SnitchSeeker.com - 2006 Audio MotW: The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie: agrippa

[{Please note that the links to the audio file are currently inactive. We are trying to track it down for your listening pleasure, but in the meantime hopefully you'll get a kick out of the the transcript. Please note that not all of the interview has been transcribed.
- Tegz 11 July 2011}]

Welcome to the second
Member of the Week
Audio Interview

With your host evlpez
and featuring:

Gryffindor's agrippa

We are still a bit primitive in our recording and editing, so it's not fancy schmancy, but I have it on good authority (from the awesome folks who listen to SS Radio) that it is "AWESOME!"

There are a few different ways you can go about getting the interview.

1) Tune in to SS Radio where some of our DJs will be playing the 45 minute interview.

2) Download an mp3 version of the interview here [dead link].

3) The transcript will be provided for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to listen in. For the full effect, download or tune in to listen to the audio version. Keep checking this thread for updates to the transcript. It's a long interview, and transcribing it is a lengthy process. I'll keep editing in here until it's complete.

Please feel free to comment on this specific interview here in this thread. If you have any suggestions for future interviews, please PM Biochemkris or evlpez rather than clutter this thread with general suggestions. Remember, we are in the process of tweaking so, please don't be too harsh.

This audio interview was conducted via Skype and recorded and edited using Audacity.

Transcript

I'm speaking with Agrippa of Gryffindor. Agrippa, what do we call you offline?

Clint's fine.

Clint is fine? Okay, and what do you do, Clint?

I teach Latin at a High School in Texas.

And how did you meet Harry?

I was teaching middle school Latin at the time. I guess this was right after Prisoner of Azkaban came out, and there was a debate at the private school that I was working at, as to whether or not the books belonged in our library because, you know, there was still some debate about 'are they satanic?' and all of those kinds of things, and I felt like I needed to read them to make an informed decision, which.. I guess that's an unusual idea in some circles. (chuckle) So I actually borrowed Sorcerer's Stone from my priest; she had small children and had the book...

Probably for the same reason.

(laughs) Yes! And I sat down one, maybe it was a Friday night and I thought Oh maybe I'll just read a couple of chapters of this before I go to bed. And I stayed up 'til three in the morning finishing Sorcerer's Stone. And then immediately went and borrowed Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban from her and read both of those, and then joined everyone else in the long wait for Goblet of Fire. And I was immediately interested in the mythological and the ancient world themes of the book.

Right. And I mean, you don't just teach latin; you've studied the classics and like, this is your thing.

Yeah, this is what I do for a living. In fact before Goblet of Fire came out, a friend of mine and I got together and wrote an article for one of the teaching journals about the Latin in Harry Potter, and looking back I realized we missed a lot of stuff, but..

Right. Hindsight's 20/20.

(laugh) Right. But I really enjoy that and in fact that's one of the things I've been working on for the Lexicon (The Harry Potter Lexicon).

Right. Now speaking of.. I kinda forgot to do this, but speaking of Latin, there are mis-pronounced spells left, right and centre in the fandom, I'm sure.

That's true.

Not the least of which are from my own mouth. We all use The Lexicon a lot to look up spells and just about anything we want to know about Harry and his world, but you really don't get a good sense of how things sound. And I know particularly for myself, I tend to want to say things. And it doesn't hurt, you know, you like to goof around with your fake wand you have at home and "I want that remote"...

(laughs) That's the 'Hermione' problem...

(laughs) Right! And so, one in particular that's always bothered me: The summoning spell.

Mm-hmm.

How do you pronounce that?

You know, it's interesting... one of the problems with latin is that there's Latin as we think the Romans spoke it, say, in the first century BC - first century AD. Then there's Latin as it was spoken in the Church in the medieval period which is very Italianate, and it does the CH stuff a lot. And then there's the kind of, British Anglican Latin that's used in scholarship when we're not speaking in Latin, but using Latin words in English. And I always said, in my head, Ah'-See-oh.

Okay.

Which is not the classical way to say it. And I noticed in the Goblet of Fire movie; they said Ah'-Kee-oh which is how Cicero would have said it, I'm sure.

Okay. Now I'm totally a, you know.. Latin Idiot here, in my head when I read the books it was always Ack'-See-oh, and I don't know why I came up with that, but it's wrong, isn't it?

That one can't be right. Ah'-Kee-oh ...

Can't be right. (laughs) Leave it to me to come up with absolutely the farthest from the real thing.

The Italian might make it a c-h. Ah'-Chee-oh.

Ah'-Chee-oh. Like Cappuccino.

Right, exactly. (laugh)

So, but you say Ah'-See-oh.

I did, but after watching the film and thinking about it, I think I'm going to try to start saying Ah'-Kee-oh, if I can make myself do it.

Ah'-Kee-oh. You know what, I like Ah'-Kee-oh. Just because.. you know, there's the whole donkey thing going onin my head with that one and so...

(laughs)

And I can't elaborate too much on Snitchseeker Radio, or in polite conversation most of the time, so I won't. But.. Ah'-Kee-oh I'm going to go with that and I'm gonna say, "Well you know, Clint says.." (laughs) "The expert I know says that I'm doing it right.." So that clears that up. Are there any other... I couldn't think of any offhand and I was so happy to get you here so early in the day that I didn't go back through the Lexicon to look for other spells I might be saying wrong. Do you get a lot of people asking for your help on this? From your students? 'Cause a lot of your students are...well some of your students are enthusiastic about Harry..

Actually, quite a few. For several years I had students coming to me saying, "Will you sponsor a Harry Potter Club?" And I always said, "Yes, but you have to organize it, because I'm not... my time is a little scattered." And this year, for the first time, there was a group of kids who said they wanted to do it and I said, "Great, organize it and I'll sponsor it," and we had... this is a high school of.. from about 270 kids we had 120 members sign up. We sorted them all into houses... it's kind of in a lull around now because Sping is a stressful time, but there's a lot of kids who want to talk about Harry Potter. And in my Mythology class as well, when we're talking about archetypes and things like that, I can't resist and say things like, "You know.. He's just like Dumbledore and Merlin and.." and, you know, the centaur Firenze, and these are all the same guy.

Now.. you say Fer-Enz'-ay for 'Firenze'. I always pronounced it Fer-Enz' in my head.

Well I always think of Florence, and italian for Florence is Firenze (pronounces Fer-Enz'-ay)

Ooooh! I didn't know that!.

And so that's where.. That's not a Latin name (though).

No, I know, and that's why I didn't ask you about it, but I just kind of... You know, when you read a book, you always have your own bent on it, like, we see our own Harrys, our own Rons, our own Remus in our heads and then of course the movie comes along and now it's all Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, but other things too, like how you pronounce things. Until you've seen it in the movie and you see characters referring to other characters and pronouncing their names.. especially for us in North America where, you know, Remus is not a particularly common name.

There's a couple of, you know.. I think maybe I say Ah'-See-oh because I think maybe Jim Dale does, now that I think about it.

Ohhh! And see, I've never heard those (audio books).

I own all the audio (books) because Texas is a large state, and when I have to drive...

You've got quite a ways to go.

Yeah. From here to my parents' house is like, 8-1/2 , 9 hours, so I always listen to those in the car. And so maybe that's why I say Ah'-See-oh.

To be continued...

You're very fortunate. I wish I could listen to Harry Potter in the car. My husband and I are both musicians and both avid music lovers, so we listen to a lot of music if we're driving, but lately we've also heard a lot of Sesame Street music ..

You sing silly songs...

...and My Little Pony music and stuff like that so.. (laughter) I hear people say, "Oh yeah, i've got the audio books for all the Harry Potter" and I'm like, "Oh you lucky... Oh man!" And of course if you have small children, using a discman or walkman is completely out of the question.

One of my favourite Latin moments was right before the release of The Half-Blood Prince, and with the new JKR.com website, there was a lot of information; she was leaking it, she was teasing us with little bits.

Right.

And we had that quote about the guy with the kind of lionine features which turned out to be, and here's another one, Scrimgeour.

Yeah. That is another one. In my head it was like, SKRIM'-JOW-er or something like that.

Yeah that's what I had too and then I thought, Oh, I bet this is French. So we had this character, and there was a lot of discussion (that) oh this must be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher or the idea that this was Godric Gryffindor in some... in a pensieve (or) back in time. And then she released those chapter titles and one of them of course, was Felix Felicis. And I can't tell you how angry I got on the comment boards at The Leaky Cauldron because people kept talking about, "Oh, that's about a cat."

(much laughter) Yeah.

And I think it's in our consciousness because of Felix the Cat, but you know. I kept saying, "Thanks not the Latin word for Cat." The Latin word for cat is feles. It cannot have this form. These (Felix and Felicis) are two forms of the same word and they mean lucky. And everyone was like, "No, no, no this has got to be the name of the guy that looks like the lion." I was so relieved when I found out that I was right. This was a potion that brings you luck and I was like, "Thank God!"

I dont' think it ever entered into my head that it would be the name of someone, or..

Well it would be a really bad character name. (laugh)

(laugh) Well it would. That would be really bad. But I think, for the most part, I try not to spoil myself too much, so like, if there are a lot of spoilers about an upcoming book or.. well.. it's only ever been with Harry Potter. Because Harry is the only thing I wait for.

You don't want to be spoiled.

I tend not to spoil myself when things are coming out, so I didn't think too much about whether that was a person or... it certainly never entered my head that it was a cat, so I think I should be maybe a little proud of that. (laugh) Now, you've often said Clint, in the past, that Neville is your favourite character.

Mm-hmm. I do love Neville.

Is he still?

Yeah, and I was so happy with Matt Lewis' portrayal of him in Goblet of Fire.

Wasn't he just .. aw!

He was amazing.

You wanted to just pick him up and hug him. Just, "Yeah! You GO man!"

(laugh) I like Neville because he is the way I feel alot of the time. Just kind of out of the spotlight, you know, dealing with his own stuff.

A lot of us, and I think maybe it's part of being a 'geek', (laugh) that a lot of us feel a little uncomfortable in groups of certain kinds of people. Like Neville, "I'm amazed I'm standing here with the rest of you and please don't look at me too closely." That's kind of a vibe I get from him.

Yeah definitely, and as that all unfolded about how traumatic his past was in Order of the Phoenix in particular, you just see in him... well I also see in him a lot of my students who have been through some pretty painful things. And yet his ability to kind of buck up and face the world bravely and, at least since he got his own wand, a real improvement in his abilities. Actually I guess that started even before he got his own wand.

Some of it even in book one. Some of that, you know, "I'm worth twelve of you, Malfoy." Things like that have to have... confidence obviously.

Yeah, like you say. Even in the final scenes of Sorcerer's Stone, "It's a difficult thing to stand up to our enemies, but even more difficult to stand up to our friends." You've gotta like Neville for that, and of course..

He does what's right, doesn't he?

He does.

He is such a Gryffindor, which you know.. I'm a Gryffindor, so I love. (laugh)

I like to think of myself as a Gryffindor.

Yeah. There we go. But yeah, he's kind of THE Gryffindor. You stand up for what you believe in.

Which answers the question (of) why he's not in Hufflepuff. He's not wishy-washy enough to be in Hufflepuff.

No he's not. If you can say anything about Neville, it's that no he may not stand up a lot, but he stands up when it's important to him and generally for the right thing, and for what he believes is right. And boy, that's pretty admirable.

And that's why in that fan fic that you and I have started on, that we'll probably never finish..

Right. (groan)

We end up having him teaching herbology and head of Gryffindor house some twenty years after the fact.

And able to look back and kind of chuckle at himself and to lead children that he sees himself in, which is kind of sweet.

Right. I hope that's the case for him. I am a little worried that he might die.

I am too. But I remain optimistic. I'd like to see all my favourite people live through this. I know they won't but.. I'd like to see Harry live through this and I'm not certain of that, so..

I just keep telling myself that he has to.

Yeah, long enough for it to be significant, anyway. (laugh) Obviously the world is not going to go the way we don't want it to, in his world. He's gonna save the world 'cause it's gotta have the happy ending. But yeah. I'd like to think they're not going to die, but.. I hope Neville sticks around because I would like to imagine that he would have the kind of future that at least you and I envisioned a little bit in that story, which brings me to ... you said you see yourself in Neville. I see myself in (him) and I think a lot of us, certainly several Gryffindors I know see Neville in ourselves. Is he the one you most indentify with, then?

Well my students like to compare me to Hagrid, which I think is a combination of me just being a fairly large person but also being a little bit of a pushover and a teddy bear. (laugh)

(laugh) Really? I'd never have thought that about you. Hmm. [/sarcasm] (laugh)

To be continued...