The first pictures emerged this week of Daniel Craig filming the opening scenes of the movie adaptation of Stieg Larsson?s book, ?The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?. Despite the fact that there is already a movie version of the book (the first in Larsson?s best-selling Millennium trilogy) by Swedish director Niels Arden Oplev with an all-Swedish cast, Hollywood have decided to come along and give it some jazz hands and add a star turn, making it into one of the most highly anticipated films of 2011, because, well, that's what Hollywood does, innit?
Some fans of the books are a little bit upset about this new remake, fearing that it will not stay true to the original work, many saying it's unnecessary to make a film about a book that's already been made into a film about a book, with concerns that an all-star Hollywood cast will somehow dilute the power behind the story, blah blah blah, moan, moan, moan etc.
Well, we can tell you for nothing that Hecklerspray is not the moaning type (ha!). we're sure the Swedish film is great but we're busy people and can't be doing with subtitles and although there's no doubt that the original Swedish actor is more Blomkvist than Craig, we at HS, are delighted about the inclusion of James Bond.
We've read all three books and found them utterly compelling, even if we did skim the boring bits (mainly the bits with politics and that which if you've read the book you\’ll know means about 90% of it but to be fair when you don't know anything about British politics, why on earth would you need to know anything about Swedish shenanigans?).
This news meant that Daniel Craig was going to get his kit off and we could have a good old perv at him whilst eating a box of popcorn bigger than the collective hecklerspray head in the cinema (the cost of said popcorn invariably involving a second mortgage or perhaps the sale of a kidney).
Shortly after seeing the pictures, HS got its copy of TGWTDT out and started highlighting areas in the story with potential for swimming trunks action (we're not stupid, we've seen the James Bond pictures). However, it quickly became clear that the chances of Daniel/Mikael getting semi-naked were pretty slim. Mikael doesn't really do anything in the book but sulkily skulk around being investigative, power up his iBook and smoke fags. Oh, and sometimes he shags women and solves Sweden?s most unsolved crimes and is generally a hero but those bits are purely fillers.
HS was a bit gutted about the lack of phwoar-inducing action until we had a genius idea. The one thing that Mikael does do, in fact, the thing that he spends 90% of his time doing, is making coffee and eating sandwiches.
Now, we like coffee and sandwiches, but Mikael takes it to the extreme. If there was an Olympic event for eating sandwiches and drinking coffee, Mikael Blomkvist would be the world champion ten times over. When you think about it, it's no wonder he's always so moody, he must be severely lacking in Vitamin C if all he eats is bread and can you imagine his breath?
Anyway, back to the genius idea: coffee?s hot right? And you wouldn't want to spill it on your trousers, particularly as you are a top journo solving a deeply complicated mystery and have no time for such humdrum as washing and ironing. And we all know that Swedish sandwiches are usually ?open? and involve some kind of random fish and a lot of mayonnaise and we all know what a bastard a mayonnaise stain is to get out, even with Pink Vanish.
What we're suggesting is, every time Mikael eats a sandwich or drinks a coffee, he does it standing in his pants. It's efficient, especially if he's about to go to bed or he's just been captured by a serial killer who took all his clothes, and it saves on washing which in turn is good for the environment and heaven knows we could all do with being a bit more responsible with our carbon footprint.
So, each time he drinks a coffee or eats a sandwich he does it in his underpants. And 30-something housewives all over the world get a little bit of Craig in their lives (or a big bit, if the camera angle?s right). There you go Mr Hollywood, write that into the script. There's a box office smash for you, no mistake.
Incidentally, HS did go to Sweden once, for a meeting. We ended up on an industrial estate drinking some kind of lemonade thing surrounded by men in business suits eating rollmop herring. We planned to go into the centre of the city for a bit of culture afterward but ran out of money in the taxi so had to stop on the outskirts where we spent the afternoon with a mad woman who wanted to check HS?s chakra, with only a copy of ?Eat, Pray, Love? for company (don't even get us started on that book).
We couldn't even find a bloody IKEA, which was a shame as our stupid editor demanded tea-lights. Anyway, we won't be rushing back.
This disgusting article was dribbled over by Betsi Doodle