My faith in the Christmas spirit has been restored this week after several posts I put round the web (including here, on Facebook, Twitter and the Kraken fan forum) gave a sharp boost to flagging sales of the Riddley Walker DVD. For anyone who’s missed it, this is a film of the whole performance of the 2007 stage version of Russell Hoban’s classic 1980 novel. The 2-disc sets have come down from 25 euros to just 15 euros, inclusive of p&p; to anywhere. Hardy Hoban perennial Dave Awl also updated his Head of Orpheus site to mention the news. Please note that as these are dispatched from Ireland, it is now too late to order these for Christmas delivery (unless you live pretty near to Waterford, that is), but don’t let that put you off – snap one up now for a new year treat!
All posts by tc
Thoughtcat price crash! Riddley Walker DVDs and Stephen Miles novel reduced!
As the credit crunch bites and Christmas approaches (rather inconveniently at the same time), prices are falling all over the place – and that includes Thoughtcat. Sam Jacob’s excellent film of last year’s Riddley Walker show has come down from 25 euros to just 15 euros – the perfect gift for the Russell Hoban fan in your life – and Stephen Miles’s unreliable memoir of writing and Thai romance All My Own Work is practically being given away at £7.50 apiece or ‘pay what you can’. Order now while banks last!
Writers’ rooms on show in London
A selection of Eamonn McCabe’s photos from the Guardian’s excellent Writers’ Rooms series is on display in London. This gallery on the BBC website includes several of my favourite writers’ rooms including Russell Hoban’s.
Riddley Walker DVDs out now!
Thoughtcat blog devotees (I know there are a few out there!) will recall my trip to Waterford, Ireland, nearly a year ago now, to see a rare theatrical production of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. As anyone who has read the article I posted at the time will remember, the performance (in a big top) was cancelled due to heavy rain, so although the cast improvised brilliantly to put on an amazing performance in a nearby pub, I never got to see the whole show… until very recently. Sam Jacob of Stickman Productions filmed two complete performances on two cameras, and the resulting film of the whole play is now fully available on a 2-DVD set. The actual show more than lived up to my expectations, and fans of Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban, and innovative theatrical productions will not be disappointed. The DVD sets are 25 euros apiece, and that includes p&p; to anywhere in the world. Full details for how to order are on the main Thoughtcat site.
Swossages, Guinness and rain: Riddley Walker in Waterford
Click here for three pages of photos on the original Thoughtcat site
Things were looking blipful since I first landed in Waterford. The twin-prop plane from Birmingham had been barely a quarter full and was 45 minutes early, surely a first in the history of commercial aviation. This was welcome in theory but in practice it meant there were no taxis at the airport yet. It was that kind of airport, that kind of town – small and laid-back. When a cab did come along, it was by accident and I couldn’t get in it because he was heading home and home wasn’t in the part of town I was going. The only other taxi driver I knew was standing next to me and he didn’t have his cab with him because he’d just got off the plane himself. But it didn’t bother me to wait; I was dressed for arctic conditions in an evening actually several degrees milder than the English one I’d left a little while before, and my taxi-less taxi-driver friend (a Brummie in a corduroy jacket who’d relocated to Waterford for the ‘gaelic tiger’ economy) recommended me places to eat and things to see.
When I did finally catch a cab, my driver – a stocky, bearded guy whose ID card photo had been taken some decades previously – asked me what I was doing in town. I felt a bit guilty, or at least eccentric, saying I was there to see a play – it seemed a long way to come just for that, and I hadn’t been to the theatre for about the past five years in London. But he was impressed when I told him I was in Waterford to see Red Kettle’s Riddley Walker. ‘Oh, the Hoban!’ he said. I was impressed back. ‘That’s had some good reviews.’ I asked him if he’d seen it. ‘No, it sounds a bit dark and heavy,’ he said, ‘set in ancient times, or something?’ ‘Kind of, yeah.’ ‘I only know about the author because I’m married to a Hoban.’ ‘What, one of the Hobans?’ I said, pondering the synchronicity. ‘No,’ he laughed, ‘it’s a fairly common name around here. I heard about the play on the radio,’ he went on, ‘one of John Hurt’s sons is in it.’ Crikey, I thought, this Riddley must be more serious than I thought. I was just getting over this when he said, ‘In fact I think I heard that two of John Hurt’s sons are in it.’
I checked in to the very pleasant Rice Guesthouse on Barrack Street, went out for a curry, had a Guinness in a lovely pub where I found myself sponsoring a complete stranger five euros to do a parachute jump, read a bit of Riddley Walker, had a very cosy night and slept in late. The next morning, I had hours to kill before my roommate, Eli Bishop, or any other Krakenites were due to show up in town, so I had a good wander around. It was neither rainy nor cold to begin with but the sky was a solid grey all day. I hadn’t known what to expect of Waterford in terms of size; a leaflet I picked up from the guesthouse said it was a city, although it felt more like a large town. The leaflet also said that Waterford was the only city beseiged by Cromwell which he failed to capture, and was the place where the first frog in Ireland was released. I counted four or five churches within a mile of each other, and the town also boasted some Viking and medieval ruins, including a near-complete tower. A plaque on the wall of a bank said it had once been the site of another Viking building. Many shops were closed for refurbishment. Small market stalls selling cheese, bread and children’s toys had sprung up in part of the shopping centre. What looked an ancient butcher’s shop, with sawdust on the floor and a chaos of invoices stacked on a teetering table, had a special offer on pigs’ feet. There was a newsagent called Morrissey’s which I couldn’t help photographing for Dave, a Smiths fan. I checked my email in a rickety-looking internet café with a Calor gas fire hissing in the background and had a superb cup of coffee in a different café around the corner; I’d go back tomorrow for that coffee alone. It was good to sit in the warm and read more Riddley and look out onto the street. As with many such moments I probably did more looking into the street than reading.
Finding the Garter Lane Arts Centre to collect my tickets for the evening’s performance took a while. I found O’Connell street quick enough but walked the full length of it twice before finding them in a smart courtyard tucked behind some tattered offices. I picked up a couple of Riddley flyers with my tickets and stopped into a quiet room with an exhibition of local art on display, an absorbing mix of naturalistic city scenes and landscapes ranging from impressionistic to abstract.
It was now getting to the time when Eli was due to be arriving, and we’d arranged to meet at the guesthouse as it was the only place in the town we’d both know. On the way back I stopped at a shop called Susan’s Sweets for a couple of filled rolls which I was assured were unique to Waterford and smuggled them into the hotel past the signs saying PLEASE DO NOT CONSUME FOOD AND DRINK IN THE ROOMS. I whiled away the next couple of hours watching Diamonds are Forever until in the late afternoon there was a knock at the door. I didn’t recognise Eli at first; he seemed taller (if that was possible) than when I’d last (and first) met him at the Some-Poasyum, his hair had grown out and he was wearing glasses, which he explained was because he’d had a heavy night in Dublin and fallen asleep in his hostel bed wearing his contacts. Despite being hungover he was game for a conversation for an hour or so; we talked mostly about his work as a nurse and computer programmer in San Francisco; I tried not to grill him too much on Riddley trivia. We were sharing not for financial reasons; the guesthouse was already excellent value – they’d simply run out of rooms.
The next part of the plan was for our other Hoban fan-friends Ernie and Deena to arrive and then we’d all head out to the Big Top, about three miles out of town, where Riddley was due to do his walking. Ernie rang to say he was at the airport, having driven down from Donegal, and was waiting for Deena’s flight to come in from Luton. A short while later the guesthouse reception called me to pass on a message from Ernie that Deena’s flight had been delayed. I tried calling Ernie back but Deena got there first, saying she’d arrived and they were on their way. My phone rang a fourth time – I’ve never been so popular in a single afternoon – and it sounded like Ernie again. I wittered on about taxis and dining spots before realising it wasn’t Ernie at all but Ben Hennessy from Red Kettle, saying he was heading over to the Big Top right now and did we want a lift?
Eli and I waited in the foyer and a few minutes later Ben’s bear-like presence breezed in: six feet tall and stocky with it, a colourful patchwork jacket over a baggy purple jumper, grey curly hair tumbling randomly from a balding dome; a contented, ruddy face. The epitome of the gentle giant, he ushered us into the Redkettlemobile, a custom-painted Luton van. Ben’s 10-year-old son Ruben was in the front seat ensconced in a video game; he was in the play, I don’t think with a speaking part but as the self-named ‘Fisher’, one of the Eusa folk children. By now it had been raining steadily for two or three hours. Ben negotiated the wet roads at the same time as telling us about Red Kettle and the play and taking several phone calls, punctuating a gentle, low monotone with a husky laugh. Eventually the Big Top rose into view, a stripey 200-seater opposite the substantial Woodlands Hotel. Ben and Ruben went off to see how the cast was getting on while Eli and I had a decent pub meal in the unforgettably-named Brass Cock bar. A short while later Ben reappeared with Joan Dalton, Red Kettle producer, a tall blonde lady in a long black coat. Ben gave us programmes and the four of us talked for a bit. I said, ‘My cab driver yesterday told me two of John Hurt’s sons are in the show – is that right?’ Joan laughed and said, ‘Yes – well, they’re my children too.’ I must have looked confused as she elaborated, ‘I used to be married to John Hurt in a previous life.’ True enough, the programme confirmed that Sasha was playing Belnot Phist and Nick was one of the Eusa folk children. Ben explained that another audience draw was Pascal Scott (Goodparley), who was well-known in Ireland for a TV series called Killinaskully.
Ben and Joan finished their supper and went away, and another lady called Frieda came over to our table. She was from the board of directors but nowhere near as formal as that title might suggest, a schoolteacher by day, utterly charming and possessed of infectious enthusiasm and energy. She was obviously busy and a bit stressed out, which made it all the nicer that she took a few minutes to come and speak to us. ‘I’m brewing a migraine!’ she said at one point, rubbing her temple. I offered her paracetamol (never travel without them), expecting her to politely decline, as people do, but she snapped them up gladly. ‘I should have prescribed those,’ joked Eli, slipping into nurse mode for a second. She went away then and Deena and Ernie arrived with Guinnesses in hand. After a few photos we realised it was getting past the time that Ben had recommended we come outside to start queueing for the show – the seats were unallocated so we wanted to be sure we got good ones.
We came outside to find a crowd of people huddling out of the rain under the hotel awning. Although it was a miserable evening, you couldn’t help thinking how Riddleyesque it was. Joan told us they were just checking some things in the Big Top before they could open up, and went off again. Ernie had disappeared into the crowd, and Eli, Deena and I were chatting together when Ben, Joan and Frieda came over looking distraught. Frieda, a small lady, addressed the crowd in a voice that no schoolchild and fewer adults would mess with, even though what she was saying was just as much apology as it was instruction. She explained, to a collective groan, that the Big Top had let in rain and that the health and safety people had advised the cancellation of the show because they couldn’t guarantee that the lighting rig and other electrics were safe. It was an unbelievable blow for everyone concerned; Deena and I were mortified more for Eli than ourselves, and then after digesting the news we were all more upset for the cast and crew. Frieda made it very clear to us all how disappointed they all were and told us how we could apply for refunds. Making the announcement was a thankless task and an old boy nearby, looking like he could have walked out of a James Joyce story in formal coat and hat, said, ‘Give the lady a round of applause!’
Everybody was milling about then, not quite sure what to do with themselves, but by and large the mood was more philosophical than sombre. Smokers lit more cigarettes and people drifted inside for another round of drinks. Then something great happened: in dribs and drabs the cast started to emerge from the Big Top, in full costume and make-up, to mingle with the audience. They looked perfect, iron-age people from the future who’d been grubbing around in the muck. You’d turn round and there was Goodparley, you’d look over someone’s shoulder and there was Riddley himself. A friendly blonde ‘Eusa folk’ girl proudly pointed out to me Lissener and Belnot Phist by their character names; it hadn’t quite occurred to me until now how deeply they were all involved in the story. They were also very approachable, happy to pose for photos and talk about the production, not a whiff of luvviedom about any of them. Cormac McDonagh, who played Riddley, was especially friendly and it was great to get a photo of him with Eli.
Even better, Frieda made another announcement to the crowd that they were negotiating a performance space with the Woodlands Hotel so we could all see some of the show. In the meantime she, Ben and Joan snuck a few of us into the Big Top for a few moments. The entrance was a heavy canvas flap whose very material rhymed with the hunter-gatherers’ costumes and the wet, elemental atmosphere of the book itself. Walking in was breathtaking: right inside was a single, huge floodlight trained on a forest set like a full moon on a cloudless night. The floor was covered in dead leaves and twigs; this was deliberate, although you suspected the equally realistic moisture of the ‘forest floor’ probably wasn’t. If you didn’t know anything about Riddley Walker you might be forgiven for thinking you were walking into a production of The Blair Witch Project. The Big Top was split roughly in two with the seating in semi-circles to the right and the set to the left, but there didn’t feel like a divide between the two – it all felt like ‘jus one girt big thing’, as if the audience was in the forest rather than just watching a play. We were told not to touch anything and you could see that the circus tent ceiling and rigging were glistening wet. I think the producers were just being extra cautious though because there were nine or ten of us milling about and you inevitably touched things and nobody was electrocuted. The atmosphere was certainly electric, though: the Big Top was warm and even smelt like a forest, and there was a low hum and hiss of machinery which was probably just air conditioning or heating and thus was technologically incongruous, but was somehow not out of place, and added a mysterious element.
After a few minutes we were ushered back out into the rain and then into the sizeable lower ground floor of the Brass Cock bar. The cast began to assemble around a stripey fit-up and the audience pulled up chairs and sat on the floor. Once the actors got going, you could easily forget you were in a pub. The all-Irish cast performed in their own accents, which took a few moments to adjust to, but it worked better, I think, than if they’d tried to replicate the English ‘estuary’ accent of the book; the language was perfect, so the accent didn’t matter. Over about 45 minutes they performed four or five extracts from the play, including the opening scene, in which Riddley addresses the audience direct (to the consternation of Goodparley and others) and kills his boar; a scene featuring Lorna telling us about Aunty (the two characters were played by the same actress, a rather lovely Jenni Ledwell) – the line about Aunty having ‘iron tits and teef betwean her legs and an iron willy for the ladies’ got a big laugh (mostly fro
m the ladies); the scene where Riddley first meets Lissener (played with unexpected energy by a hauntingly-costumed Will Irvine) and makes the emotional discovery of the ‘shynin’ machinery; the scene in which Riddley meets Granser (Joseph Kelly), who then acts out the ‘Hart of the Wood’ story originally contained in the book’s first chapter, playing the ‘clevver little bloak’ to a repulsed Riddley like a play within a play; and finally the puppet show, performed superbly by Cormac McDonagh with ‘patter’ from Erny Orfing (Joseph Meagher). A couple of scenes featured percussive accompaniment from a quartet called Torann, the traditional Irish drums complementing perfectly Riddley’s raw, wild, anxious world. The whole thing was absolutely excellent, especially given how quickly the cast had adapted to the smaller space and how much material was contained in just these few scenes, and I don’t think there could have been many people in the audience now giving serious thought to the idea of claiming a refund.
The performance over, Ben gathered the cast together and called up a shocked Eli to the front to be presented with the Punch puppet that had been made especially for the show. The audience groaned in sympathy when Ben explained Eli had come all the way from San Francisco for tonight’s show, and one of the actors later even asked for Eli’s autograph.
Afterward the audience remained pretty much as they were for most of the evening, chatting and drinking. The cast went away and returned one by one in their civvies and signed posters for us. Around 1am we were invited to join them for an after-show party. Taxis picked us up and took us to a nightclub in the town centre, where we were treated to an ear-splitting mixture of live bands and a DJ set. It was hot inside and Ben and the others were impressed when I opened my shirt to reveal p.a. morbid’s ‘Arga Warga’ t-shirt design from the Some-Poasyum. Then at three o’clock in the morning, just as Russell Hoban himself was probably getting ready for bed, we found ourselves climbing the streets of Waterford to carry on the party in a small terraced house. It was cosy inside, a gas fire hissing in the lounge, and Nora Boland, one of the scenic artists, handed round bottles of Heineken. The place was packed and many people were smoking fiercely as if to make up for the fact that they hadn’t been able to for hours earlier in the bar and club. Someone put on a recent Tom Waits album which only made it more Hobanesque. A couple of loaves of sliced white bread were dotted around which seemed surreal until the smell of frying began to drift in from the kitchen, and plates of steaming hot sausages and bacon were circulated. Somehow it seemed immensely civilised and privileged to find yourself in this company at four in the morning eating a bacon sandwich and chatting to someone like Louise Bradley, who played one of the Eusa Folk and was a drama teacher in her other life; funnily enough she’d also visited Riddley’s Kent once in her only excursion to England, some years before becoming involved in this production.
By now it was nearing dawn; as the father of two small children and thus generally used to being asleep on the sofa by ten o’clock, I was getting pretty disorientated, and of course it was even weirder to look up and see Lorna Elswint leaning against the fireplace and Abel Goodparley asking for a light and Riddley Walker now wearing a black tee-shirt and laughing with Belnot Phist. Erny Orfing passed by in a striped poncho-like top looking for two missing Cuban cigars. ‘Don’t get them mixed up with the sausages,’ I told him. ‘They’re not sausages, they’re swossages!’ he boomed, and went off cackling.
Finally I could take no more and Deena and I reluctantly made our excuses, leaving Eli behind on the sofa with Straiter Empy, or it might have been Fister Crunchman. We wended our way back to the guesthouse through the damp, deserted Waterford streets, generally marvelling over the whole evening, to all intents and purposes forgetting that we’d not actually seen the whole show as it was intended. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to Eli as the next I saw of him he crept into the room, crashed out for a couple of hours and then crept out again to catch an early train back to Dublin. I got up as late as I could in order not to miss breakfast, which was still far too early, chatted slurrily with Deena over a slice of toast, and crawled back into bed. I didn’t know the check-out time so I thought I’d just sleep until they chucked me out. Unfortunately this happened only about an hour later, but you couldn’t blame them. I settled the bill and staggered into town, now almost completely deserted, and had a toasted sandwich and big pot of tea in what may have been the most exhaustion-friendly café-bar I’ve ever sat in, all dark woods and quiet music and the low hum of conversation. It took me days to recover from the fatigue, but I hope I never get over the experience of this, the most fantastic wet weekend I’ve ever had.
POSTSCRIPT: A complete performance of the play on one of the previous nights was filmed, and DVDs are now available from the Thoughtcat site for only 15 euros inclusive of p&p; worldwide. For more information go to www.thoughtcat.com/riddleydvd.htm
Reading: could do better
As a lapsed gamer, references on the YakYak forum to ‘leaderboards’ have generally gone over my head, but today I found the term used in a context I could relate to. Adding the ‘Visual Bookshelf’ application to my Facebook profile I got up to a total of 57 titles before starting to struggle (and if it hadn’t been for the marvellous Russell Hoban I doubt I could even have reached 50 so quickly). To be fair, I’m sure there are more. At least I hope there are, as the application (somewhat fatuously) has a leaderboard, at the top of which is some bloke called Mark Woodland who looks like a member of Deep Purple and claims to have read 4,291 books. I suppose when you think about it, it’s not that amazing really. He looks to be in his early forties, if Facebook profile pics are anything to go by, which they aren’t, so even if he’s been reading for a total of 40 years, that’s an average of two books a week – a fair number, but not, I hear, impossible. I’ve never been a promiscuous kind of bloke in any sense, choosing and reading books like most reasonable people have personal relationships – waiting for a good one to come along rather than blindly jumping into them, enjoying their company, learning from them, giving them time to see what they have to say, savouring their secrets. Certainly I’ve re-read several books many times. Still, 57 does look a bit feeble for someone who’s been reading for 30 years. As Woody Allen (bless ‘im) said in the wonderful Love and Death, ‘It’s the quality, not the quantity, of your sexual relations that counts. Then again, if the quantity falls below once every two and half years, I would definitely look into it.’
E-pist-ology
Further to today’s earlier post (I know, you don’t get one for weeks and then two come along at once!), if I say so myself I seem to be doing quite well on the published-letter front this week, with this pithy comment on this article from last Saturday’s Grauniad. Such a serious subject too – the facetiousness is shocking.
Something else that was funny about both letters was the responses I got after emailing them. Not all papers use an autoreply, but when they do these are fairly boring, just saying basically ‘thanks, do not reply to this, your letter will be considered for publication, goodbye’, so it was curious that the Observer’s one rounded off with the words ‘It was good of you to take the trouble to write’ – which I’m sure is someone’s idea of being nice but does come across as rather weary and not a little patronising. Then again, there are surely worse ways of telling the vast majority of correspondents that their particular bizarre rant hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of appearing anywhere near the paper.
Then, when I sent the Guardian one, an even stranger thing happened. All newspaper letters pages tell you to enclose, in addition to a full postal address, a contact phone number. They publish neither, but I’ve always assumed the latter is required in case they want to print the letter but something ambiguous in it needs clarifying quickly, or they want to edit it and need to check with you(!) that you’re happy with the edited version. Certainly on all the occasions I’ve written to papers none has ever rung me up to say anything at all, even when they do go ahead and publish it, invariably in edited form. So imagine my surprise when, a few minutes after sending the pithy one about sperm donation – the sort of letter, to be fair, one frivolously tosses off with little real expectation that any room will be found for it in such an august organ – my mobile rings and a lady who sounds a bit like a librarian thanks me for it and tells me with not so much as a dirty snigger that ‘we are considering it for publication in tomorrow’s paper’. How very civilised!
I confess that I have since written another (actually serious) letter to the Guardian about something else entirely, although whether I’ll score three in a row remains to be seen (tomorrow or Tuesday, perhaps – watch this space). I haven’t had a phone call, anyway, so maybe they’re on to me. Either way, I won’t go into detail on it just yet as there’s a long story behind it which deserves a post all of its own – regardless of publication in the Grauniad, or indeed any newspaper at all.
Stay sharp
This article from last Sunday’s Observer on razor blade technology caught my eye, as I’m one of those blokes who never seems to get shaving right somehow. I generally feel as if I’ve got a five o’clock shadow the whole day long, which wouldn’t be so bad if I were some hirsute hunk of mediterranean persuasion, but in my case it’s simply because I can never get a very close shave without either using a new blade every time, which would cost a packet, or going so close I’d lacerate myself. Or, more likely, break the razor, not on my steel-strong stubble but against my jaw from over-enthusiastic pressure of the handle. Attempts over the years to grow a proper beard or even some designer bum-fluff leave me looking simply as if I haven’t bothered to shave rather than in any way cool.
The article incidentally covered the issue of grip, Gillette seemingly having an entire department devoted to the way men hold their razor and how this has supposedly changed over the years as new ‘thumb skills’ have crept into everyday behaviour with the advent of texting and gaming. Personally I think this is bollox, along with most of the other stubbly issues discussed such as blade angle, sharpness and inter-blade clog factor which Gillette claims to be researching on an almost 24-hour basis, as if shaving were an emergency service rather than the daily chore it actually is.
Further, in a comment almost worthy of doublespeak, the company maintains that the reason modern blades created with technology to rival NASA’s go blunt so quickly is that they’re just so sharp – more so, supposedly, than a surgeon’s scalpel. Brilliant. My beard may be that bit tougher than it was when I started shaving a couple of decades ago but in those days you could rely on a blade to last at least five shaves, if not six or seven, thus a packet of four would last you a month (your honour). These days a packet of four Titanium Quattro blades (admittedly for a razor by Wilkinson, who mysteriously declined to take part in the Observer feature) costs £5.85 and you’re lucky if you get two decent shaves out of each one. I put my reflections on the risibility of Gillette’s claims in a letter to the Observer, which they have published today (under the heading ‘Sharp practice’). Then again, I suppose you have to hand it to Gillette for adverts which have taken the dullness off the edge of shaving (even if not the razors themselves).
The reason I can rattle off the price of a packet of blades, incidentally, is that a couple of days ago I went out to Sainsbury’s and bought some. I hadn’t bought razor blades from them before and went firstly to the bathroomular accessories section. While this might seem the obvious place to go, a while back my regular supermarket, Waitrose, in an uncharacteristic fit of kowtowing to some new mad health and safety standard, suddenly took all their razor blades off their shelves and replaced them with funny little laminated, emasculated versions of each brand, which you put into your basket in place of the real thing. That really did lack an edge, I thought, but when you got to the till the cashier would ring their bell to summon a colleague who would scurry off to retrieve the real blades. All of this seemed rather a palaver, and clearly Waitrose felt the same way, since a couple of months later the authentic items were back on the shelves again.
Thus I thought, optimistically, that Sainsbury’s and all other supermarkets had probably followed suit; however, they had not, or at least this branch hadn’t. Shaving foam, after-shave and moisturisers were there in front of me, but no blades and not even any laminated bits of card in their place which I might bring to the till. Weirdly, there was no sign saying anything helpful like ‘For safety reasons, razor blades can now be found wherever’ or ‘Please direct all enquiries about the purchase of razor blades to our Razor Blade Manager Mr George Whittle’ or whatever, so I wandered around for a bit, unsure of where I might find them (cleaning products? feminine hygiene? delicatessen?) before spotting them behind a counter with other controlled substances such as cigarettes, spirits, CDs and batteries. There then followed several minutes of toing and froing as a supervisor had to be summoned, not to verify my age (even though the signs ask you to ‘please be flattered if we think you look younger than you are’) but to actually ring the bloody things up properly. I mean, honestly… the youth of today may be up to no good but I can’t seriously see a Gillette Fusion presenting a menace to society. We all know how ‘sharp’ they are.
An open letter to Woody Allen
Dear Woody,
As regular readers of Thoughtcat (which I imagine you probably aren’t) will know, I rarely manage to discover something for myself less than about two years after everyone else has written the bible on it. In keeping with this, despite being intrigued by your movie Match Point from the time it came out two years ago (mostly because it was the first film you’d shot in London, my home city), I’ve only just managed to rent the DVD.
I’m very sorry to tell you that, far from being worth the wait, Match Point is pretty much the worst film I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something, since I’ve seen Meet Joe Black. Match Point was the only Woody Allen film, and one of the very few films full stop, that I’ve felt had robbed me of two hours of my life. Here is a selection of my disappointments.
Firstly, London. You may as well have shot the film on the moon for all the use you made of this great and varied city. The Houses of Parliament and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace are very nice, but you could hardly have picked more unimaginative, picture-postcard views of the place. The Saatchi Gallery was about as edgy as you got – and that’s just a bunch of pretentious, overrated arse of the sort that you used to debunk so hilariously in films like Manhattan. Even if you’d walked a few hundred yards to the South Bank Centre you would’ve found something more interesting, genuine and vital than any of that.
Secondly, the characters – the supposed tennis pro, directionless after retiring at the age of about 12; his boring pupil, dabbling in a sport about which he clearly gives not a shit in between earning a stupendous amount of money in some high-flying job about which we know nothing and knobbing a beautiful but hopeless actress; his sister, the pretty-but-dull filly, perfect wife material and a bit of posh totty to boot; the rich father-in-law with the Country House (someone actually says ‘come and stay in my Country House’ at one point, but we’ll get on to the excruciating dialogue in a moment) and the basement full of hunting rifles… these were either cyphers, insufferable idiots or English stereotypes unrecognisable from (modern) life. Some were all three. Woody, you’re a massively creative person – a writer, director, actor, musician, a career artist. What could possibly attract you to these antiseptic ‘people’ with not an original thought between them? And how many ‘Brits’ have you ever actually met? No wonder Kate Winslet pulled out of the film at the last minute. Johansson’s character only had any depth because she was American. Moral – one of the first things they tell you about writing: stick with what you know.
Thirdly, the acting. This was mostly terrible, due in large part to the characterisation. Talents like Johansson (the only really watchable figure in the movie, and then mostly for the wrong reasons) and Brian Cox were left flailing around, desperate to find something realistic to say or do, or at least say and do what the script demanded without looking utterly crap about it. I suppose Jonathan Rhys Meyers did have a fleeting moment of thespian credibility near the end, falling apart in the back of a cab, but that was only after he’d gone completely out of character and shot a couple of people, which might conceivably have that kind of effect. Apart from that he was practically unwatchable, and certainly unlistenable. I don’t know if that was his normal accent or if he put it on for the film, but two hours of it made my ears bleed.
Fourthly, the dialogue. One of the reasons Rhys Meyers finally managed to look halfway decent in the scene I just mentioned is that he didn’t have any lines in it. I mean, Jesus, don’t get me started on the script. I could have done better with one wordprocessor tied behind my back. Much of it sounded like a bad parody of a Noel Coward play (‘Darling, have you seen my Strindberg?’); a scene involving two policemen discussing the murders was the most unlikely ever written (‘I’m torn,’ says James Nesbitt, without feeling, to his sidekick Ewen Bremner, another couple of excellent actors woefully underused here); and people simply don’t say things to each other like ‘You do realise we haven’t made love for a week?’ and ‘I have to meet my wife at the Tate Modern in ten minutes.’ You’re telling me you’re a 70-year-old auteur, with such classics as Annie Hall, Broadway Danny Rose and Hannah and Her Sisters behind you, and those lines were the best you could muster? It all just sounded at best like a first draft you’d scribbled down over the course of a few evenings with one eye on the telly, and at worst like you simply don’t have a clue how to convey story without getting the characters to say things they’d never say in real life.
Fifthly, said ‘story’. I sat there for almost the whole film waiting for something to happen and when it finally did, it was so far-fetched I couldn’t believe it. We are supposed to believe that Rhys Meyers’s dull, anonymous tennis pro-turned-I’m-not-quite-sure-what-he-does-in-his-father-in-law’s-firm is so pissed off that his beautiful mistress has got herself knocked up that he borrows said father-in-law’s rifle and shoots her? (This is a man with access to pots of money – couldn’t he have just paid her to go away quietly somewhere?) And then, to insult us further, he gets away with it? And then, to completely take the piss, he claims some kind of philosophical disaffection with life because he’s got away with it, citing Sophocles and Dostoevsky? Those guys must be turning in their graves. It might not have been so bad if you’d made Rhys Meyers’s character even slightly sympathetic, or at least interesting, but he was neither. You can quote the greats all night, but it makes no difference if I couldn’t give a damn what happens to the protagonist.
Finally, the ‘message’. This was a film about a man literally getting away with murder. Astonished at how poor this film was coming from a film-maker as great as yourself, I could only charitably assume that you deliberately set out to make a terrible movie to demonstrate exactly that – that Woody Allen got away with murder on a whole other level, by taking someone’s millions and going through the whole palaver of writing, casting, directing, editing, distributing and, finally, charging people to watch a piece of utter tosh.
In writing this for public consumption I did try not to give away too much of the plot in case any readers still hadn’t seen the film; as a personal standard, I always recommend people make up their own minds about something rather than take someone else’s word for it. But such is the crassness of Match Point, I feel it would be a dereliction of whatever duty a blogger has not to discourage anyone who may be reading this from wasting two hours of their life watching this film. Really, I beg you, dear reader – find some long-overlooked corner of the house and clean it with a toothbrush instead, as that would be both a more enjoyable and more constructive way of spending an evening.
Unbelievably, Woody, this was your first movie since Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) to make a profit in your home country. If this is what you have to do to make money then I beg you, go back to making a loss – that’s what you’re good at. I won’t make any cheap jibes about how that statistic illustrates the cultural and geographical bankruptcy of American audiences, but I will close by saying this: although it’
s long been the case that your films fare better in Europe than the US, if the UK-set Match Point was the best thing you could come up with to honour the loyalty and enthusiasm of audiences on this side of the pond, then can I please request that you stay at home next time?
Lots of love,
T.C.
On love, TV, Ugly Betty and The Apprentice
Today’s Grauniad Weekend magazine publishes a letter – well, some of it – I wrote them about this article from last Saturday, in which their resident marriage counsellor Luisa Dillner advises a reader concerned about the lack of time she’s spending with her boyfriend. Time couples spend watching TV together, asserted Dillner, ‘is passive [i.e. doesn’t count] unless you fight over the remote’. As my letter explains, this runs contrary to my own experience. TV is actually pretty interactive as shared activities go. Whilst this is especially so when you’ve got children and thus no time or energy to do anything more strenuous with your evening than flop on the sofa in front of the box, I found it to be the case even before I started breeding. Then again, when you’re of a writerly persuasion, anything seems pretty interactive after several hours spent staring at a wordprocessor – except for the web, of course. When I say the magazine published ‘some of’ my letter, I mean they cropped the last sentence: ‘The real threat to couple time and interaction these days is the internet – unless you communicate by instant messenger, of course.’ And I speak as a two-PC family.
Anyway, back to TV. Although I haven’t blogged about it (much as I’d’ve like to), in recent months both Mrs Thoughtcat and I have spent many happy hours glued to Ugly Betty and The Apprentice, respectively laughing and raging at the screen together in about equal measure. It is a shared experience and the better for that; your partner sees things you didn’t see, you talk about them, you learn from it; you find common ground; it gives you something to talk about. And given that we spend every evening in front of the TV anyway with our dinner on our laps (actually a far healthier setup than sitting opposite each other at table moaning about our days, or saying nothing at all), you notice when what’s on is actually any good, which in 2007 is rare.
The excellence of these particular two shows have almost restored my faith in terrestrial TV of late. The former is brilliantly written (especially those episodes by the acid-tongued Henry Alonso Myers) and superbly acted, and even if it’s completely frivolous is still weirdly compelling. The Apprentice meanwhile is just plain riveting: despite being fundamentally flawed – every week Sir Alan Sugar opens the show saying ‘This is not a game’, but of course it is, it’s a bloody TV show – the format and structure are plain genius. A 60-minute Shakespearean drama plays out weekly, complete with dramatic arcs everywhere they should be. The prelude: here is your mission, should you choose to accept it! Act 1: the teams set about preparing, with rumblings of controversy! Act 2: the task is carried out – usually badly by at least one if not both teams! Act 3: the teams convene at Sugar HQ, and the winners and losers are announced! Act 4: while the winning team get on with being pampered or going out partying, the losers sit whey-faced for a gripping dressing-down by Sir Al! Act 5: the team leader brings in his chosen scapegoats, the three wrangle to convince us that black is white and, our bums on the edges of our seats, Sugar fires the team leader! Then, finally, the chorus plays us out as this week’s loser is driven away into the horizon and professional oblivion.
Seriously, I’m not saying I revel in watching people get fired, far from it, but when that person is so utterly deserving of it, it really is undeniably satisfying. I would almost have applied for the next series myself if I didn’t think I’d be eaten alive in the board room – not by Sir Alan, he doesn’t scare me at all, but by the other contestants. Those people really would sell their own grandmothers to succeed. (Except for Lohit, who was just too nice to win.) Personally I found the final disappointing – Sugar, confirming everyone’s prejudices about UK business, plumps for Simon, a 12-year-old white male Cambridge graduate with a rich dad and yellow socks, when he could have had tough, independent single mum Kristina. But at least the brilliant Tre nearly made it and that other cow was nowhere to be seen.
*sigh*. The missus and I have no idea what we’re going to do with ourselves on Wednesday and Friday nights from now on. Maybe surf the web and IM each other?