Thanks so much for that information, Andrew! I did some research on the names you supplied, and there is a hotel in Paris called the Hotel d'Albe, but judging from its website, I think it looks too modern to be the same one where JMB stayed. I'm not sure. I also found several sources saying that the Theatre du Vaudeville's original building still exists, but it has been a Paramount Cinema since the 1902s.

I will be making a day trip into Paris tomorrow, but I think my friends will drag me to see the non-JMB-related parts of the city, so I will have to investigate this another time.

I have also been trying to find out whether the L'Hostellerie de Guillaume le Conquérant in Dives-sur-Mer still exists. I have seen some modern photos of a building that greatly resembles the one in the photos of JMB, Sylvia, and Michael playing Romeo and Juliet, but I couldn't figure out if it was the same building or not. One of the many occasions where a better grasp of French would have been extremely useful!

any takers to read a few scenes?

Sure! And thanks for the info about the PP in S movie. I'm quite surprised that the movie rights were bought so soon after publication. Although I wasn't a big fan of the book, I look forward to seeing the movie someday - sometimes the movies actually turn out better than the books. (Mary Poppins and Lord of the Rings are two good examples.)

On an unrelated note, today I convinced my screenwriting professor to let me do my final project on different movies about Peter Pan. I plan to include ... the 1924 silent Peter Pan, Disney's Peter Pan, Hogan's Peter Pan, Spielberg's Hook, Andrew's The Lost Boys, Finding Neverland, (possibly) filmed versions of the stage play, and (hopefully) a 2003 indie film Neverland, that I've heard some very interesting and strange things about. I don't think I've ever looked forward to a school project so much!

Oh, and my prof also invited me to consider movies "Peter Pan-esque" themes. Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

Hi, Renata. Here's a link to a guide to Scotch that I have always found incredibly useful when deciphering JMB, and I bet you will, too.

http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/general/scots.html

Thanks so much for the link and information! I have been visiting Céline's website for some time now and I love it, despite my complicated and sometimes strained relationship with the French language (to top it all off, I'll be graduating with a degree in French next May). What a brave soul she must be to take on translating The Little White Bird...

I've finally gotten my own copy of The Lost Boys (!!) and even though I've only had time to watch the first few minutes so far, I'm already surprised by some of the references to T&G that it makes. The biggest shock is the simple pronounciation of Grizel's name. Everyone in the film is saying it so it rhymes with drizzle, and I've always said it Gri-ZELLE (accent on the second syllable). I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to reconcile myself to this new pronounciation. I guess I'll add Grizel to the list of Barrie-related words that I can't pronounce, which will probably grow longer as I continue watching the movie. I also think that AB mentioned in his interview that Tommy committed suicide, which was another huge shock. I had thought his death was accidental. I better go reread the end of the book.

It's almost midnight here in Louisiana, I've got a Shakespeare paper due tomorrow, and I'm moving next week and have a ton of packing to do ... but all that will just have to wait, because I can tell right now that I'm going to be up late tonight watching this amazing movie.

I was recently looking at this website's photos of Barrie with the Allahakbarries, and I remembered something I once read in a Barrie biography (I can't remember which, but I don't think it was JMB&TLB). What I read was that short people are better at cricket, and this was why Barrie was good at it. Unfortunately I don't know anything about playing cricket, so I don't know if this is really true or not. Does anybody know if being short gives you an advantage at it?

In JMB&TLB, there is a copy of the entry Barrie made in his Querist Album when he was a young man. For "Favorite Hero in Fiction," he wrote, "Cooper's 'Pathfinder.'" Here's a little crash-course for folks who have no idea who Pathfinder is (I didn't until a few weeks ago): Natty Bumppo was the hero of a series of five novels -- The Pioneers, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer -- by James Fenimore Cooper, collectively called "The Leatherstocking Tales." I'm posting all this here because I read The Deerslayer, which comes first in the series chronologically but was the last to be published, for my American Literature class a few weeks ago, and I really think that Natty Bumppo was a big influence on the creation of Tommy Sandys and other Barrie heroes. I highly recommend The Deerslayer, or any of the Leatherstocking Tales, to anyone who wants to understand Barrie's work just a little better.
Oh, and another book I recently read for American Literature was Moby-Dick. I loved it, much to my own surprise, and one reason why -- besides that it was a really good book -- was how much MD reminded me of PP. To me, the similarities were simply astounding. I even got into an argument with my professor over whether Captain Ahab was anything like Captain Hook. Maybe no one can prove that Barrie ever read MD, but I'll eat my hat if anyone can prove he didn't. (Just joking, so don't anyone take me up on that.) If there are any other MD fans reading this, I'd love to here what you think.

Hm ... I tried using that map as a guide when I visited the Gardens, too, and I wouldn't exactly recommend it. It's not entirely accurate (try as you may, but you'll never find the outline of Pilkington's shadow on the ground!) and it's over a hundred years old besides. I'm not suggesting you ditch it, but you might want to pick up another map.