Midieval Legend…?
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Ladyhawke
Clusium — 15 years ago(March 22, 2011 08:47 PM)
I remember reading in an interview with the producer for "LadyHawke," that the story was inspired by a midieval legend about 2 cursed, star-crossed lovers.
Does anybody hear know if that's true?
If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make your signature! -
Seymour-Pats — 14 years ago(May 01, 2011 12:13 AM)
That's what has been said, but apparently, at least according to this article, that isn't true. Since the writer of the screenplay was awarded a cash settlement by Warner Brothers for making that claims, it seems that it wasn't based on a myth. I looked for a similar myth, and the one others claim inspired it is Bisclavert, which is NOTHING like Ladyhawke. That's the myth about the werewolf who needed special clothing to change back into a human; when his wife found out she hid the clothes, trapping him as a wolf and freeing herself to marry her lover; eventually the wolf gets them back.
http://joanslingswords.com/2009/01/04/looking-back-ladyhawke/ -
torreydeluca — 12 years ago(July 06, 2013 08:37 AM)
When I read this thread I recalled having seen an interview years ago with Edward Khmara where he said he came up with the idea for the movie while wandering Parisian streets at night. Plenty has been said about the soundtrack, and I've also found the inconsistency in the accents a problem, but I've always enjoyed the visuals of this movie and especially the plot.
I just Googled the Khmara interview and found it now:
Let's get one thing out of the way: Edward Khmara's script, Ladyhawke, was not based on a legend. Instead, Khmara related at the Network's March 9 meeting, the story was inspired by his late-night ramblings on the streets of Paris during the 1970s.
"Being an insomniac, I walked around at night," he recalled. "I loved to walk around the old parts of the city, where there are old churches, and gargoyles looking down at you. I could just envision what medieval life must have been like. The story started to concoct itself in my head."
Khmara envisioned a story starting with the main character being thrown out of a Paris inn and meeting a knight who would accompany the main character on a quest. "The knight had this hawk on his shoulder," he said. "I could never understand that. I knew the knight had to have the hawk on his shoulder, but I could never figure out what that meant."
Two years passed, and the story went no further. Khmara returned to the United States, and kept thinking about it. One day it hit him: the quest would be one in which the knight has to find woman he loves, and the hawk is that woman.
"It just wrote itself from then on," Khmara recalled.
While there is a long history of werewolf stories (and other tales that involve people turning into animals and back), as Seymour-Pats pointed out, no medieval legend seems near close enough to be the basis of this screenplay. The closest thing I can think of is the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Jess-Belle", where a character in Kentucky makes a deal with a witch revolving around love that results in her being turned into a leopard every night, only to resume human form by day time. But even that is a stretch to get to Ladyhawke.
