Blinkers on

So I have 50,000 words of the novel now and it is rapidly slithering out of control.

Writing a film script is tough, writing a novel is tougher. At least in the first draft. With film you have a specific scene, you decide what order you want those scenes, I use index cards, other systems are available, then you get the charcters in the scene, you decide what they want, and then you put obstacles in their way, then you see how they get what they want.
Conflict is all. Economy of words, and what is happening between the lines is all powerful.

The trouble with prose is that you are able to go on flights of fancy. Without the rigid parameters imposed (necessarily) by screenwriting, the mind wonders, it tries to cram in every aspect of the scene, every sense must be catered to, every whim of the mind appears on the page. Both mediums are hard, very hard, to get right, but with prose every little idea has a knock on effect, your mind recalls snippets of conversation, moments in the past, a look from a former lover, an awkward moment from a conversation over 20 years ago, a perceived slight at the hands of someone older, a hairbrush tangling in the hair, a smell, a taste. It's really quite distracting.

But then I suppose that is what a writer must do, like actors we are only at our best when our emotions are right up there at the surface, able to draw on every tiny aspect of our lives. It is not a healthy thing we do, days pass without proper connection or conversation with others. The curtains remain drawn, the door remains locked, and we chip away trying to get that word or phrase. We are as Robert Downey Jnr pointed out at the Oscars, 'the sickly little mole people'.

Is it worth it you may ask?

I think so yes, you don't choose writing it chooses you. As with all art forms. You can ignore and let the 'what if?' thoughts fester in your soul, or you can take a leap and get it out of your head and onto the paper, where is lies lifeless and not what you felt it should be. You then work on it, work on it, work on it, try to get every word exactly as you want it. A myriad doubts linger, keep you awake, make you think 'this is pointless'.

And then what?

You have to let other people read it, and give you their opinion.

OTHER people.

THEIR opinion.

What new hell is this?

So the novel oozes onward, the story loses shape, the friends read it and think, what exactly? Even if they tell you they like it do they really? Are they merely stroking your ego out of kindness?

Who knows?

You must just keep going and hope that when you get to the top of the mountain all that time spent with your face up against the rock was worth it.
You must look at the view, enjoy it, feel the accomplishment, feel the achievement.
And then?

You have to rewrite and edit, every single word, every single page, whilst keeping the whole end product in mind.

You've reached the top of the mountain. Now you must lower yourself safely down.
And hope the rope doesn't break.

Reading: MIND GAME: How the Boston Red Sox got smart, won a World Series and created a new blueprint for winning by the writers of the Baseball Prosectus.
Listening to: Troublegum by Therapy?

Rendezvous with destiny

Apparently every person who chooses to join the armed forces nowadays is a hero. Not the word I would choose. A hero is someone who does something heroic. Not someone who puts themselves into the possibility of harm’s way, that may then lead to them doing something heroic. Perhaps. I’m not disputing they are brave, but heroic? No.

I was thinking about this the other day because it came to my attention that a rather amazing chap passed away this year. A man who in my own understanding of the word is ‘heroic’.

Dick Winters was not someone I grew up knowing anything about, unlike Douglas Bader and Guy Gibson, whose derring-do was drummed into me at school. No, Winters was a man I read about in Stephen Ambrose’s brilliant ‘Band of Brothers’ and then watched being portrayed by Damian Lewis in the remarkable mini series of the same name.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania he was a high-achiever at both school and college and upon the U.S. entering World War Two, he joined up. He excelled again in training and was selected for officer candidate school. He heard of a new regiment, one that used parachutes to jump into action, a new form of combat elite, and was sent to the 101st Airborne division at Camp Taccoa, Georgia.

More strenuous training was endured, the drop out rate was high, Easy company, Winters’ company, sailed to England and set up in Wiltshire. More training followed, Winters was now leading 1st platoon.

They all knew their day would come.

In the darkness before the land assault on D-Day Winters and his men flew into heavy fire over the Channel, many of the C-47 planes were torn to shreds or blown clean out of the sky, losses were huge. The men stood in their stick in the noise and the Ack-Ack and the hail of fire then jumped out of the planes over France. Many were shot on the way down, many perished hitting trees or were drowned in rivers and other waterways, some survived.

Dick Winters, unaware their commanding officer had been killed, and without any weapon or equipment, rounded up 13 men and attacked a howitzer battery of some 50 Germans artillery men. The guns were trained on Utah beach. The assault knocked out the guns, killed, wounded or captured every enemy soldier and is taught at Westpoint to this day as the perfect way to take on a fixed position against superior numbers.
He was awarded the DSO and promoted to Captain.

In Operation Market Garden he led from the front again, taking out a group of SS infantry of 300 with one platoon.

In the Battle of the Bulge, with Winters now as battalion XO, the 101st were completely surrounded by 15 German divisions supported by heavy artillery, for a week, the line was thin, the cold was brutal, the shelling was constant, casualties were heavy, but they held. Winters then led his men to assault the town of Foy. They took it.

He became Major, and acting battalion commander of 2nd Battalion.

They moved into Germany and were given orders to capture Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden. They were sunning themselves on the balcony enjoying the contents of Himmler’s wine cellar when the word came the war was over.

Eventually Dick Winters returned to the U.S. he married, raised a family, got more education from Rutger’s, through the GI Bill, excelled in a number of companies, began his own. He continued to lead by example, training officers, giving talks on leadership and attending reunions with his friends and comrades. He built a house on quiet farmland back in Pennsylvania.

Some quotes from his memoirs bear repeating:
Lead from the front. Say, “Follow me!” and then lead the way.
Remain humble. Don’t worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head.
Hang Tough!--Never, ever, give up.

In a world were the word hero is banded about a little too often for my liking I’ll stick with Dick Winters, and those other men of the Screaming Eagles, who left their jobs and lives in big cities and small towns and threw themselves out of planes into the inky night engulfed by violence and death because they believed that to not do so would lead the entire world into darkness.

Dick Winters reached his ‘Rendezvous with destiny’ in January. He was 92.

Reading: Tales of ordinary madness by Charles Bukowski
Listening to: The Velvet Underground by The Velvet Underground

Castaway

There has been a steady stream of hideousness in the news, despite the media’s obsession with deflecting us away from the stories that matter, based around two wealthy people getting married. I’m steering clear of all that for now as there has been something that is so wonderful and life-affirming I am in a state of utter delight every day I sit at my desk.

BBC Radio 4, described, quite rightly, by Stephen Fry a few years back, as one of mankind’s greatest achievements, has released the last 500 Desert Island Discs, available to listen to on the computer whenever you like. I’m in heaven, the opening bars of the music alone (By the Sleepy Lagoon by Eric Coates) has me in a state of excited anticipation and total relaxation.

The perfection of radio, the intimacy, the privacy, the feeling of being in a special place, alone, listening to remarkable people who have lived remarkable lives, is pure joy. To be able to relive those I’ve adored and discover ones I’ve missed is wonderful.

The website says it is trying to sort out all of the recordings since the series began in 1942. I’m fervently hoping they do, I can’t wait to hear the thoughts and favourite music, the odd luxuries and the great books choices, of people such as Celia Johnson, Michael Redgrave, Guy Gibson, Alfred Hitchcock, Frankie Howerd, John Osbourne, Alan Bennett, Bill Shankly, anyway, you get the picture.

My fingers and toes are crossed.

It’s hard to explain my feelings about DID, maybe it’s a throw back to my pre-teen years, lying in bed with my head under the pillow, listening to my little red transistor radio, gripping the plastic handle as I heard of exotic locales, derring-do and the mysteries of the universe via scratchy voices that made the world seem so vast it was beyond comprehension. It felt like I was the only person listening, and at its best created an excitement and tension that no other medium can match.

One of my greatest hopes growing up was that one day I’d be on there, picking my tunes, dissecting my life, and discussing how I’d survive on a desert island. Such a simple concept, and yet it creates the most engaging portrait of those who participate, getting underneath the public persona, lifting the lid on what makes these people tick whilst making us think and smile and empathise.

To imagine something being created now that is still running, and as good as ever, in 60 years time is almost impossible to imagine, but DID will be that age next year. A remarkable feat that is a testament to it’s creator Roy Plombley and the simpler days of pitching ideas, where someone said ‘I’ve good idea’ and someone else said ‘let’s do it’, as opposed to the myriad bullshit of focus groups, test audiences and endless coffee drinking that surrounds the creation of ANYTHING artistic nowadays.

So I live in hope that it survives another 60 years and fills many more lives with joy and maybe, just maybe, if I work hard enough, get lucky enough and sell enough copies of my novels etc I will make it on the show to tell them I don’t want the bible, but do want a lifetime supply of pick n mix.

Well I’m off, I’ve been listening to Martin Pipe’s and Nick Hornby’s and Ricky Gervais’s and now it will be Morrissey’s.
Marvellous.

The world is not all doom and gloom afterall

, sometimes there’s simple genius.

Reading - The last testament of the holy bible by James Frey
Listening to - Live on the Sunset Strip - Otis Redding

How delicious is irony?

Andrew Marr has been a journalist for thirty years. Firstly with the Scotsman, then the Economist and the Independent, which he went on to edit for two years. He’s written for the Observer and the Express and has also become a familiar face on British television as the BBC’s political editor and the writer and presenter of fine BBC documentaries, that have also pulled in more income in book form.

Now I went to journalism school, got a degree in it in fact, and we had to write long-winded and often painfully dull essays on contempt of court, slander, libel, public interest and free speech.

It was perhaps the most distressing part of the whole three years, but we had to be taught, we needed to know, we couldn’t go out into the world of rat-like cunning that journalists inhabit without the knowledge of what we could and could not do.

Now, I’m sure Marr is a fine chap and he seems to have carried the sword and shield of truth and justice throughout his career higher and prouder than many who inhabit that slurry-pit of agenda-driving and misinformation. However, when I read that he was one of the people who had demanded, and received, a so-called ‘super-injuction’ from the high court lest we, the people who have been paying his salary very nicely for those thirty years, should discover the truth behind the jocular grin and the sticky out ears, I was a little perturbed.

Delving deeper did nothing to quell the uncomfortable feeling that Mr. Marr was having his cake and eating it too.

Having held him up to be a man of integrity and objectivity it did not sit well with me that one of the very journalist’s who has made a decent living (no mean feat) from journalism he must have harried and hassled the truth out of many a sticky corner. Always, no doubt quoting the inalienable right for the public to be told what is going on in the lives of those who have outstripped our meagre achievements. How we love to read or listen or watch as politicians, actors, sportspeople and the other celebrity Gods fall from grace as their unwise liaisons, sexual peccadilloes and nefarious dealings are spread out in front of us under the banner ‘public interest’.

Where do interest and mere titillation separate? I’m not sure any of us really know.
But surely the fact that Andrew Marr, respected voice, objective, fair, balanced, was giving us some of this information whilst having an extramarital affair, scrabbling to discover paternity issues over a small child and generally carrying on like a Tory backbencher from the Major years sits a little crooked.

Now I couldn’t care less if a politician or any other public figure gets off by dry-humping Louis Quinze furniture as long at it doesn’t affect the way they do their job. In fact for some artists to do their job they HAVE to do certain things the rest of us find distasteful or downright bizarre.
So what? Hump away!

What is harder to stomach is the idea that a journalist, who has made a life out of winkling the truth out of others, and presenting these truths to us for our delectation, might feel he deserves to be treated differently when he’s caught with his trousers down.

His admittance of embarrassment and uneasiness at gagging his own kind is something which only partially excuses his actions. I wonder if next time one of his sources tips him off to an unsavoury story concerning two families, a small child and questions of ‘who’s the Daddy?’ he might lay off.

Call me cynical but I went to journalism school; of course he wont. Saying one thing and doing another is the cornerstone of the hypocrite. Maybe he’ll move into politics, I’m sure he’d find the water warm and welcoming.

Reading: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Listening to: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death by the Dead Kennedys

Dark shadows in the East

So another friend falls from the bachelor tree amidst the sound of creaking limbs and ‘one night only’ wildness. This time with a farewell to single-dom that took place in Slovenia. To be precise the rather wonderful and beautiful capital of Slovenia: Ljubljana.

Now I have never been anywhere without a guidebook since my childhood but there was something very relaxing about going somewhere and not feeling the need to know everything, go everywhere, see everything. It’s something I may take on board the next time I visit somewhere new with the future Mrs. L. It would be a most agreeable change for her I’m sure.

Banter, badinage and japes aside I was still struck by the wholesome nature of the city, small, pretty, sleepy, even the punks were apologetic. There was one thing that did shock though. Something which we have been putting to bed for at least a generation, but something that other parts of the world are unwilling to even contemplate. That is that we are all the same, regardless of colour, ethnicity, creed or sexuality (I’m including religion, you’re ALL crazy).

Seemingly the racist chants of crowds in Italy, Spain and other parts of Europe are not only for the fervent football fanatic. It runs deeper. I’ve heard casual racism in Thailand and other places but was shocked to be out in a modern European capital and have our guide (female, 21, travelled, decent education) happily declare ‘we don’t have black people here, we don’t like them, they are sleazy and disgusting.’ This was such a jolt, so out of leftfield, I wasn’t sure how to react. In fact I hadn’t given a reaction by the time she made her next statement.
‘Do you prefer asians or blacks?’
Still stunned I tried to point out that individual people can be awful or nice, trustworthy or vile, regardless of the colour of their skin. She talked over me by explaining that in Slovenia they don’t mind Asians as much as blacks because at least they work hard.

This wasn’t said for effect, it wasn’t said out of a youthful need to show off, it was so bald, so ingrained and so effortless. I didn’t know what to say.
Later as the poor Stag (now a poor married man) Will wandered the rather hip, cool ‘city within a city’, where graffiti is king and cheap green shots flow like brackish water, another shock.

‘you’re friend’ said one harmless looking pot-smoker as I said hello to his dog, ‘is he a faggot?’
Again I was stunned into silence, as my brain raced to come up with something, anything, that may answer this question.

Do eastern European homophobes honestly think that all gay men dress in a giant afro wig and polyester disco outfits? On the evidence of his question it seems they might.

Staggering.

(For the record Will is not gay, despite same sex boarding school)
So as we continue to shrug off the shackles of our recent Empirical past and deal with the fall-out and the repercussions and the guilt and try to find a place in our Country, and our heart, for the plethora of peoples and cultures that we so happily took from, before deigning to allow them to come here to do the jobs we couldn’t possibly do ourselves (help people, serve people, clean up after people) bear one thing in mind.

We are doing something right, we are doing something righteous, we, who come generations after the Raj and the rubber plantations and the slavery have, at least, shown that tolerance is not only everyone’s right, regardless of any prejudice that may still lurk within. We are able to let it go and allow people the freedoms they deserve.

As for Slovenia, if you want to be in the EU and be included in our gang for protection and financial support, you may want to try and understand the irony of a small nation, trying to find it’s feet, being allowed to do that by the bigger boys and girls. Please join us in the present and leave your past behind.

Just read: The True History Of The Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
Listening to: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – Smashing Pumpkins

Libya, or Operation Blind-Eye

Libya, oh Libya, that encyclopaedia, oh Libya the tattooed lady. (Almost © Groucho Marx ‘At The Circus 1939)

So the UN had got it’s panties in a bunch over another oil-rich nation. Funny that. The axis of evil, or the axis of ‘people the American government can’t do business with because they want to do what they wont rather than what we tell them to do’ has fallen foul of the international community once more. And suddenly fighter jets are covering a no-fly zone, hurried meetings and proclamations from the mouths of politicians fill the airwaves. Words like democracy and despot and nutter are flung about as the western media moguls line their ducks up alongside those they put into power, here and in the U.S.

Is Gadaffi any more power-crazed than George Bush Jnr with his direct link to God, or Tony Blair who was on Libyan soil pretty recently (2004) where he declared we must ‘move on’ from the pain of the past (PC. Yvonne Fletcher, Lockerbie etc), could that have had anything to do with the other thing that was happening there at the time (As Mr Blair met Mr Gaddafi, it was announced Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell had signed a deal worth up to £550m for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast (BBC News)) surely not, and you would be a ‘nutter’ to suggest it.

The attitude of the west to these dictators is so mind-numbingly hypocritical as to leave one breathless.

The arrogance and sheer barefacedness should be shocking but cause nothing more than another world-weary shrug around the world.

Iraq – here have some weapons. Oh look he’s got weapons, destroy him!
Burma – Burma, erm, Myanmar, erm, where? democracy, dictatorship, civil liberty, erm, do they have anything apart from suffering people, like oil and stuff? No? right, moving on.

Iran – nuclear power? Right, let’s get into there. But you’ve got nuclear power, yes, but we are non-violent and serene and worldly. You are just the cradle of civilisation.
Zimbabwe – oh, yes, tricky one, come back to us when everyone’s starving to death.
Niger – never heard of it, next.
Rwanda – no words to describe that vile colonial-ethnic abortion.
Fiji – oh yes, nice water, erm, beaches? Next.

Obviously solutions to these horrific humanitarian catastrophes are well beyond the mind of most of us, there are no neat and tidy answers to any of them, but stopping a military junta from controlling its people by policing with the military of a few select OTHER countries through the UN (the picture of Colin Powell holding up a vial of clear liquid in the UN before invading Iraq still haunts) is ludicrous.

Put it this way, if you’re a poor, average, working citizen and the skies above your country buzz with bombers and the ground rumbles with approaching tanks I would be wondering a) whose side are they on? b) whose side shall I say I’m on? And c) I wish we weren’t the 9th largest oil producer in the world? Or maybe we could see some benefit from OUR country’s riches.

My heart goes out to them one and all, normal people ripped off, downtrodden and coerced by their own people, and the people coming as their ‘saviours’.
From some nightmares there is no escape.

Reading – Tintin and the Red Sea Sharks
Listening to – Creedance Clearwater Revival – At The Movies

HBO

Home Box Office. A TV station started in the 60’s, that showed the ‘Thriller in Manilla’ in the 70’s, started making their own films in the 80’s, a pioneering cable channel, the first satellite channel and for me the finest example of television available in the 21st Century.

The list of remarkable HBO television is long, from The Sopranos, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Generation Kill, Flight of the Conchords, The Wire and Six Feet Under. The Larry Saunders Show, Entourage, The Life and Times Of Tim, Boardwalk Empire, Treme, and my new fave Eastbound and Down, the quality, audacity and envelope-pushing displayed by the little company from Manhattan, that grew into an independent monster, is astounding.

(The list is huge and I wont list everything but take a look, it’s mind-blowing)
And the reasons behind this extraordinary programming? It’s simple. It’s the reason Larry David pitched up there for Curb, the reason The Wire was so vast, all-consuming and sprawling, the reason David Chase felt his ending of the Sopranos was THE ending, and that reason is that HBO trust the writer, they trust the creator, they are a bastion of creative protection. They give the creator/writer the ball and say run with it, allow your characters to breathe, allow your story to unwind organically, we trust you, you are the best, do what you like.

What an incredible feeling that must be, what empowerment, what fulfilment.

Anyone who saw the patchy but often spot on ‘Episodes’ recently, or any of the other shows that lay out the experience of writers within film and television, has some understanding of the head scratching, the bullshit, the lies and sheer monstrous power of studio execs when it comes to making TV for the masses. I pity the writer who, having sat through a meeting with 12 people, none of whom get what you’re trying to achieve, each hand you a script covered in red pen, most of it contradictory, and tell you to come back it 2 days with it all changed.

Test audience scores, advertising pressures, the bible-bashing lunatics, the share-holders, the high-ups who are desperate to cover their ‘ass’. And the subsequent crap that rolls downhill smothering the creative process will kill a good idea dead, as surely as if the writer has been taken down a side alley and had their imagination shot.

HBO doesn’t have that. HBO you pay up front and by doing so you are trusting them to deliver often brilliant adult comedy and drama, without the soul-searching, hand-wringing and moral panic attached to swearing, violence and sexual content stifling the output.

In this context HBO are a shining beacon of hope. Brilliant people given free rein to create and execute what they feel is right, treating the audience as grown-ups, exploring themes and characters to provide life-altering viewer experience.
Thank you HBO and long may you continue to stand up for all of us who want to see life as it is, not through a studio filter with all the edges shaved off.
To paraphrase Kenny Powers, you’re fucking out, HBO are fucking in.
Peace out.

Reading – The True History Of The Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
Listening to – The Boston Baseball Band – Go Red Sox!