There’s no greater mental barometer of how well a holiday went than the genuine feeling as you stumble onto the train at the end of the week (or in my case about four days) that you’re leaving a place were you felt complete and yourself and complete within yourself and those things are effortless, to return to a place where you have to work at them. That’s what vacations are supposed to do, but you hear so often about how stressful they can be, how often they’re nothing like a holiday because of the hassle involved in attempting to enjoy yourself, I’m so pleased and elated that I can genuinely say that I did enjoy myself, despite having developed blisters by the end of the first day and painfully limped through the rest of it.
I’ll be boring you stupid in the coming days (and weeks?) with tales of Stratford-Upon-Avon (and photos, so many photos) but I want to make the most of my Shakespearean glow by finally watching the BBC adaptations of his history plays so I’ll not spend too much time tapping things here today. Just to say this: after watching the results, I’m glad I didn’t follow my original idea of a coach tour. I watched coaches park up throughout the town, outside the various designated Shakespeare houses, the passengers herded off and into the dwelling which they’d trundle through briefly, take some photos, buy some souvenirs before being led back to the coach and on to the next attraction, presumably working through all five before returning to wherever they came from without the time to breath in the atmosphere.
To spend just half an hour here and there is not enough time. Much better, as I did, to slowly let the story of the bard's life through his home unfold slowly over a few days, seeing the places where he and his family were born, died, were buried and commemorated and discovering the world in which all of that happened. If you’ve already been yourself, you’ll know that there aren’t many places like it in Britain. It might have gained many of the elements of a modern town, the same high street shops which make most places seem like a photocopy of each other these days and industrialisation and suburbia just outside the centre, at magic hour it still retains the stillness of an ancient village, a reminder of what we've lost.
There’s no greater mental barometer of how well a holiday went than the genuine feeling as you stumble onto the train at the end of the week (or in my case about four days) that you’re leaving a place were you felt complete and yourself and complete within yourself and those things are effortless, to return to a place where you have to work at them. That’s what vacations are supposed to do, but you hear so often about how stressful they can be, how often they’re nothing like a holiday because of the hassle involved in attempting to enjoy yourself, I’m so pleased and elated that I can genuinely say that I did enjoy myself, despite having developed blisters by the end of the first day and painfully limped through the rest of it.
I’ll be boring you stupid in the coming days (and weeks?) with tales of Stratford-Upon-Avon (and photos, so many photos) but I want to make the most of my Shakespearean glow by finally watching the BBC adaptations of his history plays so I’ll not spend too much time tapping things here today. Just to say this: after watching the results, I’m glad I didn’t follow my original idea of a coach tour. I watched coaches park up throughout the town, outside the various designated Shakespeare houses, the passengers herded off and into the dwelling which they’d trundle through briefly, take some photos, buy some souvenirs before being led back to the coach and on to the next attraction, presumably working through all five before returning to wherever they came from without the time to breath in the atmosphere.
To spend just half an hour here and there is not enough time. Much better, as I did, to slowly let the story of the bard's life through his home unfold slowly over a few days, seeing the places where he and his family were born, died, were buried and commemorated and discovering the world in which all of that happened. If you’ve already been yourself, you’ll know that there aren’t many places like it in Britain. It might have gained many of the elements of a modern town, the same high street shops which make most places seem like a photocopy of each other these days and industrialisation and suburbia just outside the centre, at magic hour it still retains the stillness of an ancient village, a reminder of what we've lost.
Even though I seem to have spent 40% of my life sitting in front of little rectangular boxes punching keyboards, I’ve never actually been very good at computer + video games. Even when everyone thought that a 12” disc was acceptable and that instead of loading a game onto the machine you had to copy-type the thing from Personal Computer World, I’d have trouble getting the little cross (or whatever passed as a spaceship) into the bracket (docking port). In the arcade, ten pence would last fractionally longer than the lick of an ice cream.
What was a bit embarrassing was my Dad could play them better than I did. He’d sit up for hours into the night playing Acorn Electron Pac-man clone ‘Snapper’ and the platformer ‘Chuckie Egg’, usually the same game, usually for hours on end. I’d try too, but there isn’t much fun in trying to beat an impossible score.
I think the only game I’ve ever made any sense of was Lemmings . . . perhaps it was the futility of their little lives, or the fact you could play each level as many times as you liked until you got it right . . .
Film Day four. I might be going to Coventry today or Warwick. I haven't decided yet.
I’m aware that sometimes when I’m criticising the master’s work, I can sound like Oliver Peyton picking over some inedible lump of goop cooked to perfection by a chef with a Michelin asterisk on the Great British Menu and probably just as wrong sometimes, but to my eyes and ears, Spellbound is a disappointingly uneven and often dull film, the most attractive reason to watch being the central dream sequence created by Salvador Dali, in which the artist relishes the opportunity to transfer the elements of his painting into a moving picture format. To save you the time, here it is:
Unlike his paintings (and to some extent his earlier film collaborations), Dali’s work is being pressed into service to help explain Gregory Peck’s character’s psychological quagmire and all of these exciting elements are explained at the climax, the theory being that all unconscious elements of the human psyche, especially dreams can examined and interpreted.
Though there’s undoubtedly some excellent performances and the usual quota of surprises, my main problem with the film is that Hitch is repeating himself – the wrongly accused is on the run again. I’m guessing that the director is keeping these elements formulaic because the overall subject, psychiatry, is somewhat outside of the mainstream and he’s attempting to keep his audience on side. Except the execution is weirdly anticeptic and there’s a lack of chemistry between Peck and his leading lady Ingrid Bergman, who also seems uncomfortable with her part as his doctor and lover.
The director himself lists many of these problems to Truffaut in their interviews together and notes that he wanted to use a realistic approach because of the psychoanalysis. He was reluctant to fantasize and wanted to use a logic for once. Odd, then that best sequence is clearly the Bond-like skiing adventure and you can’t help but wonder if a much more interesting film might have come from setting the whole thing within the Daliscape, with Peck’s character trying to escape his dreams metaphorically instead of literally, in other words, an early version of the old Amiga game Weird Dreams or Richard Linklater’s animation Waking Life with Bernard Hermann writing the soundtrack.
Film Day three. I'm seeing Julius Caesar at the RSC tonight.
When I was trying my hand at script writing in the late nineties, one of the subjects I was interested in was how films effected their audiences. When Kevin Smith's film Dogma was released there were a number of protests about its content by religious groups in the US. Famously, as a wheeze, Smith himself protested his own movie:
There have been similar protests for everything from The Life of Brian to The Last Temptation of Christ and I wondered if it would be possible to write a screwball romance about an atheist and a Christian who meet and fall in love at a protest for the Monty Python film and then we'd revisit their rocky relationship during the time frames of when each of these 'controversial' films are released.
I hadn't developed it too much, but I did make a (very) rough start on the script and that's what's published below as is, typos and other flotsam intact. Keep in mind, if you know the place, the cinema is supposed to be the Hyde Park in Leeds.
===========================
CAPTION: ‘1999’.
INT. CAFÉ – STUDENT UNION – UNIVERSITY BUILDING. DAY.
A girl with blonde hair in power dress is sitting at a shabby looking café table looking nervous. This is JASMINE RAINE. In front of her are placed, two bottles of ‘Volvic’ water and two shrink wrapped packets of SANDWICHES.
MAN’s VOICE: I could only get Tuna.
JASMINE: I hate Tuna.
A man with short dark hair in a white shirt and stripy tie sits down in front of her. This is TOM PARKER.
TOM: So do I. But I’m also hungry.
JASMINE reaches forward and grabs the water.
JASMINE: Why do we do this . . .
JASMINE starts to unscrew the water bottle.
JASMINE: . . . why do we put ourselves through this?
TOM: Because you love it, and we make a great team.
Tom bites into his sandwich.
JASMINE: But these ones. I like having at least a week to prepare. But two hours.
TOM: (gesturing with his sandwich) Look, its going to be alright. You always think of something. I’ll just go in and talk about freedom of speech, talk about book burnings, y’know stir it up and then you come in for the . . .
JASMINE: Kill? I don’t know. This is too close.
JASMINE takes a swig of water.
TOM: You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me why.
JASMINE: I can’t.
TOM: Well, you’ve got ten minutes. Plenty of time.
INT. LECTURE THEATRE – UNIVERSITY. DAY.
The lecture theatre is in some disrepair, but this doesn’t seem to bother the people who have filled it, and clapping loudly.
They are watching a debate. A chairman (slightly balding, late fifties) sits at a long desk underneath a blackboard with the motion – ‘This house believes the film ‘Dogma’ be banned?’ - scrawled across it. On the left hand side of the chairman sit two men in grey suites behind a card which reads ‘For the motion’. To the right sit a still confident TOM and a still nervous JASMINE, who is smiling despite herself. Sitting on the desk in front of everyone is a glass of water.
The chairman turns to left.
CHAIRMAN: And I now believe it is the turn of John to second the motion.
JOHN, who is sitting at the far end stands and reaches into his jacket pocket for his prompt cards, which he proceeds to read from.
JOHN: As my learned friend has highlighted there is little recoups but to support this motion. My argument is simply this – any film which blasphemes against someone’s religious system can only be damaging. The writer James Blish once suggested that every budding writer should ask themselves one question – ‘Who does it hurt?’ Kevin Smith, the writer/director seems to have forgotten this and offers a film which hurts believers everywhere, by presenting the following – two murderous angels, a profain ‘13th’ apostle, the supposed decendant of our Lord working in a laundrette, at the Crucifixion, he offers an obscene gesture . . .
As the list continues, the audience offer a mixture of stunned silence, shock and laughter.
JOHN: . . . and the almighty is portrayed as a rock singer. None of which occurred in the gospels and which go against the fundamental beliefs of over a fifth of the world’s population. Please, support this motion.
The hall again erupts with applause.
TOM: (whispering to JASMINE) He’s done his research.
JASMINE nods nervously in agreement.
The applause stops. The chairman turns to the right.
CHAIRMAN: And finally, I think it’s the turn of JASMINE to second the motion against.
JASMINE stands and pulls her cue cards from her pockets.
JASMINE: Thank you, chairman. My learned friend in the opposition offers a very valid quote from Blish. But he forgot to mention, Mr. Blish’s amendment – which was – I think – that its always good to walk on the wild side now and then – and I think if the artists religious or otherwise had followed the oppositions foggy thinking, we’d have been a poorer place. Excuse me.
JASMINE takes a sip of water.
JASMINE: My colleague has clearly stated the legal and sociological reason’s Dogma can’t be banned, so instead, if you will indulge me – and I hope you will since the opposition didn’t seem to give an argument but a list – I’d like to tell a story by way of illustration.
TOM sits down in his chair and gets comfortable.
JASMINE: You see this isn’t a new motion. Not too long ago, another film was banned throughout the country for very similar reasons. It was 1979, and the film was ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’.
CAPTION: ‘1979’.
EXT. OUTSIDE CINEMA. NIGHT.
This is a time before the multiplex. The cinema is a large building on the corner of a road with a box office that is actually a box and a foyer with a big log fire. A fire which isn’t benefiting the crowd of people outside. The protest has been well attended with assorted people in big thick coats freezing to death. Some even have plackards with phrases like ‘Ban BRIAN’ and ‘For the faith’ printed on. A long queue of people are lining up against the wall of the cinema looking at ‘Coming Attractions’ boards and the sign over the door “Now Showing: The Python Film”.
AMY (V.O.): I was always amazed at how many people would turn up to these kinds of protests. But I suppose it was the decade for it.
AMY is standing handing out leaflets to cinema goers as they join the line. She much younger than previously, with long flowing hair and a warm looking leather biker clothes and boots. She is chatting to a friend as he hands her pile of leaflets, a young, shorter man in a blazer and role neck jumper.
MARK: Do you like the leaflet? I mean - I hope I got - my – our – point of view across.
AMY (V.O.): MARK was a good friend. Whenever I had a problem, if I was doubting my faith, he’d always listen, and put me back on the right track.
As she straightens the leaflets out, she doesn’t notice MARK wishing she was kissing him right then.
MARK: Would you like a coffee?
AMY: Black.
MARK heads of to get his thermos. As AMY offers the leaflets to passers-by, she looks up and down the line for the film. Its date night, so there are couples cuddling, couples reading newspapers or magazines and couples tucking into crisps. Some are looking at protest grimly. One man, somehow seperated from the rest is scribbling away at a notepad. He’s in a long grey overcoat and extra long scarf. She knows him. Realising she is staring, she looks away and goes to get some more leaflets from MARK.
The man in the queue realises she was looking at him and looks back, impressed by what he sees. He looks up and down the line and turns to the couple behind.
MAN: Do you mind holding my place?
The couple nod uncertainly, and the man smiles. He approaches AMY. She has her back to him (still passing leaflets) and doesn’t seem to notice him. He looks down at his shoes slightly in embarrassment, then softly taps her on the shoulder. She turns startled.
MAN: Hello. You’re in one of my joint classes.
AMY looks slightly embarrassed as one part of her life clashes into another.
AMY: Yes. Erm . . . NATHAN? Greek Philosphy, I think. How are you?
NATHAN: I’m all right, I think.
He motions his body towards the cinema.
AMY: (incredulously) You’re going to see it.
NATHAN: I’m going to see it again, actually.
AMY: Didn’t the blasphemy work its evil the first time around?
NATHAN: Blasphemy? (he steps closer so that he can whisper) Haven’t you heard – it isn’t blasphemous.
AMY: WHAT! OF COURSE IT IS!
The man looks around implying that everyone just saw her outburst.
NATHAN: Which scene.
AMY: Well I can’t tell you that.
NATHAN: Why not? YOU’VE SEEN IT HAVEN’T YOU?
It’s now AMY’s turn to look around.
NATHAN: How can you protest against something you haven’t seen?
AMY: I didn’t want them to have any of my money.
NATHAN: Then they’d better have some more of mine.
AMY: Are you actually inviting me to see this thing?!?
NATHAN: Call it spying behind enemy lines.
AMY smiles.
AMY: Well, if you put it that way. And you’re paying?
NATHAN: I believe that was the offer.
By now, MARK is trying to carefully carry two cups of coffee to AMY. She arrives smiling almost pushing him over.
AMY: My coffee?
She takes the coffee and begins to swig down the lukewarm liquid.
MARK: Where are you going?
AMY comes up for air.
AMY: I’m going to be gone a couple of hours. I’ve got some research to do.
MARK: That person you were talking to.
AMY: NATHAN’s going to take me to see the film.
MARK is disapproving.
AMY: Well someone in the campaign has to see the thing. It can only help us to be more effective.
MARK still doesn’t agree, but nods. AMY reaches up and kisses him on the cheek.
AMY: Thanks. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.
She runs off, leaving MARK to watch after her with a look of horror and love.
NATHAN is waiting for her. He looks at his watch, then at the queue, which has rapidly disappeared into the cinema. She appears, looking stony faced.
AMY: (impatiently) Well, come on.
INT. CINEMA - FOYER. NIGHT.
The interior of the cinema is in the style of the old picture houses with candelabras and old-fashioned popcorn machine. People are crowding into the auditorium, through ground floor doors and up some stirs to a balcony.
AMY and NATHAN are passing the refreshment stand.
NATHAN: Popcorn?
AMY: Don’t push your luck.
NATHAN: (to the girl passing out popcorn) Do you have any with sugar?
INT. CINEMA – AUDITORIUM – BALCONY. NIGHT.
As AMY and NATHAN enter the balcony, it is packed with people. Its already dark and an advert is playing ‘Adora – Kiora . . . it just for me and my dog . . . I’ll be your dog . . . woof – woof – woofwoof – woof – woof – woof.’ Some what inevitably the only seats free are at the very back.
As they sit down, NATHAN with his popcorn in his lap, AMY turns to him.
AMY: Don’t get any idea.
The film starts as three camels are silhoetted against the bright stars of the moonless sky, moving slowly along the horizon. A star leads then towards BETHLEHEM.
AMY: (whispering) This is worse than I thought it could be.
NATHAN is munching his popcorn.
The film continues. BRIAN’s mother, Mandy, has been offered Myrrh, a balm.
MANDY (on screen): . . . what is Myrrh, anyway?
THIRD WISE MAN (on screen): It is a valuable balm.
MANDY: (on screen): A balm? What are you giving him a balm for? It might bite him.
The auditorium fills with peels of laughter. NATHAN laughs. AMY is not happy.
The theme tune starts . . . ‘BRIAN, the babe they call BRIAN . . .’
AMY gets up.
NATHAN: You’re going.
AMY: I can’t sit and watch this.
NATHAN: The next scene is great. Its got Jesus in it.
AMY: Tell you what. I’ll stay. If you come to church with me on Sunday.
NATHAN double takes at her.
NATHAN: This Sunday?
AMY: Going once. Going twice.
NATHAN: I’ll do it. Now, will you please, just sit down. Please.
AMY sits down again smugly.
EXT. CINEMA – PROTEST OUTSIDE. NIGHT.
The protestors have downed their placards, have no one to protest to now. Some are drinking coffee. MARK is opening his lunch box. Inside are two silver wrapped packets of sandwiches. Each with a white sticky label. One has ‘MARK’ written on it in black felt pen. The other reads ‘AMY’. MARK sighs and picks out his own closing the box.
INT. CINEMA – AUDITORIUM – BALCONY. NIGHT.
The film has moved on some more. It’s the scene where BRIAN’s been scooped up by the alien spaceship which subsequently crash lands on Earth. As BRIAN staggers out from the wreckage, A PASSER BY looks at him with amazement, having witnessed both his fall and his rescue.
PASSER BY (on screen): You jammy bastard!
Again the audience falls into laughter. MARK turns to AMY and realises she is enjoying herself. She smiles at him and helps herself to his popcorn.
EXT. CINEMA – PROTEST OUTSIDE. NIGHT.
MARK has open his lunch box again. Only the sandwiches with AMY’s name on them remain. He lists them out.
INT. CINEMA – AUDITORIUM – BALCONY. NIGHT.
The film is finishing. Some people are chatting, other people are whistling along with Eric Idle. AMY and MARK are oblivious to all this.
NATHAN: So?
Amy is smiling.
AMY: It wasn’t so bad.
NATHAN: So harmless.
AMY: (reticently) Oh, it wasn’t harmless. Definitely not.
NATHAN: But you enjoyed it!
AMY: Yes. But people are going to be seeing out of context. The only way that film would be harmless is if they were giving away a copy of the gospels with every ticket.
NATHAN sighs disappointedly. AMY is conciliatory.
AMY: Thank you for inviting me. (she looks around) Come on. The cinema’s closing.
EXT. CINEMA – PROTEST OUTSIDE. NIGHT.
The PROTESTORS have consolidated now and are marching in a circle with the placards. All except MARK, who is sitting on a bollard waiting for AMY, who arrives eventually, NATHAN in tow.
MARK: Should we be burning the placards?
AMY: Not yet. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.
MARK: Tomorrow.
NATHAN: We’re going for a quick drink. You’re welcome to join us (in a way which say ‘Oh no you aren’t).
MARK: I can’t. I’m driving the minibus.
AMY nods some mock understanding. She turns to NATHAN.
AMY: Give me moment.
Nathan heads off and starts chatting to the protestors.
==============
It's a horrible opening -- long and wordy -- and if I was starting this now I'd ditch the flashback structure (in which Jasmine would eventually be revealed to be the couple's daughter) and voiceovers and open on a lateral tracking shot from the people queuing up to the protesters stopping on Amy with her coffee. And I wouldn't have Nathan convince Amy to to go into the cinema on the first night -- I'd have him return on consecutive nights until she's eventually won over, the end of the first act having them fall in love despite their differences.
Film Day two. Here's the only letter of complaint I've written about film. It's 1997 and I'm really, really pissed off ...
Dear Sir or Madame,
I am writing to you by way of a thank-you. One of your films has helped me through a mental block which I have had since I was a child, and I thought I would write and congratulate you.
I have always had a problem with walking out of films. I have spoken to friends and read magazine articles, and both have described leaving movies in the middle quiet flippantly. I have even seen it happen. But I have never understood how someone could do it. I mean, I’ve paid my money at the box office, so I might as well see the film. This has meant that I have sat through some really awful films. But I never thought would come to walking out.
Then I went to see ‘Batman and Robin’. The trailer had made this seem like a very exciting film, in the tradition of the rest of the series. I thought George Clooney would fit the bat-suit in the dark tradition of the comics, and I loved Alicia Silverstone in ‘Clueless’. Arnie seemed to have his usual carisma. And as Batman jumped into the Bat-mobile, I still thought that I would be in for an enjoyable two hours.
Then the film began proper, and even before the opening credits ended, my heart began to sink as I realised that yet again, I had been cheated. As scene after scene passed, I felt myself cringing, my intelligence not only being insulted, but being kicked to the floor, and stamped upon. I should have felt like a child on a spending spree at Hamley’s. Instead, I felt like a kid whose been given 50p and told to choose something from the second hand bargain bucket at a Car Boot Sale. I should have been enthralled, thrilled and losing myself in the new reality. Instead I found myself trying to work out what was wrong with the film .... while I was watching it.
I began thinking of the script, characterisation being reduced to exposition. How there were simply too many characters, meaning that some simply didn’t have anything to do but stand around looking pretty. I thought of the so-called action, tension being lost because everything felt so artificial, so obviously controlled by a Special FX operator somewhere. I thought about how the actors seemed to be more concerned about having a good time, than giving strong believable performances and making the audience care or not about the characters, hoping they would get by on star quality and nothing else (although I felt sorry for George Clooney - he still gave Bruce Wayne some charm despite the dialog, and the guy who played Alfred, as dependable as ever). I got as far as when Poison Ivy repeated the Joker’s line from the first film (as if we’d think it was funny) ‘This place needs re-decorating,’ and I’d had enough.
I know it is not really Warner Brothers UK’s fault. You merely had to advertise and distribute what your American big brother delivered. And you have to be congratulated - the second biggest opening weekend in British history is a slam-dunk.
But I am writing this letter for people like me, the people you cheated. The people who gave you their money, because they trusted you to give them an entertaining time and who instead left annoyed, insulted, and out of pocket, Why should I trust you again to entertain me?
Perhaps I could suggest a way. You could write back and apologize. You could refund the price of my ticket at my local Odean (£3-00), and suggest a film in the next couple of months that you are certain I will enjoy. Because if I don’t you can bet you will be hearing from me again, very, very soon.
Yours faithfully,
Stuart Ian Burns.
No refund, and I didn't write again. Though I did walk out of some more films.
Life In the early 1990s, when I should have been studying for my A-Levels and with the internet not having been invented yet, for reasons that have dropped through the cracks of my brain, the younger version of me collated/edited a volume of writing that he was particularly impressed at the time. Having thought it lost in time, it dropped out of a pile of old magazines that had been gathering dust, early Heat magazines and the first ever issue of Personal Computer World. A cheap hardback A4 lined book with about a hundred pages, half of which has been written on in a variety of black inks.
After a carefully planned out index/contents page which must have been compiled once the rest of the book had been filled in, the first page contains the following introduction. Even though the rest of the book is handwritten, this was typed into First Word Plus running on an Acorn Archimedes and printed out on a dot-matrix then stuck. The school had made me prefect in the school computer room, which though it meant that many lunch times would be spent supervising young kids more interested in scanning pictures of Jet from the Gladiators into the computer than doing any actual work, had the reward of being able to use the computers during free periods.
I didn’t have a girlfriend at school.
It’s not a great piece of writing; it’s very naïve in places and betrays a scratchy knowledge of the subject – though notice even at that age the differences between different editions of Shakespeare’s plays was a topic with which I had a keen interest. If the sixth paragraph makes little sense at least it's pondering what I would have made of the internet had it been available then. Probably, downloading pictures of Jet from The Gladiators and whole lot more besides.
Introduction -
During our time on Earth, many (including myself) have tried to answer the question of what gives Man the compunction to create literature, and why only a select few actually get their work into print. What gives each work its individuality and why anyone has the right to say whether a work should be allow to be given out to a wider audience.
Before the innovation of mass printing techniques, if a work was popular it would be hand copied by scribes by the people who actually wanted the work. This meant that piece of writing (The Canterbury Takes by Chaucer for example), would only gain a very small audience, and because of the differences in skill of the scribes (either through style of laziness), the final editions might eventually not be what the writer intended.
Matters were made either worse or better (depending upon your point of view!) with the invention of the simple printing press by Caxton. This innovation meant that some writing could be read by more people, but it was still a thing for the rich to actually own a large collection of printed books, and these still contained problems due again to lazy typesetters (hence the differences between the Folio and Quarto editions of William Shakespeare’s plays – whose original intentions will have to be left to theologians and critics until time-travel is invented).
Slowly, more advanced methods came into use, and more and more writers got into print. And, while many classic works were written, many of these works were composed (in my opinion) by writers fill of their own importance, who wrote about things which would appeal to a very small audience and which were beyond many reader’s comprehension – and very often anyone but the writer.
At the start of the pop-culture of the twentieth-century, the pulp novel appeared. It was once said that there is a novel in all of us, and it seemed as though everyone on Earth wanted to set out to prove it. Everything from ‘The Incredible Melting Man’ to ‘French Passion Goddess’. It was during this time that my favourite genre, ‘Science Fiction’, came to a head. Even at this time some great writing was produced, and many writers began asking, and answering themselves questions ‘best left to saints’.
Now, in the 1990s, the written word has come to something of a renaissance. The written word has become an even more popular form of media, and has over taken the television as a more open type of entertainment. Indeed, television has become little more than a supplement, and perhaps even a breeding ground for ideas.
Here is my own personal and totally biased selection of quotations from many sources. Everything from poetry of my own and by other writers, to song-lyrics which have given me some kind of meaning, to prose and a meaningful or amusing retort between two characters in a novel.
So, to you, the reader, here’s wishing you a good read, and I hope that whichever century it is to you right now, it will give you some idea of what kind of literature a teenager of the 1990s might have liked (we weren’t all philistines you know!).
Stuart I Burns, February 1992.
Understand that over the years this volume's importance has built up in my head attaining mythic status, the literary equivalent of Son of Rambow. My memory was that during this period, I discovered art and film and literature and began to think about the world in a far more complex way than before, that it was full of Shakespeare and movie quotes and song lyics and that it captured the moment when stopped being a teenager.
That's all there; it's also a mess of John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but also song lyrics from Debbie Gibson, Wilson Philips, Paul Simon and The Bangles the profundities that topped the sitcom Family Ties. Page 61 features quotes from Woody Allen, Art Linson and Lewis Mumford. Flicking through the pages is like talking to someone who doesn't yet know what they like, but whatever it is they think they like they like it very much.
It ends on the scene from the film Stand By Me, the one in which River Phoenix tells Wil Wheaton that he won't amount to anything because people have an expectation that he's a dead beat that won't amount to anything. Perhaps I was subliminally pointing to something I've always had to deal with (and I suspect we all do) the difference between the person I project, the person I think I am, and the person I really am.
Life With any luck, but nine o'clock tomorrow morning I'll be on the train to Birmingham where I'll be changing for Stratford Upon Avon where I'll be hero worshipping for five days. It's not my first time. In 1992, the family took a coach trip there because it seemed the thing to do when studying Shakespeare, but then I wasn't catagorically 'a fan'. I am now.
It's the longest holiday I've taken in twelve years, since the Edinburgh trip in 1998. In between there's been three days in Paris, a night or so in Oxford (the so being the overnight coach trip there and back) and an overnighter to Cardiff in 2004 for reasons I'm sure you can guess, though note I got there first.
I'm exiling myself from the web. No twitter, no blogging, no email, no rss. Which isn't to say there won't be anything here to keep you entertained; a couple of people commented at the Tweetup the other day that I'm a fairly prodigious blogger and there doesn't seem to be much point in changing that just because I'm away from a computer. This blog will not go dark. Ghosts of the past, as you'll see.
An antidote, then, to last week's monstrosity. This works simply because it's a free-wheeling meringue, a well chosen song to cover, put together with a modicum of taste. At time of release, a television documentary followed producer Ray Barretto as he met these singers and musicians in recording studios, homes and hotel rooms recording their contributions and simultaneously putting together the video which we then saw being layered together. It was a technical marvel which made the result sound even more impressive. True, Ronan Keating segways into Robin Williams and a leather jacketed Lionel Ritchie is in there too, and the Spice Girls are in their post-Geri period, but there's Joe Cocker to Iggy Pop and Chrissie Hynde and Skin and Jackson Browne which balances everything out somehow. Plus it ends on Natalie Imruglia giving it some elfin Tom Waits... (or indeed Mick Jagger ...)
Well deserved win for the Art In The Age of Steam exhibition which was truly one of the best collections of paintings I've seen in one place in many a year.
We talked about this at the Tweetup. It is a great piece of work -- and as I said then my favourite moment is the freeze frame at the end with the three astronauts all caught in highly undignified positions.
Easily done. Really. No one can know everything and there does seem to be a bond of trust in the science (and arts world) that the academic won't screw over the publisher by submitting rubbish masquerading as research. I wonder how many examples of this do slip through.
Geography Liverpool Tweetup on Thursday (a local Twitter gathering) was a far more relaxed affair than the earlier Twestival; it's a very different prospect to be walking to a room and recognising people, for there to be someone to wave to.
Within the crowd was John McKerrell, an old school friend who I last saw (he reminds me) on a train to Manchester in 2002, where we talked about blogging and he showed some new platform he was working on. That still seems like a remarkably long time ago.
His latest project is Map Me! which according to the neat card he gave me allows you to "share your current location and past trips with friends and family online", which sounds a bit like Google Latitude with a blogging element. I've signed up for an account and I'll let you know how I get on.
Updated! John's clarified some of mapme's applications in the comments, essentially what I haphazardly hazarded a guess at with the title to the post: "mapme.at is similar to Google Latitude in some ways, having the location tracking and social network aspects, but we store your history and let you browse through it too, which Latitude doesn't do it. If you're an existing user of Latitude though you can let us know your details and we'll pull your location in from there and store the history as well. "
Some of you might remember being a kid. When you’re young there are very few avenues for true comedy. There’s sound making (burping, farting, that thing with your hand under your armpit), hand gestures (sometimes with props like rulers) and finally, playing about with your face.
You’d sit there pulling bags down under your eyes; turning your eyelids inside-out; pushing the front of your nose up; sticking your mouth on a window and blowing (see Daryl in ‘Adventures in Babystitting’); pushing your ears forward; pressing down as hard as you can on you head and pushing the skin back and forth to prove you’re wearing a wig.
The fact you’re only just remembering you did all these things proves what happens after the age of – say – thirteen, took a lot of the fun out of life. You actually began to care about your physical appearance. What people think about your hair colour or whether that mauve tie with a picture of Tweety-pie on goes with that pink shirt (NO!). But you didn’t actually know whether all that hard work to make yourself look terrific was actually worth it. Then the bandwagon began.
In television and film, a bandwagon takes months, even years to come into effect. It took nearly a year for the ‘Scream’ clones to appear at the cinema. The Docusoap menace took six months. ‘Hot or not’ seemed to take three days. This rash has already claimed many casualties and destroyed hundreds of self esteems. Pity they can be so darned fun . . .
[The older version of me notes -- the only other one of these rating sites from the original page still in circulation is Pick The Hottie. Some of those photos must be ages old.]
About thirty years worth, from 1974 through to 2002. The first episode: "Plumbers Ball" (from six months before I was born) is a bit of an oddity -- features all of The Goodies and has a very young sounding Barry Cryer in the chair (Humph apparently being ill that week)
I didn't hate the 4th -- even the fridge scene. The quicksand was a mistake and the climax simply lacked awe. What it desperately needed was a reaction shot of Indy showing us what to feel, but for some reason Spielberg decided to concentrate on the thing with the whatsit which simply wasn't that impressive given that we've already seen thousands of them flying around in other doodahs.
What a lazy poster and appearances from Aniston and Eckheart might not guarantee an audience. What's the plot then? If only it was Maggie Gyllenhaal and John (not in American Beauty at all) Cusack. That's a film writing itself. Then, I thought 'Must Love Dogs' was going to be good ...
Film Hitchcock worked as a propagandist during the war working with the UK’s Ministry of Information to produce a couple of shorts as a morale booster for the French Resistance.
The first, Bon Voyage, is a neat bit of suspense about an RAF who has escaped a prisoner of war camp and describes how he returned home. His story is presented in flashback, the events described from two perspectives Roshoman-style, Hitch demonstrating that there are always varying degrees of truth and that you shouldn’t believe everything you see. Clearly made on a budget and featuring few locales, it’s still more purely entertaining than many war films because the director isn't afraid to emphasise small details at the expense of the epic gestures, such as the decency of the resistance fighters. A scene in a farmhouse (between a soldier and a resistance fighter) has a clear antecedent in The 39 Steps, and the overall impression is that if he’d had the time and inclination Hitch would have been able to stretch the material over a longer duration.
Aventure Malgache has a similar flashback structure, but it’s the much clearer, more straightforward story in which an actor explains to his colleagues how he escaped from Vichy controlled Madagascar. The BFI have an incisive discussion of the political implications but my favourite scenes are the brief moments between the actors in their dressing room; Hitch returned to the theatre throughout his career, but this seems to be the most accurate presentation so far of what it is like, the friendly banter between actors just before subsuming themselves in character before going on stage. There’s also a wonderful moment within flashback in which a picture is replaced which could have been dropped in from Casablanca. And that’s that for the war period.
According to @anattendantlord the only positive contemporary review of The Last Action Hero and it does get the measure of the film. It's one of my favourites. As I told him it's a misunderstood, post-modern masterpiece. It's an action adventure film that references Hamlet and The Seventh Seal for goodness sake...
Rob explains why ITV1's in trouble but also why it's important to keep it around even though it is a bit rubbish. Lost In Austen was superb as was Boy Meets Girl (mostly); but I can see why neither of them brought in viewers since (a) the usual ITV1 audience doesn't seem to expect something that gives them something to think about and (b) the audience that's generally disenfranchised by ITV1 wouldn't expect them to have something that intelligent and assumes ITV's drama is rubbish so didn't make the journey.
TV Concluding a television series is an impossible business. Unlike film, which Hitchcock, Welles, Goldman, Bordwell, all kinds of people acknowledge should always strive to have a clear and obvious ending mapped from the opening of the film, either because of the nature of the characters or the type of story that’s been set in motion, television series are designed never to end.
Film characters are destined to experience the most exciting/important/life changing event in their lives – on television they have a succession of them and like real life, the only definitive conclusion to their story can be death. Similarly in most films the story has a beginning, middle and end and in the best films, and the climax is so satisfactory we don’t wonder what happens to the characters afterwards.
You know all of this already, but I just wanted to put that up as a way of explaining my feelings about the close of Battlestar Galactica, the critical reaction and so that the next sentence doesn’t appear at the top the post thereby rendering the spoiler warning in the title a complete nonsense. Treat that last sentence as a buffer as well. And that last one – and this one. Here we go …
Well, why not the Douglas Adams ending?
If it’s going to mimic anything why not the closing moments of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (primary and tertiary phases)?
I mean how could you possibly conclude Battlestar Galactica satisfactorily?
Essentially the choices must have panned out as follows –
What we got.
The Blake’s 7 ending – everybody dies and the last human standing is Baltaar, hands up looking into impassive face of a cylon.
The Galactica 80 ending – they reach Earth, but discover a civilisation already in ascendancy and have to work out how to integrate themselves.
The fatalistic ending – they return to the rubbish post-apocalyptic version of Earth and decide it’s what they deserved and try to make the best of it as they slowly die of radiation poisoning
The Voyager ending – they reach Earth in the last few seconds of the episode with the fleet jumping into orbit but we don’t actually get to see them go 'home'
The Angel ending – the human race finds itself in a hopeless situation against insurmountable odds against the cylons and the series ends on a freeze frame of Apollo and Starbuck and the fleet grinning into certain doom
The surprisingly bleak ending – what we saw, but instead of the flash forward we find that the cylons were playing the long game and Caprica, Sharon and the final three turn on the humans as the centurions return along with the remaining cylon models and the final few shots are of Adama watching helplessly as the final remnants of the human race are wiped out as planned since the beginning because his son decided they need to enjoy the rural lifestyle rather than keep some way of defending themselves.
None of which would have been quite worked – wouldn’t have seemed right – because television is built that way – we always need to want to know what happens next. That’s why Angel could still continue in comics even after it ended on television, why the Star Trek franchise rolls ever onward. That’s why the Douglas Adams ending – well almost –- I’m not sure Douglas would have been too happy about the quasi-religious mysticism and the angels – is about as good as it could have been. It’s not perfect, but it’s ok.
As is the usual way of things, most of the criticism seems to be about the detail, the nitpicking. Why would the human race give up all of this scientific development like this? What about all of the diseases? Why is ‘our’ Earth in the wrong place – look at those star maps? What’s all the guff about ‘god’s plan’? How come the two most morally bankrupt characters get continue existing into our time? Does this mean we’re all cylons? Is Bob Dylan? It’s all rubbish, I tell you, rubbish!
No it isn’t. Yes, we’re back to me getting annoyed at people for expecting fiction to obey the laws of reality when it doesn’t need to. It’s fiction. I’ve quoted Hitchcock before on this. You can do what you like in fiction so long as it obeys the rules of the world you’ve created and it's entertaining in the pure sense.
The human race unilaterally give up technology to attempt to end the cycle which got them in the mess they’re in and after what they’ve been through have clearly decided to think of the future of the race, the long game, the hope for a better future for their ancestors. So what if the Earth’s in the wrong place – it’s in the wrong place in the world created by Ron Moore! Why can’t there be a deity in that version of reality – there was one in Clash of the Titans. No we’re not part cylon – the people walking around in the fictional version of New York might be.
I like this ending.
All of the main characters recieved a decent send off – the characters we’ve been following since the first year at least. Most found peace, some surprised themselves, a few found retribution, there was atonement and one just faded away. The show didn’t rest on its laurels and gave us the massive/epic/banzai epic space battle, humans (and some cylons) against cylons we’d hoped for, with the added incongruity of watching centurion battle centurion, new style and against old. It even surprised structurally, as it so often does, providing Lost-style revelations via flashback which will add texture when we decided to watch the series again.
Gestures large and small.
More than that it winds up the central themes of the series, about how we’re usually doomed to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, of history, despite our best intentions and the Asimovian conjunction between androids and humans and how we’re not averse to playing god ourselves. And I did adore the controversial coda with the return of the iconic image of Six in the red dress which I’ve always seen as a nod to the figure in The Matrix and the montage sequence of the robots we’re desperate to be in our image. But not in a preachy way, with that cheekiness which has been at the core of the series.
Except, of course, this isn’t the end, because this is television. There’s to be a new tv movie, The Plan, retelling the story from the cylon perspective. There’s the prequel, Caprica, set fifty years before the fall, in the world we glimpsed in the pilot and in the flashbacks here. And I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see a proper continuation set somewhere down the line, returning to these characters, now farmers, eeking out their simple existence as some new catastrophe befalls them. Aren’t they going to be doing the cave people what the cylons did to them?
It's always been slightly curious that there's nothing much for tourists to see when they visit one of the city's most famous place names. When Annette and I walked the length of Penny Lane, even I could see that if this was the sight of a pilgrimage, there isn't much to thank the traveller for visiting. On the one hand it's nice that it is still just an ordinary street unaffected by its musical legacy. But on the other, if I was a tourist and I had come miles, I'd at least expect to see something marking its 'importance', at the very least something pointing out where the various elements of the song are -- and they are there if you know where to look.
This is more than that. A coach stop, art centre and general renovation of the area from Allerton Road right up to Smithdown Road, my own neck of the forest. An artificial tourist trap then, but if it brings money to the area, then fine, and in some respects it has to be better than what we have now, the derelict shops and shell of a bistro. It'd be nice to have somewhere close by, within walking distance, which has a guaranteed atmosphere, continually buzzing; in other words, the Penny Lane that exists in The Beatles' own video where it's a bus destination and there are men on horseback.
“The huge classical Harris Library, Museum and Art Gallery, with its inscription over its great portico: ‘TO LITERATURE ARTS AND SCIENCES’ and above it, Roscoe Mullins’s sculptural group, The Age of Pericles, dominate the centre of Preston like a medieval cathedral. Cultural and intellectual spiritual nourishment for the citizens of Preston now seemed to be the responsibility of the municipal museum and art gallery, of the church.”
Certainly, dashing through the narrow streets of the city in a downpour searching for the entrance was exactly how I’d imagine it would be if I was a character in an Ingmar Bergman film desperate to tell some god about my sins. Luckily, I didn’t have any sins worth sharing, which saved the security guard and lady working in the shop a bit of bother.
Harris, the name above the door, was a local solicitor, a very rich man, who at his death bequeathed £300,000 to the city for the building of new municipal buildings, and the council used a third of that towards this resplendent palace to house a collection which had developed during the previous few decades. The usual mix of gifts and bequests, this has built primarily from the industrialist John Sheepshanks and another local solicitor, name of Newsham. The fads of the time passed Newsham and his fellow donators by; you’ll not find the Romantics, Pre-Raphaelites or Classical Revival on these walls. His conservative tastes stretched to Etty, Herbert and E.M. Ward. Collectively, and baldy, a central theme emerges – women -– and they’re generally hung in thematic clusters, similar ages, contrasting ideas, from a range of periods, like the controversial initial layout of Tate Modern.
Unlike the controversial initial layout of Tate Modern, this works very well. Grimshaw’s melancholic In The Golden Time, an autumnal scene which depicts a maiden and child dwarfed by a stately home and wealth they’ll never know is placed next a variety of portraits of ladies in corsets of precisely the kind they’re cross the cobbled street to avoid. On one side of the main atrium is a full-sized portrait of Mary Logsdail by her father William, a chaste figure in her late teens, wear silver gown and violet scarf, perfectly designed but strangely artificial perhaps waiting for the viewer to provide their own emotional narrative, question whether her expression suggests that she cross, pensive, stroppy or simply waiting for something (perhaps her Dad to finish painting). Opposite, and produced a century later in the 60s is John Ward’s Linda, whose impressionistic style creates movement and whose dark background draws us towards the girl’s eyes and their certain emotion, sadness.
There are landscapes, true, but these are the most striking images and to an extent I wonder if the Harris could draw even greater attention to what is their main asset in their literature; this is a feminist destination and depending upon the route you take, you end up witnessing the slow development of the depiction of women in painting. I have pages and pages of notes describing this girl, that lady, at work, at play. John Rogers’ Cordelia with her Bette Davis eyes, Romney’s Serena Reading showing the tranquillity of reading by candlelight, Dickee’s Hespania whose beautifully detailed costume picked out in reds and golds distract us from her inert face. Then the rather wonderful In For Repairs by Laura Knight offering an antidote to the testosterone hued war paintings of the 1940s featuring a team of female factory works repairing a barrage balloon, the folds in the fabric of which so similar those in the dress in the Logsdail and closing At The Courtierer showing a beautiful model with deep red lips, as decorative as any of the Victorians, but more relaxed in her own skin.
None of which is to say that an element of social conscience doesn’t run through the collection. In Arthur Hughes’s Bed Time, a family is revealed to us, a mother putting her children to bed. Except from the father’s palpable anguish we can tell that all is not well, they’re a family in trouble. He grasps his leg and has his forehead in his hand which layers poignancy on the other elements of the scene, his wife teaching their daughter to pray and the smallest child laughing, blissfully unaware of whatever catastrophe has befallen them. Sherwood’s The Preston By-Election offers the city in disarray as supporters of the various parties clash, the eventual winner looking down upon the scene from a safe balcony demonstrating that politicians have always, to some extent, been out of touch. Charles Spence asks “Why War?” in his painting of a veteran of the (not so) Great War in his drawing room at the dawn of World War II, surrounded by symbols of conflicts passed, a bust of Wellington, a painting of Trafalgar and a copy of the Daily Sketch whose headline reads “Premier flying to Hitler”.
Then there’s the surprise. If by some remote chance you are planning on visiting the Harris soon, I’d look away now because it’s best discovered on your own. Gone? Right. In the main gallery space, one of the paintings has been replaced and next to the replacement is a small black and white photograph of the missing piece, Pauline in the Yellow Dress, by Sir James Gunn. She’s a regal figure with come hither eyes, like a young Princess Anne eyeing Mark Philips, draped across a chaise lounge cuddling a small dog. We’re told that its been moved to the costume exhibition, showing the breadth of fashion garments in the general collection. And it is. Along with the actual yellow dress that is in the painting! Next to each other. I actually gasped, the kind of audible gasp that tends to only appear in comic books, in a speech bubble with gasp written in the middle. The painting was bequeathed and the artist’s family recently gave the dress as well. It’s a very rare privilege to see just how accurate a painter has been with the costumer, to see how carefully they’ve copied the dots, matched the pigmentation. We can also see now that the dress was meant to be buttoned up but Pauline has unbuttoned herself, completing her seduction and making the visit worthwhile all by, um, itself…
