...The Movie!

Having just seen the Brad Pitt vehicle, I can safely say that familiarity with the Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid in no way prepared me for many of the, er, ingengious plot twists. Am trying to imagine what the pitch was to the Director. Or what the Director said to the Script Writers. Or what the Script writers would have said to Homer. Or Briseis: What is my motivation in this scene?

I won't even go into the creative locales. Who knew that Mycenae was right on the sea? And where is the port of Sparta? (This did occasion much entertainment with the Greek audience, however.)

I think there is fodder for some fun verse here...

troy 2004—review

hot bods
no gods
dialogue plods
audience nods

PITCHING TROY


Better than Brad in an unbuttoned shirt
is Brad on a horse in a pert miniskirt.

It'll bring in the dough.
That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Update

We all have one spot where we're weak,
though otherwise we're strong as steel.
The spot was once named for some Greek,
but now it's called our "Brad Pitt heel."



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited June 04, 2004).]

These are hilarious. Renate, yours should be on the poster.

Kate--a better title, Grecian Earn?

At least they didn't change it to the Brad Pitt elbow or something. I wouldn't put it past 'em.

[quote]Originally posted by A. E. Stallings:

I won't even go into the creative locales. Who knew that Mycenae was on the sea? (This did occasion much entertainment with the Greek audience, however.)

I think there is fodder for some fun verse here...
__________________________________________________ _

I haven't seen the film, nor am I sufficiently versed (ha!) in the Trojan Wars, otherwise I might offer a little ditty beginning:
"Oh, I do like Mycenae by the seaside.........."

(or is that another of these songs familiar to everybody in the UK and to nobody anywhere else?)

I'd like to be beside
your side, Mycenae.
Hee, you're by the sea side,
by the beautiful sea.

[*blush* My apologies to the old songwriter.]

- Bugsy

Alicia Stallings, classicist,
with all her wisdom, somehow missed
prognoses that the gold of Troy
was Pitted for the hoi polloi.

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited June 03, 2004).]

Brad Pitt
makes for bad wit
(though as Achilles
he gives me the willies).

I Told You So

Cassandra cried, "I said it was a ploy
the moment that they wheeled the horse before us!
Am I the only one with ears in Troy?
The damn thing shook with the sounds of a Greek chorus!"

troy 2004—review

hot bods
no gods
dialogue plods
audience nods


I thought Achilles' mother was a goddess in the movie. Isn't she some descendant of a sea god, and wasn't she portrayed looking pretty regal and pretty fine (the blue eyes and straight from the hairdresser 'do), for an old lady, picking up sea shells in the shallows? She looked like a goddess to me. It was a subtle way of doing it.

I did notice that Briseis in the Iliad wasn't captured at Troy, but an earlier battle, but in "Troy" she was... well, at the temple.

Oh yes, I forgot---she also made a prophecy.

[This message has been edited by diprinzio (edited June 07, 2004).]

Brad Pitt's in Troy? Well what the f--k!
Poor Jennifer is out of luck.
Would I fly to him? Of course.
And dress up as a Trojan Horse.

The poets frown. They disapprove
of shameless moviemakers who've
played fast and loose with Homer's oeuvre.

"No gods!" the cognoscenti fume
with one eye glued to Brad's costume,
the other on Orlando Bloom.

Ye classicists who're feeling randy,
Come and enjoy some Greek eye candy.

Though Troy is gone, its glory quondam,
Its name lives on in film and condom.

I thought it was a cataclysmic flop.
Brad Pitt looks nothing like him - much too short.
And why add all the Grecian crap, but chop
A Summer Place and Parrish; then distort
the man's career, ignore Suzanne Pleshette?
Where's Palm Springs Weekend? Clearly, nothing good
(not since Godfather II, to my dismay)
will emanate these days from Hollywood.




[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited June 13, 2004).]

(With only slight apologies to the half-actress who played Andromache .)


Death of a Nation: Backstory


How could the splendid, high-walled city fall?
Old poets failed to earn their salaries,
For only Hollywood resolves the crux:
The Trojans fell for want of calories.

Those paltry Greeks could not have razed bright Troy:
That hollow ships included such small food
Reveals these figure-watching "warrior-sailors"
As naval gazers, and a snaky brood:

Their strategists--untutored, vain, and sordid;
Their Weapon X--a willowy Achilles;
Their other heroes couldn't clog a jakes--
Assorted ranks of Thoroughly Attic Millies.

Watch puffy-chested Hector's rippling arms
Glisten more brightly than the klieg-light sun:
How could Troy's human shield be broken by
A beefcake hot-dog with a tiny bun?

When poets pinned the blame unequably
On equine wood, Odysseus, and Zeus,
They turned a blinkered eye to the true cause:
Andromache's embrace was Hector's noose.

That prince, the night before his duel, beholds
His fashion-model wife, how gaunt and pallid
She looks at dinner. He admonishes:
"That's not a meal! Put dressing on that salad!"

"But lord," she meekly says, "our people look
To me for light when Dardan plains grow dark
With blood. I have an image to uphold.
Shall I grow wide as a flat-bottomed bark?"

Troy's hope encircles then his fragile wife
In tender arms that slew a hundred men.
Her head, its colors rare as saffron, burrows
Into his breast. He tells her that she's thin,

Thinking he does aright. And so it seems,
Till late that night, she wonders if rebukes
Hid in his proffered comfort. Nervous, mad,
She breaks into the larder; gorges; pukes.

Proud Hector rises to Apollo's hooves:
The chariot trampling on the sail-like clouds
Portends a victory for all he loves.
He calls for food--but what he's brought astounds.

"I'd beat you, wife, except it wastes my strength!
No beef, no chicken, not a single egg?
Would that I could eat Helen! But, no matter.
This day shall see that twerp Achilles beg!"

Thus famished Hector took the fateful field,
His empty stomach gurgling like a baby,
And strength to match. Troy's soon consumed by flames.
Could one meal alter history? Well, maybe.


Moral:
No meat is murder.



[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited June 13, 2004).]

(This is a rewrite and combination of my previous efforts. What a colossal waste of time! Alicia - how could you do this to me? I swear I'll stop now.)

Troy - Capsule Review

I thought it was a cataclysmic flop.
Brad Pitt looks nothing like him - much too short.
And why add all the Grecian stuff, but chop
A Summer Place and Parrish; then distort
the man's career, ignore Omega Cop,
Hawaiian Eye, Suzanne Pleshette; abort
all mention of Come Spy With Me, and crop
Godfather II and Surfside Six? Deport
this crap that Pitts the gold of Troy: no good,
no class, no plot, too crass, too Hollywood!!


[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited June 16, 2004).]

"But Homer had no horse," the scholars said it;
so Quintus never got his rightful credit.

Robert Meyer

An Innocent Bystander

Pity the proud wooden horse
who was prodded into the scene:
being seen in this Pitt of a movie
will bar him from acting again.

The Trojans

The Trojans weren't all that swift.
They opened the gates of their city
thinking their enemy gave them a gift...
and Helen wasn't that pretty.



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited June 17, 2004).]

Ha!!

I have it on authority
in re the equus spectacle
the Greeks' superiority
was more than dialectical.

And if the Trojans hadn’t been
half-cocked with too much wine
they would have gladly given in
and sacked the concubine.

We would have had to live without
The Odyssey and more:
no cautionary tale about
that spoiler and his whore.




[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited June 17, 2004).]

Heh. That guy said equine wood. heh heh.

Though classic in tone, it’s inept
That devices meant to contracept
Were named for a city
Laid waste with no pity
When the “gift” burst, and out the guys leapt.

[Movie tie-in available by misspelling and hyphenating "pity." I just didn't have the heart.]