Archive for August, 2007
I'm probably (as usual) the last person in the world to get on to this - but I've just discovered the joys of Google Sky. Google Earth is great of course, but once the shock of discovery has faded, it's a bit like a really excellent atlas. Google Sky, however, is like - well, it's like being at the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, barking orders at Uhura. ('Uhura, sack the designer who made us these skin tight jumpers!!') It's a magical mystery tour of space, with a Hubble Catalogue of colour photographs of amazing galaxies on edge, or shaped like pinwheels. It's a marvel, downloadable for free, and out there.
I wish I'd had this when I wrote Debatable Space; I'd never have finished the first draft, but oh what fun!
There are links to other extraordinary places too, such as the site devoted to Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, an account of the life's work of an eccentric but brilliant astronomer who studies, er, peculiar galaxies. Or this site, which takes you on a virtual tour of black holes.
If you're the other person in the world who didn't know about this - download Google Earth 4.2, go to View, click on Switch to Sky
I read an interesting article the other day by Sarah Churchwell, a senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia (The Guardian, last week) about women in cinema. She'd been to see the new Bourne movie, which has Julia Stiles in second billing, and noted sadly: 'The most amazing thing Julia Stiles does in The Bourne Ultimatum is to get second billing. She has approximately three scenes, in which her character runs the gamut from concerned to worried...she does nothing else of practical utility, except bring Damon a washcloth.'
It's a familiar complaint - why do women in movies never get heroic parts? There are honourable exceptions - like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, and Jodie Foster in Panic Room; and of course,
Sigourney Weaver in all the Alien movies. 
But the pattern tends to be - women star in chick flicks, while men kick ass.
Churchwell acknowledges that 'there are some female action heroes these days. In TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena Warrior Princess and now Heroes, and movies such as Catwoman, Elektra and the Matrix films.' But then she adds, 'these are all science fiction fantasies, they take place in imaginary worlds, and several of them were notable flops.'
That seems just a tad dismissive. Yes, Catwoman was a flop, but Elektra is a movie which has plenty of admirers (like Ariel, who wrote this about it) - and the Matrix was a huge huge hit. But the key conclusion I would draw is that audiences for SF movies are not sexist, they positively like women to kick ass, and they are, generally speaking, proper grown ups.
Even in the SF movie world, though, the best parts do tend to go to women (Trinity is not the lead character in the Matrix). But there is a reason for all this. Movie studio executives are not idealists, pursuing a secret cultural agenda; they are greedy money-grubbing so and sos. And so if they thought there was money to be made out of making movies with strong, kick ass women at the helm - they would make those movies. But their audience research tells them that spotty boys don't like girl heroes, so they play safe, and they keep casting guys in the lead roles.
But is this true? Are viewers of the male persuasion really so narrow minded? As an erstwhile spotty boy, I've always loved strong female characters in movies, novels, and graphic novels. (My dream would be to see a movie solely devoted to the great heroine of my teen years Ororo, aka Storm of the X Men, preferably with Wolverine as her romantic lead. Scene 1 would feature...okay, okay, I'll get back to the point...)
On a couple of occasions, when teaching large groups of screenwriting students, many of them in their twenties, I've done a straw poll of favourite films; and my anecdotal evidence is that most women of that age and many women of other ages love kick ass action movies as much as men. The cliche (and it's a brilliant cliche) in the movie Sleepless in Seattle is of a yawning chasm between women, who weep at soppy tear-jerking chick flicks, and men, who weep at The Dirty Dozen. (Such a great scene!) But my suspicion is that these days the dynamic is different, and there is a vast audience of women and men and boys and girls who would relish movies with strong, morally compromised, kick assing female heroes at the helm.
Am I right? Would you buy a cinema ticket if Matt Damon became the hapless, ineffectual sidekick in The Bourne Sister? Would you turn on the telly if Dr Who were reincarnated as a woman? Are the studio execs right in thinking there is no market for movies with female action protagonists?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd also love the studio execs to hear them, but that's a tougher proposition....
I've just finished reading the excellent and immensely ingenious Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It's a book which plays a very clever game - drawing on the ancient myths of Anansi the Spider God, and mixing it in with an entertaining contemporary drama/comedy. It's a warm, lovely, feel-good kind of a book, as one would expect from the warm-hearted, kind-spirited Gaiman.
But fortunately, it's not too nice. In fact for my money, the book really gets into its stride when a ghastly and horrific murder is committed. Yay! Bring it on! my inner demon yelled at that moment. Now we're cooking with vitriol and bile...!
In an interview published as an afterword to the book, Gaiman admitted that this twist in the story came as a surprise to him (ah! so I'm not the only writer who doesn't plan his bloody stories in advance...) and it forced him to totally rethink the rest of the book because, 'I didn't want anything quite that dark to happen to any of the characters.' But I'm glad he took the left hand fork in the road, the one that leads the dark side; because a novel that's all nice is an oyster shell with neither grit nor nacre.
Gaiman is, of course, an absolute softie - all his main characters, even the wicked Spider in Anansi Boys tend to have a heart of gold. But Gaiman's malicious streak is a joy to behold. Take this little section from Neverwhere, in which the evil hitmen Mister Vandemar and Mr Croup are pursuing a young girl, with intent to murder:
'Bless me, Mister Vandemar, she's slowing up.'
'Slowing up, Mister Croup.'
'She must be losing a lot of blood, Mister V.'
'Lovely blood, Mister C. Lovely wet blood.'
'Not long now.'
A click; the sound of a flick knife opening, empty and lonely and dark.
That last phrase is poetry from the quill of Lucifer - bleak and menacing and ghastly. And in a later scene, the evil Misters commit gory and gruesome torture and murder, sending streaks of darkness through Gaiman's light, witty prose, and creating rich chiaroscuro.
While reading Anansi Boys, I was niggled by a sense that there was something familiar about the story. It's a classic tale of course - an ordinary Joe turns out to be the son of a God, with god-like powers himself. And it reminded me strongly of The Eternals, the graphic novel re-make of Jack Kirby's original, which Gaiman himself wrote (all the best writers steal from themselves!) But, as I mused about the need to have nastiness mixed in with niceness, I then remembered another graphic novel with a similar premise - the brilliant (and truly truly nasty) Wanted by Mark Millar. In this story Wesley Gibson, an ordinary Joe, discovers that he is in fact the son of - not a god, but a supervillain, called The Killer. And he has also inherited his father's super-powers - which basically consist of the ability to kill, very very well. Wesley is cajoled into taking up his father's mantle (cape?) and becomes a super-villain, with bloody consequences.
It's gripping stuff, a perfect setup for a classic character journey/twist, in which Wesley realises in the nick of time that supervillainy is not for him - he is going to be a superhero after all! Thus, achieving redemption, etc etc, and setting a moral example for us all. This, as I say, is what I was expecting....
I won't spoil the story by going into more detail; but suffice to say, this story shocks because it starts nasty and it stays nasty. I remember reading it in a state of stunned incredulity - surely someone will turn out to have some redeeming qualities?
Nope, they don't. It's dark, bleak and nihilistic from start to stop. But it's not, I would argue, immoral or amoral - hell, it's a story, not a rampaging mob in your local pub! And it's a story which plays with ideas about good and evil in a complex way. It is written with wit and brilliant satirical edge, and it openly mocks our assumptions about how a comic book story ought to work. (It has a supervillain called Fuckwit, and an even eviller supervillain called Shit-Head, who is made of 'one hundred per cent excrement...the collected feces of the six hundred and sixty-six most evil human beings that ever walked the earth.') If Jonathan Swift had written graphic novels, he'd be jealous of that line....
It intrigues me to see how two writers can take essentially the same story premise (ordinary Joe, father a god/superpowered being, son turns out to have the father's powers) and yet can create two such radically different stories. Both Millar and Gaiman write with wit and verbal flair, and both of them have a morally sophisticated approach to their material. But Millar shocks us with his nastiness, while Gaiman charms us with his niceness.
I don't know either writer - but I'm sure that in real life, Millar is as nice as they come. But he writes like a Tequila Slammer, in sharp intoxicating bursts; while Gaiman is a glass of Pimms on a hot summer's afternoon.
Interestingly, many friends who know me as a person, and as a teacher, are genuinely shocked when they read my screenplays and prose - because my writing is way nastier than I am. In the Nice V. Nasty spectrum, I'm closer to Millar than Gaiman.
Although, some would argue, and have argued, especially after seeing that sinister photograph at the top of this blog, that the 'Nice Palmer' is just a facade...I'm evil through and through. I'm the Cheo, not Flanagan...
Hmmm..trouble is I do like that idea. Who wants to be Superman - when you can be the Killer!
Everyone has their favourite country for holidays....mine is Italy. I've been to Lake Garda, Umbria, Tuscany, Florence, Lake Garda again, Florence again, and of course Rome. This year I went to Crete which looks a little bit like Italy, and once again I pursued my favourite holiday pastime - reading detective novels set in Italy whilst actually being in Italy. (Or in Crete - my mind is very easily fooled.) And the key holiday texts for me are the novels of Donna Leon, Michael Dibdin (author of the Aurelio Zen mysteries) and the great and under-appreciated Magdalen Nabb. Nabb's unlikely hero Marshal Guarnaccia is a carabinieri officer with poor deductive powers, very little social self-confidence, who is absent-minded to the point of rudeness, and who essentially muddles his way through every case aided by his astonishing memory, his instinct for people, and his passion for truth. He is like Columbo, but less suave. (!)
Nabb's books are stylishly written, understated, and rich in emotion and truth. She evokes an Italy of forests and feuds and bitter neighbourhood disputes; almost every chapter features the Marshal having a long boozy lunch and sleepwalking his way through the afternoon's amiable interviews. As who-dun-its, they wouldn't feature on anyone's Top Ten list; but as evocative studies of the queerness of folk, they are unique and special .
Years ago there was a TV adaptation of one of the novels, which misfired really because of the incongruity of English thesps playing Italian characters. And after that, there was a period when the Marshal books seemed to go out of print - although that was no handicap really, since like all lovers of detective fiction I'm devoted to second hand bookshops and was always able to obtain my fix.
Sadly, Magdalen Nabb has just died, in Florence, on the 18th of August. Her final novel Vita Nuova will be published in 2008, after which there will be no more Marshall Guarnaccia mysteries.
I will miss him, and her.
I'm not actually here, and I'm not actually writing this blog. I'm on holiday in a cottage in the North East of this country, with no internet access and no real motive to seek out an internet cafe. This blog is an imposter and a fraud.
The fact is, for completely childish reasons, I found myself attracted to the idea of writing a blog whilst not actually being here/there. And this is easily enough done by playing with the Timestamp; the blog then lurks in cyberspace until it's scheduled to appear.
If this were a detective novel, this could be my alibi. I couldn't have possibly been in the Billiard Room wielding the candlestick with such deadly effect, because my vast (!) internet community of blog-readers were sitting at their screens reading when these very words appeared. This means I effectively have carte blanche to commit a heinous murder at precisely 21.00 on Wednesday 22nd August.
Beware....
WHY I LOVE BUFFY
When I first started teaching screenwriting, I quickly learned the fundamental principle of teaching is to create a group dynamic; and the way to do that is, get them doing things. Even great orators (which I'm not) get annoying after a while. And the best way to learn is to listen a bit, then talk a bit, then do stuff, then talk about what went wrong...
And one of the simplest 'warm up' exercises for a group of would be television writers is to simply ask them what is their favourite show - ever. The one they'll stay home to watch, even when Dad is in a prison cell and needs to be bailed out.
The West Wing is a popular choice, among the many groups I've talked to. Smallville works for some people. The Sopranos is the answer many give; or Six Feet Under, or Spooks, or Shameless. It's rarer for anyone to name Eastenders or Coronation Street, but maybe that's because no one wants to admit to having such mainstream taste. (For many viewers, however, these are most emphatically their 'to die for' shows.)
When it's my turn to talk, I sometimes bluff and talk about The West Wing or When the Boat Comes In, or The Shield. But usually I admit the truth: the best ever show, for me, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, I have to admit there are better and more profound television dramas but - er, actually no I don't admit anything of the sort! It's brilliantly written, brilliantly cast, brilliantly conceived, brilliantly sustained, extremely profound and resonant, and so damn sexy.
I wasn't a first generation Buffy viewer; when it first appeared I was caught up in life and career and couldn't see much of interest for me in a teen drama about a vampire slayer. Later, however, I watched the re-runs avidly and discovered a pure love for the series that no other series can evoke in me.
But why? That's the key question I ask myself, and the purpose of this blog. At some point, when there are more hours in the day, I want to write in depth about the series itself, and the relationship between Buffy and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Coleridge wrote about the 'willing suspension of disbelief for the moment [which constitutes poetic faith]', and Buffy of course depends on a massive and extremely willing suspension of disbelief on the part of its viewers, and - anyway, that's for another day.)
But the question is: why? What does my (somewhat, in certain quarters) embarrassing passion for this teen show reveal about me? I like Power Rangers - but I wouldn't say so in front of a bunch of sharp-witted would be screenwriters. So what is it about Joss Whedon's Scooby gang that hooks me so?
Buffy is of course written with wit and savour and tang, which is something that matters a great deal to me (see the blog On Captain Jack Sparrow.) It has fast-paced storytelling and great narrative variety, which I love, and it has resonance and allegory, which I also adore. And it's funny as hell, which is a constant delight.
For me, though, deep down, when I come to really probe my own feelings, it's about bullying. Buffy is never bullied by peer pressure (or if she is, she learns a lesson fast); she's never bullied by jocks (she can beat the crap out of them) and she's never bullied by the real bullies, the vampires and demons who steal away young and sometimes not so young lives and who think they own the ****ing planet. Buffy looks so vulnerable and so sweet and so easily bullied; but in fact, she's a warrior.
I'm the opposite. I was always up for being bullied when I was Buffy's age. I wasn't the most obvious target, but I was most certainly a sitting duck. Once, I displayed a small amount of heroism and defied the class bully by shoving him feebly - then running away screaming with fear. He caught up with me, and I babbled in panic; then he shook my hand and befriended me. So I guess that counts as a happy ending. But all I remember was panic and indignity and not even being able to run away very fast.
Bullying in school is a terrible thing; but later in life, the forms of bullying get sneakier. Bullies use sarcasm, mockery, undermining, and authority to get their way. And I've lost track of the number of times when I've crumbled and given in to someone who isn't particularly smart, or right in his/her opinions, but has the calm, authoritative, faintly patronising tone that allows 'Them' to bully 'Us'.
I've been bullied big-time, and small-time, and the secret to defying it is not to feel defeated, even if technically you are. Giving in because some has the power to sack you is sensible conduct; feeling small and inadequate and inferior is just dumb. That's the power we give to bullies, which we shouldn't.
Attitude is all. I remember when I tried to learn karate in a dojo in South London, with a charismatic working class karateka called Sensei George (the inspiration for Sensei Eddy, a minor character in Debatable Space.) Let's take it as read that I am hopeless at karate; the point is that the first time I sparred, I was kicked in the head and Sensei George sympathetically told me to stand aside and take a break. The second time I sparred, I was kicked in the head, and George roared at me, 'That was your ****ing fault Palmer!' And he was right. If you want to do karate, you have to either duck better, or not wince when you're kicked in the head. That's attitude, and it empowers.
These days, I duck better, and wince less. And I give short shrift to bullies. But all that took a long time for me to learn. So I would give anything to have done as Buffy does, when I was Buffy's age - to kick arse, fearlessly, and never to show fear.
So that's really why I love Buffy. I like it because it's exceptionally well made drama; I love it because part of me is hooked on wish-fulfillment drama that allows me to be what I'm not.
There, I've saved myself twenty years of therapy bills to acquire that insight about myself.
Now it's your turn...should you choose to accept the challenge.
Tell us why you love Buffy.
Don't synopsise the episodes or discuss the craft and the writing - just tell us what it is about you that makes you, that special person which you are, love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Assuming that you do - though I guess I kind of think that anyone reading a blog by a current SF like myself will share that particular passion. Am I wrong?)
The trick here is - you have to avoid all tricks and tell the truth about yourself. Otherwise, what you say won't make sense.
It may be that your reasons for loving the show are similar to mine; or it may be that they are very different. But in telling me those reasons, you'll be revealing something about yourself. (Not TOO much! you can keep your darkest deepest secrets for the new blog I'm setting up at mydeepestdarkestsecretsrevealed.com).
You can use the Comments section beneath the blog to reply. And remember, I'm looking for something that's more than a quick throwaway response - I'm looking for something that other users of the site will read and savour and learn from.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and inner dreams...
My new radio drama BREAKING POINT is broadcast on Friday, 10th August, 9pm, on Radio 4...(For further info, see the blog ON THE RADIO DRAMA EXPERIENCE.)
If you miss it, you get another chance to listen via the BBC's wonderful Listen Again facility. For those who haven't used it before, just go to the BBC website (www.bbc.co.uk) and scroll down to Radio, then click on 'Listen to shows you've missed.' Then click on Radio 4, and scroll down the list of shows until you reach The Friday Play (under 'f'). The programme will be available on the internet for a week after its broadcast (TX) date.
I'm reading the proofs for Debatable Space this week...a delightful but terrifying exercise. The story spans a thousand years, and features extraordinary events that are meant to be implausible and incredible, and yet should still be possible, just about.
Now I have to make sure that I haven't made dumb mistakes in the chronology and with the science. This, to my horror, involves writing an account (albeit a brief one) of everything that happens between AD 2004 (when my heroine Lena is born) and AD 3000 (Lena's Subjective Time - not Earth Time!) when there' s a great big kick-arse battle.
The sensible way to write a future history is to write one book; then write another book set twenty years later; then another book set twenty years later still. I have not done this sensible thing. I have started with an epic, and now I have to check that the Future History I have created that will stand the test of time....