An Unexpected Journey, or the morning after

[davem]

According to Billy Connoly (Dain)

Billy - who also stars in new Dustin Hoffman movie Quartet - admitted he wasn't a fan of the novel.

"No I never read it. And I probably never will. It's not my cup of tea. Youthful society when I was younger was divided into Tolkien and non-Tolkien and I was a non-Tolkien and I didn't like the Tolkien people," he said.

"They were all corduroy and limp wrists and we were all string band people, banjos and bluegrass players and blues players, chasing women about the place, having long hair and they were all talking about the ginks fighting the gonks."Connolly: No plans to read Hobbithttp://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/en...-16255688.html

Which got me wondering whether Billy is the odd one out, as all the other actors/production team have been praising Tolkien, the fans & the books to the skies, but surely, for most of them its first & foremost a job & they may not have any time at all for the book/fans.

And actually, should we care whether they like the book or not, or whether they think the fans are a bunch of sad geeks who can't get a girlfriend/boyfriend? Not everyone is going to like Tolkien, & isn't the most important thing that they play their part well & give the audience a good time? And yet, and yet.... what about the niggling little feeling that when you watch Dain on screen the actor is thinking "I can't believe they're paying me to do this rubbish! Right, now am I a ****** Gink or a ****** Gonk?"

The other point to be made is that if his reference to 'string band people' is to The Incredible String Band, then he's making a big mistake as Mike Heron & Robin Williamson were deeply influenced by Tolkien:

Heron and Williamson fashioned a visionary environment out of odd and ends of Tolkien, Blake, Celtic folklore, Western occultism, Romantic poetry, British children's literature, The Golden Bough and The White Godddess, the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. And that was just the lyrics. They were gifted, if highly eccentric songwriters. They were deeply versed in British folk music, having come up on the coffee house scene during Britain's own version of the American folk boom.http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/a...viewjune09.php