied communications, and I went into TV and publishing. I hated it. I didn't like the field. After a couple of years of job to job to job, I was laid off right before Thanksgiving, and I said, “You know what? I'm going to go and study what I wanted to study before. I'm going to go back to Queens College and study music, and we'll see how it works out. That’s how I ended up at Harvard.”
FB Good for you.
Do you think that was a smart thing for your mom to say to you, versus saying, “Follow your passion”? I find that to be really difficult. I have two teenage kids, one who just went off to college and knows what he wants to do. He doesn't want to be in entertainment, he wants to be more in business. But my daughter, she's going all over the place.
My father was a real entrepreneur, a risk taker, and he was like, “Yes, go do it.” I started off on the ski team and it seemed like a ridiculous idea that I would ever make money or that I would be good at it. And I would have to not go to college, where I was going to go to college part-time, and my mom said, “Absolutely not.” My dad, however, said, “Absolutely do it.” I wonder how you feel about your mom’s advice and, if you were giving that advice to yourself, what would you say?
AJ It’s taken me a long time to get over my mother's advice. I realize that she was right in a way and she was wrong in a way. My father, even though he was an attendance teacher when I was growing up, was laid off from the city in the 70s. He was also an entrepreneur and he started his own driving school after a time. So I have both this toeing-the-line thing and the entrepreneurial thing going. Now, I understand and I actually appreciate my mother's take on the arts career-wise. I wish she'd been a little more nuanced in what she had said.
After I got out of Harvard, I tried to have an arts career. My research was on women composers and operas composed by women. I started my own opera company and it was so difficult. Even if my mother had been in perfect health and we'd had perfect stuff going on in the family situation, it still would’ve been so difficult. I just said, “You know, what? I don't want to be a full-time artist.” I got to that point.
But I understand what my mother was saying. What she was saying was it's very difficult to make it in the arts. You can, but it's not as clear a path as getting a nine-to-five job somewhere or getting a teaching degree and then teaching. I understand where she was coming from.
FB It’s not just talent. Talent can only get you so far. If you’re an actor, you have to be so driven that what you're saying to yourself is, “I don't care if I do community theater, I am going to act. I am not thinking about being a movie star. I just need to be on the stage. It's how I live and breathe.” If you don't look at it that way, then you're not going to make it. You're doing it because you can't do anything else.
AJ That's exactly it. I love singing. I sing all the time. I wake up in the morning, and I'm singing. During the day, I'm singing. I'm singing Bach. I'm singing Handel. I’m singing Mozart. All this gorgeous music that I love. I don't have to be out in front of people to do it. I came to that realization. I do need to be with other people. There's a pianist I'm working with now. I sing in choirs. I've done some recordings, but I don't have to be in an operatic role on stage.
FB You found your way in terms of combining a lot of different interests. You have your website and your wellness program, the ALICE Way, which is how I originally found you. I love the way you describe helping adults rediscover their natural joy and playfulness so they can better navigate life's ups and downs. Alice in Wonderland is so deeply rooted in culture and brings lots of joy and amusement to people, and you've attached these five steps. Could you tell us the five steps, how you came to them, and why it's been effective for people?
AJ Alice is not just the name of the heroine of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. For me, she also gives her name to the acronym for the five steps. They’re equations. “A” equals “Awe plus Authenticity.” “L” is “Love plus Levity.” “I” is “Inspiration plus Impossibility.” “C” is “Courage plus Clarity.” “E” is “Exercise plus Expressivity.”
FB Beautiful. There's a double meaning for everything. Then you sign up for your program and you work your way through the acronym. People want awe in their life and they want to be authentic. To be authentic, you have to know yourself. And to know yourself is one of the themes of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Do you tie the story and Alice as the protagonist into the exercises?
AJ That's exactly what I do. I have an online video course and I also do this in person. I'll talk about the video course as that's most accessible to people. I divide it up into chapters plus an intro and a conclusion. In the chapter on “A” for “Awe and Authenticity,” for example, I do a video where I introduce the topic by reading something from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that relates to awe. Then I tell a story from my life that connects to the same concept of awe. Then there's an exercise, a separate video, on how you can experience awe in your life. Most of the videos are under 10 minutes. I also have a 42-page playbook to accompany the course so people can do written exercises along with each chapter of the ALICE Way.
FB Is there any crossover between the text that you're referencing and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland? Was there anything in his movie that you carried over for your program because you liked it? Or do you stick with the original, Lewis Carroll text?
AJ I keep with the original. The original is the reason why the Tim Burton film is so effective. So let's reference the original work. I really want to encourage people to engage with Lewis Carroll and engage with his work. The ALICE Way is not just about me. I want adults to rediscover joy and I want to have other people to play with. But it's also about appreciating this man who was just such an incredibly loving soul and left us such engaging, enriching, and magical works that can still affect us.
FB That are still important 150-plus years later.
AJ It’s amazing. How many times in a week do you hear the phrase “down the rabbit hole”?
FB I bet you have heard it a lot more since you saw the movie. Before, you probably didn't even know it was connected to Alice in Wonderland.
AJ Exactly. I don't think I ever knew it was connected.
FB You use the word joy. Joy is having a moment in society and culture right now. Why do you think that is?
AJ Joy is one of the most underrated emotional states.
FB It's true. It's one of those things you forget as an adult. Speaking for myself, I'm usually waiting for some something really outstanding to happen, like having this interview, which will create great joy for me. As opposed to finding joy in the little things when you're just going about your day, like a really amazing cup of coffee. I think we should be enhancing joy in life. There's imagination and there's wonder and there's awe, and a lot of the things you talked about, but living with joy is a nice state if you can get to it.
AJ Sometimes people think it's unapproachable or unattainable, but it's not it. I maintain that joy is our natural state. That's something Charles Dodgson understood. His cultivation of these child friendships and his love of telling stories grows out of a recognition that children come in joyful. We come in joyful. Dodgson was the eldest male child in a family of 11, so he got to experience that with his brothers and sisters. He was like the family entertainer. He would make up things for his siblings. I think that's where his love of the theater came from. He was able to access imagination and joy and saw other people who could also do that regularly.
There's something divine about joy and I think Charles Dodgson understood that joy and love come from the Divine Well. That's where we come from. That's the source we go back to. So let's keep that in our lives because that is the actual fuel for our lives. Good energy is the real fuel that keeps us healthy and that's why we need to cultivate these good emotions, speak good words, take in good thoughts, and do good deeds. That's what keeps us healthy as individuals and as a society.
FB You certainly seem to be living the ALICE Way. At the same time as Alice and Lewis Carroll, there's a secondary character that has somehow found her way into you, is that correct?
AJ Madison Hatta, Sonneteer.
FB Can you tell us a little bit about her and her birth?
AJ This is what I mentioned earlier, the voice that came to me during the Tim Burton film. It was about a year later and I was obsessed with finding images from the film to use as wallpaper on my Mac. I came across one that had a picture of the Hatter and a poem on the side, which was written in a Hatter-ish voice. So I'm looking at it and then that British-accented voice piped up inside my head again and said, “I could do better. It's not even a proper form. It needs to be a sonnet.” I hadn't written one of those since I had a Creative Writing class at Queens College years previous. But I had been working with angelic energies a couple of years previous to that so I recognized this as a directive from a spirit.
So I got out pieces of paper and a pen and I started writing. Then I started laughing because 15 minutes later, we had:
"If I were not mad, what on Earth would I be?
It is an unlikely prospect I'm sure you'll agree.
Those voices that whisper when no one is near
Their meaning is all too entirely clear.
I love out-of-turn.
I sing in the rain.
To me, this is custom,
To others, insane.
My past is a mystery shrouded in dreams concealed by blue starlight and moonlit by streams. My present meanders up on common roads.
And as for my future, who knows what it holds?
My friends, they're a mixture of whimsy and wise who come round the bend to drink tea in disguise.
In a world where one plus one equals three,
If I were not mad, who would I be?"
Came right out of my pen. That's how I wrote it. Then the name Madison Hatta, Sonneteer came right out of the pen afterwards.
FB That was really brilliant. I can see the connection with Lewis Carroll and how strong it is in terms of the brilliance of that poem and how relatable it is to his work and to your own creativity. Thank you so much for sharing that. Have you published that somewhere or where would somebody find that?
AJ That is in a little chapbook called Madison Hatta’s Book of Unreasonable Rhymes. That was published by Moonstone Press in Philadelphia back in 2015. They may still have some copies available. The ALICE Way is a course but I also plan to have it as my second book. I published my opening essay from that book, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” on the Gulf Coast Writers Association website. It won third place in the Non-Fiction category of their 2024 Writing Contest.
FB Amazing. How cool.
Your first book was The Tenth Muse. Tell us about your first writing experience and what the book is about.
Maria Antonio was a noblewoman who lived in the middle of the 18th century. She was well known at the time because she was a composer, poet, and singer, as well as a patron of the arts who wanted to turn the German Electorate of Saxony into the fine arts capital of Europe. She composed two operas. She wrote the music and the lyrics, and she sang as the lead. This is extraordinary for anyone of any time to do, but particularly at that time and for her to be a Princess. People wrote poems to celebrate her life. They named their kids after her. In fact, one of the people named after her was the Queen of France, who everyone has probably heard of, her cousin, Marie Antoinette.
FB Wow, that sounds like it could make a good movie. She seems like such a fascinating character and so ahead of her time.
Is there anything else you would like to talk about regarding your ALICE Way program? I really hope people will check it out. It's been so much fun talking to you about Alice in Wonderland. I really appreciate your taking the Mad Hatter and turning him into Madison Hatta. I named my reimagining of the Mad Hatter, Hatter Madigan. We both need that “mad” somewhere in the name. Yours was divine. She came to you. I think mine came up from below.
AJ I call Madison the guardian angel of my sense of humor. She came at a time when I was starting to lose my sense of humor. I think we all need that reminder.
FB Thank you for offering this wellness program and for the incredible amount of optimism you shared. Most importantly, I'd like to end on the joy that you communicated and the joy it's been having you on the show. We wish you the best of luck and thank you for taking the time to chat with us.
AJ Thank you for having me on your show, Frank. It's been wonderful chatting with you.
Of all the articles I have written for Frank, I have always had the most fun writing about the Mad Hatter and his many different versions. From the original Hatter to the Disney cartoon to Frank’s badass Hatter Madigan, the adaptations of Hatter always seem to be a crowd favorite. So much in fact that October 6 is actually National Mad Hatter Day. Mad Hatter Day is a bit of a free-for-all for those who like to be silly. It’s quite easy to celebrate, you can wear a silly hat, watch a silly movie, throw a tea party, eat some mercury, or just be authentically silly. When I was let out of Franks's basement to write this blog, I was told it should be “…pretty light and leave a lot of room for comedy.” Which I have interpreted as “Be as weird as you want Jared.” To which I say, “Your funeral.” So, I have gathered a collection of my top five Maddest Mad Hatter Moments for you to enjoy.
5. Tea down the neck, through the shirt, and out the sleeve - Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.
Starting off this list is arguably the most recognizable version of the Mad Hatter. Voiced by Ed Wynn, the 1951 Disney Mad Hatter was probably most people's first introduction to the wild character. While he has many funny and whimsical moments in the movie, I chose this slick maneuver as the first “maddest” moment. You really would have to be suffering from mercury poisoning to pour tea down the collar of your shirt and out your sleeve and not be screaming from the beverage singeing your skin. I know it’s a cartoon, but it’s still mad.
4. Martin Short’s Mad Hatter Haunting My Dreams - Alice in Wonderland TV Movie
I had to see it and now so do you! Martin Short is awesome, the comedian is beloved by many. But he has a dark secret. You see when he isn’t solving crimes with Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, Martin Short is busy haunting my dreams. Specifically, his performance as the Mad Hatter in the 1980s nightmare fuel Alice in Wonderland TV movie. First is his laugh, a high pitch truly crazy laugh that sends a chill down my spine. On top of that is the fact that his head is MASSIVE. I know this was an attempt to make him look more like the cartoon but instead, it made him look like a terrifying Steve Madden shoes ad. I have included the full tea party scene so you can have nightmares as well.
3. The Mad Hatter’s Pin Cushion - Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland
Some would argue that Tim Burton’s adaptation of the Mad Hatter made the manic milliner even more famous than before. A part of this, of course, can be attributed to the fantastic performance of Johnny Depp, who brought his signature flare into the role. This specific performance is arguably the most cosplayed version of the Mad Hatter due to the costume, hair, and makeup being exceptionally striking. Also probably because Depp is a sex symbol and if you're going to cosplay, might as well be cosplaying that. Don’t believe me? Well, the video I found was titled “Tarrant Hightopp being sexy af for 5 1/2 minutes straight” Don’t get me wrong, Johnny Depp is a good-looking guy but…I mean…to each their own I guess. I need a shower.
Depp’s Hatter has many great moments but the maddest moment of all is when he is fighting the Knave of Hearts. During the sword fight, the Mad Hatter uses a pin from his pincushion to poke the eye of the Knave gaining the upper hand in the fight. This is truly mad because I never expected to see something so violent from the Hatter. But hey, all is fair in love and war.
2. Human Chess - Batman: The Animated Series, “As Mad as a Hatter”
The Mad Hatter isn’t just limited to the collection of Alice movies. He was also a less popular Batman villain who made his first appearance in the 1950s comics. The version of the Mad Hatter portrayed in the comics and cartoons has nothing to do with Alice and I’ll prove it to you. First, his hats are mind-control devices. Second, he’s in love with a woman named Alice. Finally, in one of the comics, he had a monkey called Carroll Lewis. Completely different. In Batman: The Animated Series, there is a scene where the Mad Hatter has placed mind control devices on people and Batman has to figure out how to fight through them while on a giant chess board. The queen on the chessboard even says, “Off with his head.”
1. Mad Hatter Bot - Futurama, Insane in the Mainframe
This is only a quick moment but as a massive Futurama fan, I had to mention it. In this episode, an error happens in Fry’s sentencing for a crime and he is sentenced to the Hal Institute for Criminally Insane Robots. While in a group session, the Mad Hatter Bot, whose hat tag reads 5/3 instead of 10/6 (probably because a robot would do the math on the fraction) periodically makes the other robots change places, causing the therapy robot to end up as a patient, thus receiving “treatment” in the form of a hammer. Is this one of his maddest moments? Well, he is in an insane asylum.
I have more moments and decided in the spirit of Mad Hatter Day, traditional listicle numbering be damned.
This time, the Hatter is portrayed by Steve Buscemi, who, side note, would make an amazing Mad Hatter outside of a skit. In the sketch, Alice, the March Hare, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter have a mad-off to show Alice who is the most “mad.” It starts off quite whimsical but when it gets to the Mad Hatter, he seems to actually be insane, claiming to wash his hands over one hundred times a day to wash off the smell of his mother, making toy cars out of his poo, and eventually flipping the table and being placed in a straight jacket. He was both the winner and the loser of the contest.
-1. Special Guest Bonus Moment
*AIRHORNS* That’s right, before wrapping up this list, I wanted to bring in the author of The Looking Glass Wars. You know his name because it’s humbly the name of this website. He’s the man who kindly allows me to see the light of day once a month. My boss, Frank Beddor.
So, Frank, I have purposely left out any moments of your version of the Mad Hatter, Hatter Madigan because I wanted to hear what was your favorite mad moment that you came up with. I didn’t leave it out to make you mad. I definitely don’t want that. The Disappointment Box is so small and dark. But yes, what is your favorite Hatter Madigan moment?
SPACE FOR FRANK’S ANSWER
*Response to Franks's answer has been pre-written and will not be edited as the author of the blog kept calling it “censorship”:
Hahaha, I couldn’t agree more. Or if the answer requires it, Hahaha, I disagree completely.
Well, there you have it, my list of the Mad Hatter's Maddest Moments. Before I reach the finish and am forced back into Franks's basement until another blog is needed, I wanted to mention one more quick, “mad” Mad Hatter moment I thought needed to be mentioned.
-2. Frank Beddor vs. Tim Burton: The Trial of the Century
I guess it's not so much a moment but a snippet from a trailer. In the trailer for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, we see the Mad Hatter throwing his hat. This is early similar to Frank Beddor’s very own Hatter Madigan, who famously uses his hat as a weapon. While it is legally distinct, the Hatter throwing his hat was first conceptualized by Frank Beddor. What, or should I say, who, is so mad about this? Well, Frank Beddor of course. IP theft is no joke and as Frank Beddor’s official lawyer-
(The rest of this sentence has been deleted. It must be stated that Jared Hoffman is not, has not, and never will be, the legal council of Frank Beddor or those associated with Frank Beddor. Frank Beddor loves Tim Burton’s adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” and does not believe there has been any theft of IP. Additionally, there is no Disappointment Box and Jared Hoffman can leave the basement any time he likes, he just chooses to stay there.)
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
The Cast of "Wicked" the Movie Talks Inspiration and Approach - Part 2
Wickeddebuted at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews, with John Cooper calling it an “exhilarating hybrid that continuously surprises and amuses” in the festival’s program. The thriller is a twisted tale of murder and incest with noir sensibilities and biting dark wit. The driving force behind the film is its stellar cast, who deliver complex, compelling, and sometimes shocking performances.
Directed by Michael Steinberg and produced by Frank Beddor, Wicked served as the breakthrough for Julia Stiles. The then-16-year-old is electric as Ellie Christianson, a troubled teen who despises her mother and has an unhealthy obsession with her father. Stiles won Best Actress at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and her performance as Ellie led to her being cast in the teen classic 10 Things I Hate About You.
William R. Moses delivers a nuanced performance as Ellie’s father-turned-lover, Ben, while Chelsea Field is an excellent counterpoint as his doomed wife, Karen. Vanessa Zima exhibits uncommon depth for a child actor as Inger. Newcomer Louise Myrback is captivating as the Christianson’s au pair, Lena. Grammy-winner Linda Hart brings humor and soul as nosy neighbor Mrs. Potter, while screen veteran Michael Parks seems to step out of the ‘40s as the Bogart-esque Detective Boland. Melrose Place baddie Patrick Muldoon is a serial scene-stealer as quirky next-door neighbor Lawson Smith.
We recently digitized a treasure trove of onset interviews in which the cast discusses everything from their characters’ psyches to how they think audiences will respond to the incendiary subject matter.
This is Part 2 of a three-part series that will be a fascinating look at an actor’s process, how they handled the challenging material and the fulfilling experience of working on Wicked. Read Part 2 here.
*Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Working with the Cast Everyone is just really great. I'm enjoying this so much that I feel guilty. It makes me sad to think about it being over. Billy (William R. Moses) is really nice. I thought maybe I’d feel weird doing some of the scenes with him, but he's just made it so easy for me. I think he might be more nervous sometimes.
Patrick is great. I’m not one to get very starstruck, but he's really cute. When he came to the set to meet Michael and Frank, Vanessa and I were checking him out a little. But he’s really funny. He cracks me up.
Vanessa is a 35-year-old in a nine-year-old’s body. She's really sweet and has some head on her shoulders.
Chelsea Field is perfect for Karen and a fantastic actress. She's really good and very nice to work with.
Linda Hart is hilarious and a good singer.
Working with Director Michael Steinberg Saying he's a genius is an understatement. He's so nice and so brilliant. He really looks out for my interest and always asks me for input. I really appreciate that. I’d love to work with him again, and I'm not saying that to kiss ass.
Getting Involved in Acting I had always wanted to be an actress. When I was five years old, my parents would let me stay up and watch The Honeymooners on Channel 11. I would stand in front of the TV and mimic whatever Alice Kramden did. I thought she was so cool, and she always stood up to Ralph. There was one time I was watching an episode, and the stage actually came apart in the corner, and you saw people trying to put it back together. I thought, “Wow, that's fake. That's so cool.” And I wanted to do that.
I did a lot of theater with a company called Ridge Theater in New York. It's very avant-garde, unique, and cool. They did stuff at La MaMa. It was a great learning experience.
New York versus Los Angeles I could get used to it, but Los Angeles is so different. It’s very segregated, and a freeway separates everything. New York has so much culture, and I'm sure L.A. does, too. I just haven't had any time to go look around.
You always get into really interesting conversations with New Yorkers on the street and in the delis. I have always had really interesting philosophical conversations with people in Washington Square Park.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked It will be hard to ignore it, and it'll appeal to them.
Working with the Cast Julia Stiles is 15 going on 45. She's the most adult teenager I've ever met in my life. She's an incredible human being, incredibly brilliant, incredibly smart, and an incredibly wonderful actress. It’s a strange dichotomy working with somebody who, on a creative and professional level, you treat exactly as your equal, and on another level, she is 15. We sometimes forget because she's so mature and incredibly bright. She has an insight into life that goes well beyond how old she is. She's an amazing young actress and will be a huge star.
Chelsea Field plays Ben’s adversarial wife, Karen. She is amazing. I've known Chelsea for a while. She's a very solid actress, a very strong person, and very certain of herself.
Vanessa Zima plays my younger daughter, Inger. Vanessa is nine years old and scary good. She's a lot of fun as an actress. It’s fun to have this fresh face on set who’s always happy to be there. I tease her constantly, as I do with Julia, too. My pet project is to make their lives miserable while I'm here on the set.
Michael Parks plays Detective Boland. Michael's amazing. It's an education every time I've done scenes with him. It's been truly exciting in the most dynamic way. Working with Michael requires enormous concentration. He’s very free as an actor, very innovative, and very improvisational. He keeps you on your toes. Every millisecond is different and alive. He has one of the most exciting film techniques I've ever seen.
Linda Hart plays the neighbor, Mrs. Potter. Linda is a joy. She’s a tremendous talent and very funny.
Patrick Muldoon and I had a couple of scenes together, and the characters don't like each other very much, so it was interesting working with that kind of dynamic. It was fascinating to work with him, and very creative. The scenes we did were, by nature, disjointed, so it was one of those experiences where you go, “Whoa, that was weird.” But he's great, and young ladies seem to find him quite attractive.
Ben and Ellie’s Relationship Ben feels tremendously close to Ellie. They have a very special relationship. Ben has a great need to be loved by women in general, a particular need to be loved by his daughter, and to be thought of as the hero. His need to be seen as the hero and to be loved creates dysfunction in that relationship.
Ben and Inger’s Relationship Inger is the second in line and less affected by the dissolution of Karen and Ben's marriage. She's left more alone, which is probably healthier. But she becomes entwined in the family's dysfunction and then entwined in the dysfunction between Ben and Ellie, which is an offshoot of what happened with Karen.
As a Suspect in Karen’s Murder There are reasons to believe Ben might be happier without Karen around. The audience will think because of Ben’s great love for his children and Karen’s willingness to take them away, he might be willing to do something dire. He's a man who lives under tremendous pressure and can be quite erratic at times.
Playing Ben Every actor is different, but with Ben, it was from the inside out, creating the belief in the circumstances that would generate this amount of guilt in a human being. As an actor, he's interesting to play because he has a great deal of emotionality. He's so riddled with guilt, anxiety, and rage. He presented an image of himself; the image was what he believed he was, but who he was in the interior spaces was different. In terms of playing a character within the structure of a murder mystery, you play the character from his emotional reality. Then, through the structure of the script, he's so guilt-ridden about the dissolution of his marriage and because his wife died. He probably didn't really want her to live. He's never really been a father before, although he thinks he's been a great father, but he never really has.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked I don’t know. When I first met with Michael and Frank Beddor, the producer, I said, “I understand there are elements of comedy in here. But I'm a father myself, and I don't quite understand how this becomes what it becomes.” I don't want to give too much away, but the process of creating and living in that reality has been the most mind-bending experience I've ever had as an actor. For those people who are roller coaster aficionados, this will push them to at least a 96% of maximum, I'm sure.
On Her Character Lena is Swedish. She comes to America to study art and needs extra cash, and her friend, Mrs. Potter, is friends with the Christiansons. So, she ends up working for Ben and Karen and falls in love with Ben. He's established, has money, is good-looking, and is funny. It’s easy for her to fall for him. Lena is a powerful person, and she knows what she wants. She wants to stay in the U.S. so, unconsciously, the green card is a reason why she gets married to Ben, which she probably wouldn't have done otherwise.
Her Audition When I came in for the role, it was originally written as a French au pair. Many of my relatives live in France, and my sister was engaged to a French man, so we speak a lot of French. I thought, “I can play French too.” But I'm very blonde and I look very Swedish, and I guess they liked me anyway.
Working with the Cast Everybody's been great to work with. I'm so fortunate. Bill (William R. Moses) is just an amazing person. He's a brilliant actor. Vanessa and I have so much fun together off-camera, which is why we have such a good relationship on camera. Michael Parks is a great guy. I love the cast. It's going to be so sad when the movie is over.
Working with Director Michael Steinberg It's been great. I've never done a feature before. I've done a lot of theater. But I feel the same way as with the cast. I'm so fortunate. It’s very easy to understand what he wants. He’s a good communicator. You feel safe.
Relationship with the Christianson Children Lena is great with Inger. She's a great girl, and they have a lot of fun. Ellie is more difficult. Obviously, she doesn't want me there, and I feel that, and I want Ben. I can see myself in Ellie. There’s not a huge age difference between us. We have our arguments, and I don't like her because she wants to be the head of the family, and that’s what I want. In a way, I want to be like a mother to the girls. I want them to love me because if they do, Ben is going to feel good about that and everything is going to be much easier.
Relationship with Karen I can see that her relationship with Ben isn't very good. I can sense that Karen isn't really in love with him anymore. I don't hate her. I just feel that they're not good together, and therefore, I think it's better if they divorce. I've never really made Karen one of my friends because she's not interested in that either. She treats me very businesslike.
Lena as a Suspect in Karen’s Murder I might be a suspect because I want Ben, but he's unavailable. Some people do anything to get what they want. I had a lot of things to gain by getting rid of Karen. I want to stay in this country, and if I don't marry Ben, nobody's going to sponsor me. I'm better off without her, and she’s not a very nice person. Once, she kicked me out of the house, and Mrs. Potter and Ben and Inger had to force her to take me back.
Acting in Her First Feature Film At the start of shooting, I was more careful. That's good because the cameras catch everything. But I always question myself and think, “Would she have reacted in a different way?” It’s scary to do that because you do it once, and you're not going to come back to the scene again. It's stupid to do what I'm doing sometimes, but I think that makes you work with your inner life and your character and work on your craft as an actor. For that reason, it's important you do that.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked I think they're gonna think it's a funny movie. It's fun. It's scary. Hopefully, they can recognize themselves in some of the parts. Some people who are in the same situation as Karen and Ben may think it over a little bit more.
All Things Alice: Interview with Joanna Groarke of The New York Botanical Garden
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Vice President for Exhibitions and Programming for the New York Botanical Garden Joanna Groarke join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor I’m thrilled to have Joanna Groarke on All Things Alice. She’s the Vice President for Exhibitions and Programming for the New York Botanical Garden, which has a fantastic Alice in Wonderland exhibit, Wonderland: Curious Nature, open until October 27. I'm very excited to talk about all the facets of the exhibition. Thanks for coming on, Joanna.
Joanna Groarke Absolutely. I'm happy to be here.
FB How did you come to work for the New York Botanical Garden?
JG I’ve been at the Garden for about 13 years and I've been in my current role for over two years. I've worked in exhibitions and interpretation, which is the development of all of the educational media you see when you visit including signage, audio tours, video guides, and mobile apps, since I started here 13 years ago.
FB That seems like such a dynamic job because of the diversity of tasks you have and all the different people you get to interface with, especially with this exhibit. You have a lot of cosplayers and musicians. There are the culinary aspects of it. There's the artwork, there are the books, and the library aspect of it.
How was Wonderland: Curious Nature conceived? Where do you start when you're putting together something this massive?
JG It is a real undertaking. It’s a labor of love every time we create an exhibition, in particular, our summer exhibitions like Wonderland: Curious Nature. These are often original shows we're creating in-house with the help of many, many people, both inside and outside the Garden. We always say good ideas come from everywhere, so sometimes it's a concept that is very closely related to something that's happening in science or horticulture here at the Garden. Sometimes it's something one of us reads late at night when we go down the rabbit hole on some topic and it sparks an idea we then discuss together. In the case of Wonderland, I think for most of the time I have been at the Garden, Wonderland has come up periodically as a topic that's really ripe for exploration through the medium of horticulture because of the connections to science and botany and what was happening scientifically at the time the book was written. Also, so much of the narrative is animated by the setting of gardens and nature. Very early in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice looks through a keyhole and sees what she calls the most beautiful garden she's ever seen. One of the things she's trying to do throughout the story is to get into that garden and explore it. That speaks to our hearts also. Our exhibitions are very multifaceted, as you mentioned, but at our core, we're all plant people so we're driven by that interest and our wonder and excitement about plants.
FB What were some of the plants or flowers that were in the book? You mentioned the exploration of Victorian gardens and some of the vegetation that was in the novel. Was that the starting point?
JG The plants and the garden settings that are described in the book are part of what first drew us in. One of the things we do with any exhibition like this is, very early on, we develop a plant list. We develop a checklist of objects and historical objects. If we're using the collections of our library, we have the LuEsther T. Mertz Library here at the Garden, which is the world's richest resource in all things horticultural and plant science. We draw upon those collections quite a bit for our exhibitions. We also have the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, where we have 8 million dried plant specimens that have been collected over hundreds of years by scientists, and we have many examples of those herbarium specimens on display for this show.
The Garden was founded as a seat of scientific inquiry into the world of plants. Those two resources I mentioned are incredibly vital to the work we do to showcase that research. We were also founded to be a place where beautiful horticulture was celebrated. So my team in exhibitions and programming works closely with horticulture to develop these voluminous plant lists. One of the things we do is mine the text of the book and the images that have been created, both to illustrate the book and then in all of the many film adaptations. So we're noticing which flowers are talking to Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers. We're noticing what plants are mentioned. For example, on page one or page two, I think, Alice is making a daisy chain. We’re making notes all along as we read because that is a great resource for us to know what plants were grown at that time and would have been easily referenced by the author, and then also to start to build what the world of Wonderland, which is what we're trying to do through horticulture.
FB What's great is that Alice is so deeply seated in culture, you're not just using Lewis Carroll's version, you're using all these various versions. You mentioned looking through the keyhole and that’s from the Disney movie and is not in the original text. I love that you're pulling all of pop culture into this exhibit.
When you enter the exhibit, you are met by an oversized White Rabbit, which has an orangish, reddish, yellowish vest of some sort. I was wondering what flowers those were because it's such a stunning first image. Can you tell us what flowers you’re using and how you keep those flowers alive from season to season?
JG The first rule is that I'm not allowed to touch the flowers. I am not a talented plant person when it comes to caring for plants, but I love them very dearly, obviously, so I work with my colleagues in horticulture.
Our giant White Rabbit is about 12 feet tall and situated in our visitor center. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s first sign of Wonderland is when she sees the White Rabbit in his little waistcoat. We wanted to capture that moment when you are arriving and you realize almost immediately you're about to have a magical, whimsical experience at the Garden. We worked with our friends at Mosaiculture, which is a company based in Montreal. They produce these beautiful living sculptures that are based on the ancient art of mosaiculture, which involves creating these beautiful wire armatures that plants are then plugged into. The plants that are most prominently featured on the White Rabbit are a special variety of Sedum that has a little bit of a white tinge to the foliage so it makes him have his little white fur. Then Alternanthera, which is used to create the waistcoat. It has a very sophisticated irrigation system so we can make sure he's looking his best every day when you arrive.
FB The irrigation system must be a work of art in and of itself.
What about the library? You have the books displayed and the emphasis is on the enduring popularity of Alice in Wonderland. Have you come to a conclusion as to why Alice has lasted for over 150 years in your estimation?
JG What spoke to me and what spoke to us as we were organizing the exhibition was the way in which Alice feels like this universal heroine. She is a stand-in for the reader, which is not unusual, but was unusual at the time, in particular, for children to see in literature. A heroine who was actively exploring the world around her. Yes, she was subject to the whims and events that adults, sometimes human adults and sometimes animal adults, put into motion. But she also has an impact on the course of the narrative and that wasn’t very common in children's literature at the time. That sense of empowerment and exploration of the world around you is one that really speaks to us and we thought would speak to our visitors. It deeply connects to the way we hope visitors of all ages will experience the Garden. We have a lot of programming for kids in our Children's Garden and our Edible Academy.
FB What’s your Edible Academy? Where do I sign up?
JG It's pretty great. It's one of my favorite spots at the Garden. We have two gardens that are really for children, although, of course, children explore the entirety of our 250 acres here in the Bronx. The Edible Academy is on the site of what has been our family garden for generations, and in 2018 we reopened it as the Edible Academy.
We have classrooms, a greenhouse, and vegetable gardens throughout this space, and thousands of school kids come every year and plant the seeds, tend to them, and weed the beds. Then they learn how to cook with the produce they produce. We have schools that come repeatedly and they see the beds through the full growing season and then get to cook with the produce and bring the produce and recipes home. We have kids who come in every week for drop-in programming with their grown-ups and they get to have a similar experience over the course of the season. Then we do one-off visits where the kids get to participate in the growth, tending, and harvest.
My own daughter has participated in the programs and the camps we hold there in the summertime. It’s a pretty special place. We encourage literally digging in and getting your hands dirty. So someone like Alice feels like she really resonates as a protagonist, who is herself getting involved right away in the events of Wonderland.
FB When were you introduced to Alice and in what medium were you introduced? Then what was your reaction to that first introduction? There’s the family-friendly, whimsical interpretation and then for other people, it's more nightmarish and a little bit scary.
JG I was a very bookish child. So bookish that when people my age reference things on television, I don't always understand the reference. But interestingly, for Wonderland, I was first introduced to it through the Disney film. But I would have pretty quickly picked up the book after seeing the film. Even in the Disney film, I was struck that it is a little scary. These giant flowers are being mean to her and the Red Queen is pretty scary and I think that is sort of inescapable. Our show is definitely meant to be enjoyed by visitors of all ages, but I think kids are a little bit drawn to frightening stories or the darker side of stories. As a kid, I remember feeling that was part of the story and feeling ambivalent about it. But one of the things that really resonants as I think about the books and the films, as we've been working on this show for the last few years, was how Alice, quite overtly, expresses her frustration with the world of adults and the world of rules that's around her.
It's very relatable. It’s also pretty revolutionary because she is very clearly well-schooled in etiquette and how to behave. The idea that kids both chafe against rules but also are aware of them and understand the structure that exists and they sometimes rely on it, is, in a lot of ways, at the heart of what I as a kid, and probably a lot of kids, find both exciting and a little scary about the story.
FB Also how illogical adults can be at times with their rules and how they're putting you in this box. I found that to be very relatable as well. When I started working on my Alice projects, it was like if you buy an Audi and then suddenly you see all the Audi's out there. Same with Alice. Suddenly, I noticed “down the rabbit hole” was used in politics and music. Every single day I read somebody saying, “Down the rabbit hole.” So two years ago, when you and everybody on your team started this, did the Alice references and how deeply seated it is in pop culture start to bubble up? For instance, I didn't realize how many people were doing cosplay, whether it was the traditional Mad Hatter or Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. It's everywhere. Did you guys have a similar insight when you were starting to build this out?
JG In organizing exhibitions like this, we're thinking about all the ways in which our visitors find meaning around the topic. We talk a lot as a team in exhibitions and then as a broader team here at the Garden that is responsible for the visitor experience. We talk about making sure there are points of entry that allow everyone to have the experience they want to have because that will make what they are seeing resonate more. It'll make them more excited about the plants they see. The cultural expectations and the cultural imagination that exists around Alice are things we definitely talked about and have continued to talk about throughout the run of the show.
We had a feeling we would have a lot of people coming dressed as Alice and other characters, and that was in part because we had seen that with other shows where you might not expect it. Nearly 10 years ago now, we had a show that was focused on Frida Kahlo and her garden in Mexico City, and how the plants she grew there were impactful in her larger artistic practice. We had a lot of Frida look-alikes coming to the show, people who would dress up like Frida and her husband, Diego Rivera. We ended up organizing Frida look-alike contests as a night activity for some of our Frida Alfresco nights.
When we had our exhibition of Yayoi Kusama, the contemporary artist, in 2021, we had lots of people dressed up as Kusama. We had a lot of baby Kusamas in particular, actually. So we knew this was something folks liked to do when there was a show that really appealed to them. We had a feeling that that would happen with Wonderland: Curious Nature. We have some opportunities for people to come and dress up. When people buy a family package ticket to the exhibition at the Garden, they can actually buy headpieces so each member of their party can dress as Alice or the Queen or the White Rabbit. We found that those were snapped up really fast. We had never done anything like that before so we weren't entirely sure how it would do, but it was really popular.
Every time you work on an exhibition, you go in with a plan of what the show will be, and then as you start to have visitors, you make little tweaks and adjustments. We wanted to have opportunities for all of our visitors to meet some of the characters so my team organized that each month we have a different character or characters who are on-site on the weekends. Visitors can take photos with them and talk to them. Right now, we're in the midst of our Mad Hatter month, so we have the Mad Hatter here every weekend. We found that visitors really wanted a photo op as part of that, so we had to think a little bit about how we tweaked that experience. Then, as we were approaching the end of the school year here in New York City, we organized a “Mad for Summer” weekend where we encouraged families to celebrate the start of summer here at the Garden. We had never done that before but it was so much fun. Kids got in for free if they were dressed up in any costume or Alice-inspired garb. We had this weekend of so many fun activities, lots of photo ops, and interactive moments with the characters.
FB Why don't you give us a little rundown of those entry points? You have things for kids but you also have cocktail hours for adults. There's also food and I've read about a lot of different music. You had a Pride night with Malik Miyake-Mugler. Maybe you can talk about the diversity of the show and some of those entry points you keyed in on early to give people access and variety,
JG When people hear about an exhibition focused on Alice in Wonderland, they automatically ask what there is for kids and families. But Wonderland has persisted for 150-plus years. It's never been out of print. It's been published in over 170 languages. We knew it was an enduring story for a reason and if a story endures like that, it's not only being consumed by kids. So it was important to us to make sure we had a lot of different ways for people to experience the exhibit. We have an exhibition in the library where you can see some of the original publications. You can also learn about what was happening in terms of science and botany in the 19th century in Britain and around the world. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published just a few years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which completely transformed not only science but modern society, in a lot of ways, with the ideas it was putting forth. So, in that environment, a book like Wonderland comes out.
It's also coming out in an environment where there's an increasing acknowledgment of childhood as a different stage of development. Children are not just miniature adults but are considered to have a different way of learning and a different way of seeing the world. That was something we were really interested in because kids know that they're not adults, obviously, and adults know that kids are not adults. But we knew that adults in particular would find that story interesting. The idea that Wonderland is shaped by a lot more than just the desire to create something that entertains children, which is true of a lot of what kids consume. Even today, every show your kid watches has little Easter eggs for adults. The same is true when you're reading stories with your kids. So that was something we wanted to make sure we did.
But also we wanted to speak to the long-term cultural resonance of the story and the ways in which it's been interpreted through the lens of pop culture, through the lens of psychedelics, and through the lens of different artists. One of the things we have is a display of different herbarium specimens of different psychoactive plants and information about how studies of the mind, cognition, and psychology were becoming more and more prevalent during the Victorian era all over the world. The documentation of everything from coffee to cannabis to opium was not just in the scientific realm. The way different writers, doctors, and psychiatrists were starting to write about the effects of different substances on the mind was really interesting to us because that's a modern-day association with the Wonderland stories. While there's no actual evidence Lewis Carroll was partaking in any of these substances, most likely he was not, that association is really interesting and fruitful and has led to a lot of different cultural expressions, from music to the way some of the films and other adaptations have entered the world. That was something we wanted to talk about, especially because most of those substances come from plants and fungi. That's where we have something to add to the conversation because we have the expertise here at the Garden.
We also wanted to invite contemporary artists. We have photographs by Abelardo Morell, where he created these incredible dioramas using illustrations from different editions of the story and then photographed them. We have work by Patrick Jacobs, an artist based here in New York, who creates these beautiful miniature worlds you peer into and it's like peeking into the rabbit hole. The three he made for our exhibition are called Portals for Alice and he was quite overtly inspired by the story.
As we were looking into the contemporary art world, we worked closely with our guest curator, Jennifer Gross to develop our list of artworks we have on view, we became really interested in the work of this group called the FoldHaus Art Collective. They're based internationally and here in the U.S. They've done a number of installations at Burning Man and they created this work called Shrumen Lumen, which is two 15-foot tall kinetic mushroom sculptures. While you're standing outside of our conservatory looking at them, you'll notice that one of them moves and they actually appear to be breathing. They inflate and deflate, and at night they light up with different strobing LEDs in different colors.
FB Mushrooms are very popular in culture right now and there was an amazing article in National Geographic about all of the varieties of mushrooms. Do you guys explore fungi and the importance of fungi in the natural world?
JG Mushrooms are definitely having a moment and we are very excited by that. Mushrooms are fungi, so they are not plants, but we do study them here at the Botanical Garden as they are so critical to plant life and environmental health. We have great collections of different specimens we were able to bring out and show visitors. We have organized a Magic Mushroom Weekend, which is taking place September 14 and 15. We’ll have different ways to experience mushrooms, from seeing how they are used in cuisine to how they are used to make dyes and art. There are innovative companies that are using mycelium to create packaging and building materials. Of course, psychoactive mushrooms are also increasingly being studied for their potential to treat all different sorts of conditions. While we will not be offering samples, we are eager for our visitors to learn as much as possible about the many ways in which mushrooms are used and appreciated.
FB So there's not a rabbit hole you can fall down and try a couple of magic mushrooms?
JG We do have a constructed rabbit hole, and we would encourage you to fall down it or pass through it in our conservatory, but we will not be facilitating that journey with anything you can consume.
FB Do you have some Alice in Wonderland Easter eggs in the exhibit that you would encourage visitors to search for?
JG We have different depictions of the characters from the story seeded throughout the grounds and the conservatory. When you first enter our conservatory, you're in a Victorian-era glass house. Ours is among the latest built Victorian-era glass houses in the country, completed in 1902. When you enter one of the first things you see is a a pool of giant water lilies, Victoria amazonica, which were named for Queen Victoria and were a prized specimen plant during the period in which Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written. The Oxford Botanic Garden, which would have been where the real Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll would have seen these plants, was our inspiration for that first entry into the wonders of the plant world and how they figure in the story. Alice is there in a boat among the water lilies, a nod to the boat ride famously associated with the origin of the story.
Then visitors pass through a doorway into one of our exhibition houses and they pass our homage to the Oxford Botanic Garden Flower Border. They actually do pass through what looks like a rabbit hole in the roots of a tree. Then they enter our version of Wonderland, where we have all kinds of wonders of the plant world, from giant tree ferns to carnivorous plants. Sensitive plant is one of my favorites. It's a Mimosa that if you touch the plant, it will curl up its leaves. Not everybody associates plants with having those kinds of abilities.
In our plant Wonderland you can also spot the Cheshire Cat in a tree or the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. We wanted to give our visitors the experience of the wonders of the plant world while also giving them an opportunity to engage with those characters throughout the exhibition.
FB It sounds like there's a lot for adults because there's the scientific part of it, the educational part, and the historical part of it. Then for the kids, they're going to see this magical rabbit and these big card soldiers. There's so much for them to do. It sounds like it's been really successful in terms of the number of people who have come. Are you guys all very happy with how it's turned out?
JG It's been it's been wonderful. It's been so exciting to see visitors during the day and also at night. We threw Wonderland parties in June and May when the show first opened and they're coming back in September. They’re nights when visitors can come and dress to the nines as whatever character they like or not and it’s basically a Wonderland dance party. We have DJs and some of the characters on hand. You can dance with Alice and the Queen of Hearts. Those are fabulous and fun. We love to create an experience where someone can come on a mission to see the plants of Wonderland or they can come just to have a good time. That's been incredibly successful and rewarding to see.
FB People who love Alice love all things Alice in my experience. No matter what aspect of culture it is, if it has to do with Alice, they're all in. I first met these people at Comic-Cons. They’d walk by my booth and see Wonderland and they would come right over and talk about their book and art collections.
What's been the biggest challenge in pulling something like this off?
JG Anytime you have an exhibition in a garden, there are certain challenges. One of the big things that my team is always doing is working with artists and supporting them to showcase their work outdoors, which many artists are accustomed to but many are also not. Being mindful of, as you said, the myriad ways that visitors will be expecting to see Alice, and trying to deliver as many of those as possible is a really fun challenge. But it is a challenge because in the 150-plus years since the story first appeared, there have been so many opportunities to imprint on someone's mind what Alice means and what Wonderland is about. That's why working as a team with outside advisors, our guest curator, and everyone from food service to security to visitor services to make sure that the experience we're offering feels as robust as possible is critical.
We have special tea parties that have been held as part of our weekend events but you can also come have a tea party with your family and friends in our cafe. That has been really popular and really special. As we introduce these things, we're planning really carefully. We had a friends and family launch where some of the staff attended one of the tea parties and got to sample the food, give feedback, and think about what that experience was like before the visitors ever stepped foot on the ground. It's all about the planning and the cross-departmental partnerships are really fun and really rewarding.
FB You have four seasons there in New York. How do the exhibit and the plants change and how do you manage the change from spring to summer and now going into the fall?
JG A botanical garden is a dynamic environment. Last night we had torrential rain so we're constantly in touch with each other about what that means for for the garden grounds. We have people here 24 hours a day to keep the Garden safe and to keep the Garden operating. When there's a storm, we're in touch all day and all night. The summer exhibition is really a multi-season exhibition. It opens in mid-May and it runs through the end of October, so you’re really experiencing spring, summer, and fall. The horticulture team at the Garden is incredibly talented and the work they do is fascinating. What they're doing is developing what we call a plant palette, a range of plants that will be on view. They're developing, in many cases, three plant palettes, because what you see in the spring is different from what you’ll see now. In the spring for this exhibition, when you first entered the conservatory, you saw these incredibly beautiful foxgloves and Delphiniums and plants that were very English garden spring in their appearance and style. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.
There were these poppies that were just gorgeous but a few days later, the poppies had wilted because that's what poppies do, and then something else was put in their place. Our staff is here every day, watering and tending to the plants. We're changing plants constantly. We bring things back into the production greenhouse when they've finished their flowering period and either put them into the collections to be used for display purposes when they flower again, or, in other cases, they’re annuals so we're composting them and they come back out around in a different way as mulch and fuel the future plants we showcase. It's an incredible process to see the team caring for these plants every single day, and then on Mondays, when we're closed, that's when the big changeouts take place. It's pretty incredible to see what they can do.
FB I love your job I like the environment that you live in. I like the people and the excitement of so much changing, day in and day out, just like nature. I really appreciate you taking the time.
I have one last question for you. If you were a character from Alice in Wonderland, who would you be and why?
JG This was really hard. I knew that this was coming, so I thought about it, which was good because I was struggling. This probably comes from that bookishness I alluded to, and also the work I do now, which is all about making visible what this place is and how it works.
It's probably going to be the Cheshire Cat. The Cheshire Cat has one of the best lines, “We're all mad here.” But also, the Cheshire Cat acts as a guide and helps Alice to make sense of the world around her, and not in a parental way, like a helicopter parent. He pops in, literally, and offers words of wisdom, sometimes slightly confusing words of wisdom, and then disappears and lets Alice figure it out for herself. While we don't want to pop in and then disappear on our visitors, part of the job of organizing an exhibition like this is to create just enough of an environment that is controlled by what we plan and how we lay out the space and what we tell you in the signage, but then to let you have your own experience. So that resonates.
FB Excellent answer. That bookishness has served you very, very well. Thank you for a very compelling interview. It was great to meet you, and I encourage everybody who's listening, if you have a chance to get to New York before this closes, definitely check it out. Thank you so much. Joanna. Really appreciate it.
Battle of the IPs: Alice in Wonderland vs. The Chronicles of Narnia
It’s been a while since I’ve written this style of blog. Only so many IPs can even get close to the weight class of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This time, I think I’ve found a good contender to face off against the rabid Jabberwock that is Lewis Carroll’s creation. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce our contender. In the red corner, with a combined total of seven books, we have, The Chronicles of Narnia.
Oh, wait a second, what’s this? It turns out that The Chronicles of Narnia isn’t going into this bout alone. No, it seems as though Narnia has brought the (religion-dependent) son of God himself, Jesus Christ, to help with the battle. While I’m not too sure about the legality of this, I’ve been told by many bumper stickers and people with megaphones on the street that having Jesus in your corner is a good thing. You’re in for a good one today folks, it’s Lion vs. Cheshire Cat, Witch vs. The Red Queen, Wardrobe vs. Dormouse, allegories for the Bible vs. allegories for the absurdities of Victorian society. Will Alice, our raining champion add another win to its belt or will Jesus be enough to sway the judges? We will find out below.
Worldwide Cultural Impact
In this first round of our showdown, we’ll examine the global impact of these two massive franchises. Both have made a good case for themselves, but only one can be victorious.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Spanning literature, film, art, and fashion. Wonderland's timeless allure transcends cultural boundaries, making it a seemingly immortal component of global literary and artistic culture.
The Chronicles of Narnia: C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, has also left a significant cultural footprint. The allegorical Christian themes, epic battles between good and evil, and the fantastical world of Narnia have resonated with readers worldwide, making it a beloved series for generations.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - We have a clear winner. While Alice and Narnia both have had a profound cultural impact, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has influenced various artistic mediums and has become a symbol of whimsy and imagination. Whereas The Chronicles of Narnia, which has deeply impacted readers with its allegorical themes and expansive fantasy world, has not shaped the culture of the world in as meaningful a way. Some may argue that spreading Christian values is more meaningful, but I’m not “some.”
Critical Appeal
In this category, let's delve into the critical acclaim of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Carroll’s novel is loved by critics for its original narrative, surreal elements, and thought-provoking absurdity. It has been celebrated for its unique blend of fantasy and satire, which cleverly critiques the norms of Victorian society. Its innovative approach to storytelling has cemented its place as a classic in the literary canon, influencing generations of writers and artists.
The Chronicles of Narnia: C.S. Lewis' series has been praised for its rich allegorical storytelling, moral themes, and the depth of its world-building. The Chronicles of Narnia has been a staple in children's literature and continues to be studied for its religious and philosophical undertones.
Verdict: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Alice is the clear winner here. While both works have received critical acclaim, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland wins based on pure originality alone. Another reason Alice takes this round is some critics don’t like religious undertones. There are plenty of reviews one can find ripping into Chronicles of Narnia because of this. While others will inherently love this book due to the religious bent, the divisiveness of a religiously themed children’s story hurt Narnia’s chances.
Influences on Language
Let’s talk about language. Both franchises have left linguistic marks with unique phrases and terminology.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Carroll’s work introduced a variety of whimsical phrases into everyday language. Expressions like "down the rabbit hole" and "mad as a hatter" have become common idioms, embodying the book’s playful and eccentric spirit. Moreover, Carroll’s inventive use of language gave birth to entirely new words, such as "chortle," which have since been integrated into the English lexicon.
The Chronicles of Narnia: While Narnia introduced memorable names and terms, such as "Aslan," "Turkish delight," and "Narnian," it hasn't quite had the same impact on everyday language as Carroll's work.
Verdict: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Really, are we surprised here? Off the top of my head, I don’t believe Alice has ever lost this section in past blogs. I mean, Aslan is a cool name but it’s just that, a name. It’s not a new word and I definitely haven’t used it recently. Turkish delight is a real thing and introducing the perfume-y treat to children is a disservice. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t even remember that the people of Narnia were called, “Narnians”.
Controversy
It's worth noting that both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia have faced controversies related to their content and themes.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Over the years, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has sparked various discussions about its surreal and often puzzling nature. Some critics have debated the suitability of its abstract themes for younger audiences, while others have questioned its deeper meanings and implications. Despite these debates, the story has remained a beloved classic that continues to intrigue and entertain readers.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Chronicles of Narnia has faced controversy over its Christian allegory and perceived sexism and racism in some of its portrayals. The overt religious themes have sparked debates about the appropriateness of the series for secular audiences.
Verdict: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Oof…Are we going to have a sweep here? Look I know I’m biased because I’m paid to write about Alice and I’m the only judge here but…C’mon. Debating the appropriateness of abstract themes for younger audiences is dumb. I would argue teaching kids to think abstractly allows them to experience the world for more than what is immediately visible on the surface level. It’s a dumb debate. I really had to scrape to find controversy relating to Alice. Whereas the Chronicles of Narnia: The Racist, The Sexist, and The Indoctrination over here…Do I need to get into this?
Books Published
Now, let's turn to book sales and the impact of the printed word.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll's literary classic has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 100 languages. The book's enduring popularity is reflected in the vast number of editions and adaptations that continue to captivate readers of all ages.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Chronicles of Narnia series, comprising seven books, has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 47 languages. The series remains one of the most popular and enduring works of children's literature.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - No, it’s not a tie and I can prove it with my incredibly limited grasp of mathematics. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a single (1) book, has sold over 100 million copies. The Chronicles of Narnia series, which is seven (7) books, has sold over 100 million copies. It’s just less. Even if we just compared the Narnia series’ best-selling installment, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (85 million copies sold), with Alice, Narnia still falls short.
Box Office Success
Next, we compare the box office success of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Various film adaptations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland have enjoyed considerable box office success. There have been far too many and I think it would be unfair to add their box office success. So I will choose the highest-grossing adaptation. Disney's 2010 adaptation directed by Tim Burton grossed over $1 billion worldwide, cementing Alice’s status as a beloved cultural icon in the 21st century.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Chronicles of Narnia films, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), have also seen considerable box office success, with the first three films grossing over $1.5 billion worldwide collectively.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - In terms of total box office earnings, The Chronicles of Narnia edges out Tim Burton’s Alice adaptation. But, I evened the playing field for Narnia, so it’s got to even the playing field for Alice. The first film in the Narnia series grossed $745 million. And, 2005 was the first time Narnia graced the silver screen, whereas Alice was first put on film in 1903. What I’m saying here is that more people came to see a movie that has been adapted multiple times more than a first-time adaptation. Alice wins here.
Theme Park Rides
Finally, we explore theme park experiences inspired by these beloved franchises.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The enchanting world of Wonderland has been brought to life in various theme park rides, particularly in Disney parks. These attractions allow visitors to journey through Wonderland, encountering the iconic characters and scenes that have made the story a timeless favorite.
The Chronicles of Narnia: While The Chronicles of Narnia has inspired various interactive experiences and exhibitions, it has not led to dedicated theme park rides on the same scale as Alice.
Verdict: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - While I’ve made my hatred of the teacups known in past blogs, that torture device disguised as a theme park ride did not hurt Alice’s chances here. I think sweeping a category is a fitting way to end a sweep of a competition here.
Pre Conclusion Note
Okay, I just want to say a couple of things before I get to my conclusion. I know it seems like I just ripped on The Chronicles of Narnia for a while and was handing points to Alice. But, I actively tried to find a way to have Narnia be closer. And look, when I rip into Narnia for its Christian values, I know, it’s low-hanging fruit. From what I remember, most of those values are not bad. Christian values aren’t bad or worse than other religions’ values. It’s the Christians pushing them onto non-Christians that give Christian values a bad name.
Normally, I don’t go into explaining my reasoning on why Alice won because, duh, we’re on an Alice-related website. But, I do have a soft spot for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie specifically. My family friend Alejandro took me to see the movie on its opening day, December 9th, 2005. Four days before this, my father had passed away. Going to the theater and watching this movie allowed me to have some fun at a time that was, for lack of better phrasing, not fun. Due to this, I will award The Chronicles of Narnia a point in this contest. I’m not a massive fan of the books and I don’t really care about the film franchise but at the time, the movie took me somewhere else and that was nice. Ok, back to me being rude.
Conclusion
In all this excitement of seeing a sweep, I blacked out for a second. Wait… What’s this? The Chronicles of Narnia scored a point? What for? Making a sad kid happy? I would assume Alice has done this more than Narnia. Whatever, the judges were obviously bribed. I guess Alice does not get a sweep but it does still come out on top as the WORLD CHAMPION. I hope you enjoyed the fight. If you agree, disagree, liked, or disliked any of the judge’s rulings let me know.
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
How "Wicked" the Movie Went From Script to Screen with Writer Eric Weiss
What was going through Stephen King’s head when he came up with It? What was Lars von Trier thinking on the set of…any of his movies? The minds that create bold, polarizing, potentially disturbing stories are just as fascinating to audiences as the tales themselves. The way a storyteller takes inspiration from their life and spins it in a new way, sometimes taking the kernel of a story to an extreme end, is a mysterious, beautiful process.
Wickedscreenwriter Eric Weiss delved deep into the idea of family-centric horror, Hitchcockian suspense, and Jungian psychoanalysis to craft the script for this audacious thriller. The film follows Ellie, a troubled teen whose lustful obsession with her father spells doom for her mother. A native of Framingham, Massachusetts (40 miles from the witchy environs of Salem), Weiss attended Grinnell College for undergrad before receiving his M.F.A. from the internationally acclaimed American Film Institute.
Primarily trading in dark comedy, Weiss penned the script for Bongwater, a substance-soaked odyssey starring Alicia Witt as a Portland woman who moves to New York with a heroin addict (Jamie Kennedy) after becoming frustrated with her weed-dealing boyfriend’s (Luke Wilson) lack of ambition. The film premiered at the 1998 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and features an endless list of “before they were famous” faces in the supporting cast, including Jack Black, Brittany Murphy, Andy Dick, and Scott Caan.
Weiss also co-wrote the adaptation of Robert O’Connor’s satire Buffalo Soldiers, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Ed Harris and follows a group of American soldiers in West Germany on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film premiered at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for five awards at the British Independent Film Awards, including Best Screenplay and Best British Independent Film.
For Wicked, Weiss utilized his expertise in dark comedy but chose to focus on the dark when crafting the core of his story. In this recently digitized exclusive onset interview, Weiss discusses the inspiration for Wicked and the emotional toll of writing the disturbing script.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I originally wanted to write a story set in a gated housing community, like a Winesburg, Ohio kind of thing. The story with Ellie was one of the stories I thought of and I started to focus on that and came up with the idea of doing family life as a horror film.
I'm a fan of Polanski’s films like Repulsion and Knife in the Water. I'm fascinated by how he takes everyday things and shows them with the intensity you feel in real life. A lot of times in films, that intensity comes from the supernatural or goblins or something like that. But usually in real life, that intensity comes when you almost hit a car on the freeway and your heart starts pounding 120 times a minute.
Originally, the script was more Hitchcockian. It was more of a horror movie with some comedy. Then Michael Steinberg read the script and his contribution was to make it more of a murder mystery. In the original, you knew who did it. Michael looked at the script and said, “There's all these other people that have motives, let's make it into a murder mystery. Let's take advantage of that. So when we rewrote it, we made Detective Boland more of a major character and we deepened the other characters as well.
The themes of infidelity and matricide came from exploring different sides of family life, which is very intense. The highs are very high. The lows are very low. This movie, I guess, is one of the lows. The script came out of the desire to show family life in a different way, as a horror film. It doesn't mean this is what I think of family life, but it’s a different viewpoint.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked
I think it's going to be one of those films you either really like or you really hate. I don't think there are going to be riots in the streets but it's gonna be one of those things where you either get it or you don't. It’s not a Chevy Chase movie where when you're at home at Christmas and everybody has to decide on a movie and you end up seeing the Chevy Chase movie.
The Experience of Writing Wicked
It took a lot out of me but when I was writing Wicked I knew it was good so it was affecting my real life in very positive ways. But when you're writing something like this it's very hard to do anything else.
Lewis Carroll, Traitor to a Princess: Princess Alyss' Never-Before-Seen Letters - Part 3
Back in 2007, we collaborated with noted Alyssian historian Agnes MacKenzie to publish Princess Alyss of Wonderland, a stunning collection of letters, journal writings, and art from Her Royal Imaginer, Princess Alyss Heart. These breathtaking documents chronicled the incredible childhood of Wonderland’s exiled heir apparent and future hero of The Looking Glass Wars.
Part One spanned Alyss’ flight from Wonderland and how she survived her first days on the rough streets of London. In Part Two, Alyss recounts the horrors of the notorious Charing Cross Orphanage and her disappointment at being adopted by the unimaginative Liddells.
When we last left Princess Alyss she was in trouble again, having been caught trying to break into Buckingham Palace to rescue her mother from Queen Victoria. As Alyss’ angry foster father took her back to Oxford, Alyss doubted if she would ever return to Wonderland.
But hope was not dead. It returned in the form of a shy teacher who would change Alyss’ life forever…
(*As always, I am indebted to the tireless and exhaustive research of the eminent Wonderland historian Agnes MacKenzie. Her dedication has helped keep the true story of Queen Alyss alive!)
Diary Entry - April 1, 1862
I mark the date April 1, 1862, with a white stone, for it is when I first met Mr. Charles Dodgson! (In Wonderland it is custom to always mark days of great imagination with a white stone.) His name was a blur of sound until I heard 'Dodg-son' and I thought of my best friend Dodge. I looked up and saw the kindest face I had seen since leaving Wonderland, Charles Dodgson. I liked him immediately, but it wasn't until Lorina introduced me very grandly as Princess Alyss Heart (mocking me, of course) that I knew he was to be my best friend in this world, for the man bowed quite seriously, took my hand and whispered, “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Princess Alyss Heart.”
Diary Entry - April 10, 1872
Today, Mr. Dodgson invited Lorina, Edith, and I to his studio for our first photographic portrait. What we all enjoyed most about the portrait setting was being able to try on the costumes that Mr. Dodgson had collected. I told him that I had not seen such imaginative costumes since I had left Wonderland. He became very interested and said he would like to hear more about this land called Wonderland.
Agnes MacKenzie
Charles Dodgson's aptitude in the nascent art of photography made him a popular portraitist of children for Oxford's better families. Choosing their costumes for the various portraits was always left to the girls and might I suggest that the photograph of Alyss in the white dress appears to be her tribute to her time spent with Quigley and the others as a street urchin.
Diary Entry - July 2, 1862
I closed my eyes so I could see back to Wonderland and began to remember. I wanted to tell him about the Inventor's Parade and the giant mushrooms that were as tall as ten of London's greatest trees set end to end and the caterpillars who knew everything but only told you what they knew you needed to know but instead, the words that came out were the story of my last day in Wonderland and the Cat and Redd entering the palace and her ear-shattering cries of “Off with their heads!!! At this point, I opened my eyes and saw poor Mr. Dodgson absolutely pale with fright. He asked, “What my dear is so wonderful about Wonderland???” I smiled and told him there was much, much more to tell…
Agnes MacKenzie
I cannot help but be moved by the beauty of the friendship shared by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Alyss Heart. As devastating a betrayal as the eventual outcome may have been, for a period of time, two kindred spirits found each other in the same world and proceeded to have a riotous good time. Charles Dodgson was a young mathematics don at Christ Church when he first met the daughters of Dean Liddell, and, as history has voluminously recorded, he was particularly in awe of the daughter supposedly named 'Alice.'
Diary Entry - July 30, 1862
I believe Mr. Dodgson is finally coming to understand what is so wonderful about Wonderland. We seem to talk about nothing else, though it is easy for both of us to get off the subject whenever the topic of sweets comes up.
Letter from Princess Alyss to Charles Dodgson - 1862
Dear Mr. Dodgson,
You must remember to write about the Inventor's Parades that are held in Wonderland to honor the imaginations of Wonderland's most inventive inventors. All of Wonderland gathers to watch the parade while the Queen decides what is ready to be sent on as inspiration to other worlds. The Queen’s Trampoline was invented as a gift for my mother so she could jump high enough to reach her favorite cloud. I have drawn some of my favorite inventions which all had to do with travel and I was hoping that maybe you could pass these on to whoever is in charge of London's traveling conveyances. Perhaps if they were more imaginative with regard to this vital service I would be home by now.
Your Friend, Princess Alyss Heart
Princess Alyss' sketches of Wonderland inventions, including (from left to right) the dragonfly windjumper, crystal miner, furry parashooter, Queen's Trampoline, jollyjellywings, marching drums, lampshade roller coaster, and umbrella pogo.
Agnes MacKenzie
On the back of the valentine from Charles Dodgson, Alyss had written the cryptic message, “This is the day that I began REMEMBERING…” And thus began her own literary effort to assist Lewis Carroll in saving herself and Wonderland. It is sad to think that a venture begun with such high spirits and hope would in less than 2 years meet a wrenching conclusion!
In November of 1864, Charles Dodgson proudly and dare I venture, a bit shyly, presented 'Miss Alice Liddell' with his handwritten manuscript of ALICE'S ADVENTURES UNDERGROUND. This historic manuscript contained 37 illustrations drawn by the versatile and prolific Mr. Dodgson. As you shall soon discover, Alyss's reaction was not quite what the poor man had anticipated!
Diary Entry - November 27, 1864
And at long last, the promised book was delivered. What can I say?
HE GOT IT ALL WRONG!!!!
He even spelled my name wrong! What makes me want to scream, “Off with his head AND both arms!” is the fact that he actually seems to believe HE told ME this nonsensical children's story when the truth is (and he knows it!) that I told him.
Letter from Princess Alyss to Charles Dodgson after reading his manuscript - 1864
To the Very Cruel Mr. Dodgson,
How could you betray me with this pack of lies? If I were not so furious with you I would certainly be sobbing at the loss of what I believed to be my one true friend in this grey world. Be warned, for the sake of Wonderland and everyone I love, I cannot allow this book of lies to go unchallenged. And who is this 'Lewis Carroll' that you are now calling yourself? Are you ashamed to put your own name on this book? I should hope so! As if a royal princess would ever travel through a rabbit hole! Thanks to your efforts my reality has now become this world's fantasy.
Your Un-Friend, Princess Alyss Heart
P.S. Now you shall never be invited to Heart Palace for tarty tarts! And no, strawberry jam tastes NOTHING like the oh-so-delicious squigberry jam. Your loss!
Agnes MacKenzie
The first published edition of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” appeared early in July 1865 and featured illustrator John Tenniel's iconic artwork. Alyss now had to adjust to the fact that the betrayal was no longer an unpublished manuscript but an actual book that would soon find its' way into the hands and hearts of the literate public.
Diary Entry - August 17, 1865
Oh that horrid ALICE! Now she has stolen my life forever!!!!! I must do something to stop this disaster. Lewis Carroll is not the only one who can hold a pen.
Letter from Princess Alyss to Alexander MacMillan, Co-Founder of MacMillan Publishers, publisher of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - 1865
To the Attention of Mr. Alexander MacMillan,
HALT!!! In the name of Imagination and Truth, I am sending this decree to inform you of a dire betrayal by the author masquerading as Lewis Carroll. The book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is nothing but a pack of lies! It is imperative that this book be labeled UTTER FICTION and the true story be told so that those searching for me can find me and return me to Wonderland to rule as Queen.
Her Royal Imaginer, Princess Alyss Heart
Agnes MacKenzie
Despite Alyss' attempt to halt the publication of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” the book continued to spread from country to country and would soon be found in the hands of both children and adults around the world. The fantasy of this world was threatening to overcome the reality of Wonderland and Alyss was feeling the pressure.
Diary Entry - September 22, 1865
Since the publication of THAT BOOK, I have been pushed into an actual rabbit hole, chased by a pack of boys wearing fake rabbit ears shouting, “I'm late! I'm late!” and taunted by the local bully girl (a redhead, of course!) who stands outside our gate and screams, “Off with Alice's head!” whenever I show my face. Complete strangers approach me and express disappointment that my “beautiful blonde hair” has turned such a “dull brunette”! Dull??? When everyone insists on saying up is down, it is very difficult to continue pointing out that they are wrong. It seems that “Alice” has won after all…
*Stay tuned for Part Four, in which Alyss starts the journey of recovering her imagination with the help of an old friend...
The 5 Best Alice in Wonderland Themed Airbnbs!
While I’m generally skeptical of the benefits of apps, I used to like Airbnb a lot. The original concept of renting out either a room or house through an app was actually quite useful for an eighteen-year-old who could not afford a hotel room and, in some cases, was not able to check in due to my age. Of course, every app eventually becomes terrible, but instead of Airbnb becoming terrible due to corporate greed like Uber, it was the hosts that got greedy. They started demanding insane prices, often exceeding hotels in similar areas and adding “cleaning fees” that would sometimes double or triple the cost of your rooms. Just like that, I started using hotels again, and I will say hotels are better in almost every conceivable way. Daily housekeeping and better amenities, and statistically, you are less likely to be recorded by a hidden camera in your room. But, there is one thing that Airbnb has over hotels. I'm talking, of course, about curated, themed stays.
Some hotels might offer curated rooms, but generally, when I imagine a “themed” hotel room, I imagine a motel room with a heart-shaped bath in the middle of the room, which, of course, is completely carpeted. It’s a very 80’s, terrible, mold-filled disaster. Then there’s the Clown House from The Good Place. Both are the stuff of nightmares, and I would assume the food is terrible. Themed Airbnb’s are completely different. Usually, the Airbnb host is a fan of the theme and puts a lot of effort into creating a special space. On top of this, popular themes for Airbnbs are incredibly competitive. If the theming is weak, another better-themed Airbnb will take your customers. Interestingly, the attention to detail of the theming does not mean less competition because if there are only two options for a specific theme, unless the price difference is massive, the prospective renters will choose the better one.
This brings us to today's topic: Alice in Wonderland-themed Airbnbs. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is in no way a niche interest, which means the competition is fierce. There are some fantastic options out there all over the world. I’m bringing you five Alice-themed Airbnbs that I think are the creme de la creme. I honestly never thought I would use the one year I studied beer hospitality in college for one of these blogs, but here we are.
1. Alice’s Palace, Alice in Wonderland - St Augustine, Florida
Kicking off this list is Alice’s Palace, a beautifully designed condo in St Augustine, Florida. “A sophisticated twist” on the Madhatter’s tea party, this one-bedroom, one-bathroom oasis is eccentric yet subtle in its theming. To explain what I mean by the previously stated oxymoron, if you wanted to stay at an Alice-themed Airbnb and someone you were going with didn’t want that, this place would be a perfect balance. The colors and furniture are fun without screaming, "Alice!" But if one were to look closer, they would find little details all around them. With many different rabbit statuettes, a flamingo sculpture, and checkerboard patterns, those who know Wonderland will feel right at home. My favorite bit is the Dormouse’s door, which leads to a drawing of a keyhole. If I were going to St Augustine, I would definitely want to check this place out.
2. Mad Hatter Cottage - Mineral Bluff, Georgia
If the first one was subtle, the Mad Hatter Cottage is loud. With cloud lights, a tree-shaped fireplace, a plant-covered wall, mushrooms everywhere, a giant chessboard, and a neon sign that reads, “We’re All Mad Here,” it’s pretty obvious where the inspiration for this cabin comes from. This one was my girlfriend's favorite because it’s a grown-up twist on Alice. And I mean grown up. On the listing, the host makes a point to say, “Our home is NOT suitable for children. The terrain can be dangerous and there are adult motifs present throughout the home.” While I understand the difficult terrain to an extent, I haven’t seen any blatantly adult motifs that I wouldn’t be comfortable with a child seeing. But I don’t have a child or live in Georgia, so my sensibilities might be different. That being said, if you have a slightly older Alice fan in your life that you want to take on a vacation, they will not forget it; this is the one. Plus, it’s in the middle of a forest on a river. Honestly, the space is beautiful.
3. Alice in Wonderland - Ozark, Missouri
Okay, what if you want loud but have children? Well, Alice in Wonderland in the Ozark Mountains is 100% the spot you need to rent. This nine-guest, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house instantly takes you down a kid-friendly rabbit hole to a wonderland they will never forget. With Alice quotes everywhere you look, a massive game room painted to look like Wonderland, and, to top it all off, a home theater, your Alice-loving kids will truly feel like they are living in Wonderland. Each room has a different Alice theme, ranging from the Cheshire Cat to the Red Queen. Look, I’m a grown-ish person. I have a beard, pay taxes incorrectly, and my back hurts for no discernible reason, but when someone puts a SLIDE inside their house, I’m sold. If you or a loved one loves Alice or you have kids, stay here.
4. Alice’s Queen Cottage - Hayesville, North Carolina
This wouldn’t be a proper Airbnb listicle without a tiny home. Nestled in Hayesville, North Carolina, Alice’s Queen Cottage will make you feel like the Red Queen. Intricately designed and painted, everywhere you look, there is a heart, mushroom, flower, or other Alice motif to remind you that while the house is tiny, you are the queen. This Airbnb actually shares a lot with many other Alice-inspired stays, including Alice’s White Bunny Cottage, Mad Hatter RV, Dormouse RV, Cheshire Cat RV, Caterpillar RV, and March Hare RV. (There are also some Harry Potterstays on the campground, but that’s not what you’re here for.) Not only are the stays here fantastic, but the grounds include a Fairy Garden, a Wonderland fire pit, and a hot tub. Go and get lost in the Magical Mountain Resorts Enchanted Forest.
5. The Wonderland Townhouse - Bath, England
Allow me to paint a picture in your mind. You and your family/friends want to go to the United Kingdom to see Alice's homeland. Maybe there are sixteen or more of you. Unfortunately, there are only so many Alice-themed stays all over the world, and you don’t want to end up in a bad one. Well worry not, for the massive Wonderland Townhouse in Bath and North East Somerset sports eight bedrooms. Its theming is intricate yet tasteful. The British really know what they are doing. It’s posh yet whimsical. Take, for example, the dining room. Strip away the faux garden of silk flowers coming out of the ceiling and the room still works. This house will never fail to remind you that you are in Wonderland.
As you can see, there is an Alice-themed Airbnb stay for every kind of Alice fan. Of course, I only listed five here, but there are many, many more personal wonderlands scattered all across the globe. All one has to do is go down the rabbit hole that is Airbnb. As with all my blogs, please let me know if you liked what you saw and if you have any Alice-themed Airbnbs you want to stay at. Also, if you have stayed at an Alice-themed Airbnb, I would love to hear how it was.
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
Directing the Dark: Michael Steinberg on the Stylistic Challenges of "Wicked" the Movie
Wickedis a twisted tale of murder and incest with noir sensibilities and a biting dark wit. The story follows a troubled teen, Ellie Christianson (Julia Stiles), whose obsession with her father has disastrous consequences for their family and friends. It’s an ambitious film with no margin for error, blending horror, mystery, and dark comedy simultaneously. It’s a project that required a director with nuanced sensibilities, cohesive vision, and firm control of their craft. Ultimately, South Dakota native Michael Steinberg was tapped to helm the film.
Steinberg first fell in love with movies when his father took him to see Bonnie and Clyde, the mixture of adult humor and chaotic violence sparked his imagination. A collection of 60s-70s classics like The Graduate, Dog Day Afternoon, and Badlands fueled that flame but it was Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc and F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise that inspired him to become a director.
After graduating from UCLA’s acclaimed film school, Steinberg teamed with former classmate Neal Jimenez to direct The Waterdance, which stars Eric Stoltz as a writer forced to accept life in a wheelchair after an accident. Produced by Gale Anne Hurd, The Waterdance wowed critics, winning the Audience Award at Sundance and Best First Feature and Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. The film’s success led to Steinberg’s first solo effort, Bodies, Rest & Motion, a romantic drama that was the runner-up for the Sundance Audience Award and screened in the “Un Certain Regard” section at Cannes. Both The Waterdance and Bodies, Rest & Motion showed Steinberg’s instinct for character and his ability to draw strong performances from his actors, two qualities that were central to his work on Wicked.
In this exclusive interview, taken from recently digitized onset footage, Steinberg discussed his approach to helming Wicked, working with Julia Stiles, and tackling the film’s stylistic demands.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Story and Tone of Wicked
It’s a murder story. The mother of the family is killed and there are a host of suspects, including the father and the next-door neighbor, who the mother was having an affair with. There’s also the au pair and the eldest daughter. On the surface, that's what it's about. But it becomes about something else that happens inside the house with the family, which is really a gothic horror film.
The movie is constantly throwing curves at you. As soon as you think you're set in comes this other story element and this other tone that completely takes it in a different direction. Then you think, “Okay it's going to be the teenage daughter from hell and then it throws in something else completely different.” I like movies that take you on a ride. I think too many movies are streamlined from beginning to end and you pretty much know in the first five minutes everything that's going to happen. This person is going to get together with this person by the end and it's just a matter of when and how. I don't think you can tell that from this movie. I don't think it lets you settle in and be comfortable. It's constantly pulling the rug out from under you, which I think makes it fun.
What Attracted Him to the Script
I never read anything quite like it. It's a combination of genres that I'm really interested in. It's a thriller, a horror film, and has elements of black comedy. I grew up in suburbia and I thought I knew some of the nightmares that come with that. I thought Ellie was a really unique character. I hadn't seen a young girl who had that kind of power over men. I thought that was interesting and I wanted to explore it.
How Wicked Compares to His Earlier Work
What's different about Wicked from the other films I've done is it's much more about the style and tone and the genre elements. Those other films were much more about the performance and the basic story. They were very naturalistic while this is a stylized movie. This is something I hadn't done before.
Working with the Cast
Julia Stiles is a phenomenon. She'd somehow read the script on her own and sent an audition tape from New York that she did in her apartment with her mother. I was really intrigued by it. She wrote me a letter and I couldn't believe a 15-year-old had written this letter because it was so smart and insightful about the character and the story. I called her immediately to find out who this girl was and could tell right away that she was incredibly intelligent and had a good grasp of what we were trying to do. So she came out and auditioned and she basically was Ellie. She had that character inside her, which is kind of frightening. For a young actress, it's rare you can find something this complex where you're really carrying the movie and you're the dominant force behind everything that happens. So this is a great role for her.
I'm in love with Michael Parks. He’s amazing as Boland the detective. It's not really a detective story but there is this murder mystery element where the detective is trying to uncover the murderer. I think we paid the least attention to that part in the script but Michael came in and brought this character with him that was really specific and something that he really came up with on his own. He's been a lot of fun to work with.
I had seen Linda Hart do small parts in big movies and was really curious about her. I thought she was really funny and perfect for the part but I didn't think she'd be interested in a low-budget movie. I wrote her a letter telling her why I thought she'd be great and, to my surprise, she wanted to do it. I didn't even know about her whole singing career. She's an amazing gospel singer and comes from a family with this whole tradition of gospel singing. As it turns out, her character Mrs. Potter sings a song at a wedding reception so I was completely thrilled she could do that. She was great.
When Billy Moses came in and auditioned for Ben he just blew me away and completely stole this part from every other actor who wanted it. He’s done an amazing job. He's very funny, which is hard to do in this role. It's walking through a fine edge of playing real but understanding the comedy.
Chelsea Field came in for Karen Christianson and we just talked about the script. A lot of people had no clue from reading the script what kind of movie this was going to be. Ten percent of those who read it got it from the beginning the same way we did and Chelsea was one of those people. I felt great having her in the movie and she was really fun to work with. She did her own stunts and she's a lot of fun on the set.
Patrick Muldoon was a revelation because the part had been written for somebody older and we'd heard about Patrick and became really interested in him and had to talk him into doing it. Once we did, we realized the part had to be rewritten and it was fortunate for us that we did because it turned out so much better once we sat down and rewrote it specifically for him. It actually changed the story and became much better with his participation.
Louise Myrback came in and auditioned for Lena. We fell in love with her in the audition. It’s her first movie, the first of many. The character was supposed to be French and there were many fine French actresses we were looking at but Louise had a spark and a playfulness that really worked well for the part.
The Technical Side of Wicked
That stuff is easy. The camera angles, the lighting, and the other technical things are easy. What's always hard is telling the story well and getting a performance from the actors. In that respect, it's been the same as what I've done before. It's been more fun, stylistically, with some of the things we're doing. I've enjoyed that.