Screen Writing
I recently posted my 100th blog! And it's been huge fun to chatter away on this site.
I'm now aiming to post a little more regularly - this year has been a whirlwind for me and my blogging has suffered! And in particular, I want to introduce a new semi-regular feature of movie and TV show reviews and 'stuff' about movies and telly. I'm going to call this MOVIE ZONE and, er, TV ZONE. (Cue spooky 'Twilight Zone' music...)
In previous blogs, I've written about science and science fiction and movies and TV shows I like, and also generally about the movie and TV businesses. I've also posted entries on what it's like to script edit for telly, and my experiences of going to the Cannes Film Festival and the AFM.
And the Movie Zone blogs are my way of combining my two passions and areas of work - science fiction, and film. They're also an excuse for me to watch some old classic genre movies, some for the second or nth time, some for the first time. And what the hell, TV Zone is reason to write about my favourite TV shows - Battlestar Galactica, The 4400, Supernatural, Smallville, and others.
So to launch this new 'space' on the Debatable Spaces site, here's a comparison between two totally different films: Outland and Watchmen, whose only common factor is that they both belong to the movie SF genre, and I love 'em both. (Watchman is pure genius; Outland is half great, half crap - but love is love!)
Outland (1981)
Logline: High Noon on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. An action SF thriller starring Sean Connery as a police marshal pitted against a evil mining corporation whose greedy conspiracy is causing miners to kill themselves, gorily.
Writer/director: Peter Hyams
Cinematographer: Stephen Goldblatt
Composer Jerry Goldsmith (he of Star Trek fame!)
Watchmen (2009)
Logline: I'm guessing you know the story...retired superheroes kick ass!
Writers: David Hayter (X2, XMen, Scorpion King) and Alex Tse.
Directed by Zack Snyder.
Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons.
Cinematography: Larry Fong
Music by Tyler Bates
Watchmen is cinema as sensory and moral overload; that's what I love about it. Alan Moore has disowned it, as is his wont; and most civilian critics found it to be rambling and digressive to an annoying degree. But anyone who loves Alan Moore's original graphic novel will find, I hope, little to rage against here; this is Moore's vision, and Gibbons' visual anarchy, rendered with love and as much accuracy as is desirable.
It is of course just so damned wicked. Former super-hero Edward Blake aka The Comedian is a rapist, and a monster. And his fellow superhero Rorschach is a seriously disturbed individual who brutally murders a dwarf convict and exudes sleaze. Even squeaky-clean Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) learns to embrace the morality of evil-for-a-greater-good by the story's shocking end.
Most readers of this blog wil have read the graphic novel, but I won't take the risk of stumbling into plot spoilers for a film so recent. Go and see the damned film! And don't wait for the DVD or the BluRay; this is a film designed to be seen on the big screen. It's full of explosive action and images that pound the retina. Like Zach Synder's previous movie 300, and Robert Rodriguez' Sin City, this is a film which delights in the graphic novel's exaggerative style and rich visual palette and renders it on to the big screen, with knobs on. All three of these movies challenge the way films are normally shot - the colours, the framing, the preposterousness of the images - they're all leached from the comic book artist's crazed visual cortex. They simply don't look real. They are more than real.
The Matrix also played this trick - it's the greatest graphic novel adaptation that is not in fact based on a graphic novel. I can still remember with awe the first time I saw that movie - and I still recall jolting foward in my seat when Neo started to fly and karate punch and zoom at superspeed. It felt as if the possibilities of the cinema image had just been expanded. And when I read the screenplay, I felt it to be a masterpiece of intelligent allegory coupled with knock 'em dead movie action - though admittedly it's marred by often ponderous and humourless dialogue that only very great actors can render as credible, natural speech.
And this - the hallucinogenc hyper-reality - is to me is the great triumph of the Watchmen. It takes a great story - it doesn't screw it up - it organises the story material with care and intelligence, unspooling a series of origin stories followed by a stand-out action climax - and along the way it makes images that shine and resonate. The Nite Owl's flying ship in erratic, ludicrous flight over the city; Doctor Manhattan, his resplendently blue male organ bobbing (bet he never gets emails inviting him to have his penis enlarged!) on his base on Mars; the shocking revelation that beneath his ink-shimmering bandage mask Rorshach is actually - normal. All this for me is visual poetry. I even found the gratutitous sex scenes between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre enchanting. My cineaste friend Archie Tait advises me that this scene is just, urggh, eggy! and over the top; but damn it all Archie! This sex scene is rich in truly beautiful images, in a film which devotes itself to celebrating beautiful and extraordinary images.
Of course, pretty images do not a great movie make. But the story was already great! And Synder, Hayter and Tse had the courage of Moore's convictions; they didn't try to rebuild and sanitse the story, to make it suitable for the target movie demographic. (As the makers of Wanted, shame on 'em, did - it's a fun movie but a pale imitation of Mark Millar's scurrilous, vicious, amoral graphic novel satire.) And in three staggering hours, Snyder does more than not screw up a good plot; he makes us live in a land of image.
In 300, he did the same. It is, at one level, a preposterous erotic fantasy for gay guys (and nothing wrong with that!) And it's also, for me, a daring movie made up of pure myth, rendered in images that are beyond-real.
And I think films like this mark one of the futures for cinema - even more visual, even more spectacular, even more extraordinary. As an SF novelist, I'm a lover of amazing heart-stopping images; and it's movies like Watchmen that inspire me to write words that aim to conjure wondrous images in the reader's mind.
But compare and contrast that with Outland! Outland is a really fun movie, but in many ways it's a relic of an older style of (relatively) lower-budget film-making. It's a chamber piece with extras, a studio drama enlivened by a few great images of Io floating above the great red globe of Jupiter.
It's also a film cursed with dialogue even clunkier than that which clunked through The Matrix. There are some painful scenes in Outland, especially those in which Sean is declaring his love for his saccharine wife and son. And Mr Connery has one speech in which he laboriously utters a series of repetitious platitudes, when he visibly struggles to find a way to add vocal variety to lines which are all saying the same thing - sure evidence that the screenwriter doesn't read his own damned stuff.
But mixed in with the dross is a gem of a story. It's an old fashioned, horny handed SF yarn. Miners on one of the moons of Jupiter are commiting suicide; and only the marshal can find out why, and save the day. The Western parallels are overt, from the poster image to the naming of Connery's rank (not 'Captain' or 'Lieutenant' or any of the other police ranks, but 'marshal') And there are two stand-out action sequences. In one, Connery's character O'Niel (they sure can't spell in the far future!) spots someone with a sac of the (fictional) drug that is killing miners (polydichloric euthimal, no less). And he sprints athletically through futuristic corridors and recreation rooms before finally confronting the bad guy in the kitchen - where he has to plunge his own hand in boiling water to retrieve the vital evidence. And then - he winces - just a tiny bit. Now that's what I call a tough guy...
And in the final setpiece, which I won't describe for fear of spoiling, Connery fights to the death against assorted bad guys, assisted on by the ship's cranky female doctor, played superbly by Frances Sternhagen. The rapport between her and the lean, tanned, older but still shockingly sexy Connery is one of the highlights of the film. Sternhagen has no glamour, she's no looker, she's rude and irritable; but the two of them together light up the screen! Screen chemistry like this isn't about looks; it's about two vivid personalities interacting. Who gives a shit about Connery's pretty but pallid wife, when there's a wily old bird like this to make him come alive!
The story is genuinely clever, and it's a really gripping movie. I'd recommend it strongly. But it's the contrast between the visuals of this movie and Watchmen that intrigues me. Outland wasn't a cheap 'quota quickie' film made by an impoverished British company. It was a Hollywood epic, made with state-of-the-art special effects (it was the first film to use Intro Vision to create credible backdrops.)
And the budget for the film was around $16 million - which was a lot back in 1981! But you got far fewer bangs for your bucks in those days; and the film has that hemmed-in TV studio feel that for me is evocative of Doomwatch and the old Dr Who. So all in all, it's not visual poetry; it's just an oldfashioned great yarn.
And yet, though I admire the visual poetry approach, and get wonderfully overexcited at show-off action sequences, I do like this pared-back aesthetic too. Not every movie can be an X Man or a Watchmen or a Matrix; the eyes can eat too many sweets. So I'm very attracted to the idea of SF films that focus more tightly on character and world-building, rather than going for the phantasmagoria SFX route. As such, Outland is a template for a whole subgenre - suspense SF that's about people, not just about action. (Even if the character writing in that particular movie isn't ALL that it might be.)
We need both sorts of movie of course! And I'd love, also, to see more special effects visual-smorgasbord movies that ALSO make us care about the characters. Because all too often, action films deliver nothing but action. In particlar, I found the various X Men movies, which I'd been looking forward to for decades, to be terrifically enjoyable - but over complicated, and ultimately heartless. There are so many damned people on screen, it's hard to root for any of them! And there was never any time to explore the psychology of each and every X Man, as the comics have done so richly. (So I'm hoping the X Men Origins: Wolverine will redress that balance. On the basis of the trailer the prospects look good.
So let's live in hope that we get some rich science fictional variety in the movie theatres in the years to come - character-based SF that moves us, and touches us, existing side by side with Snyder-style eye-banquets.
I popped along to see the new Vin Diesel film this week - Babylon A.D., a futuristic thriller. I was expecting a bit of decent crap; and instead was blown away by it. It's an astonishing piece of film-making, with a future world that's beautifully realised, and a fast-moving and utterly accomplished cinematic style that's on a par with Paul Greengrass's direction of the last Bourne movie. And there's a scene featuring snowmobiles racing through snow that has to be one of the best action sequences ever.
I was reminded of Kill Bill, with its amazing use of colour, and its balletic swordfight in the snow, and its effortlessly kinetic flair.
The director of Babylon A.D., Mathieu Kassovitz, uses every directorial trick in the book - jerky cameras, fast moving cameras, saturated film stock, rapid-cutting and blazing white light to render a normal image eerie (Battlestar Galactica and Minority Report use this white light trick brilliantly too.) It's action film-making that has a right to be considered poetry in motion.
The French Kassovitz also directed the acclaimed movie La Haine, and the more recent Gothika. He gets great performance out of Vin Diesel; and turns a workaday SF thriller into a jolt of pure adrenalin.
I have say, though, that the script and the story of Babylon A.D. don't exactly inspire. There's a great set up - our hero has to take The Girl from Russia to America. But we never really know why until quite late in the day a bloke turns up, tells us all the plot in a few long speeches, and then gets popped. Soon after the movie ends, just as the story was getting started. There's also an illogicality, concerning what the girl does to help our hero; though I can't be more specific without spoiling. See if you agree with me.
So all in all, don't go to this film if you want to be made to think; just go with eyes open, and watch, and watch, and watch.
This week has turned into something of a perfect storm for me - one of those freak moments when many events coincide to create a whole larger than the parts - though, I hasten to add, in a good way, not in a smashing-up-ships actual storm way.
Firstly, I've just emerged blinking from the studio at BBC Broadcasting House, where my radio adaptation of Tayeb Salih's classic novel Season of Migration to the North has (almost!) completed recording. This is my first Radio 3 project, and it's been very exhilarating - I'll write more about it when I get my daylight eyes back.
And also, this week, Debatable Space continues to be the SF/fantasy/horror Book of the Month in Waterstone's. Sales are brisk I'm told, and, the telling detail here, the books are £2 cheaper than they will be on the 1st September.
And on top of all this, I've discovered (rather belatedly, since I haven't had time to read the Radio Times) I have an episode of Heartbeat being broadcast this Sunday, 31st August. This is the first ever science fiction episode of Heartbeat; and, buoyed up by my success in selling this notion, I'm now pitching a proposal to the BBC about an an alien family that moves in to Albert Square. (They will be squat and bald-headed and will talk in an eerie whisper - ah, you guessed it! Phil Mitchell was part of the advance party of the alien invasion!)
Next week things go back to normal. I'll spend my time worrying about being late with my deadlines, no one will phone me, and my emails will all be spam or virus threats. But for these few days, it's nice to savour the adrenalin-rush that comes from having a show in post-production, and a show on the telly, and a book in the shops, all at the same time.
Brian Ruckley has written a delightful blog featuring the Bart Simpson blackboard about the forthcoming movie version of the classic graphic novel The Watchmen. Like Brian and many others, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this movie.
But this report shows that there is a real danger the movie will never get released at all. There's a copyright dispute between two studios - Warner's, who just made the film, and Fox, who claim they owned the darned rights.
And chillingly, Fox have said that if the judge rules in their favour, they would prefer to kill the movie entirely rather than take a share of the profits. This would be a shocking waste of creative talent. Come on guys! Can't this be settled amicably?
I'm reminded of a previous incident where a great film wasn't released because of copyright issues - Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, an Italian language version of the James M. Cain roman noir The Postman Always Rings Twice. Stupidly, Visconti made the film without even trying to acquire the rights - I suspect he didn't realise you had to - and the film was lost to audiences for decades. When it finally surfaced, it turned out to be one of the greatest film noirs ever made.
So let's just hope we don't have to wait twenty years to see how The Watchmen comes out...
I've just come across an interesting new site, recommended by SF Crowsnest; it's called SF Diplomat and it has some very good in depth articles on SF and movies. And this one in particular I like; a list of the best SF movies of 2007, including quite a few I haven't seen yet.
Was it worth the wait? Does it justify the hype?
Hell yes! I loved Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (which as well as directing, he co-wrote with his brother Jonathan). It's exciting, exhilarating, it's richly written, it's a class act all round. And Heath Ledger's Joker (apparently modelled on Sid Vicious - how come all the best characters in movies are based on music biz stars? think of Captain Jack Sparrow, based on Keith Richards) is (I'm putting in another section in brackets here, for no good reason, I just love 'em!) utterly brilliant and compelling.
It's a weirdly structured movie though. The genius idea is that the Joker brings anarchy to the city - this isn't an old-style Batman villain dastardly plan, it's a subtle strategy to shatter the very fabric of goodness in society. (I'm not giving any specifics here, and I don't think that counts as a spoiler.) Harvey Dent, the DA, has a role to play in the Joker's evil thing; and it's wonderful stuff.
But before we get to this, the meat and blood of the story, there's an awful lot of other stuff to get to, involving the Far East and Mob money. And I have to say, it does make the movie very long. I loved the whole thing; but my adrenalin would have raced faster if it had been shorter.
Morgan Freeman is eerily superb in his role as the gadget guy, Lucius Fox. And Michael Caine clearly had a clause inserted in his contract that this time he would have to have a couple of major scenes and great speeches, to make his role more than incidental. He does have those scenes, and those speeches; and boy, he's stunning. Caine has such composure and stillness, and Christian Bale has the charisma sucked out of him ever time he's fool enough to stand next to our East End boy.
Next year's comic book blockbusters are The Watchmen, and Wolverine: Origins. Can't wait...
I recently read Albion, the graphic novel by Alan & Leah Moore about the long-forgotten superheroes of British comics - characters like the Spider, and the Claw, and Captain Hurricane, who liked nothing better than biffing up the Fritz with his bare hands. Some of the characters I knew, some I didn't - but the book is a wonderful evocation of a by-gone age and a dark subversive story to boot.
To be honest, most of the British comics I read as a kid were reprints of the American comic books - Spider Man, Thor, X Men, all that mob - which I also read in their full-colour American versions. (I was nothing if not blindly loyal.) And for years a love of Marvel comics was my secret vice. I once had a script meeting with Geoff Deane - screenwriter of Kinky Boots and It's a Boy Girl Thing and the TV comedy A Many Splintered Thing - which was totally derailed when a), ah, shucks, we ordered that second bottle of wine and b) we started talking about Marvel comic books.
Now of course comic books are so much the mainstream that that secret buzz is utterly lost. Comic book movies are not a cult thing; movies in which no one wears tights or has super powers have become the new cult thing. Drama, let's face it, is the cult thing.
For me, though, the influence of comic books and graphic novels on movies has been a wonderful thing - it's led to audacious cinematography (Sin City, the 600), rollercoaster family action (Spider Man, Fantastic Four), and a deep-rooted understanding of the fact that spectacular doesn't always mean stupid. The Matrix is perhaps the greatest of all modern comic book movies - even though it isn't based on a comic book, the original pitch was accompanied by storyboarded images, and the sheer intelligence of the mythology betrays a knowledge of Chris Claremont, Peter David, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Mark Millar, and more.
It's possible to have too much of a good thing though. I adored Iron Man, and I'm looking forward hugely to the Dark Knight next week. But it would be great to see spectacular mythological movies that create some new mythology, and break some new ground. The Hollywood way is to cherry-pick the tried-and-tested and the famous, to 'acquire properties' like Narnia and His Dark Materials and Lord of the Rings. Sometimes the results are fabulous - Lord of the Rings, especially the first one, was a blast of raw energy, and a labour of love.
But sometimes the results are less compelling. The Golden Compass is a glorious spectacle - but it squashes and simplifies the genius of the original in a way that is painful. It's a sprint through the Uffizi gallery, with never a moment to pause and look at the paintings. And the recent Wanted is a really great action movie, for those who love action movies, and that includes me; but it really is a pale imitation of the subversive graphic novel on which it is (very loosely) based. I liked it when I saw it; but it really hasn't stayed with me, and I doubt I'll ever watch it again.
That's why I loved Albion - it's full of forgotten mythologies, and cult characters. These are comic book creations, not 'properties'. And the quirkiness, and the differentness, and the non-mainstreamness, that's what really appeals to me.
I've just seen the movie of Iron Man, which is just as good as everyone told me it was. Jon Favreau, the director, is an actor who did a wonderful job on a kids' movie called Zathura. And he's brought some lovely qualities to this latest Marvel superhero pic - zest, coupled with rich levels of irony, combined with out-and-out slapstick humour. Robert Downey Jr. just doesn't seem to be taking it all that seriously - and yet, he is just as driven and obsessive as the next guy who happens to have a double life as a superhero. It's that wonderful balancing act between spoof and serious-but-funny which I adore.
The movie has a dark political undercurrent, as this comic book character series always did. Tony Stark is dying of a heart attack, he becomes an alcoholic; and, the killer punch, he made his fortune selling weapons of mass destruction. And this last element from the original comic books now seems even more shocking and terrible in the context of today's screwed-up world.
Gwyneth Paltrow gives excellent support as Tony's female sidekick - there's a wonderful scene where she has to insert the electromagnet that is keeping him alive into a HUGE GREAT HOLE in his chest.
And Tony Stark kicks the whole superhero ethos on its big fat backside in one delightful moment, which I won't spoil.
The movie was preceded by a trailer for a spoof superhero movie in which a Tobey Maguire lookalike has the powers of a dragonfly. But the joy of Marvel is that you can't spoof them - the humour is already there.
Stan Lee makes his customary appearance, as Hugh Hefner, unless my ears deceived me. What a great life that guy is having. He's now surely one of the most powerful men in Hollywood (after sueing the studios to ensure he got his fair share of the gross - no one ever called Stan a sucker.)
The Hulk is the next one out of the blocks - after the (for me) staggeringly disappointing Ang Lee version, it'll be nice to see how Ed Norton shapes up. I still yearn for a movie about the Hulk series (scripted by Peter David? who has an encyclopedic knowledge of these things?) in which the Hulk works as a Mob enforcer in Las Vegas, squeezed into a pin-striped suit.
I saw this on the same night as the new Indiana Jones movie, which I also enjoyed, though a little less. The queues for these movies, plus Sex and the City, were amazing. And it's a joy to see how many people enjoy their movies these days.
And yet...
It would be nice to see a couple of highly commerical movies that AREN'T based on old comic books or TV series. Get Smart is coming soon - which I remember fondly, but was probably crap. Hollywood is generating great movies; but they are getting timid.
A possible exception to this rule may be the movie of Wanted, based on Mark Millar's daring and iconoclastic graphic novel of the same name. I just hope they haven't de-fanged it, or toned down its scatalogical and hilarious humour.
I'm now back in the real world, after 5 days in Cannes, networking, partying and, well, more networking, and more partying.
I'm not in fact the world's greatest networker, but the Cannes Film Festival is one of those events that lure in shy, tongue-tied film-makers and turn them into crazed party animals. Normally, I huddle in the corner at all social gatherings, staring at the wall, and avoiding anyone who is important or good-looking or who could be useful to me. But during those days away in the South of France, I became - I hesitate to say it - dammit it's true - actually quite sociable.
I went with my writer friend Emma, who is also a non-networking type personality, and who nevertheless shone and sparkled for day after day, until the last evening, where the two of us just slumped and became zombies.
There is a reason and a purpose behind Cannes; it's not all fun and frivolity. (Although a hell of a lot of it is fun and frivolity). Yes, it's a Film Festival where films are shown (though watching films there is ridiculously inconvenient unless you're famous and get proper Invitations to screenings.) It's also a sellers and a buyers marketplace, where sales agent pitch to distributors and distributors pitch to studios and film-makers pitch to anyone who isn't dressed as a waiter.
But more than anything, I realised after this latest trip, Cannes is a community. It's where the film-makers of the world converge and explode over each other; and just being there makes you part of that world. Mike Figgis was there, and so was Tim Bevan of Working Title, and so were Emma and I. And okay, we didn't talk to either Mike or Tim - but we were close to them!
The world of science fiction of course has a fabulous sense of community - fans and writers and publishers are linked by blogs and websites and cons. And in the film world, festivals provide the same function.
But it's a very weird thing out there, to be honest. The glamour is ever-present, and often fraudulent. I saw (on a telly in a bar, I couldn't get close enough to view it in real life) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the red carpet outside the Palais, exuding wealth and glamour. But many of the film-makers sipping cocktails in bars and wearing gowns or dinner jackets were, in reality, struggling to find the price of a coffee. And yet we all feel impelled to join in this mad process of touching the hem of the glamour garment. Just to walk along the Croisette - admiring the vast yachts in the Bay - soaking in the Mediterranean sun - nodding at friends and acquaintances, and maybe even sipping a glass of wine or a cocktail at the Majestic or the Carlton - it's just an impossibly glamour-soaked experience. It's like being a film star, without having any acting talent, or having to make any films.
And it's also complicated. It's the third time I've been to this particular festival, and I now have a grasp of the basic principles. In order to get access to any of the buildings, you have to be Accredited - essentially you have to prove you have ever worked in the film business. That's tricky enough in itself, though I'm used to it by now. But if you want tickets for films, you have to queue on-line; which means you stand by a computer terminal and log in on the very second the new hour begins, and then the screen tells you how many hours you have to wait to actually reserve a ticket for the film you want to see. (It could be 2 hours, it could be 10 hours, or even 24 hours.) And so, 24 hours later, you stand in front of that same terminal and click; and then it's a race to see who has the fastest typing fingers.
What? How dumb is that?
Tickets are free; but the expense of energy required to operate and understand this system is extraordinary. There are hand outs to explain it, but they are baffling. There are people at the Information Desk to explain at which cinemas you can get tickets just with a Badge, but they never write anything down and what they say rarely tallies with reality, or maybe it's just that they don't understand my Welsh accent.
And of course you have to know the right people to go to the right parties, and where to go to get free breakfast, and where to be seen, and who to schmooze and when. I used to think that going to this festival was like being trapped in an American High School movie, where you're either in the In Crowd or you're a Geek. (Naturally, I'd rather be a Geek, but that's not an option.) But my new theory is that the Cannes Film Festival is a parallel reality, a version of Second Life where for a few days you can live by complicated rules untouched by domestic concerns or real life.
I'm proud to say I made it to two parties on yachts - the yachts are essentially floating offices for the richer companies, so it's essential to know someone who can blag you on board. And I met an amazing range of interesting people. An Irish film-maker who was making a short movie about people's feet as they walked up the red carpet (no, I didn't understand it either - but I spotted her later, filming my feet.) Two sisters, who comprise 2/5ths of an American movie company called Five Sisters - each of the sisters is a producer, and each has a project, making their slate formidable. An American writer/producer with an exclusive deal with a major US company who warned me passionately that America was turning into a fascist country, and that concentration camps had already been built in every US state (!!!?) And a fantastic bloke I met who, when I asked him about his movie project, replied that hd didn't actually have a movie - but he had built a boat that flies! Yes, a boat, that flies, which he had designed and engineered, and built! And, er, it flies! (So what the devil was he doing at the Cannes Film Festival...?)
And, as always, I saw lots of pals who had turned up, pitching their movies via their newly formed companies, and ensuring I always had someone to talk to in the UK Pavilion.
My own reason for going to Cannes was to meet potential financiers and the like, to get some movies of mine into production. Like many film writers, I've learned to be pro-active; never wait for the phone to ring, ring other people. And I'm fortunate in that over the last few years I've built up a circle of gifted people who know how to help new producers get their movies made.
But in tandem with the offical Cannes, I was living a separate and alien life, reading and thinking about science fiction. At the airport, I bought my copy of SFX, which was my constant reading in all the lulls between meetings. I also, I'm ashamed to say, had a look to see if Debatable Space was available at the Gatwick Airport bookshop (it is!) I then bought my anxiously awaited copy of The Digital Plaugue by Jeff Somers, which I will read just as soon as I've got through Alfred Bester's extraordinary The Demolished Man.
Yes, I'm a true Geek; surrounded by glamour and beautiful women and gorgeous men and beautiful Mediterranean skies, I sit and read science fiction novels.
For this, to me, is the true reality; impossible and magical worlds existing in my head.
Last year many of my friends went to the Cannes Film Festival - lucky devils - while I stayed behind.
This year, I'm glad to say, luck is on my side. And I'm able to take a few days off to sun myself in the South of France, meet some old friends, and hopefully pitch some movie projects.
The first time I went to Cannes I stayed in a friend's hotel room, on the floor, and we were so broke we had a no-food budget - we weren't allowed to spend anything on food or drink, we had to live on free champagne and canapes. It was tough, but someone had to do it...
This time, I've booked an apartment off the Rue D'Antibes, and I may even pay for the occasional meal. And, together with a writer friend, I'll be meeting film financiers, attending a party on a yacht, and generally enjoying myself. (Though of course - it's hard work too!)
Cannes is a crazy event. All the film people who live in London and have offices in adjoining buildings move to France for a week and meet each other over there. The scale of the festival is vast - it's a film festival but also a business conference and also an opportunity for wanabee film-makers to hang around in the hope that fame and fortune are contagious. I suppose it's like having WorldCon and a Book Fair in the same place and same time.
And so, my bags are packed, my schmooze has been well oiled; time for the networking to commence...
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.