Turns out Catherine Hardwicke’s modern day adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” — retitled “Haml3t”— is a musical of sorts?
“It’s a modern-day film, set at a liberal-arts college where words matter — so people are careful and talk in beautiful language, and Hamlet tries to express himself through music,” Hardwicke explained to MTV. “So, we’re using some of the cooler Shakespeare language, in a musical way. [My Hamlet] is like an [aspiring] rock star. He’s got six people that go to his performances, go to clubs and listen to him. It’s like an early Kurt Cobain.”
“He’s a good singer,” Hardwicke said of her leading man, Emile Hirsch — who, despite never singing in a film before, will play the Cobain-esque Hamlet. “He’s also taking singing lessons and guitar lessons. We were in the studio a couple weeks ago, and he was rocking it.”
Hirsch didn’t seem too nervous about the comparisons and, in fact, seemed to revel at the prospect of being involved. “We’re hoping to shoot in the fall, I think in Boston,” said the actor. “One of the movies that inspired us was Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet.’ … We want to lower the ages of everyone in the cast, make it much younger and see how that affects the story. Most of the ‘Hamlet’ [interpretations] onscreen are with much older casts, so we wanted to make everybody in college, set it at a college, make it really dark and gear it more towards young adults and young people and teenagers.”
Musically though, Hardwicke seems be recruiting the exact right kind of people. “We have Brian Reitzell, the music supervisor who did ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and all of Sofia [Coppola]’s movies and other cool things, like ‘Friday Night Lights.’ He’s collaborating with bands. He used to be in Redd Kross; he was the drummer. So he’s working on getting a whole cool palette together — a sonic experience.”
Reitzell’s credits — among impressive feats like coaxing My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields out of semi-retirement to make music for “Lost In Translation” — includes the achievement of making something as generic-looking like the vampire film, “30 Days of Night,” feel like a terrifying picture, by creating a creepy and experimental score in 2007.
Sure, Hardwicke’s name may have been tarnished by her involvement with the “Twilight” franchise but let’s not forget she helmed the exceptional “Lords Of Dogtown” her last collaboration with Hirsch. And with Reitzell on board, this might be something worth keeping an eye on, bad Cobain comparison and all.