I’ve long been tickled by Shakespearean “versions” of things. There’s a Shakespearean version of Ghostbusters, “William Shakespeare’s Star Wars” (one book for every major film, I believe), and the book that I believe started it all, “Two Gentlemen of Lebowski” by Adam Bertocci. That last book tickled me so (especially the faux-scholarly textual notes) that I put on a free concert reading of it in graduate school, while showing cartoon storyboards drawn by a classmate.
One more addition to that list is the Internet trend of adapting the lyrics from well-known songs into sonnet form. “The Hokey-Pokey”, Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”, and many others (most by a single writer, published as “Pop Sonnets”). Some are quite clever.
I’ve never kept up terribly well with pop music, so I wondered what my sonnet might be. And then I hit on the perfect material: the introductory monologue to the best TV show of the 80s!
First, the original (to refresh your memory):
The A-Team opening credits with music. Be sure to hit the HQ button for high quality.
I was tickled by how many of the phrases in the original were already iambic, so the writing went quicker than anticipated:
The year was nineteen hundred seventy-two,
A crack commando unit straight was sent
To prison for a crime they did not do
By military court: cruel punishment!
So swiftly these courageous men did fly
A maximum security stockade.
In Angel City’s underground they lie,
Lest back to jailor’s grasp they be conveyed.
Still wanted by the government today,
As mercenary soldiers they survive.
They help but pow’rless victims seize the day,
For evil deeds they never would contrive.
If no one helps your problem when you pray,
And you can find them, you might hire “Team A”.
© Liam Castellan, 2020
(And a tip of the hat to Tino Brokaw, my grad school cubicle-mate, who helped me decide between a few options for the final couplet!)
The original plan was to superimpose the text over an image of the four actors from the show, or the A-Team van, and share the image around as a meme (like most of the other “Pop Sonnets”). But that wouldn’t capture the spirit of the original very well, so I decided to challenge myself. I realized this would be a great excuse to mess around a little with video editing (a skill that I’ve long known would be useful).
Here’s the result:
A mash-up of two of my favorite things: William Shakespeare and "The A-Team". Sonnet written/recorded by Liam Castellan, www.liamcastellan.com: The year was ...