Scarlet & Other Stories

On going absent without leave, computers, eyes, recent developments and an important request- rather long but please bear with me...

First, I hope you all had a good Christmas and I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

It occurred to me that it would probably be polite to start the new year by explaining why things tailed off during the last.

The last you may have heard I’d sent in a selection of random script pages to Red Planet and was pacing more nervously than a prospective father during the 96th hour of labour. Except I’d all but decided not to bother completing the complete draft having decided the first ten pages I’d written were drivel. Thankfully, I had the sense to thrust them upon a sentient being who said these were quite good so ‘write the rest’. So I did. The first draft needed to be properly storylined then clocked in at around 100 pages and was done in a couple of weeks. Then I sliced and diced until it was a more appropriate length. If I remember correctly this was dealt with by the beginning of November. While I’d written something rather poor it was still fortuitous, so it turned out, to have a completed draft...

Do you know what a ‘backlight’ is? Neither did I. It’s the thing that makes the pretty pictures appear on a laptop screen. When it dies the computer dies: it is not economically viable to repair. And thus my faithful old Toshiba started to die after 6 years loyal service while I was writing the RPP piece. Unfortunately, within a day of completing, and just before I was about to back it up and check all the most important files were also, the hard-drive imploded. So, I had to find a new laptop and hope that I could get all my data recovered including the just completed script. A new laptop was relatively easy to acquire (they sell them in something called ‘shops’), the data recovery was tough going as the hard-drive was hard to access (but apparently I only lost 14 files and I still haven’t worked out what) but the hardest thing was getting back online as apparently the drivers needed for this (and practically all other things) change by the day. And have to be downloaded. And how do you download the drivers for internet access when you haven’t got internet access?

The new laptop has taken some getting used to because at some point since buying the Toshiba they decided to change where most of the keys were and made them a lot smaller (or closer together) and the screens are now a lot wider... apparently for no other reason than so America can have two pages on screen at once... and what America wants we all get. I thought it was just to annoy me!

When I got back up, running and online in late November I discovered in a somewhat well-stuffed inbox the telegraph from Red Planet telling me that they too rather liked the play what I wrote. I was rather pleased. As it had arrived nearly a week before I was very concerned that I might have missed the next deadline- and still don’t know- and had to hurriedly go through the somewhat rough, full script making sure that it had not been ‘corrupted’. That got sent off and now I’m back to pacing in the aforementioned corridor. Of course, I’ve since realized quite how ropey the script is and have already set about a comprehensive ground-up rewrite.

The Problem
The new laptop didn’t just require adjustment to new hardware but also to new software- Vista doesn’t ever do as it’s told- I change the settings, it decides I’m wrong and changes them back again; Word 2007 is shockingly bad and I’m hunting down Word 2005 or earlier (I can’t find anybody who actually likes or uses 2007)- but these are things you can get used to... even if you don’t want to!

Now, for several years I have feared that I have been slowly glowing blind but, as I’m very squeamish when it comes to eyes, I’ve put off doing anything about it just in case there was something wrong. The new machine has a wide shiny LCD screen that has a brilliant burning intensity. I’d always turned the screen brightness down on the old matt-screened Toshiba but turn the new one down to the right level for me and it turns into a very good mirror. Turn the screen up and it feels like I’m staring into a light-bulb. In the first month of use I was finding it harder and harder to see- and using the machine less and less- I was left unable to focus my eyes, things were very blurred, over-bright and my eyes hurt and strained constantly. But this only happened after computer usage. Finally (presumably this is the approach to the innermost cave), I bit the bullet and went to the optimist optometrist.

Several years of worry have been assuaged- I am not going blind. In fact it turns out I have very good eyesight, both near and far, and good peripheral vision to boot. However, although the lady didn’t give it a name, I seem to have some form of Photophobia which hadn’t previously been a issue. Thankfully, it’s not severe but apparently is irreparable. I think I know where it’s arisen from though I’ll probably never be certain. In hindsight it has explained a few things including why I’ve been dreading the ban on incandescent light-bulbs as I have found the fluorescent bulbs quite painful. What I really need now is a screenguard for the laptop which is proving impossible to find- everybody says they exist nobody knows in which mythical land. If you know somewhere I can get a laptop screenguard please get in touch as a matter of urgency.

In the meantime, I’m trying not to spend so long at the machine and I write everything in detailed notes on paper (like I always used to) and just type it up so it’s a good job my typing speed is half-way decent. So you’ll have to forgive me if I spend less time online.

Other Stuff
The most unexpected thing I realized while I was computerless was how little I missed the internet- and how little I really used it for- email and eBay primarily. The loss was more irritating than devastating. I didn’t use these iPlayer type things- why watch TV in pixelated form on a small screen when I can watch it on TV? I’ve never played computer games- online or offline- life’s too short already. I just went back to music, reading, watching and terrorizing the cats with my own inimitable brand of terrible guitar playing. Being unable to type was a nuisance but I’ve always done a lot on paper anyway. The other thing I hadn’t realized until I stopped was how deeply tired I was. Maybe sometimes people need a bit of a break.

...and in the meantime, I appear to have acquired some followers. Which is strange, new and unexpected. This wasn’t there when I was last about. What’s it all about? Do I have to do anything? Should I reciprocate? When I get 12 followers I’m going to start a religion- I already have good recipe for loaves and fishes... well... pilchards on toast. And now I must be thinking about a meme- and rather a difficult one I suspect...

The Missing

A few years ago there was a story about a recording of the two string quartets by the major 19th Century French composer Saint-Saëns. Had this been a recording of the Beethoven, Shostakovich or Mozart quartets there would have been barely a flicker of interest in anything other than the quality of the performance and recording themselves. However, what made these recordings noteworthy was not only that the compositions were of very high quality but that these were the world premiere recordings. In the classical music industry these days an eye is kept open (especially by labels like Naxos and Chandos) for rare and unusual recordings to give a disc a unique USP. Lost and/ or previously unknown works do appear, not least because many of the major music archives still haven’t been catalogued thoroughly and have centuries of manuscripts residing in them. After centuries of European wars, private sales, clearances, thefts or simply mislabelling things have inevitably been displaced but what made the episode of the Saint-Saëns quartets more peculiar was that these were not lost works they resided in the archives, people knew they existed, but for over a century nobody had even played them let alone recorded them. As a musicologist noted on the radio at the time, this was terribly sad… they were simply neglected.

We all know about the missing episodes scandal that has left many of the Hartnell and most of the Troughton episodes of Doctor Who lost for all time; the same goes for the four missing first series Dad’s Army episodes, virtually all of The Likely Lads and the missing episodes of Quatermass. Many aficionados know that a vast amount of early cinema has gone forever (about 80% of all silent film), not least of all because it was filmed onto highly unstable, highly inflammable nitrate stock, films such as Murnau’s illegal 1920 Dr. Jekyll adaptation Der Januskopf or Chaney’s turn in 1927’s London After Midnight. And how tantalizing is a 1920 Roumanian film entitled ‘Drakula’? But these are gone. Probably forever. Maybe one day someone will look in a can and find cause for their heartbeat to quicken as they open a mislabelled can and find… who knows? And so we should be thankful for anything that survives from the era when films were considered throwaway. Of course, sometimes films do come back, a mini-masterwork The Most Dangerous Game (made back to back with King Kong), Boris Karloff in The Ghoul and perhaps the best example being a pristine, full length print of Carl Dreyer’s masterpiece The Passion Of Joan Of Arc from 1928; long thought lost, it was discovered in a Norwegian mental asylum!

However, as with the Saint-Saëns quartets, there seems to be another category: the neglected film, works that are known to exist and yet seem to be languishing in limbo, unreleased on disc or tape, unbroadcast on television. The EU did have a scheme to make sure that certain classics of European cinema remained on catalogue (EVE) but this seems to have long since gone and it seems more likely that a film (or television programme) will be released if it comes through a smaller company. Even the classic, Witchfinder General was apparently not going to be released on DVD because the rights had ended up with Sony Pictures who had decided on a policy of not releasing films over a decade old because their profit margins would be too small- and I do realise that profit margins are a large part of the problem- which is peculiar when you consider how they kept telling us we were coming into an era of greater choice. We must be grateful to companies such as Network, Eureka, Artificial Eye, Tartan and Redemption-Salvation for throwing light through some nigh on forgotten classics but there are so many more…

Among the films and television programmes that seem to have fallen through the cracks and I would like to see appear on DVD in the UK include…

• The Student Of Prague (1913 and 1926 remake) (Essential early horror works.)
• Genuine (1920) (Footage from Robert Wiene’s film was placed on the end of the NTSC and some Pal tapes of the same director’s The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari- known to exist in its entirety.)
• City Girl (1930) (Murnau’s third American film- of four- and the only one unreleased.)
• The Naked Spur (1953) (the only one of the Anthony Mann-directed James Stewart Westerns not available on DVD- bizarre!)
• Fear And Desire (1953)(Kubrick’s first feature, withdrawn by the director)
• The Colossus Of Rhodes (1961) (Sergio Leone’s credited directorial debut- it may well be terrible but without a release- how would anybody know?)
• The Big Gundown (1966) (Sergio Sollima’s first Western)
• Privilege (1967) (Peter Watkins’ first feature film. Rights owned by Warners- I think- who have no interest in a release)
• Poor Cow (1967) (Ken Loach feature film briefly released since disappeared)
• Up The Junction (1968) (the film version of the BBC play)
• Run Man Run (1968) (Sergio Sollima’s third Western)
• Gladiators (1969) (Peter Watkins’ second proper feature film)
• Leo The Last (1970) (The film John Boorman directed between Hell In The Pacific and Deliverance; won him Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.)
• Deep End (1970) (Apparently a classic from the end of the sixties from Jerzy Skolimowski and said to be Jane Asher’s greatest role.)
• Face To Face (1976) (Ingmar Bergman’s Oscar- and Bafta-nominated, Golden Globe-winning classic. Unavailable.)
• Bloodbath Of Doctor Jekyll (1981)(Euro-auteur Walerian Borowczyk’s grimmest film. Rights issues)
• Chinese Boxes (1984) (Chris Petit’s fourth feature with Will Patton and Robbie Coltrane)
• Drowning By Numbers (1988) (Peter Greenaway)
• The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1989) (Peter Greenaway)
• Prospero’s Books (1991) (Peter Greenaway)
• The Baby Of Mâcon (1993) (Peter Greenaway)
• The Pillow Book (1996) (Peter Greenaway)
• Dracula Rising (1993) (Not the most widely known Corman production but effectively the companion to his Frankenstein Unbound)
• Se7en (1995) (Seriously! This modern classic is currently unavailable at HMV online!)

(I have not included any films that remain unreleased for actual censorship reasons. That’s a different subject entirely…!)

And from television wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have releases of amongst others…
• 1984 (1954) (controversial Orwell favourite saved for posterity by the Queen- I kid you not- but even Royal Appointment isn’t enough to command a DVD release!)
• Up The Junction (1965) (the acclaimed BBC Wednesday Play)
• Ghost Stories For Christmas: The Stalls Of Barchester (1971); Lost Hearts (1973); Treasure Of Abbot Thomas (1974); The Ash Tree (1975) (The BFI released two- Whistle And I’ll Come To You and A Warning To The Curious and then… stopped.)
• No Man’s Land (1978) (classic filmed version of Pinter’s play with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson sits languishing in the BBC’s vaults)
• The Muscle Market (1981) (pre-Blackstuff Play For Today)
• A Very Peculiar Practice (1986, 1988, 1992) (early Andrew Davies: first series released briefly; second series and one-off special… nowhere to be found)
• The Woman In Black (1989) (much sought after chilling Nigel Kneale adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel- apparently the rights are now owned by Universal and they refuse to release it- because they think they may do a big-screen version at some point in the next century.)
• Mother Love (1989) (chilling Bafta award-winning Diana Rigg starring 4-parter)
• Chimera (1991) (scary as hell, proto-genetics story)
• Blackeyes (1989) (controversial Dennis Potter classic)
• Lipstick On Your Collar (1993) (the final Dennis Potter shown during his lifetime- starring Ewan McGregor)
• Karaoke (1996) (the first part of Dennis Potter’s posthumous flourish- filming arranged so quickly that rights were not properly sorted out)
• Cold Lazarus (1996) (the second part… same reason for lack of release)

Then there are some that were available briefly and have long since returned into rights limbo: The War Game, Culloden, The Stone Tape…

I can’t help thinking I have merely scratched the surface and that there are plenty more classics (and curios) which have been lost under the welter of Star Wars re-issues, Ed Wood and Jess Franco releases.

Perhaps the thing that first made me interested in the rights and releases issue was the intriguing case of Johnny Got His Gun, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s sole directorial outing and pacifist film from 1971. The rights were bought by Metallica solely so they could use extensive footage in their promo for the track One They had no interest in making the film widely available and so the film languished in obscurity. A couple of years ago the film got its DVD release. Until then this was all you could see of the film…

…I haven’t yet bought a copy!

About You Now

I recently clocked up 50 posts; more by luck than judgement I’d say, and it got me thinking back. After technical glitches and the lay-off over Christmas, when I came back to the blog thing, I realised I couldn’t recall what I’d been annoying you with: I wasn’t even sure why I’d got a blog in the first place. (As I said in the first post, I don’t have much to say and I’ve been saying it ever since- empty vessels and all that…!)

Faced with not remembering what people blogged about, I looked at the other blogs and was reminded how individual they all are: the veritable information-stations (take a bow Danny, Lucy and Robin); some that tell you what they’re doing or have done and some offering opinions and reviews. Some blog frequently, some less so; some spread the love, some vent the spleen… but behind them all is someone with a desire to share something.

However, I’m still not quite sure why I continue with this blog… it started by accident, I was considering what title and URL to have, putting it in blogger to see whether it looked good and pressed the wrong button. That I continued was at the prompting of Phill, The Arnopp and Sister Elinor. So I continue.

Yet, I cannot help but have the same sense of being the interloper that I had at the Screenwriter’s Festival last year; there I was, surrounded by people I assumed to have worked in the industry for years discussing fascinating aspects of craft and I couldn’t help thinking ‘how terribly presumptuous of me to be here; any minute now I’ll be found out’. And here, when I think too much, I sometimes find myself thinking the same: I don’t have special knowledge or insight- only opinions; I’m not particularly qualified; haven’t been published or filmed; I don’t even watch many films- maybe one every couple of days; and I’m aware there is a lot left to watch and a lot to know about pretty much everything. So, why do I blog? And what should I blog about? I only have opinions and questions.

In the end, I suspect I blog because:

• I’m curious about things; I have questions. I like to hear other opinions; I like debate and discussion- I’m particularly interested in media attitudes. (I like comments and to comment myself.)
• Rather selfishly, I hope it gives me a chance to ‘meet’ people before I actually meet people. I retreated from people several years ago when I realised that 95% of those I knew or had known were either after something and/or felt good about themselves solely by making others feel bad; 4.5% were likable people who also happened to be veritable scumbags and who I’ve rid myself of; leaving a tiny handful of decent people…
• …and arrogantly, I like to think I have some small contribution to make to this ‘Scribosphere’ thing…

The other thing that has haunted my blogging is, being an opinionated bastard, how far should I censor what I put here. There are some pretty good reasons for this concern:

• Several recent articles on TV and in the press have discussed how potential employers (especially in the media world) are habitually Googling potential employees and searching for them on Facebook, MySpace and the various blog sites- researching attitudes and personal life- if you’re bragging about turning up seriously hungover (i.e. still drunk) at work an employer may just be put off.
• Should I mention much about any ideas I’ve had? If I put them half-formed on public show and someone (less scrupulous than all you lovely people) half-recalls one of them and uses it to great success would I be able to get legal recourse or would it just be my own silly fault?
• Not so long ago, there was a case of a teacher, Sarah Green, the details of which you can catch here and here*. Basically, Green is a young woman teacher at a public school who was previously an aspiring actress. She has been suspended, pending inquiry, because an in-industry advert for a building-clothes company, in which she appears in a sex scene (variously described as steamy or soft-porn), appeared on YouTube and was enjoyed by her pupils. Parents have declared her unfit to teach and called for her to be sacked forthwith… although she hasn’t killed anyone, slept with a kid and has presumably passed the CRB check. All she did wrong was leave a record of her legal past activities for all to see and now it’s coming back to bite her on the ass**. Does this mean Greta Scacchi shouldn’t be allowed to teach kids? What about Kevin Spacey’s workshops for kids at the Old Vic- has he not done sex scenes? So, while some blogs enjoy anonymity and can vent to their heart’s content, should the rest of us monitor everything we say or write- in fact make sure our lives are entirely blameless in case we change career? And what of Chip’s persistent attempts at career suicide? (Sorry Chip! :)

So if you’re still reading this and, I haven’t sapped either your soul or your strength, maybe you could share some thoughts on the following…

• Why did you start blogging and why do you continue?
• How do you decide what to blog about?
• Do you write straight out or pre-plan what you’re going to write.
• Do you censor yourself?

…and that’s that. Thanks for reading! :)

*Try and ignore that it’s a really terrible and sexist advert.
**There is an entirely different discussion to be had about how and why an increasingly liberal society has become increasingly judgemental and prone to leap straight for the portable gallows!

The Deep Blue

***contains links to images some may find disturbing***

It may come as no surprise to anyone who’s read some of previous witterings on this, that and t’other thing that I have no great liking for whaling…* what with (some) being endangered, one of the smartest of the world’s creatures and generally being majestic and all…** And anybody who saw the unedifying spectacle of the mother and calf Minke whales being hauled from the sea may also be left with some pretty reasonable questions… (see here and here.)

So, whenever we have this annual controversy about the on-going Japanese scientific whaling programme I always find myself asking the self-same questions

Firstly, based on the masses of data that they can only gather from dead whales what conclusions have the Japanese reaches and subsequently published or are about to publish in serious scientific journals?*** Secondly, would they have any particular objections to neutral scientific observers travelling with on the ships, perhaps with a remit to peer review their scientific methodology? Lastly, would they mind if the whale carcases were taken away and used by other scientists for other scientific research purposes? After all, as we’re told these days, ‘if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear’.

Of course, it could be suggested that the international community might like to know more about the whalers themselves… maybe they could indulge in a little ‘scientific research’…

See! I can do short…

*With the clear exception of ‘Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling’.
**In short we must only eat ugly stupid animals!
***Maybe that whales don’t particularly like being killed!

OK Computer

So what ‘very important thing’ shall I post about today? Global warming? Economic meltdown? Possible timetable for nuclear war? Nah! Let’s go with a post for people like me… idiots!

Or more precisely, this is a post for all those people like me who are normally quite sane and intelligent* but when confronted by technology turn into a particularly stupid two-year old. And so to a modern morality tale... or at least a modern tale with some sort of moral. Or maybe even a moral with some sort of modernity in its tale. Don’t ask me…

Sometimes my head is filled with luminous luxuriant thoughts brimming full of such magnificence and glory that the sun itself could be dimmed by them; of course, mainly my thoughts tend to burble along like a clear mountain stream with a song that sings of cats, music, cats, film, cats, music, cars, music, cats and cats… And, of course, sometimes my head is just filled with a sort of molasses-like drivel that makes no sense to man nor beast.

Of late my laptop slowed to a crawl… taking upwards of five to ten minutes to load a single web page, so I gave up trying, and at one point became so gummed up that it took over an hour to become unstuck again. Now, does my poor beleaguered head tell me to think through things logically and work out how to resolve them amicably for all parties concerned? Or does it tell me to run round the ramparts wailing and gnashing my teeth waving my fist angrily at a vengeful God? Give you a clue: wasn’t the former. Finally, the brain found some semblance of sanity and remembered what I used to do on a semi-regular basis. Before the rot set in.

And here comes the moral for all the technophobes and fellow idiots out there…

Laptops, and presumably other devices, have various things lurking around inside them. These things are sometimes put there to help. There is a thing called ‘Cache’. This needs clearing out on occasion. There is a thing called ‘cookies’. These should be eaten occasionally and the crumbs disposed into the midden. If you have an ‘Ad-aware’… use it. Oh, and properly turning off ‘the machine’ rather than always just shutting the lid for hibernation is a good way of clearing the virtual memory. And lo, when all these things had been accomplished, it was good: the laptop did work wonderfully and, indeed, the internet was not actually broken.

And the moral of the story? Sometimes it’s not just the technology that’s out to get us; sometimes it’s given a more than adequate helping hand by the fool with the opposable thumbs.

Of course, the good thing about all this is that I’ve been able to take a longer than usual break from the screen which has allowed my eyes to settle back to that whole being able to see properly thing.

So, onto other mindless trivia exciting** news. I’ve spent a good deal of the last couple of weeks worrying about the fluffiest of the cats (known variously as Billy or Flib but known to himself only by his own private cat name… the only thing he actually reacts to is the sound of a mousse lid being peeled back- he just can’t spell!). So, Bill Flib came in and settled to doing absolutely nothing for a couple of days having been out scrapping all night… He’d only managed to get a hole carved out of him the size of a marble… no blood but the world’s largest quantity of vile smelling pus. And so a trip to vet to get it looked at and a second trip to the vet because I decided to worry unnecessarily. The vet cleaned the wound with a cotton-bud and the thing went in and under the skin about an inch: watching inanimate objects entering living flash where they didn’t ought is a genuinely bizarre sight. So for a while he was more a pusycat. I was very surprised at how fast this managed to heal up: two weeks to go from gaping wound to mere scab. Staggering!

Other exciting*** non-news: a CD bought on the highly addictive eBay arrived. The Best Of X-Mal Deutschland, apparently pressed in Brazil^ but bought from a nice chap in Poland. Took a grand total of 5 days to arrive which is far faster than most Brits can manage. It’s very good- how’s that for reviewing prowess? And also arriving was a nice 5-disc Stravinsky set (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Neeme Järvi) which was a present to me from me. And I’ve gone back to ‘Untitled Conspiracy Thriller’ (UCT) with the intention of making it work properly this time. I’ve gone back to first principles and the entire plot is now on small scraps of paper pinned to a board. Currently, the major problem is the missing last ten minutes: I don’t particularly want to ‘do a Schrader’. This ending issue also seems to have flummoxed those who’ve trodden this road before me. I know these things: I checked.

And in the immortal words of Columbo ‘just one more thing’: does anybody know if the woman in the Bold 3-in-1 advert is the lovely Nicola Bryant, formerly of Doctor Who…?

*You’ve never met me… you can’t contradict!
**Legal note: I’m using the word in the loosest possible meaning of the word.
***Again with the lies!
^Not sure how legitimate this actually is but the quality’s good as are the songs.

Know Your Rights

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1791

When I hear of the latest killing spree, when I see the footage of emergency teams stretchering out bodies, more often than not in the United States, I feel a hollow empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I find myself shaking my head because I am no longer shocked given the seeming inevitablity of these events. Now, the only thing left to be shocked by is the size of the number preceding the word victims. I’m sure I sound very liberal, limp and wet to almost any American who stumbles across this but I sound liberal, limp and wet in a Britain remarkably spree killing free.

This time in Nebraska a 19 year old man, who I won’t name, shot and killed eight people and injured at least four others. The names of the victims (two customers, six employees)* are Gary Scharf, 48; John McDonald, 65; Angie Shuster, 36; Maggie Webb, 24; Janet Jorgensen, 66; Diane Trent, 53; Gary Joy, 56; Beverly Flynn, 47. Sadly, the killer’s name will be the more remembered; the victims will become a mere footnote to all but their friends and families.

I don’t hold with total bans on firearms: I think the Draconian British ban on certain types of firearms was a knee-jerk reaction to exceptional events and has been ill-advised and unproductive- there is nothing wrong with sensible, well-licenced and regulated gun ownership- ask the British Olympic shooting team. However, I find it hard to fathom what possible reasons there might be for private ownership of an AK-47. The Right to Bear Arms is specifically historically rooted and, sadly, we Brits are in fact to blame for it. Sorry for that. But just once after one of these spree killings I would like to hear a majority in the U.S. or a few Congressmen ask why do we need all these guns? No doubt the old mantra is already being rehearsed: ‘guns don’t kill people, people do’- so why not limit the people allowed to have guns?

The killer’s suicide note apparently stated he wanted to ‘go out in style’: he wanted to be a celebrity and seemingly this was his only way. Celebrity would now appear to have become so idolized and all-important that it no longer matters what dubious achievment attains it or whether you even live to ‘bask’ in it. A prime-time flash of breast, a night-vision filmed internet-displayed blow-job, a live bug menu or an ability to gun down the innocent… apparently anything will do.

Does it help that killers are elevated to a position of ersatz celebrity? Manson, Brady, Hindley, Dahmer, Bundy, Gein, West… we always remember the names of the killer over their victims… even better to be Chapman, Hinckley or Oswald and kill (or try to kill) a celebrity… can’t achieve success by yourself? Ride on the back of someone else’s. Remember ‘Charlie don’t surf’? Hilarious. Seven acts of butchery, a million ‘ironic’ t-shirt sales.**

“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.”

-Article 3, Universal Declaration Of Human Rights

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights… Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

-United States Declaration Of Independence, 1776

...as long as you're the one holding the gun.

*Sourced at Wikipedia.
**And, yes, the line came from Apocalypse Now and referred to ‘Victor Charlie’, VC, Viet-Cong but it’s long since been expropriated.

Götterdämmerung

“I don’t think there is anything wrong in having a religious conviction… (but) you talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter.”

-Tony Blair, The Blair Years, Episode 3

“God doesn’t exist, grow up.” “Those of us who have reached the age of reason and aren’t afraid of the dark would really like all of the god-botherers to stop bothering us, thanks. … I have had it up to here with the lot of you. Fuck off and fuck off now.”

-a recent screenwriting blogger's posting.

Now, before I get started I want to make it absolutely clear that this posting is NOT about whether a God, or Gods, actually exists or whether any particular brand of worshipping in a Theistic system may be preferable over any other. This post is about something else and will mainly consist of questions…

This post was prompted by several events that seem have occurred one on top of the other but primarily by something over at Potdoll’s Palace. I first started reading the Scribosphere (the blogs primarily devoted to screenwriting) in earnest about five months ago, and you’re all jolly nice people by the way^, and I’ve found there’s much wisdom to be found here (I wish I had something constructive to add to it- I only seem to have opinions and questions!). Shortly after this inauspicious arrival there were a number of posts from various people proclaiming their Atheism. This started me thinking about something which I then put to one side and promptly forgot all about. Then the other day at Potdoll’s someone quoted a hymn but immediately qualified it with ‘I’m not a believer’… and it got me thinking again, why the need to make this clear, people quote from Shakespeare and yet nobody qualifies it with ‘I’m not a Shakespearean’ or ‘I’m not an actor’. Why would it so necessary to clarify lack of belief? Then as if to prove a point there appeared the post from which the above quote appeared.*

My exact question on Potdoll’s post was ‘is there anybody out there prepared to admit to being a Believer?’ I didn’t even realise until it was mentioned that I’d used the word ‘admit’: not profess, proclaim, declare or even just mention, but admit as if it was something shameful- people admit crimes, they admit affairs- they admit things they think they should feel guilty about- but should Theistic belief be such a thing?

I’ve been around various branches of the Arts for longer than I care to remember and in all that time I can only recall four Christians who would openly acknowledge their Faith (one tutor and three students- one from Saint Helena, one from South Korea, one from Britain) but I did find a few who were but wouldn’t publicly acknowledge. All the Muslims and Hindus have been comfortable to profess their belief and, intriguingly, the reaction to their beliefs from others has tended to be more favourable as well- I hope it was not from some patronizing paternalistic attitude or from some notion of inherent exoticism. On the other hand, I have found a large number of proud Atheists including at least three tutors who have belittled both belief and believers, in some instants to the face of the above mentioned believers (not as part of reasoned debate but purely from scorn or ridicule).

It is certainly part of the British psyche to avoid talking too much about various things: religion, pay packet size, being good at things, being proud of things, etc. and the British do seem to cringe when they hear others discussing their Faith. So a certain reticence is understandable. The British are good at reticence! Not that I’d want to boast about it! This all raises a series of questions for me in three distinct areas…

Atheism
Why do so many screenwriters (and artists in general**) seem to have no Theistic beliefs? Why is this view so prevalent in the arts? Is it harder for we artists to acknowledge a Creator given that we ourselves create on a daily basis? Is it because writers are often highly educated and it is known that there are higher levels of Atheism concomitant with higher levels of education. (Although, it should be noted, there are also many educated people who are devout.)

Embarrassment
Are people embarrassed to admit a religious faith amidst such vocal Atheism? And is this particularly so in places like the Scribosphere? If even the (ex-) Prime Minister is embarrassed to mention his religious beliefs why would any of the rest of you Scribes find it any easier? Is it easier to admit to drug-taking than a belief system? Could it be that because the Atheists are more highly educated than the Theists that the believers are not capable of the requisite skill for constructive argument and debate and so prefer to remain silent? Could it be that people don’t mention anything because a strident belief might offend other people? For example, this week an invited guest speaker, Cristina Odone, was stopped from giving a sermon in favour of outward religious expression at a church carol service because it might offend any Atheists in the audience.

General Population
The high levels of non-belief amongst writers and artists are more intriguing given the statistics for the general British population. At the last census (2001) four-fifths of the UK profess to some sort of religious faith (of the others, 15.5% stated no religion and 7.3% refused to say: presumably this included all those Jedi Knights!); subsequent surveys in various newspapers from Left and Right seem to show a general 75-85% belief rate for Britain. Is it advantageous or disadvantageous to be out of sync. with the majority view? Does this or should this give carte blanche to the artist to offend at will those who do believe? Does this mean when writing it is harder to justify belief than disbelief? Does this lack of sympathy (or downright hostility) with believers mean that we writers find making fair representations of religious matters and people harder to achieve?***

As Potdoll suggested “maybe writing is getting more popular because less of us believe? Is it another way to 'transcend' death? Is religion more private than it used to be?”

Is it possible that the general lack of contact with death in our daily lives has made thoughts of a hereafter or a higher purpose to life less necessary? Does an absence of faith mirror a sense of betrayal with religion? Have our creative impulses become a replacement for God? Has the potential of our works to survive us become our pathway to immortality? Has our creativity become our way of working through our problems, neuroses and paranoias; our psychiatry, our confession and our salvation?

“Thank you and may your God go with you”

-Dave Allen

^Blatant sucking up, you lovely, lovely people! ;-)
*And was quite swiftly removed as well!
**The one exception would appear to be composers for some reason… Tavener, Macmillan, Glass, etc.
***Watching the last 7 years of Doctors, as I have, would give a good example of this!

In Deep Water

Anybody watching the news in Britain today will have seen that the Fishing Industry has come up again. And again the issue is over the quota business. In short: North Sea fishermen (particularly) can only land catches of certain varieties up to the quota limit. Anything of these varieties over the limit has to be thrown back into the sea to preserve the stocks… even though by this time it is dead and is now good for nothing but gull-food. It was quite clearly lunacy when I realised this several years ago and it’s clearly lunacy now. There are a couple of problems to contend with: firstly, if you let the fish land and be sold you are rewarding people for breaking the quotas and this will end up being flagrantly abused no matter how understanding the authorities are to genuine over-catches; next, the fish in the sea are a finite resource and must be protected; lastly, the throwing back of perfectly saleable edible dead fish is unethical, immoral and unbelievably wasteful. Trawling for one type of fish is the equivalent of taking a scoop of hundreds-and-thousands and hoping you'll only pull up red ones!

Personally, my idea, which is totally naïve and daft of course, is to allow the over-quota fish to be landed and sold but, instead of directly benefiting the fisherman (the under-quota catch to be sold for their direct benefit like now), the money goes into a hardship fund for the benefit of the whole fishing community: to be used when the quotas are fully filled and the fishing fleet is laid up. The fishermen don’t benefit directly and have no incentive to over fish; the fish aren’t wasted; once the quotas are filled the fishing stops as always but there is money available to benefit the fishermen during the off-times. I know… it’s stupid and I’m entirely sure the politicians will come up with something far better and more sensible… maybe some kind of quota system which involves throwing good fish back into the sea. Dead.

A Drug Against War

There was a story that seemed to sneak out over the weekend which didn’t garner much coverage. Is it hilarious? Is it sad? Does it even make sense? It doesn’t have anything to do with writing or the media but it seemed quite indicative of something or other.

Here’s the situation as far as I’ve deciphered it: Britain is currently suffering from a major shortage of morphine (for pain relief). Morphine is made from opium poppies. So, the government has approved the growing of opium poppies in Britain for the first time but it’s all got to be done in secret locations under tight security. However, I have heard of a place where there’s quite a lot of Opium. I’ll give you a clue, begins with ‘Afghani’ and ends in ‘Stan’.

Now, it seems the original plan in Afganistan was to take all the ‘evil’ opium (destined to be heroin) and destroy it. This plan hasn’t been working terribly well. It seems the Afgan opium farmers aren’t entirely happy with this it. So, over the weekend there’s been a new policy announced… we buy the opium off the Afghan farmers then we destroy it.

Now, here’s a vague thought, a little blue-sky thinking if you will… we buy the opium and then we… use it!

Now I’m no top-level politician so I’m not all smart so I may well be wrong but I could imagine a couple of advantages…

• if we buy the opium (for a fair price… Fair Trade opium anyone?) it will break the supply chain of the 80-90% of heroin on British streets originating in Afghanistan,
• we can ensure that the money goes straight to the Afgan farmer rather than going straight to the Taliban who promptly buy things like guns with it,
• it frees up UK fields for stuff like ‘crops’, you know, food, which by a strange quirk of fate it seems we’re actually a bit short of*,
• it frees up the non-Afghan troops, Afghan National Army and Afghan Police to spend their time more productively,
• it would increase goodwill with the Afgan farmers who get very upset when they see their livelihood being taken away,
• lastly, let’s face it, Afghan farmers have proved they’re really rather good at growing an opium crop…

So, why aren’t we doing this? Why ask me? Oh yes, because I brought it up... I can only think of three reasons:

• it’s the wrong kind of opium,
• it runs contrary to some ideology-based theory (drugs are bad, opium becomes drugs, therefore opium is bad),
• there's a problem with a treaty (probably money-based),
• politicians are incredibly stupid.

…I know which one makes sense to me!

So there you go, nothing to do with writing but I thought it was 'curious' to say the least...

*You may not have heard this but believe it or not the EU are now predicting food supply shortages and soaring food prices in the EU because their encouragement of converting fields to bio-fuel crops has been such a roaring success that food crops have been ripped up like nobody’s business. That’s why the Italians had the strike where they refused to buy pasta. All the Umbrian wheat fields that have always been the bread-basket of Italy providing so much high quality wheat have been torn up and converted to bio-fuel. Lack of wheat and increased demand means soaring prices!

Darling, You’re Meme

…word has reached my mountain lair that I have been ‘memed’. This means I have inveigled my way into being accepted… and thus the first stage of my plan for ‘total global domination within the next five years’ is now complete! Mwahahahaha! Until I reveal the list… then you’ll all just laugh at me! Actually, this turned out to be far harder than I thought it would as I realised I considered what I thought I was proud of deeply lame! So, here, in no particular order, are ‘five things about myself that other people may consider lame, but this writer is secretly proud of’.

I have never willingly taken illegal drugs. Why does this make me lame? Because I kind of assume that pretty much everybody else nowadays is regularly getting off their faces!* Because of this I have been able to reach the following conclusion...

I have never understood fashion. For example, why would I need a new pair of jeans with a different fit just because some gonk on a magazine thinks I do? My old jeans work fine- battered but comfortable, why buy new while they're still functional?

This applies to things thrown up by technology. Facespace? Mybook? Friends Dehumidified? Not a clue! I got my first CD player in 1993 (so I could listen to the Under The Gun and Tower of Strength CD singles amongst other things). It sounded great in ’93. It sounds great in ’07. Why would I need to upgrade? I don’t own an iPod; I will never own an iPod… I want to be aware of my surroundings. Then there are computer games: I played one in the 80’s then once again maybe a year ago. What on earth is so endlessly fascinating?**

However, I do have a mobile phone… it has a dial^. And if I was a complete Luddite you’d be reading this when the carrier pigeon knocked on your door. Fashion: an excuse to try and sell me things I neither want nor need just to keep the economy growing. Not being interested in any of this fashion stuff frees up a lot of time for other far more useful things like...

I have catalogued all my Vinyl & CDs and all my Videos & DVDs. Really. Lame. Until you consider the numbers involved. I don’t have a deep desire to start duplicating things just to avoid appearing geeky! Everything is then sub-divided and cross-referenced just to increase the lameness of the whole endeavour. On the other hand, the setting up of these lists was how I taught myself to type without looking at the keyboard. Which I’m also quite proud of… even if I can only do it on a flat laptop-style keyboard! This has no bearing on the fact that...

I seem to prefer the company of cats to humans. They’re self-contained, can be self-sufficient, they’re smarter, friendlier, more honest, less greedy, better conversationalists, don’t get drunk and keep themselves cleaner… albeit in the most disgusting of ways. Of course, this excludes all members of the Scribosphere, family members and potential employers who are all wonderful, wonderful people. I’m backing the ‘opposable thumbs for cats’ campaign! When we recognize their place as our Overlords the world will finally be set to rights! I have never catalogued my mogs but they do help with the fact that...

I believe in Ghosts. Not the nice Hippy-New Age kind that come with crystals and chanting and then do the dusting with the corners of their sheets. Oh no. These are the type that cause cats to stare into space and hiss. These are the evil spirits that throw crockery, poke you in the eye and hide the teabags (could there be a greater Evil than that?). However, I'm safer than the rest of you because I know they're out to get us. Thankfully, they won't sneak up on me because...

I never switch off. My brain is continually fizzes. Everything is there to be learned from or studied. Films, TV, magazines, books, CD’s, CD booklets, the internet, watching people… thoughts and ideas explode every second and every single one must be written down. This means I never need to take drugs...

I must sound suitably lame by now? Did I pass the audition? Of course, nothing I do is actually lame… everybody who doesn’t do what I do is! Isn't it the truth that one man's meat is another man's poison. It should also be noted that most of the music I have collected could well be considered ‘lame’…

…I shall put the mark of the meme upon…. Valentine Suicide, Rob, MJ, Tom and the person who keeps arriving here via this search or alternatively Andy…

*I chose those opening words very carefully because about 20 years ago I was ONCE givena mug of hot chocolate spiked with a well-known resin by a ‘friend’ for ‘fun’. It was all a waste of time as I’d already drunk the best part of a bottle of Smirnoff. I just fell asleep. The 'friend' soon became an ‘ex-friend’ and I never felt a need to try it again. I also recently discovered the painkillers I was prescribed for my dislocated knee a decade or so ago were Class B but that was all legit as there was a prescription.

**Is this Halo 3 thing that everybody mentions a computer game of some kind?

^That’s a lie… it’s just two tin cans on a line of string!

Feel Good Hit Of The Summer

Today, we’re doing, whisper it, drugs. Actually, we’re not but I thought I’d just blatantly pique your curiosity to get you hooked. Recently, yet another ‘supermodel’* has been caught out by yet another rag over alleged cocaine misuse. Fair enough you may say: naughty girl, been a bit stupid, got caught out. However, it was discussed on daytime television the other day, where a well-spoken ‘media commentator’ said something along the lines of ‘while it’s alright for models and media types to do some coke at dinner parties from time to time it’s totally different for people on council estates and housing projects…’

…now, maybe I missed something in his preamble or a measure of sarcasm but it was all too easy to believe he was being serious as this is not the first time I’ve heard various celebrities, media commentators and such like express such views in magazines and on TV.

I doubt I really have to expound why this annoyed me but I will anyway. At its heart, in each time this view is expressed, there is a tacit arrogance and elitism that harks back to an 18th or 19th Century of rakes and dandies. Surely, if it’s bad for people on council estates it’s bad for supermodels, actors and media commentators? What makes a girl whose only claim to fame is her looks so much better at handling narcotics than someone who lives on a council estate? Especially since that very model might have been plucked from that self-same council estate!

I’m not after debating the rights and wrongs of cocaine (or any other drug): I’ve not tried it and I’ve no desire to. (Anyway, I have chronic hayfever so I’d probably end up re-enacting that scene in Annie Hall!) However, do not such attitudes reinforce the perception that there is a ‘them and us’ situation; an elitism where certain elements believe themselves better than or above and detached from the wider public, exempt from the rules and laws that might be enforced on the ‘lower orders’ as was?

Chris Morris’ work has increasingly become less funny but as a chronicler of and commentator on modern mores and morals he has been perceptive. Every time I hear such views on drugs as above I always think of his dialogue from Brasseye:

“Luckily the amount of heroin I use is harmless; I inject about once a month on a purely recreational basis, fine, but what about other people: less stable, less educated, less middle class than me: builders or blacks, for example. If you’re one of those my advice to you is leave well alone.”

Here endeth today’s lesson...

*What Superpowers do these people have? Can they fly? Do they have X-ray vision? Enormous strength? All in all as Superheroes go they’re quite a disappointment really!

We Could Be “Heroes”

******Here be spoilers******
for Heroes Episodes 1-8

“This is the way the world ends not with a bang but a cheerleader”*

Hoorah! You say in expectation of the obligatory lionization of Heroes. Ha! I say as I confound you! I have heard the hype, read the reviews and watched 8 episodes of the show… and so far I have to admit that I just don’t get it. What’s all the fuss about and perhaps more importantly what’s the show all about? So far I have nothing against the show but on the other hand I can’t find anything pro the show either. I’ve found so many irritants with the programme that I’ve starting forgetting before I find the next. These are just some of them.

1. Each episode starts off irritating me with ‘chapter headings’. I presume this is a comic book reference but it’s still irritating. (Don’t get me started on how I dislike the term ‘Act’… it’s film and TV not theatre… surely after a century we should have created film into the entirely new form it so deserves to be, free from encumbering orthodoxy of a theatrical tradition…?)
2. Each episode starts and ends with a voice-over. These give us, the humble viewer, a lesson in ‘deep meaningful wisdom’ which would work if it wasn’t for the fact that these come across as trite, downright bemusing or both. This tone carries through the episodes to the extent that the show comes across as very portentous and humourless.
3. The look of this show is the standard American high gloss and is therefore indistinguishable from everything from The OC to Smallville to Charmed. Not bad, not good just rather average.
4. Eight episodes in and nothing much has actually happened: a bunch of disparate people have discovered some heretofore unknown mysterious superhuman powers and are experimenting with them. Meanwhile a possibly sinister organization is possibly taking an interest in them. And everybody seems to be concerned about the possibility a cheerleader who can’t die might die. Where are the twists, where are the turns. So, in 8 episodes, more than two-thirds of the way through, little has really happened: that’s the equivalent of 40 minutes of a 2 hour feature film. If little more than character introductions and build-up had happened in the first 40 minutes of a feature would you be considering the exit yet?
5. Anything that does happen seems to be left off the screen: we have serial killer who eats brains (or something) and we have a psycho hooker but we’re not allowed to see what she actually does. And that’s just cruel!
6. Each individual episode is not overly encumbered by it’s own individual structure. Something like The X-Files had long multi-episode storylines but each episode had a formal structuring with a cliff-hanger ending to keep you watching. The same goes for chapters in books and comics.
7. The eclipse was surely important but seems to have been thus far ignored.
8. The superpowers are a little dull: no webs, no fire-breathing? Presumably, as they all have very human based superpowers they are part of some sort of genetic experiment to create new superior hybrid people… (just guessing actually!).
9. The amount of coincidence and randomness is just plain odd: there are 6.5 billion people in the world, 300 million of them in the US and very few of these are ‘gifted’ yet all of the gifted special types seem to be perpetually bumping into each… I know there’s that whole ‘universal lattice of coincidence’ thing (see Repo Man) but Heroes is really pushing it to the limit of credibility…
10. The characters themselves aren’t coming across as particularly individual defined solely by about one, often stereotyped, trait: sensitive nurse, oleaginous philandering politician, down-on-luck stripper, moping geneticist (who seems to have little grasp of science), lovably bumbling nerdy office worker, tortured artist (are there no other kinds of artist) on heroin, dumbish cop and the irritatingly chirpy cheerleader. Save the children, save the world? At the moment I’m voting kill the cheerleader, screw the world!
11. …this leads to the next problem: the characters being created with such broad strokes has given me little to latch onto to make me care (or empathize with) about what’s happening or potentially going to happen to them.
12. …this then leads to the next big problem: much has been made of the necessity of saving the cheerleader who all the characters say is going to get killed. However, it’s already been established that the cheerleader can’t be killed. She gets spikes through her head, part dissected and still gets to go home! If I know she can’t be killed, how can I fear for her safety?
13. Quite a bit has been made of the daring use of subtitles in a mainstream US show and this should be applauded and yet I have a caveat for the Hiro character. While he is ‘cute’ (as the waitress put it) he is also the most humourous character… the bumbling comic relief. To me, he keeps drawing a comparison with Kato in The Pink Panther.
14. Out of around 9-10 major characters only 2 are female. These two women are an internet stripper and possibly part-time prostitute and the other a nubile cheerleader seemingly surgically attached to her never ending supply of outfits. (Or maybe her Mom launders them and sews them back up… but wouldn’t that lead to so many awkward questions about all those blood and bone fragments?) In comparison, the men get to be Nurse, Politician, Artist, Geneticist, Cop and so on. Apparently, in the writer’s thinking, men do man’s jobs and women are either ‘virgins or whores’. Indeed, the cheerleader has fiercely defended her virginity to the point of killing. This has lead to my wondering about the age of the creators. Is stripper and high school cheerleader the best they could have come up with for the women? Presumably, the stay at home Mom who does a little temping was left out for being too outré.

Does this all seem too harsh? I envy the programme’s success and critical praise. I keep feeling I’ve missed some episodes but I'm pretty sure I haven't. I keep creating bits of story to fill out the whole: my new stories include the genetic experiment storyline, the eclipse-trigger storyline, the alien-DNA storyline and, my favourite, that they’re all part of one entity who all just have to get together so they can all meld into a super-monster. I can’t tell where all this build-up is going and that’s a problem because it doesn’t raise any expectations to either be thwarted or fulfilled.

Despite all of this I’ll be sticking with the show for at least another couple of episodes because greater minds than mine assure me it is ‘very good’. If nothing else that cheerleader’s date with brain-eating serial killer seems to be looming large and I really want to see how they get around her indestructibility.

Now, please, tell me where I’m wrong.

“The Maestro says it’s Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you’re waiting for the miracle to come.” –Waiting For The Miracle, Leonard Cohen

*Apologies to T.S. Eliot.

A Life Less Ordinary?

According to an article on IMDB Tim Burton has just been honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival this year as "one of America's bravest, most visionary and innovative filmmakers". Their choice, of course, but…

…while I love Burton’s films as much as the next-potential-outsider-on-the-street there are a couple of flaws:

• Burton has directed 12 features in 22 years which can’t really be considered a huge canon (still trumps our very own Ridley Scott: 16 in 30 years),
• the canon, while excellent, does not show a huge variety- all wonderfully Gothic, stylish, sympathetic to the outsider, etc.- but not something for all tastes yet,
• he now lives and works in Britain and has for quite some time,
• but above all, Tim Burton is only 49! This is a lifetime achievement award? Do they know something we don’t? Do they decide these things, not based on work, but from spirit consultations? Has Burton himself worked out the horrifying implications?

So, there you go… Tim Burton gets an award for being good (which he is) but also for living his lifetime (which is hopefully nowhere near done yet).

Just to make this clear: I love Tim Burton films, might even love Tim Burton (but I’ve not met him so wouldn’t know) but I’m thoroughly baffled as to what exactly constitutes a lifetime these days. This gives most of the scribosphere 10-15 years before our lives can be officially classed as either over or a failure. Whichever’s worse. And before complacency sets in... you may think you've got 15 years to achieve in but they’re handing these things out younger and younger.

Next month’s lifetime achievement goes to Haley Joel Osment.

*Peter O’Toole, of course, didn’t get his lifetime until he was 71. So we’ll swiftly ignore that.