4RA-4: Why Do I Want to Ask Questions

Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

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Why do I want to ask RA questions ?

• Because he played roles so excellently that I really would like to know how he made them plausible to himself to be able to make them work for his audience as well.

• Because the preparation for the roles he plays seems so complete that I would like to know what he makes of the roles and adds in explanations and background to make them work – for himself and for the audience.

When I during my studies, had access to cheap tickets, I nearly weekly went to the theatre to see productions. Often I could not make sense of what they wanted to tell me. With RA playing a role, it is easier to get the message and meaning, even really difficult, emotion racking ambiguity works with him.

• What is the difference here and there? What makes this work beyond the hints the script, set and artifacts give?

• Why does a scene even work, when RA does nothing more than let a smile shine through his eyes, while his face remains impassive (or rather needs to remain passive, because it is covered with prosthetics like in the Hobbit, where the smile intoxicated me so much that I forgot to be attentive for quite a while and now urgently need to see the Hobbit a third time to catch up on the scenes I missed two times)?

But this all still does not answer the question, why I especially would like to get the answers from RA.

• Because I think he is sensitive and thoughtful enough to have really interesting answers.

• Because he takes the time to think his answers through and not just does something to please the audience, but also himself and his high standards.

• Because he does not do it for the greatest marketing effect, though marketing for an actor necessarily must be part of it, but to be content with what he did.

As this is such a strong aspect for me in my life, this might be a point where I over-interpret RA’s previous interviews and his answers. Still his behavior in interviews is surprisingly different and refreshing.


My questions and analysis is far from finished and I will go deeper over the next few days of FanstRAvaganza 4.

Have a nice and enjoyable FanstRAvaganza 4 event !

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Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

4RA-3: Questions 2 about Richard III

Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

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No, nothing like if he killed his nephews.

If I believed King Richard III really did it, I would rather ask how or why he thought it to help his position and prestige as king, when I see it so much as an error for him from all perspectives.
I have clear doubts here that he did it, but not for being a ‘Ricardian’ (which I am not) or only wanting him to be good, but for psychological reasons.

For one, I see the king as an intelligent man and I just can’t imagine, he did not come to the same conclusion that the disappearance would hurt his position as king. He was their uncle after all, if they were legitimate or not and as such responsible for them. To lose them just is no good style for an uncle. (That reminds me of my own nephew. I think my sister would kill me in return ;o) Preferably in a very slow and extremely hurtful way.)

For another, the one with the best and strongest motive in police investigations rather rarely is the culprit, as his interests are much too obvious to allow him to act upon them. They are obvious for everyone to see and deduct the logical consequences.
This leads to the strange situation that the strongest opponents might act as the fiercest protectors, just because of this reasoning.
While not so blatantly obviously interested parties, normally the second, but often even in the third or fourth position of motive strength, feel safe enough to act upon their baser motives.

I know that is no proof, but at least shows why I doubt.

Whereas I don’t doubt, that King Richard III clearly calculated all (!) his options and was well aware of advantage and risk.
A crime executed in the head, is it still or yet a crime in itself?

NPG 148; King Richard III by Unknown artist
(Source: National Portrait Gallery)

My questions to RA now would be:

• What aspect of King Richard III especially can fascinate an actor?

• What advantage has Shakespeare’s Richard III character compared to the ‘real’ (or historically reconstructed) one?

• What can a film do to a king who is already famous? – Or should I rather say notorious?

• What influence would you as actor like to give Richard III’s wife Anne Neville over him? (As very little is known about her and her relationship to her husband, this aspect leaves quite a lot of space for interpretation.)

• Is Richard III a driven or a reacting figure? Driven by greed or acting out of necessities put upon him?

• Is Richard III personally strong or weak and why?

• What in your opinion makes Richard III act in the way he does?

• What in his background / education / upbringing / influences / … leads him to become such a different character / morally settled person compared to his older brother Edward IV?

• What kingly abilities of Edward IV does Richard III miss?

• Why does Richard III’s relationship to his eldest brother work though their large age difference and their opposite characters and approach to life and moral?

And here I really need to forcefully stop myself, otherwise we would sit here till next year’s FanstRAvaganza 5 ;o)

I very much hope you enjoy the event ! Till tomorrow, with more musings, why I just can't stop asking questions ;o)

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Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

4RA-2: Selection 1 of Fan-Questions

Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

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One thing that absolutely fascinates me about RA and his preparation for film roles is his creation of stories and biographies and background for his characters. That he has these background stories, predestines him to answer most of my questions I have for him playing certain roles, more so than the scriptwriters themselves, as they make up a story, but what interests me much more is, how he made these stories work, how to get the feeling of a plausible flesh and bone character out of their raw material.
This is the pre-condition for most of my questions and why they are directed at RA.

Today, I will start with a selection for “The Hobbit” and “Spooks”:


What I would like to ask Thorin Oakenshield: 
Though I gladly admit, "The Hobbit" is not my strong part with questions, so it was a good point to start with only a few  ;o)

• Why undertake a quest without closer research about the dangers, conditions of the way and the situation with the dragon? Why go in so unprepared and only rely on Gandalf as backup and rescue?

• Why not search for his father first?

• Why not ask Gandalf about what he knows, but only take him as a granted help?

• How does RA legitimise Thorin’s behaviour for leading his nephews into almost certain death?

• What is the misbehaviour of Thorin at the end which legitimises his loss in battle / in his honour and consequently his death? Is the loss at battle parallel to his error and misbehaviour in other areas?

• Does RA believe in this parallelism of the one who is right wins and the one who is wrong looses in a battle?

• At what time would he see that way of thinking to have been common and why does he support the continuation of such a thought system?

• What does “The Hobbit” has to tell youths and adults today and what does he think Tolkien wanted to achieve with portraying such an ancient believe system?

• The Hobbit does not reward effort, but for every success a lot of magic and outsider's influence is needed, not only one’s own abilities, work and effort. This is rather a fate-belief than based on the own ability to change the destiny. How can this inspire young people to become strong and hard working, upright people?

• Why is Bilbo the hero, while he steals and betrays his friends? Are those the elements Tolkien wanted to show his children as the right behaviour in the world?

• Why is it necessary for Bilbo to support Thorin’s enemies, when Thorin is completely aware of the loss the city endured because of the dragon and wants to recompense them? What gain does this turn of the story give to the audience?

• Why does it need to be half the bounty, which has been accumulated for generations by the dwarves, when the other recipients did nothing either to help fight the dragon nor to accumulate the wealth? Should that tell us that force and not hard work gets the easier reward? (If we see our banking crisis, I don’t think children need a further example in that regard to get the idea that hard work is not popular.)

• Why do the dwarves not deserve their own hoard after their long exile, but are seen as greedy that they want their home back and revenge because nobody helped them in their legitimate fight or during their exile?

• Why can Tolkien and his event driven writing style especially fascinate boys?

What I would like to ask RA in his roles as Lucas North:


One of my main characters and roles of RA I would like to grill without end, is Lucas North, rather less John Bateman, whom I just ignore somehow, but would rather accept more in a form like Al Delarmy, as he at least would have some kind of motive or answers. John Bateman for me just seems to be an empty shell not worth asking anything at all.

Already from the series 7 and 8 I have enough unanswered questions for Lucas North, but series 9 just hit it all off by not answering a single one, but just opening up a wagon load of new ones.

So here only a small selection of questions still burning inside me through all my re-watching of “Spooks”:

• What did Lucas North do in China? Where did he get his artefacts in his flat/ apartment?

• How long did he stay there? How well does he speak the language and which dialect and when did he have time to learn it?

• What languages does he speak and when did he learn them?

• What did he study at university?

• When did he meet Maya Lahan?

• What crime did he commit to only be imprisoned for 1 year back then when causing the separation with Maya Lahan?

• Whom did he offend to seem to feel the need to protect Maya Lahan, but who seemed not interested enough in him to track his departure?

• Why did the Russians not train him and give him a technical update before coming back as double agent?

• Why does Harry Pierce have such a strained relationship to Lucas North? Why can’t he openly ask Lucas North a single question? Why is all their dialogue overshadowed by a load of different intentions, but not once a straight forward talk between two equals wanting to know the other’s answer?

• How does Lucas North interpret the Ancient of the Days by William Blake?

• When did Lucas North learn Greek and Latin? What education did he have?

• How could Lucas North get the tattoos, when he was kept in isolation in the Russian prison?

• What did the other Russian prisoners, who did the tattoos on his body, tell him about Russia, their reasons to be imprisoned, the state of the world outside of the prison, about the prison guards, the prison conditions, etc.?

• Whom did Lucas North befriend in the Russian prison?

• What did Lucas North do during his active time at MI5 before his imprisonment in Russia?

• How does Lucas North react to the application of conspiracy theories? Can he fight them entirely himself? If not, which one’s does he favour / fall into, which one’s is he able to discard? How does he see their working mechanisms? What does he think about global groups like the freemasons, the French atheist sector of the freemasons, the real equivalent to the Bendorf group in Spooks, the clubs, circles and associations with an abundance of secrecy and an accumulation of too much time and money?

• What are Lucas Norths’s goals in life? (For me, he does not clearly have any in Spooks, not in the series 7 + 8, nor in series 9.) Maya Lahan here is no goal – as she comes in so late and because she seems rather a method than a goal to me.

You see, Lucas North would have no silent second around me, as this is only a small selection.
And I must say, Harry Pierce really did a bad job interrogating him and getting out no real information.

Now I obviously did ask too many questions ;o)
Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Tomorrow, I will go over to King Richard III and afterwards more to analyse my approach than adding further unanswered / unanswerable questions.

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Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

4RA-1: Fan & Fan-Questions

Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

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Some time ago, I came up with the idea to collect questions (while I already have a bulk of them regarding “Spooks”).
But why do I want to ask Richard Armitage questions and would like to know the answers, when I don’t bother with asking other men?

Before I start deeper in my journey of discovery into this question, I must add that this all for me is a very (extremely strong !) hypothetical question, because I don’t believe that I will ever ask the questions for real and I am not even sure that I want to ask Richard Armitage those questions!


Have I confused you enough by now?   
Yes? 

Fine, then we can start with my further discovery into this question during this following FanstRAvaganza week.


For me, it is something different to ask a ‘professional’ question about King Richard III, as I did just now via the digital distance of Twitter

@thehobbitmovie #AskThorin How did role of Thorin prepare for #RichardIII and what plans does #RichardArmitage have concerning this film?
— Chris Doart (@cdoart) March 5, 2013

(Though it was not answered – but did I really expect it would be?
Not really, after already hundreds of questions before and thousands after mine.
And the question per se is not answerable in 140 signs or 140 sign-bits and furthermore is not at a stage to be answered or allowed to be answered in a ‘The Hobbit’ context.)

But with those questions I enlist here in the next posts, I would rather like to hear the opinion of RA, without him needing to think about the marketing of a film or check his answers in regard of a financier. So this whole premise could only take place in a very hypothetical environment not likely to ever happen or even exist, but which can be enacted in a fictitious part of my mind.

Because the RA I ask these questions is fictional for me and so can become a version of a man I would like to talk to, while in real life those men I can talk to are really numbered and I can count them on one hand and do not even need all fingers. (As one of them already is my father, men in my acquaintance I find worth to talk to and their answers I deem something worth to get, are really few.)

How do I envision RA to answer those questions? I think the new interview in Lorraine’s Show last Wednesday (06.03.2013) with his lovely attentive and oh so ‘understanding’ attitude, came very close to my ideal of attentive listening. The attention he gives his partner in the discussion, is addictive, the understanding he expresses or seems to project (I have no idea if it is real or just a very good way to encourage the interlocutor), but it seems to work perfectly at all times and certainly has its effect on me.

Own screenshot - I know it's a bit fuzzy, but I want exactly that moment.
(Source: Lorraine's Show (06.03.2013) shared by RANet.com)

 
Still, I see this whole topic of really asking RA questions as very hypothetical, as RA would break out of the frame I gave him access to in my life and would from fictional character suddenly become real, if I really should meet him to ask those questions.

During the week, I will examine more, what that for me would mean. I hope, at the end of the week you will know more about why I fear that and so can’t imagine myself standing at a red carpet event or another event where I would meet RA in a fan-encounter.
But under this premise, I can fantasise about asking questions and in the next posts can start with a few of the questions I would like answers to.

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Posts from previous FanstRAvaganza years 2012 & 2011

Success & Envy

Lately, the news around King Richard III has been so wonderful, so full of joy and interesting revelations for me, that I was totally overwhelmed.
The only thing which could have topped the happiness, would have been an interview by Richard Armitage about King Richard III, but though it was intended, so far did not happen.

So I watch the news, look out for RA mentions and hope for the best ;o)

Today, on my search for King Richard news, I found this article. As it so well meets other development right now, one even in fandom which has caused me to make myself a bit scarce here, it was able to raise my full attention.
It expresses such typical, such destructive, uncreative and contra-effective behaviour, that it totally gets my opposition. I fight this behaviour all my life. I see it, but mostly must observe it and this behaviour once when started can't be made undone or the things repaired it has destroyed. The creatives only can collect the remains which this destructive behaviour left intact - which at the end mostly are not many.

I never understood and most likely never will, what makes this behaviour such a daily occurrence and so well accepted in society, that all journalists readily apply it, politicians make decisions based on their lobbyists acting under this maxime, colleagues, choir buddies, family and friends find it totally acceptable and do not even think about it twice,
though it destroys everything in its vicinity, creations, immense amounts of work, friendships, relationships, happiness, ...

If it is the battle of the Cities, the now arising battle of Universities or the existing, silent battle inside fandom.

I don't support it, as I support real effort and work, but not those wanting to shine based on the work of others.
I know that makes me a lonely fighter against things others do not even recognize as a problem. But I won't willingly support the destruction of happiness and creativity, which are the main motivators for every single step of my life.

I am so happy that one person can instil creativity and motivate me to ever more effort in my life.

RA even sitting gives the impression of overflowing creativity.
(Source: RANet.com)

Thank you, Mr. Armitage!!!

Rescued by Mr. Armitage

Just got an invitation to Paris. Not that it had especially something to do with Paris, just - you know - for the other stuff.
Why do men doing business with a woman think that is included - after one (business-)meeting?
And I must add, I am not someone sending out those relevant signals lightly or - in my perception - even at all. I am down to business to a fault. Friendly, effective, stiff as a stick ;o)
And men telephoning me on Sunday of all days because of a previous business meeting, already raise my suspicions to high alert (even without mentioning Paris).

As I mentioned in the discussion following my last post, I am not good at small talk, though I already know this man's biography and today, on the phone, just heard the rest, the small parts he had left out the first time.
This time he came prepared to crush my reservations to talk about myself, so he tried to openly and repeatedly get some answers from me, especially to my relationship status. He was quite inventive and certainly 'prepared' for this talk. Nearly double my age (though that might be a slight bit exagerated ;o), and after one meeting, he has no chance whatsoever with me - oh, and my business offer to him just was withdrawn in a very unobtrusive way, covered up in a business advice, so that it took him a while to figure out that he was out of it entirely with no return-ticket in, and I assure you, he tried. I certainly don't do business on such a basis, not if someone thinks he can get my work and expertise for free, appeasing me with a lousy affair.

Do you think I am totally mad and tell someone who lives in the close neighbourhood to me openly that I am single?

Oh, that leads me to - why did RA do it and state it openly? I had not expected that, at least not any longer after "The Hobbit". Good, perhaps it is different for men and women? But the question 'Why?' certainly gets on my 'undoable list of questions' [ULOQ] ;o)

For me, RA in today's situation on the phone posed the best excuse ever! With my engagement 'for' him, I am in good, very good hands ;o)
That thought gave me the strength and humour to remain patient, and helped me greatly with answering the questions quite convincingly and navigate through all the man's trick questions and angles.

Thank you for the rescue, Mr. Armitage!

I imaged RA looking like this at his 'rival' over my attention and my inner smile helped me to be convincing:

Source: RACentral.co.uk from FAULT Magazine
(excerpt)

Preparing to ...

Source: RANet.com from GLAMOUR Macazine
(excerpt)

Sorry, just could not resist ;o)

Still it is very reassuring to have such an effective protector at my side ;o)

A Picture of Perfection

Today, I got a wish granted !

Ali posted my picture of perfection (or is it the picture of the day?) on RichardArmitageNet.com:

Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

This image is a shot in the middle of a transformation on his face. He goes from annoyed to amused to interested in milliseconds and a load of mini-expressions, which only Servetus could describe properly.

Though that small transition from amused to tolerant, just happening/having happened in this screenshot, is how I presume he would look at me, if he ever by accident should encounter me. Slightly amused, tolerant, patient, ... ;o)

Still, I would like to ask him so many questions, but in real life, I know I will not have the bravery to ask them ;o)

You ask what questions? 
Loads and loads and a heavy accumulation of notes and pieces of paper already.
Alone his Budapest connection and his trip to Vienna would give me loads of material to grill him - and I would not even need to mention the circus.

So it perhaps really is best, I am not a reporter.

Also I would like to ask him, why he once mentioned he would like to learn German. It for English ears must be a guttural language, as it uses more parts of the mouth than English speakers in general do. Would he go for a northern 'dialect', a middle/southern one or the strict stage language? Has he at all decided yet and what area(s) would he like to see and visit to accompany his language learning, if at all.

Another part I surely would ask RA without end, would be about his preparations for Spooks in series 9. What did he make of his character, what of John Bateman, what outlook did he give him, what alternatives had he prepared, what really worked out - what not, ...
What was planned with the not available helicopter at the end?
What differences / preparations he felt uneasy to leave behind from the two previous Spooks series?
How Spooks helped him for Thorin Oakenshield
. . .


And that still is entirely without mentioning King Richard III!

You see, it really is best, I never get close to RA, otherwise I would never stop asking questions ;o)


If you have questions you would like to ask him, please comment. Suggestions are very welcome, to complete my kilos of notes ;o)