Little round tinted 'dictator' glasses! Again!

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I've just seen the TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic / The Light Fantastic, and was amused to see that they'd given Vetinari (just called 'The Patrician'in this story) the inevitable little round tinted 'dictator' glasses. If you don't know the books, Vetinari is a sort of goodie - Pratchett described him as a mixture of 'Robespierre and Machiavelli', but I think he meant that in a good way - but I haven't noticed any mention of little round tinted dictator glasses in the books...

Comments

[cat-empress.livejournal.com]

Where does he compare him to Robespierre? I've heard him compared to Machiavelli, but never Robespierre.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Rather bizarrely, I've just tried to find the article, and it's no longer online (so it seems). It was an interview with Pratchett called something like 'The Creator Speaks', and he described Vetinari along the lines of 'Machiavelli and Robespierre rolled into one' - I found the interview again last week, after seeing the film, but now when I google for it I just get my own post about it! Oh irony.

[cat-empress.livejournal.com]

Heh, that's ok. What did you think of the film? I haven't seen it. I'm a Rincewind fan and he looks totally wrong to me.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It's a while since I read the book, but I thought Rincewind was supposed to be much younger: David Jason is a national treasure, but too old for the 'Rincewind' in my head. Twoflower was spot-on, though, and the librarian - it's worth seeing: you probably won't be disappointed, but books-on-TV are never the book in your head (Lord of the Rings being the exception - though that could be because Jackson had grown up seeing the same LOTR images by Tolkein, Alan Lee and Ian Miller that I had, and then got Alan Lee to design the film!).

They're filming Going Postal at the moment - it's my favourite Discworld book, so I'm hoping they treat it well!

Interesting to note I always thought JK Rowling based one of her characters on Maggie Smith in 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' - then managed to get Maggie Smith to play her in her film - and critics said 'oh, she's perfect' - yes, quite! The drawings of Vetinari seem to be based on 'the Master' in the 1970's Dr Whos, but that actor's long dead...