Directed by Pinny Grylls & Sam Crane
It is not very often that you get to see a movie where you can honestly say “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” I was lucky enough to have it happen to me last year when I saw Nickel Boys in the theater. The way that RaMell Ross and his team decided to shoot that movie from a “first person” point of view was incredible, and married so well with the narrative storytelling. I’d never seen anything like it before, especially within the context of how it complimented the movie itself, it wasn’t just a random, artistic choice. It mattered. With Grand Theft Hamlet I am happy to be able to say once again, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” What Sam Crane and his filmmaker wife Pinny Grylls have crafted is truly remarkable.
Effectively unemployed at the height of the pandemic in early 2021, Sam found himself spending a lot of time in the video game world of Grand Theft Auto Online, along with his friend and fellow unemployed actor Mark. With no theaters open to employ them and put on plays, Sam and Mark decided to team up and embark on the harrowing journey of staging a version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet right there within the video game world. This was not an easy task. After employing Sam’s wife Pinny to document the journey, they sent out a message to the GTA world for auditions, and much to their surprise, they had fellow gamers with a shared interest in the works of Billy the Bard.
It was not an easy journey, with the inherent dangers of the Grand Theft Auto world. Could they find a space to be undisturbed for auditions and rehearsals? A space safe enough to not get murdered and have to re-spawn into the world? Could they build enough of a community to keep the players interested from start to finish? These were monumental questions, and bizarrely ones which parallel nicely not just into the world of theater during the pandemic, but into the world of art generally. While Sam and company were looking to avoid random teenage boy thugs from offing them for their own enjoyment in game, actors and artists in the real world continue to struggle to find safe spaces to tell their stories and perform their work.
Perhaps not in the same literal sense of danger, but danger nonetheless. Funding and support for the arts has been waning for years and creating a safe space for people of all types is as important now as ever. Grant Theft Hamlet shows us the art of the possible. It’s possible to find your people, to find a group with shared interest and shared passion. Video games, and especially ones like Grand Theft Auto often have a negative reputation for the violence, or for people wasting their lives away in front of a screen, but there is value in community, whatever that looks like for you. Even if that means putting on a ridiculous play in a ridiculous world (to be fair the play is not ridiculous, but the circumstances certainly are).
Even if the play wasn’t successful, it was. They did it. They pulled it off, and by all accounts had a great time making it with each other, even with some bumps along the way. But was the film successful? You bet your ass it was. It was certainly an adjustment, watching a movie which takes place entirely in the world of Grand Theft Auto, but there was genuine joy there too. Grylls finds some remarkable shots (shout out to the game makers too), and there are some very real conversations having between the players. A movie about people putting on a play within a violent video game should absolutely not work. The fact that it worked as well as it did, well all I can say is I’ve never seen anything like it before.
Corndog Chats 