Wizard People, Dear Reader

The other night I go to my friend’s house, and we watch/listen to Brad Neely’s reimagining of Harry Potter 1, Wizard People, Dear Reader. A laptop plays the audio while the visuals are provided by an old VHS tape, the first I’ve watched in years.

I’d wouldn’t be inclined to watch a Harry Potter movie (excepting that time Damh made me watch the second one hungover afternoon [it didn’t stick]). I know, everybody says this. Why bother? It’s not exactly a brag. “I’ve avoided watching a children’s movie. To what college certificates am I now entitled?”

The point is that here is a piece of pop-culture which is not for me, and by simply layering something interesting over the top of it, it then becomes a film I need to see. The idea that we create our own sub-cultures when popular culture fails to provide for us is not a new one, but our sub-cultures don’t have to be built from scratch or weakly derived from older movements. We can take what’s here and now and twist and warp the fun back into it.

That’s what I like so much about this Neely thing, it hurts no one (encourages sales of the film if anything), but manages to build on the work of others to create something that appeals to a whole different section of people. And still manages to smack of counterculture.

To be honest, it was hard going. The film is so long. How do 4-year-olds manage it? But Neely is something special. Weird, random vocabulary and bizarre sentence structures, sometimes poetic. I laughed as much as I’ve laughed at anything this year.

Here’s my favourite line, to give you a taster:

Everyone claps, and Harmony (Hermione) feels like she could cry out a second self of tears, so that she could have someone to hug.

Here’s hoping he eventually does the whole septology; I’ll be able to find out how it all ends without ever having to crack a book (like most children, I spend most of my time and energy trying to avoid having to read).