In case it is not already abundantly clear, I am no great reader of Shakespearean prose and one of the things that drew me to the Sonnet Project was the chance to have them played out and interpreted by others, to aid my understanding. Now, that said, when I read sonnet 151 it is hard for me not to conclude that the writer is being a smutty horndog – which I believe is the term that scholars would use. The text starts out harmless enough but by the middle he is talking about flesh which is "rising at thy name" to "point out thee", and from there we have many other sentences which, to me, seem to be about his erection. As ever, I write these thoughts before going to the film but I was very interested to see how they presented this one – and the thought of them doing a sonnet about erect penises at the designated location of Nathan's Hotdogs had me all the more curious to see if they would do what I had in my head when I saw that in the title!
All credit to the filmmakers then because although it toys with the suggestive language and does have a comedic tone, it doesn't go the "hot dog sausage as penis" route as I may have done – confirming yet again (as if it were needed) that I am much better off on this side of a screen. The film sees a man awkwardly waiting around outside Nathan's hot dogs and we see him eyeing a young woman as she goes in. He watches her in apparent lust as she gets her hot dog and prepares it – all while he gets a text from his girlfriend not to forget the quinoa. I was waiting for the hot-dog-related flirting to start in the second half of the sonnet just as we got to rising flesh etc but the film was smarter than that and produced a nice conclusion that is amusing and fitted with the light tone.
The bright colors of the film fit the location well, and although it is a bit generic, the perky music hall style music throughout works well. The performances ham it up a little bit on the screen, but it still works and the voice-over is well done and the intensity of the delivery connects with the video – which is not always the case in these films thus far. An amusing film then that uses the text quite cleverly even if it perhaps is not really what the writer had in mind all those years ago!
All credit to the filmmakers then because although it toys with the suggestive language and does have a comedic tone, it doesn't go the "hot dog sausage as penis" route as I may have done – confirming yet again (as if it were needed) that I am much better off on this side of a screen. The film sees a man awkwardly waiting around outside Nathan's hot dogs and we see him eyeing a young woman as she goes in. He watches her in apparent lust as she gets her hot dog and prepares it – all while he gets a text from his girlfriend not to forget the quinoa. I was waiting for the hot-dog-related flirting to start in the second half of the sonnet just as we got to rising flesh etc but the film was smarter than that and produced a nice conclusion that is amusing and fitted with the light tone.
The bright colors of the film fit the location well, and although it is a bit generic, the perky music hall style music throughout works well. The performances ham it up a little bit on the screen, but it still works and the voice-over is well done and the intensity of the delivery connects with the video – which is not always the case in these films thus far. An amusing film then that uses the text quite cleverly even if it perhaps is not really what the writer had in mind all those years ago!