Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[Michael Murry]

The richest man on Earth has spent some money:
two-hundred-fifty million, so we hear,
for rights to make what some will not think funny:

a TV-series "based on" "writings" "near"
to what an Oxford don had not completed
but "might have" had he lived another year

or ten. His death left fandom feeling cheated
who wanted more of Tolkien's Middle-earth.
Escapist fantasies: Morgoth defeated!

In fact, where joined by Amazon's net worth,
the HBO and Netflix "streaming" plan
distracts from sights of "good guys" doomed from birth,

defeated by the common peasant man
in Vietnam and now Afghanistan.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2021

[Michael Murry]

I kid you not, fellow Crimestoppers. Just as I started thinking about another way to lampoon in verse the forthcoming Amazon "steaming" [spelling intentional] television series and it's Amazon-ordered mission to mix Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology with HBO's Game of Thrones sexploitation, I catch this little item from Sputnik News:

Monica Lewinsky Pushed 'Thong-Flashing' Scene to Be in Upcoming 'Impeachment' TV Show
https://sputniknews.com/society/2021...hment-tv-show/

"Impeachment: American Crime Story" a forthcoming FX TV show, is set to hit the small screen on 7 September. It is based on the widely-known sex scandal involving the 42nd US president, Bill Clinton, and a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, which led to Clinton's impeachment in the US House of Representatives.

Monica Lewinsky, one of the show producers for "Impeachment: American Crime Story", insisted that writers include a scene depicting her flashing a thong at then-US President Bill Clinton at the time of their White House affair, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The screenwriter team was at first afraid that re-enacting the scene would "retraumatize" Lewinsky, but the former White House intern greenlighted the "thong-flashing" section.

. . . [snip] . . .

Initially, Lewinsky shared the intimate detail in 2018, saying that she exposed her thongs to Clinton in 1995 in the middle of a government shutdown.

Lewinsky became a part of the production team of the show after Ryan Murphy, an FX producer, urged her to reconsider her concern and pledged that the show would be about the affair between her and a president, from the perspective of the women involved.

Despite the spicy topics raised in the show, "Impeachment", according to executive producer Nina Jacobson, will be "mindful of what we show when, and why, and what we don’t show, and why".

The show is scheduled to be released on 7 September, starring Beanie Feldstein as Lewinsky and Clive Owen as US President Bill Clinton.

Oh, well. At least I've got a working title for my next poetic polemic: "Game of Thongs."

[Michael Murry]

Again, from what I understand: Amazon plans to start televising the first episodes of their "Lord of the Rings" series next year (2022) which I look forward to lampooning given the sort of material that I assume will disgrace the entertainment industry -- a difficult task, I admit. Others more knowledgeable than myself in Tolkien Lore have said that The Silmarillion will constitute the literary basis for the intended rip-off. I don't have a copy of The Silmarillion, but I do have a copy of Unfinished Tales, where the Editor, Christopher Tolkien, writes in the Introduction:

"The problems that confront one given responsibility for the writings of a dead author are hard to resolve. Some persons in this position may elect to make no material whatsoever available for publication, save perhaps for work that was in a virtually finished state at the time of the author's death. In the case of the unfinished writings of J. R. R. Tolkien this might seem at first the proper course; since he himself, peculiarly critical and exacting of his own work, would not have dreamt of allowing even the more completed narratives in this book to appear without much further refinement." [emphasis added]

"On the other hand, the nature and scope of his invention seems to me to place even his abandoned stories in a peculiar position. That The Silmarillion should remain unknown was for me out of the question, despite its disordered state, and despite my father's known if very largely unfulfilled intentions for its transformation; and in that case I presumed, after long hesitation, to present the work not in the form of an historical study, a complex of divergent texts interlinked by commentary, but as a completed and cohesive entity." [emphasis added]

Without a copy of The Silmarillion, I have had to research the Internet -- Wikipedia and other on-line sources -- so that I have some clue as to the "divergent texts" that the television series plans to pilfer and "adapt." As a model for how I might go about lampooning this stuff -- as I did with the "Itaril/Tauriel" butt-kicking elf-chick love interest in The Hobbit movies -- I consulted National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" and the terrific send-up of Star Trek and its fan base in Galaxy Quest. I trust that this influence will come through in my next verse offering:

Demiurge Dementia

Valium, Land of the Vulgar, it seems,
features some real-estate made up of dreams
parceled-out absent competitive schemes,
"built" by The Owner for "his" chosen teams:
“Angels” who mouth metaphysical memes;
“Demons” who thump theological themes.

Boron and Lithium, man and elf female,
teamed up to perpetrate – down to the detail –
theft of a mineral stone (cheap at retail):
Morbid’s crown missing a rock, now for resale.
Lithium’s dad asked his girl why should she wail?
Boron knew that he’d get shafted should he fail.

Where do the Halfwits come into this story?
Trying to separate Labor from Tory,
What should we call them? A “truck” or a “lorry”?
Do they not serve as an apt allegory:
Rustic and “Middle” and “common” and hoary?
Who, if not them, will suffice as pure quarry?

Somehow this story sounds already told,
Like a stale meal having long since grown cold;
Fetid like swamp water covered with mold;
Reeking of avarice; done; over sold;
Amateur alchemy: tin made from gold;
Narrative nonsense: escape from the fold.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2021

[Michael Murry]

Moving right along after consulting Wikipedia for the low-down on the tree-dwelling Elf Queen and her "consort."

The Undying Dirt

Gladrail and Celebrate,
Elf Queen and toy-boy mate,
she splits and he stays late
minding the forest.

She wears a ring: her fate.
He has to mind the gate.
He gets to clean her plate
and pay the florist.

She sails away to wait,
Dimly the Dwarf her date.
Present tense adequate:
Elf-speak’s aorist.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2021

[William Cloud Hicklin]

As far as I can tell, nooooobody knows. My best guess, given that Christopher was alive at the time the deal was made, is that they have only Second and Third Age material

Although the events of that year remain to date very murky, it is clear that Christopher's position as head of the Estate ended almost exactly at the same time as the Amazon deal was struck.

Now, I can say with almost complete certainty that CRT would never, ever have agreed to this, not if Amazon, or anyone else, had offered him the entire US national debt in payment. Which leads me to conclude that either (a) Christopher retired due to advanced old age, and as soon as he was out of the way other family members jumped; or (b) Bezos came offering a quarter-gigabuck of cash, and the obstreperous old man was forced out because he stood between them and Smaug's horde.
And since the deal was made without Christopher it's almost certainly for the whole damn legendarium.

[Michael Murry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

... And since the deal was made without Christopher it's almost certainly for the whole damn legendarium.

It sure looks that way. From Wikipedia:

A synopsis released in January 2021 revealed that ... by July [2020], Amazon had gained access to certain elements and passages from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales due to the Tolkien Estate being happy with the development of the series so far.

In light of the above, I think we can fairly assume that Amazon studios have already begun "interpreting" (i.e., encroaching upon) the Tolkien legendarium and will continue to do so. Then, as per typical movie-industry practices, lawyers will argue and judges will decide the distribution of profits, if any, resulting from the billion-dollar exercise in "entertainment."

At any rate, I understand that teaser trailers and a pilot episode will debut sometime before the end of this year; and, depending upon the viewing audience's reactions, we will no doubt see "changes of direction" (meaning, recasting of certain roles or deletion of them, etc.) that the "creative" executive producers will choose to make prior to the first season's episodes beginning to "steam" (not a misspelling) in early September of 2022. Not all that long to wait now for at least "something."

[Michael Murry]

To recapitulate my understand things, the forthcoming Amazon television series of steaming [not a misspelling] "Lord of the Rings" episodes -- projected to span several years -- will base itself on a mythology found in The Silmarillion, a book put together by Tolkien's son Christopher, about which I know next to nothing. (I always felt that if Tolkien didn't consider these writings fit to publish, then I needn't waste my time reading them.)

But "the show must go on," as the people paid to stage theatrical entertainments like to say, and so some sort of "adaptation" of Tolkien's "writings" (i.e., extensive notes) will most likely appear on television (or cell-phone) screens beginning with a teaser trailer and pilot episode sometime before the end of this year, with regular weekly episodes to begin in the fall of 2022.

In preparation for reading on-line reviews of these productions and their possible relation to mythology in general -- or J. R. R. Tolkien's "legendarium" in particular -- I thought I would access the Interwebs for information, if not enlightenment. Most, if not all, mythologies contain some sort of "origin" or "creation" story -- in this case, probably a narrative voice-over by an "immortal elf" like Cate Blanchet or Hugo Weaving -- and so I thought I would start with asking how Tolkien supposedly began describing his made-up world.

I found this:

Eä was first spoken by Eru Ilúvatar with which he brought into actuality. Eru commanded that the Eä "be!", "[Let it] be!", and then it was. It may be assumed that everything outside Eä, including the Timeless Halls of Ilúvatar, had no material form.

Pure, unadulterated gibberish. It meant nothing intelligible to me, but it did sound like something I hear or read from time to time:

ew – interjection. Pronounced ē-ü — used to express disgust at something distasteful or repellent (such as a bad odor) “Ew, what's that smell?”

Then, a somewhat technical term for this sort of thing occurred to me:

apotheosis – noun. The elevation of someone [or something] to divine status

Which led to another terza rima sonnet attempting to put it all together in verse, my preferred medium of literary exposition:

Apotheosis of Existential Odor

Ew (ill avatar) cried: "Let stuff be!"
So stuff became where stuff wasn’t before.
Nothing for stuff means stuff happens for free:

Schema, mythology, hand-me-down “lore;”
Pure fabrication: fictitious tall tales;
Filling up silence which Halfwits abhor.

Fantasy triumphs where disbelief fails.
Posit The One and name IT “Deity.”
Publish and hope that does wonders for sales.

Coin the term “being” (which no one can see).
Then call it “is” (far more easy to spell).
Thus, tautological identity:

"A is A," proves syllogism can sell
Anything – if you can just stand the smell.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2021