Screen Writing
I'm off to Eastercon this weekend, for what promises to be a fabulous convention. Two of my favourite writers - Neil Gaiman and Tanith Lee - are Guests of Honour - and I notice that the magnificent and prolific Charles Stross will also be attending. My agent John Jarrold, a veteran of Worldcons and Eastercons, will also be there. I'm new to the SF convention experience, but I expect to be a duck impacting water.
And in fact, from now on my year appears to be cluttered with festivals and conventions - I'm on a panel at Alt. Fiction in Derby, with the gifted Stephen Gallagher, and then in May I spend a week in Cannes, for the Film Festival.
And between those two events comes another great festival, which I would like to shamelessly pimp - the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. If you can get to London do check it out.
Now I need to find some time to actually write novels.
I recently attended the last in this year's SPARKS workshops up in Yorkshire. It's been six months of intensive work with 3 bunches of writers. My lot were developing TV series, and a damned good job they did too. And the other groups were working on feature projects, creating a wonderfully diverse range of projects.
I did a brief talk on one of my favourite shows, Heroes. Not everyone loves this show (Jeff Somers is agin it, and he's someone whose opinions I very much respect) but I find it exhilarating and fresh and, damn it all, wonderful. But, as is always the way, when you have to teach a movie or a TV series, you look at it with fresh eyes.
And what I discovered about Heroes, on a second viewing with notepad in hand, is how much of it is not great; and how little that matters.
The stuff that's not great is, really, all the voiceover narration by the Mohinder character. On first hearing, it seems fine; but when you listen again, and focus in on the content - well, it's so much tripe really. It's all platitudes and generalisations, and doesn't advance the story. (And of course, almost all the of the 'science' that Mohinder spouts in his actual dialogue scenes is, um, pretty dodgy.)
And yet, this doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because Mohinder's voiceover is there for a complex and subtle reason, and not because the narration is needed to move the story. It was added, in fact, in post-production, always a sign of a panic last measure; and what it does is add style.
There's a scene in Ep 3, which I screened, in which the Nikki character is burying some bodies in the desert. (If you want to know why, you need to watch it.) It's classic thriller stuff, well shot admittedly, but very much the kind of scene you might get in any crime show. So it could easily look, well, B movieish, or cheap tellyish.
But when the scene is played out with actor Sendhil Ramamurthy's beautifully spoken voiceover on top of it, it becomes special, and evocative, and stylised. It's more than a woman burying bodies; it's a scene of sublimity and pathos.
This is one of the great tricks of the show; everything is stylised, enhanced, 'more so.' The colours are richer than life, with yellows and oranges and browns and fabulous set designs, and Indian streets stalls selling brightly coloured fruit, and shockingly bold shirts, and vividly rich lighting. And the angles are cleverly chosen, bold and striking and disorienting, the shots develop swiftly and in a complex way, and every single shot has a three dimensional quality (something in the foreground, something in the background, something in the mid-ground, so the eye is constantly tantalised and entertained.)
And the voiceover adds a whole level of stylisation on to this; it makes us aware that what we are watching is meant to be thought provoking and idea provoking and assumption provoking. The voiceover teaches us how to 'read' what we are watching, in other words.
But Mohinder's prose, as I say, is painted on with a very broad brush; I have a feeling, really, that it was written in a hurry. But I'm not carping, just observing; and the narration is spoken so beautifully that it's a pleasure to hear it, even if I often don't bother listening to it.
And I came away once more confirmed in my belief that American TV series are better than their British counterparts because they really really care about style, as much as they care about content. Every great American show has its own visual aesthetic, its own style rules - from the jerky camera movements of NYPD Blue to the staccato explorations of urban New Jersey in The Sopranos, to the lush malice implicit in the cinematography of Desperate Housewives. Whereas British shows tend to be shot in one of two ways; cinematically (if it's high budget telly) and cheaply (if it's factory telly.) But there's no real attempt to do what movie directors to - to create a unique visual look. (Compare Spielberg's Minority Report, with Spielberg's ET, and compare them both to Spielberg's Schindler's List - they represent three totally different directorial 'looks'.)
After my brief talk to the SPARKS group, we did a question and answer session, and it quickly emerged that Heroes is a show which has really captured the imagination of almost all the writers present. It's Marvel comics merged with prime-time US TV storytelling skills (Stan Lee even has a cameo as a coach driver.) And it is, I would argue, one of the most visually beautiful TV shows ever made.
Later in the course of this residential weekend, we had a screening of the classic British film The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp, one of Powell and Pressburger's most outrageous, and funny, and satirical, and thought-provoking films. It features a very different type of hero - a moustachio'd Colonel Blimp who appears in the first scene as a figure of fun, and emerges after the film has told his story, as a man of romance, passion, and integrity, and heroism. It's a homage to an old fashioned kind of British hero.
There are plans for another SPARKS workshop next year; I hope very much to be involved in it.
Great film! See it.
Imagine if you could travel anywhere, whenever you wanted.
It's that simple really. A science fiction extrapolation of the back-packer's wanderlust. You can travel to London, Rome, and Egypt - and still be home in time to watch your favourite show on telly.
There are villains, rather good ones, if dubiously motivated; and Samuel L. Jackson plays a bad guy with a scary haircut. But the real conflict is between two Jumpers, who bicker and end up having a fist fight that zaps exhilaratingly from location to location.
It's a film that has no resonance, and leaves no lasting insights or profundities in the mind. It's just - zap - zap - zap - great fun.
Was the hype worth it? Is Cloverfield as scary as its trailer? (I was blown away when I first saw those wild hand-held camera images culminating in the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing to earth.)
Pretty much, I'd say. Cloverfield is great scary action, and has one nail-biting sequence that had my vertigo working overtime. I once walked up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and was appalled at how nauseous it made me feel - because of the lean, up and down didn't feel right and I was convinced I was falling. The Rescue Scene in Cloverfield had a similar effect on me.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie - it's brief, exciting, and exceptionally well shot. But I found in the end I resisted the central conceit - the idea that the whole movie we're watching is actual footage from a DV camera held by one of the characters. I'm not normally slow to withold my suspension of disbelief; but this was a step too far for me. A monster (no plot spoiler here, we all know this is a monster movie) is approaching, and you're running for your life - and you take time to pan the camera around to take in the view?
There was several points where only an utter lunatic would have carried on filming, and each of those moments kicked me out of the film.
I think the movie would have been stronger if it had just allowed us to imagine there really was a monster. The Bourne Supremacy has a similar, jittery hand-held camera feel throughout - but we never query that. It just feels natural, part of the movie's style.
And the restricted POV of the movie - we only see what our main characters see - was used to equally good effect in Spielberg's War of the Worlds without any need for explanation. The most chilling moment is when the Tom Cruise character sees bodies floating down the river; far more powerful visually than seeing the people being killed and becoming bodies...
But I did love the film's complete absence of exposition and narrative information. There's a great big monster - that's all we know. Is it an alien? Did it have a spaceship? We don't know; and we don't care.
Because it's coming for us and it's time to run...
I saw I Am Legend last night. The reviews have been mixed, and I've read comments criticising the implausibility of the premise - if Will Smith is the only person in New York, where does the electricity come from?
But the film blew me away. Most SF movies are actually action movies, which are light on ideas, high on adrenalin. And this movie certainly delivers some great scary action sequences. But it's also a very brave piece of storytelling. For long long periods Will Smith is the only human being on screen, talking to his dog, living in a New York which is a wasteland inhabited by antelope and lions. And the film captures, beautifully, his despair, alienation, and growing madness. The man is so damn lonely it breaks your heart.
For reasons you'll discover when you see the film, New York is not a safe place to be in this (very near) future world. But though the Will Smith character is heroic and resourceful, he's not an exaggerated 'movie' hero. When he gets hurt, it hurts. He does stupid things. He exudes vulnerability. This is not The Matrix, where archetypal characters perform impossible deeds; it's an altogether more challenging piece of storytelling about a flawed and real central character. (And by the way, I love The Matrix!)
It made me think about the nature of the movie audience. We all know that Hollywood studios target their blockbuster at the 18-24 year old demographic; blockbuster movies are for 'the kids' (I have actually heard some producers use that phrase.) But as I recall (it's a long time ago!!!!) that period from 18 to 24 is very intense, emotionally and intellectually. At that stage in our lives, most of us are asking questions about identity, we have moments of loneliness and angst, and we have a burning curiosity about life, and its meaning, and whether it has a meaning. (And okay, partying and sex and drink and slacking come into the equation too....) But my point is, teenagers, and 18-24 year olds, think, and they think a lot, and they like movies which make them think.
The success of I Am Legend has been attributed to Will Smith's star power. And there's certainly some truth in that. But I think it's also successful because young audiences are up for seeing a movie which makes them imagine and then reflect on what it is like to be terribly, appallingly lonely.
The scenes of the desolate New York are superb. I was in Times Square very recently, so had a frisson at the scene where the antelope run past the poster of Legally Blonde.
I can't for the life of me remember if I've seen the Richard Matheson novel on which this is based. I suspect not, so I'll have to read it soon.
Answer to the question above, about the electricity: lots of buildings like hospitals have generators, so Will Smith must have installed a generator in his apartment block, fuelled by oil or some other easily available resource. The film doesn't bother to explain or show this, because it's a film - you can't waste time explaining every little thing! By the same token, no one tells us the lions have escaped from the zoo - but we, the audience, are smart, and we figure it out.
Critics can be so annoying sometimes....
Many years ago I studied Anglo Saxon as a module at University, and could actually read and speak a few snippets of that of that long dead, resonant, rhythmic, repetitive, blood-drenched-battle filled ancient tongue. ('Biter was the baduraes, sword edg onfeng' - that's the only bit I can remember. Meaning 'Bitter was the battle, sword clashed against um, 'onfeng'? Lance? Forgive me, it was a long time ago.)
I also read Beowolf, in translation not in the original Anglo Saxon, and I remember finding it tough going. A wonderful core story - Grendel is the monster, but when he's killed, Grendel's Mother stalks the land - hilarious but chilling. And great passages of rhythmic epic writing. And I don't doubt Seamus Heaney's claims that it's one of the greatest poems ever written. But it is without doubt a tough read - very repetitive, and full of bragging alpha males.
And so I have to take my hat off to Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, for what they've done with their script for the Robert Zemeckis' directed Beowulf. They turn a turgid yarn into a ripping yarn. And without taking any credit away from Avary, surely it was Gaiman's influence that turned a macho blood-fest into a subtle dissection and critique of the nature of heroism? Quoting from memory: late in the story, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) says, 'Men are the monsters now,' beautifully turning a reactionary tale into a critique of war. And the extraordinary twist in the story, featuring a near-naked CGI Angelina Jolie, most certainly was not in the original....
This is, all in all, a very very smart movie. You wouldn't know that from the rather sniffy reviews, which all tactitly imply that Gaiman/Avary are playing fast and loose with a flawless classic, rather than making a magnificent hero's journey morality tale out of a dense and bloodthirsty and at times impenetrable text.
The final sequence is fabulous in every sense of the word - a brilliant tour de force spectacle every bit as thrilling as the best bits in the first Lord of the Rings.
There are flaws, as in every movie - Anthony Hopkins is fine as Hrothgar, but Robin Wright Penn makes an attempt at a matching Welsh accent that was ill-advised and, for a Welshman, deeply annoying. And John Malcovich? Um?
But I found this beautiful and spectacular and thought-provoking. And like The 300, this is a film which stretches the visual possibilities of film. It's eerie, at first, to see such almost-real CGI animations; but by the final climax I had suspended my disbelief totally, and could totally see why they just had to do it that way.
The nude scenes have been much mocked, because of the way the naughty bits are always cunningly concealed. I didn't mind that - am I really ready to see a CGI willy or vulva? I think not! And to my mind, it was very like the coy way nudity has always been handled in Marvel Comics, which I'm sure is the intended vibe. (But it still manages to be genuinely sexy. Especially Angelina as Grendel's mum! - quick, cool me down with swamp water immediately..!)
The 3 D experience added enormously to the richness of the experience. I remember seeing House of Wax in 3D in a cinema near Piccadilly Circus many moons ago. The modern incarnation of 3D is streets ahead of that - and for a spectacular movie like this creates a truly remarkable viewing experience.
'I've come to kill your monster!' says Ray Winstone/Beowulf in an early sequence. Good lad, off you go then....
And okay, that bit is maybe just a tiny bit unintentionally funny; though I wouldn't swear to that. Gaiman of course has the most delicious sense of humor, and he doesn't mind leavening drama and tragedy with belly laughs.
One of the pieces of writing I'm proudest of is my own adaptation of another literary classic for radio - Sir Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. (That also had a dragon, in fact...) The experience of making that was fabulous, though extremely risky; I kept closely to the story, but I iconoclastically wrote the whole thing in my own very different Hollywood-influenced style.
But at that time, I never would have imagined that these dusty greats of Eng Lit would start making their way into the multiplexes of the world....
The Writers Guild of America are currently on strike...in Britain, there are many screenwriters so starved of work that the idea of going on strike actually seems comical. And very few writers in the UK earn the kind of mega-bucks which their US counterparts can earn, so it's hard to feel too sorry for them.
There is a principle at stake however. The CEOs of the corporations which own Hollywood are busy persuading their shareholders that there are vast fortunes to be made out of the internet, via various digital platforms which will allow us to watch films on our computer or mobile phone or I-Pod (George Walkley, the adorable and techno-literate head of marketing at Orbit, already watches movies on his I-Pod on his way to work, which is way ahead of my own technology capability.)
It's obvious really that before long DVD will vanish and we'll all be downloading films directly on to our television sets; and most of us will be happy to pay for that privilege.
And yet those same CEOs argue, to writers and actors and other creatives who currently get a profit share from DVD sales and television screenings of their work, that it's not possible to pay any revenue from digital broadcasts, because the market is so uncertain. They want to pay the money! But they're scared to, for fear their shareholders will become destitute and impoverished.
And yet these same shareholders are being promised vast amounts of dosh arising out of the digital era...Hmm. This is called talking from both sides of your mouth at the same time.
Next year there'll be an actors' strike in America, about the same principle.
In showbusiness everything is negotiable; the only rule is that both sides should negotiate fairly and openly. And I guess this is why the Writers Guild of America is being so intransigent; they fear they are being fibbed to.
For my part, I'm hugely looking forward to the next stage in media technology - when I bin this cheapo computer and my small screen telly and walk around in a box surrounded by cinema screens.
But let's hope the transition to a digital future starts to proceed a little more smoothly and fairly.
Last night's Writer's Guild forum on fantasy and science fiction writing proved a great success. We had a full house of interested writers, many of them non-Guild members (there was a large contingent from the London Film School, where I'm a part-time lecturer.) And the panel debate was, I felt, though I'm biased of course, lively and very informative.
Ashley Pharaoh was there to talk about Life on Mars, and he showed a splendid clip which demonstrates the show's amazing stylistic range - from naturalism to surrealism to out and out verbal comedy. There was a stunning exchange between John Simm and Philip Glenister, in which Glenister's character splurges a smorsgabod of offensive homophobic terms.
Ashley thinks of the show as imaginative writing rather than 'sci fi' per se. And the chair for the evening, Edel Brosnan, described it as 'uncanny' writing which is a lovely word to use.
The point though is that this is a show which has challenged the stranglehold of social realism and police procedural in British television. It manages to be a great cop show - but it is also allowed to be weird, and strange, and philosophical, and thought-provoking.
And is it SF? On the basis of what happens in the final episode of the last series, I'd say yes; but the power of the show was always the way it made the ambiguity of its own reality a part of the story. Is this actually happening or is it just fantasy? And of course what we saw in the final ep may just have been another dream...! So I guess in many ways the show this is closest to is Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective - which was also a detective drama, and a mystery, but played beautifully with our ideas about what is real and what is imagined.
Phil Ford spoke about his experiences writing and script editing for shows like Dr Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Phil is a life-long science fiction devotee, who has suddenly discovered there's now a sweet shop in his living room.
I spoke about my experiences working as a development executive for Scottish Television, when I was told in no uncertain terms by senior ITV execs that they were never going to do SF, because it was stupid....! And audiences wouldn't like it! Phil nodded vigorously at this point; he had obviously heard the same comments many times, in the days before Russell T. Davies's Dr Who. Phil has spent a career in TV swimming against the tide; but now the tide has changed...
And Phil showed a clip of the Sarah Jane show - the wonderful Gorgon episode - which had us spellbound.
The third panellist, Adrian Hodges, co-creator of the bold dinosaur series Primeval, spoke about how he approaches the task of creating 'worlds'. Adrian has written a huge amount of historical drama, including the BBC's splendid life of Charles II. But Adrian is adamant that documentary realism is not possible or desirable for a dramatist; you have to create a world that's credible, and accurate in its essentials, but which is also accessible and resonant for a modern audience. And for him there's no real difference in approach between writing an historical drama, a literary adapatation (he wrote the movie version of Michael Hastings' Tom and Viv) and dinosaur dramas.
Adrian also wrote The Lost World; so dinosaur drama really is a genre he has made his own!
I spoke about SF and fantasy in novels, and read a short excerpt from Debatable Space, which seemed to be well received. The excerpt features a line in which Lena bemoans the fact that in her far future world some people have been bio-engineered so that their excrement emerges wrapped in polythene - to ensure that their shit does not smell.
How, Lena wails, can I stay sane, knowing a thing like that?
I'm delighted that the Writers Guild have organised this forum, because it really does mark a seachange in the way genres like SF are perceived by the 'mainstream' media. For years, SF has been treated as 'not posh' (a phrase one of the panellists used.) But now TV execs have woken up to the fact that SF has a loyal and discerning audience, and that it's a genre which offers different and exciting ways of telling a story. Different and exciting and, quite often, more imaginative ways.
However, Adrian did make the telling point that there was a time when TV audiences were very forgiving of wobbly sets and poor special effects - in the days of I, Claudius, and the early Dr Who. But after the movie Star Wars, TV audiences got pickier; so one reason SF has been off British TV for so long is that our companies literally couldn't afford to make big SF epics like Star Trek or Stargate.
But that's changing, as the cost of CGI comes down. And for my money, the production values of a show like Battlestar Galactica seem to me equal and at times superior to the values we'd expect from a feature film. (When the Vipers fly out of the mother ship, it always send a shudder of awe down my spine.)
And, in my view, the potential of SF on television has barely been tapped. So I'm looking forward to even more bold new shows in the next few years. A British Heroes? Why not?
But the secret for me about creating a show like Heroes is that you don't start by copying an existing show - you create something genuinely new! So pale imitation superhero series interest me not so much; I'd much rather see shows that come from somewhere fresh, and unexpected, and original.
(For an edited verbatim account of the debate, click here.)
I recently did a Q & A for the Book Swede - great fun. If you fancy reading it, then click here.
I spent last weekend in Hebden Bridge, a startlingly beautiful town in Yorkshire with mill chimneys and clock towers and horribly, horribly steep hills. I was teaching on a workshop run by Screen Yorkshire for new and established screenwriters.
Jeremy Dyson of the League of Gentlemen was there too, giving a talk on how to write...he's an engagingly and delightfully grounded guy. He spoke about he and his pals took a show to Edinburgh, worked their socks off to make it good - and the rest was history. Success swooped and swept them away, and the success of the League has been remarkable.
But Jeremy has kept a clear understanding on what it's like to be on the other side of the wall, and judged his audience extremely well. A number of the would-be writers on the workshop had completed an MA in Screenwriting at Leeds Metropolitan University, in the hope it would lead to fame and fortune. And Jeremy was one of the first people to do that same course; and here is now, writing comedies for men dressed as big breasted women in Royston Vasey.
Jeremy spoke brilliantly and very honestly about what it is like to be a writer. It is basically very hard because you get out of bed, sit in front of the computer...then nothing happens. And when nothing happens, for hour after hour, day after day, it does become profoundly embarrassing. It is, I would surmise, a bit like being a gigolo who doesn't much like sex. It is horrible, and awful, and also petty, and humiliating. There is the blank page. There is the writer staring at it. It's not a bit like Clint Eastwood glaring at Lee Van Cleef. It is just basically....banal.
All writers know this. Clever writers use words like Writers Block to add dignity to the embarrassing phenomenon of creative impotence. And smart writers like Jeremy have a whole battery of techniques for conjuring up a creative mood in which the words happen. For Jeremy, it hinges around having a clear desk, a neat environment, and stopwatch techniques in which he forces himself to write 5 minutes of anything, however crap it may be. Then he takes a break. Then he writes for another 5 minutes. Then - and then, something takes off and magic comedy results. When the flow flows, it really flows.
After Jeremy's talk, the writers broke up into 3 groups of 5. I was teaching the TV drama group, who were full of pizzaz and optimism and paid me the enormous compliment of actually having heard of the first TV show I worked on, The Paradise Club. (It's a cult hit, but there's a ghastly rumour that all the tapes have been lost or hidden in some basement somewhere - though this is a show that cries out to be given a DVD release.)
Kathyrn O'Connor, head of development of the Northern office of Talkback Thames, came to talk to the writers about TV today, and gave great feedback on their stories. I gave my usual spiel about the fact that TV really has got more interesting - it used to be nothing but police procedurals, but now high concept and science fiction and weirdy and wacky are all in vogue, which means there is at least the possibility of drama that's excitingly different.
The projects pitched to me ranged from a cop show (by an actress with recent CAD room experience, ie being the person who sits behind a microphone telling the area car where to go) to teen drama (sexy, stylish, full of potential) to precinct drama to hugely ambitious melodrama. Interestingly, most of the writers doing the TV section of this SPARKS course have significant experience as writers, but are looking for human contact, and feedback, and career openings. The talent is out there...it's finding a way to connect that's so hard.
Later that weekend, at the instigation of script guru and my pal Simon van der Borgh, we did a pitching session in which all 15 writers had 15 minutes to pitch their idea to a scary panel including myself, Simon, Hugo Heppell (head of Screen Yorkshire) and Ann Tobin (senior lecturer at Leeds Met University.) As a joke, we compared it to the X Factor (I was cast as Louis of course.) In reality - it was alarmingly and terrifyingly like the X Factor. For a new writer, to walk in a room with four industry professionals and pitch a project which then gets ripped to shreds must be one of the most frightening experiences possible...and frankly, we pulled few punches in our critiques.
But we were nice with it; and the truth is, that degree of adrenalin does really help the creative process. I was amazed at how much the projects developed and grew after that Bunsen Burner process.
But then, of course, the follow up to that kind of scary pitching session has to involve TLC and slow, careful project development. Writers need a safe space in which to try out ideas; and they need room to spread their wings.
I love teaching; over and above the high quality work that results, the whole process is about getting the best out of people. And to be part of that process is a privilege.
SPARKS continues through the Autumn and into the early months of next year. I salute Screen Yorkshire for actually giving a damn about the new screenwriters in the region, and for giving them a chance to develop. Some will be better than others; some will have careers, some won't. But everyone gets an even break, which is all we can ask for in this wicked world.
I wrote a little while ago about why women are still getting short-changed in action movies...and now to competely confute and contradict me, along come two movies with female action stories. There's The Brave One with Jodie Foster, which is trailering now; and Quentin Tarantino's critically pasted Death Proof.
Death Proof, of course, was originally meant to be one half of the Grindhouse project, a double bill of Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez exploitation flicks. The two-films-in-one version bombed in the States because audiences kept leaving before the second film screened (I did that at the theatre once - left at the interval, relieved it finally was over, only to find there was a second half. Oops!) So Harvey Weinstein, the film's distributor, has now released the two films separately - Rodriguez' Planet Terror is still to come.
This process, of course, screws Tarantino's movie badly. He's had to add material that he'd previously cut, making it too wordy and too slow at times. And the spoof trailers which spliced the movies together have also gone, killing most of the joke.
Even so, I found it a fascinating and artistically rich movie. It shows that Tarantino can write for women as effectively and lusciously as he does for men. For much of the film, women chat and bicker and insult each other - and it's done with panache and wit and great verbal dexterity. And though many critics found the chatting tiresome, I felt it was delightful.
And the casting is magnificent - the women have energy and chutzpah and verve in abundance and the camaraderie between them is sublime and to be savoured.
But Tarantino also plays some magnicifent style tricks. The film begins in a mock-70s fashion, complete with scratches on the celluloid, dialogue jumps and dialogue repetitions, with cheesy, grating music, and at one point there's a ghastly car-crash (!) of an edit to (apparently) remove a nude scene.
Later, as a group of women pull up in a car, the image turns to black and white for the duration of an entire scene. Then abruptly, colour is restored; and from that point on, the celluloid scratches are gone and the screen look is rich and properly graded.
I can see why some critics think this is all random and silly; but I bought into it. And I bought into it because of the application of Samuel T. Coleridge's fundamental principle of how poetry (and by extension, movies) work - through the 'willing suspension of disbelief.' This phrase is in fact generally misquoted - people talk about not being able to 'suspend their disbelief' at a far-fetched piece of storytelling. But the word 'willing' in there is the killer, and truly defines how the process works. Movies - all drama - all fiction - constitute an entirely interactive experience. As a movie goer, or a reader, you can choose to suspend disbelief; or you can sit there carping and sneering and hating it. It's your choice. Of course, if the film is bad, no amount of suspended disbelief will make it good; but there is always an early moment in a film when you the audience agree to the deal - yes, I will believe this ridiculous premise, provided you entertain and stimulate me with your movie...
And Tarantino, as a master of genre movie-making, knows this process. And he knows that style tricks are a way of sending coded messages to the audience - 'this is the experience I'm going to give you,' 'this is how to experience and interpret the film'. In Kill Bill his blatant pastiche of cheesy martial arts movies - evident in his choice of music, his choice of shots, even his casting choices - tells the audience right from the start: 'This isn't real, don't look for psychological truth, it's this kind of movie.' And you have to roll with that; because if you don't, this movie has nothing whatever to offer you....
All genre movies have to define their genre of course - they have to tell us what kind of film we're watching. So a film noir will begin with moody, film noir music; a thriller will begin with action, or at least, with energising music that tells us action will soon occur.
But Tarantino is playing games with his very art form. In Kill Bill he switches genre and even switches medium with bewildering dexterity. He has anime; he has a fight sequence seen entirely through the shadows of the fighters behind the screen - turning the movie into a shadow puppet play. He has a fight scene in the snow which stops being cinema and becomes an animated version of Chinese plate engraving. He has cheesy B movie low angle shots; then he has shots worthy of Kurosawa. He's like a jazz pianist who switches to classical riffs and back again (as Nina Simone, by the way, does so brilliantly.)
So with Death Proof, a story with a wacky plot which implies it's okay to take brutal revenge on nasty men - the style shifts are an essential part of the point of it all. This film is not one thing, it's many thing. It's a No-Brainer (with its laughably simple narrative); it's also a Much-Brainer, rich in artistic experimentation. It's a straight-down-the-line exploitation movie, with great car chases and cheesy moments; it's also a Nouvelle Vague art film, with rambling dialogue about life and everything; and it's also a postmodern exploration of the limits of cinema. There really is no narrative reason for the movie to suddenly be in black and white; but when colour is restored, the characters are standing next to a canary yellow car which spears the retina with its brightness. It's a particular kind of yellow which Tarantino uses again and again in Kill Bill; and the switch from black and white to such savage colour teaches us to savour the beauty of that yellow, the yellowness of that yellow. It's an existential moment.
It's also a bridge; it allows Tarantino to change register to a 'modern' and colour-rich screen image, set much more firmly in the present day. (Though the mobile phone seen earlier tells us that in actual narrative fact, the entire movie is in the present, just shot like a 70s movie.) Then, through a series of ludicrcous contrivances, Tarantino has a climax featuring two vintage 70s cars (I'm not a car person, I can't remember the damn makes of these cars, though of course that shit really matters to Tarantino's characters) weaving in and out of traffic on a road filled with Saabs and 4 x 4s, in a wonderfully jarring time-dislocation effect. In theatre this effect is used often - when characters in a Shakespeare production wear clothes from different eras and different places, for instance with 20s gangsters side by side with Roman centurions. In movies, it's less expected, and hence even more effective.
Ultimately, this is a movie which is less than the sum of its parts - but only because the rest of its parts have been severed and (temporarily) cast elsewhere. But it will, I predict, do massively well on DVD when Grindhouse will be seen as it was intended. And since the theatrical release of movies these days is often not much more than a warm-up for the DVD release, that means that this project should not be counted as a failure - the judgement can't be made until it's watched at home, by an audience of willing disbelief suspenders, with a six pack of beer at the ready.
I did find it hugely refreshing to see a film with so many distinctive, and vivid, and rich female characters. And I admired Tarantino for creating the two stunt women characters - who can outdo guys at any daring feat, and who really are bona fide Action Women.
The special energy of the film comes from the rapport between the (massive!) cast of women. Tarantino clearly loves the way women talk, the way they banter, the way the tease, the way they move and dance. And the life force of each of his actresses is a palpable thing in this movie; they light up the screen, they radiate personality and life, and they provide the human heart of this shrewd exploitation flick.
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....
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...
Harry has been a very close and valued friend of mine for a number of years. I'm not blind to his many faults, but I've always regarded him as a man of integrity, and someone I could trust. So it came as a bitter blow to me when he calmly and coldly announced that he was personally responsible for the assassination of Princess Diana.
Harry then went on to explain, with ruthless logic, that she had to die because she was a liability to the British state. And he showed no qualms or remorse as he carefully explained how the 'hit' was managed.
Then I noticed that Adam Carter was hiding a smile, and I began to wonder - was this a wind-up? My guess was confirmed when Harry admitted that he was merely being ironical. Yes, he had been responsible for a worst-case-scenario exercise which explored ways of killing the Princess. But the death itself was an accident; not an MI5/MI6 conspiracy as some people foolishly believed.
My relief was mingled with chagrin, as I realised that I had once again got confused about the difference between reality and fiction...Because Harry Pearce is not in fact my friend. Nor have I ever met him; nor, in fact, does he exist. He's a fictional character in the hit BBC series Spooks; and the Princess Diana speech came in a Howard Brenton scripted episode at the end of series 4.
I've always admired Spooks since its first audacious series. But it is the later series which really capture my imagination, when the show developed an effortless ease and a deadly cutting edge. It's a show characterised by fabulously understated acting, in which a look or a grimace can speak a thousand volumes, and defined by high-octane storytelling in which twist follows twist and the energy level never dips.
I've been watching the show obsessively for the last few weeks, in preparation for a workshop in Bradford on film and television writing (organised by Hugo Heppel, of the enterprising regional screen agency, Screen Yorkshire.) Normally I'm used to teaching groups of 3 or 4; but on this occasion I was addressing a lecture hall of 100 + keen would-be writers. It was a nail-biting experience, but made easier because I shared the teaching load with the charismatic and fearless Simon Van Der Borgh, a screen writer, film analyst and teacher who (would you believe it! considering how amazingly young I look!!) was my student when I was a lecturer at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield.
Simon analysed film structure and showed clips from the movie Sideways; I analysed television drama structure, and showed the Princess Diana episode of Spooks in its entirety. It was extraordinary to see how well the TV drama stood up to this kind of close scrutiny. The episode is virtually a stage play, taking place during a 'lockdown' in the series' standing set. And there's one prolonged scene which consists of a character (Zaf) talking us through how Diana died. There were no guns, no car chases, just one man talking and talking; but it was spell-binding...And the star of the episode was Lindsay Duncan, who gave a masterclass in scary menace.
Harry argues that it's not possible for men in his business to have friends - you can only have 'colleagues you would die for.' But so long as the show lasts, he'll continue to be my pal, and trusted guide through the evil machinations of global politics....
This is the time of year when the papers are full of glamour and glitz as the serious media players head out for Cannes for the Film Festival. Beautiful actors and actresses and major moguls will attend cool parties in this enchanting Mediterranean town. Deals will be done. The sun will be hot. The clothes will be expensive. Anyone who is anyone in the film industry will be there.
Naturally, therefore, I won't be.
I've been to Cannes a couple of times, and loved the place, and the people, and the vibe. But I never for a moment felt I belonged. The first occasion was when I was working in television and a friend of mine, who had written part of a film being screened there, invited me out to join him on a no budget basis. This meant sharing a hotel room and never buying food or alcohol. We lived on canapes and champagne, and things dropped in bins.
Last year I actually went with projects to sell and had several meetings. One of the meetings was on a yacht! And the highlight of the whole trip came when I had a drink with a friend who actually knows Elton John and David Furnish. I felt so proud to be in a situation where I knew the time and rough location of Elton's glitzy villa party, even though I wasn't of course invited.
Cannes, it seems to me, is a great place for writers to be reminded that they aren't important, and don't ever get invited to parties. It's a chance to savour the delicious joy of being near the red carpet, but not actually standing on it. It's a window which you can peer through, to see the diners eating expensively inside.
This year, although I'm not going, I have friends who are out there (Hi Carlo! Hi Lisa!) and who will be keeping me up to date on what's happening. And I'm savouring the glorious epiphany of not being not invited to the cool parties, of not being not at the heart of the glamorous world of the film industry.
For a writer, to be at Cannes is to experience the piquant existential tang of being almost but not famous, and almost but not glamorous. Not being at Cannes, however, is an even more intense and savourable non-experience.
And I treasure it.
The view from the British Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, where I'm not:
Crime has been good to me over the years. One of my first and best jobs in television was as a script editor on the cult BBC series The Paradise Club, created by Murray Smith, starring Leslie Grantham and Don Henderson. It was a seedy London crime drama with shootings and heists and yakuza, set against a backdrop of deliciously improbable and larger than life characters. Murray was himself a larger than life character, who had served in the Foreign Legion and (so he claimed) had a close association with an SAS. As a member of a shooting club, Murray owned a gun, a formidable Sig Sauer which he once showed to me during a difficult script conference. He pointed it at me, smiled his evil smile, and even though I knew the gun was unloaded, I immediately modified my notes and told him what a great script it was – don't change a word, Murray!!!
After Paradise Club I worked for years as a regular writer on The Bill. Later I worked as a script editor on crime dramas like McCallum and Taggart, and wrote thrillers and noir film scripts. I spent a large part of one year hanging out with the West London murder squad, attending post mortems and drinking with coppers. I once spent an evening with an armed robber who had recently been abducted at gunpoint and hustled into the boot of a car, before being dumped on to the street in Glasgow. (I never had the courage to ask him why.) Another armed robber gave me a guided tour of all the banks and sports arenas he had armed robbed; only later did it occur to me that I would be appearing on the CCTV cameras loitering outside banks with a convicted blagger. 'Guv, who's that sinister looking Welsh bloke? Put him on the surveillance list…'
Then one day in the Science Museum, standing under a massive space rocket which hung from the ceiling, a vast phallic remnant of the days of space exploration, I had the germ of an idea that eventually evolved into Debatable Space. My aim was to write in a genre I love, with as much passion and bravura as I could muster. I wanted it to big, bold, and crazy (and in all honesty, I would say that it is.)
In writing Debatable Space, I became aware of the many differences between writing drama and writing prose – there are more words! Many many more words. (Actually, that really is the main difference. That, and the absence of producers, script editors and heads of drama all adding their wise and tactful insights to the evolving text.) I also experienced the joy of knowing that in telling this particular story, money was no object. This is a book with numerous space battles and bizarre aliens and black holes and flaring suns. If it were made as drama, it would cost the equivalent of 2,000,000,000 episodes of The Bill…
I also relished the freedom I felt I had to switch genres and styles, whenever the characters felt like a change. It's a book about slavery, and entrapment; but in writing it, I've never felt freer.
As well as being a book about evil, though, it's also a book about joy. One of my most truly joyful experiences in cinema was seeing the trailer for Raiders of the Lost Ark as a young man. It evoked the wonder of childhood, impossible stories of derring-do, and had a retro nostalgic tang that was fabulously compelling.
Debatable Space is born of a similar impulse. With Raiders, Lucas and Spielberg set out to make a movie that was like the movies they watched as kids. And in similar fashion, I wanted to write a story that evokes the spirit of wonder and delight that I remembered from reading science fiction as a boy. I'd buy and read a half dozen novels a week, and when I didn't have money I'd stand in W.H. Smith and read the books that way. I'd borrow SF novels from my Uncle Bob, who had shelves and shelves of them in his motor repair garage. And I'd lose myself in strange worlds, from A.E. Van Vogt to Asimov's Foundation universe, to the Known Space of Larry Niven.
It was Niven's vision of weird, witty aliens and a morally conflicted hero that has most haunted my memories. The cowardly puppeteers, the furry Kzinti, the space yachts propelled by the solar wind…that was my starting point. But in the process of evolution, Debatable Space became more than just a rip roaring space opera. It become a biography, and a political allegory (evil rich humans controlling an empire by means of remote control technology – hel-lo?) and an ensemble show about a bunch of misfits bonded by humour and a mission.
But does that mean I'm now a science fiction writer? Well yes I am, and proud to be so. But a large part of me is an unrepentant genre-buster, with a love of mixing it up as much as possible. I love Blade Runner – a science fiction film noir. Alien, of course, is an SF horror movie. And The Matrix is a science fiction allegory of Jesus. Bring it on…!
Genre-busting is one of the most lively strands in modern SF, too. Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Alastair Reynolds do wonderful things in the world of SF noir. The astonishing Neil Gaiman gets his books on the SF shelves but, so far as I can gauge, manages to be a genre all of his own. And Peter F. Hamilton, one of my favourite SF writers, seems to be a Victorian novelist writing triple decker novels with rich, bravura characters, who also has a penchant for aliens and techno-talk. (And his Gregor Mandel novels are of a course a fine example of the busted genre of SF detective novel, following in the tradition of Asimov's Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw.)
Casablanca was once described as a thriller, a love story, a political drama and a musical all rolled into one. And for me, one of the joys of SF is the freedom it offers to play with style and genre with complete abandon. Any story can be told in the SF genre, in any style, with any degree of political seriousness, or not, and with no limits on the degree of intellectual seriousness at work. So long as it's exciting, and extrapolative…it can be SF.
I worry, though, that after Debatable Space I will no longer be allowed to write in other genres without putting an extra 'M' in my name. But even so, after a writing career living on the proceeds of crime, it's a liberation to be a 'British SF author'.
To me, that's an invitation to have some serious fun...