A Small Rewrite

I may have posted this years ago, but I've always loved it (most especially over the years when getting "notes" on one of my screenplays...), and it's so good that it deserves having a repeat, or at the very least to not risk falling through the cracks.

It's a comedy sketch from British stage benefit concert for AIDS in 1989.  The actors for this kind of thing don't get better, Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie.  Interestingly, the show was directed by Hugh Laurie's longtime sketch partner, Stephen Fry.  Laurie and Atkinson here play William Shakespeare and his producer for Hamlet. 

The sketch is called "A Small Rewrite."  And the writer of it doesn't get better either --Richard Curtis, who won an Oscar for writing Four Weddings and a Funeral, and wrote such other movies as Love Actually, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones' Diary and Yesterday.  He also wrote for two TV shows with Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean and Blackadder, which I note because it's the foundation behind the sketch.

The producer of Blackadder was a fellow named John Lloyd, who apparently once said during production that he felt Shakespeare could have done with and editor.  And that was the inspiration for Curtis.