A dividing line between certain senses of humor, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead written and directed by Tom Stoppard, is a film you’ll either love or hate. It’s number 38 on my favorite films of all time behind Kieslowski’s Decalogue and just ahead of Bergman’s Persona. It’s one of those films that has such a small target audience you wonder how it got created.
I guess the best way to hit a small target is to get really close to it.
One of my all-time-favorite films, Brazil, never would have come out if the director hadn’t snuck a copy to a film festival. It won (I think), was praised by critics, and Universal was embarrassed into releasing it. They had wanted him to change the ending (read: dumb it down). He’s been quoted as saying that if you say the word “art” at Universal they call security. I think most of the big studios are like that. The biggest surprise when one of them releases a decent movie is that it got past their “creative” producers without being ruined.
At summer arts camp, my teen and her group combined Hamlet with Rosencranz & Guildenstern Are Dead for their final performance – it was funny! And for their encore they did the whole thing super fast in reverse.