Considering that when casting was complete, he had given the part of Hermione to a girl called Watson, and the part of Harry to a boy called Radcliffe (the Radcliffe Camera is the heart of Oxford; chunks of YSH were filmed in Radcliffe Square; the publicity shots of Holmes and Watson show them there) I think he was taking the p***.
P.S. Random aside: just realised why Elizabeth in YSH has a surname of Hardy - it's a homage to the Hardy Boys detective stories.
P.P.S. More support for my Hogwarts-is-Oxford sub-theory (partly because HP draws on YSH, partly because JK didn't get in) - Professor Slughorn, in the latest book, seems to be based on a famous Oxford Don, Francis Fortescue Urquhart, nickname "Sligger". In a piece of detective work worthy of Holmes (which I read on the net, but cannot now find the page) someone spotted that J.K. Rowling has a well-thumbed copy of "The Brideshead Generation", by Humphrey Carpenter, on her bookshelf, in this photo:
http://www.mediarodzina.com.pl/nowa/images/media/jk1.jpg
It's the maroon book to the left of her head, and it mentions him in detail, in addition to various Oxford characters and Mitfords (Rowling's real-life heroines).
P.P.P.S. Looking at the photo again, I note that on the right, next to the yellow Freud book, are a couple of Agatha Christie novels. What was I saying about the names Lestrange, Lucius and Griselda?
P.P.P.P.S. If you want to get weird, above her head, on the top shelf, are the words "Holmes, Oxford" on a book...
but I think that might just be an old edition of this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198662092/qid=1137970856/sr=1-48/ref=sr_1_2_48/026-3449535-3414838
(The Oxford Companion to Military History, Richard Holmes Editor).
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combatreview
18 years ago
Actually, I found something additional the other day that may be of interest to you. I'm afraid I don't have it to hand right now, but it was a copy of the December 2001 UK edition of the Film Review magazine. This was a 'fantasy special' (primarily as Fellowship of the Ring was just being released), and had a general focus on fantasy cinema throughout.
As a Harry Potter film was also coming out at this time, the magazine includes an interview with Chris Colombus, in which he specifically cites Young Sherlock Holmes as being one of the reasons he was interested in making a Harry Potter film - he felt it was bringing him back to where he'd started off. I'll try and reproduce the full quote for you sometime.
He doesn't, I'm afraid, suggest at any point that the influences may have worked in the other direction. Mind you, just supposing your belief is correct that's certainly not disproved by Colombus' failure to be egotistical in this instance!
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ephraimwaite
18 years ago
Thanks. I think I know the stuff you are talking about - where he says that he loves England / the UK, how he wanted to come back, and how he had practice of a story set in a gothic British school environment. But please reproduce away.
I'm thinking of doing some digging into anything I can find about the circumstances of Columbus' appointment to the job. Remember the stuff about J.K. vetoing Spielberg, when she came out and said it was all media speculation? To be honest, I'm still pretty much convinced that my original hunches are spot on:
J.K. was in a bad way financially, she knew she wanted to write something for kids that dealt with her own story interests, but would sell commercially, so consciously or unconsciously she borrowed a number of elements from YSH. It took off in way she could not possibly have foreseen, perhaps even because U.S. publishers looking for a product to push unconsciously recognised the big franchise possibility that had been indirectly retained from YSH. Come movie rights time, Columbus hears about it, does some investigating, and basically says he wants control of it. The alternative is that he launches some kind of challenge, either in the media or in the courts. It's almost certain to fail, if only because Coumbus used characters from Conan Doyle, but that doesn't matter. These kinds of cases are launched in Hollywood all the time. The threat is the damage he can do to the reputation of the property. And what is the damage if he gets what he wants? The studio gets a director who will still probably do a decent job, Chris hits another personal financial jackpot, J.K. avoids accusations of plagiarism. Who loses?
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ephraimwaite
18 years ago
JKR on Richard & Judy (U.K. chat show) a few days ago:
Richard: I was dodging around the death bit, because I know you can't answer that question, but you know how Conan-Doyle got sick up to there of Sherlock Holmes ...
Jo: Yeah.
Richard: ... so pushed him off the cliff at the Reichenbech falls, I'm not asking if you have done that obviously, but have you ever been tempted to bump him off because it is such a huge thing in your life.
Jo: I've never been tempted to kill him off before the end of book 7. I have always planned seven books and that is where I want to go, where I want to finish on seven books. But I can completely understand the mentality of an author who thinks "well I am going to kill them off because that means there can be no non-author written sequels as they call them, so it will end with me and after I am dead and gone" - they would be able to bring back the character and write a load of ...
Richard: That never stuck me before. I thought it would free you up.
Jo: Agatha Christie did that with Poirot, didn't she, she wanted to finish him off herself.
Interesting that Christie was the authorial example that sprang to her mind here - I'm sure that's where she got some of her naming conventions (not just specifics like Lestrange, but also stylistically e.g. Little Hangleton sounds just like a Marple village). I bet she devoured Agatha's mysteries when she was younger.
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