Ursula LeGuin Comments Further on Earthsea…

December 16th 2004 at 3:35 pm

LeGuin artfully explains why the recent movie of her books miss the whole point:

Time went by. By the time they got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries — and Robert Halmi Sr. had come aboard — they had lost Boyen.

That was a blow. But I had just seen Mr Halmi’s miniseries Dreamkeeper with its stunning Native American cast, so I said to them in a phone conversation, hey, maybe Mr Halmi will cast some of those great actors in Earthsea! — Oh, no, I was told — Mr Halmi had found those people impossible to work with.

“Well,” I said, “you do realise that almost everybody in Earthsea is ‘those people,’ or anyhow not white?”

I don’t remember what their answer to that was — it may have used that wonderful weasel word “colorblind” — but it wasn’t reassuring, because I do remember saying to my husband, oh, gee, I bet they’re going to have a honky Ged.

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