Art's in an ethical pickle: Film and Morality

The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray

In Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989), a doctor meets a filmmaker at a party and tells him the story of a man who is cheating on his wife. The mistress begins to demand that he leave his wife for her, or she will tell his wife of the affair. He feels he is left with no choice but to have her killed. At first, he is riddled with guilt, suffering terrible nightmares. Convinced his crime will be revealed, he is on the verge of confessing all to the police. Then, one day he wakes up and the guilt is gone. He is never investigated by the police. Rather than being lead to ruin, he suddenly prospers.

In Philosophy Goes to the Movies, Chris Falzon writes that at the core of Allen's film is a question of morality: “why should we be moral in the first place? Why should we do the right thing if we can do the wrong thing and get away with it?” (Falzon, 2002, p83) He continues, noting that:

"We are all familiar with those moments when we find ourselves wanting to do something even though we know we shouldn't, or not wanting to do something even though we feel that we ought. The tension here is sometimes characterised as being one between self-interest and morality, between acting purely to satisfy my own interests regardless of others, and doing the right thing. In such cases it might be thought that the moral considerations are the ones that ought to win out, and that in a morally good person they will (Falzon, 2002, 84)."

This subject, the tension between acting out of self-interest or acting in a moral way, has been central to art for some time now. Falzon makes mention of several films that have been concerned with characters who have a moral transformation, moving from acting out of self-interest to acting morally, films such as Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and On The Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954).

Falzon makes note of films such as Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987), which explore the idea of acting out of self-interest. In Wall Street, Gordon Gekko argues that “Greed is Good”, and that greed drives all human activity. Falzon sees the parallel between Gekko and the writings of Plato in his book Republic. In Republic, Plato recounts the tale of the Ring of Gyges. Essentially, it is the story of a man who can do whatever he likes, as he will never be caught. Plato is suggesting that the only reason we act morally is because we fear being caught. If we remove this possibility we have no reason to act morally. Plato is arguing that we all act out of self-interest, there is no 'moral' compass.

Falzon asks, “is it true that the only reason people adhere to ethical standards is because of fear of being caught and punished if they do not? Or can we give a better answer to the question of why we should be moral? One response might be that even if we can avoid external punishment, we will suffer at our own hands for evil deeds, through guilt or remorse (Falzon, 2002, p87).”
Can conscience really point us in the right direction? In Crimes and Misdemeanors, the doctor's conscience isn't as powerful as he thought it would be; when he sees he will go unpunished for his deeds, his conscience reveals to him that he is able to live with his crime. He can become rational in his thinking about the immoral act.

This leads us to thinking about something more powerful than simply our conscience, or our ability to act rationally and to think critically about the ways in which our actions will affect not only our own life, but other people's lives. Theologians will argue that God is the guide that directs us to be moral. This is the idea that there is a higher purpose and that the truth of the world is revealed to a higher being such as God. In having this knowledge God develops rules in which we can live by, and acting morally means living in accordance to these rules and hence the higher purpose. What does this mean? What are the benefits of acting in accordance with these rules? The benefit is that by living with these rules we will one day have revealed to us the truh of the meaning of life. But only when we move on from this world and into the next. There is a part of us that will live on in the next life, and this is what we need to take care of by living in accordance with the commands of God.

This is the soul. This is the thing dear to us, that moves on from this world to the next. But how can we be sure of the soul's existence? Surely if some people can act immorally without consequence, this is proof that there is no soul or even a God. The filmmaker in Crimes and Misdemeanors finds the doctor's story terrifying, because it is proof that God doesn't exist. There is no moral guide, no afterlife, no soul to nourish in preparation for the next life.
But what happens if the soul is real? What if it is not only real, but you can see the affects your actions have on the soul? If you could separate your soul from your self, would you take care to ensure the soul remained pure? Or would you let it deteriorate, knowing that it bear the burden of your immoral acts?

This is the question posed by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray. If you could remain unaffected by your actions, letting the physical (and in this case visible) manifestation of your soul carry the weight instead, would you do whatever you liked?

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, a young man makes a wish that the portrait of himself would age and bear the burden of his actions while he remains as young and beautiful as he is in the portrait. For that, he claims that he would give his soul. His wish is granted and the portrait essentially becomes his soul.

What Dorian initially sees as being his ticket to freedom, this separation of his soul from his self, becomes his prison. He becomes terrified that someone should see it, and in effect see his soul. And while some refuse to believe the stories whispered about him because he looks so young and innocent, he can never really hide from them. There are some who shun him, and he loses friends and potential lovers along the way. He eventually commits murder to conceal the true nature of his soul. And yet the worst of this is seemingly the idea that not only does he really feel any remorse for his actions, but that his closest friends agree with his actions and share a similar disdain for acting morally. It is the words of the man who will become his closest companion that provoke him to making the wish that he comes to regret.

We should pay for our crimes, shouldn't we?
Oh, I don't know. I think knowing that you've committed a crime is suffering enough. And if you don't suffer, maybe it wasn't a crime after all.
- The Player

Falzon writes that when the idea of morality is explored in art, particularly in Hollywood films, those who act immorally are either punished, or the film suggests that the idea that there are no consequences for such actions is abhorrent. Perhaps one film that provides no comment on the morality versus self-interest is The Player (Robert Altman, 1992), in which a man who commits murder still gets his happy ending. This ending is performing not only this function, that of providing a critique of morality, but also subverting the moral judgments inherent in the conflict and resolution in the Hollywood narrative.

For what The Player really questions are the myths, platitudes and ideas that Hollywood expounds to the people through its writers. Writers provide the foundation for the film's structure. Griffin Mill, the writers' executive, finds the question of eliminating the writer from the creative process an interesting one, especially as he does this literally in the murder of David Kahane. He finds that he can continue to write the Hollywood story as a business product while espousing the importance of film as art. He identifies the “certain elements that we need to market a film successfully: suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings. Mainly happy endings.”

The strength of Altman's film is that it questions the moral codes embedded in the Hollywood narrative and subverts them completely whilst operating entirely within the narrative structure being critiqued. But what lies at the heart of this film, for me personally, is the way in which film writes our moral code for us (literally in the days of The Hays Code). Hollywood has long been the place for questions of not only what it means to act morally, but how to live a moral life, or the good life. The ways in which we punish greed, crime, adultery, have always played a central role in Hollywood narratives, but not only that; film constantly provides myths that allow us to remain happy with our position in our life.

For some, this is an extremely depressing idea. For example, in "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argue that film blinds society to this idea through the entertainment industry, in effect forcing individuals to accept society as they present it, through the standardisation of form and content:

"The entertainment manufacturers know that their products will be consumed with alertness even when the customer is distraught, for each of them is a model of the huge economic machinery which has always sustained the masses, whether at work or at leisure—which is akin to work. From every sound film and every broadcast program the social effect can be inferred which is exclusive to none but is shared by all alike. The culture industry as a whole has molded men as a type unfailingly reproduced in every product. All the agents of this process, from the producer to the women’s clubs, take good care that the simple reproduction of this mental state is not nuanced or extended in any way (Horkheimer and Adorno, year, p4)."

If the standardisation of Hollywood film can lay claim to this power of exerting control over individuals not by force but through the reinforcement of certain ideas prevalent within culture, otherwise known as hegemony (well, if I've defined it well enough, that is), then certainly it has the power to reinforce moral judgements or ideas that allow individuals to be satisfied with their place in society.

How many times have you heard someone say, if I had his money, I could do things my way? But little they know, that it's so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind
- Satisfied Mind

It's not only Hollywood film that reinforces these myths and ideas. All art seems to reflect certain ideas we come to hold that seem to allow us to become accustomed to our situation. As Johnny Cash suggests, money brings unhappiness. Crimes and Misdemeanors suggests that if we accept the idea that people only act morally out of a fear of getting caught, then we accept that there is no God. Are we willing to pay such a price for our moral freedom? The Picture of Dorian Gray asks us to realise that we all have a soul, and to see our soul as something tangible, and then to question how we would behave if we could see what effect our actions have on our soul.

More than that, they ask us to accept certain platitudes or 'home truths' – the reason we are horrified at the behaviour of these characters is because we have received messages from art and society; the man who pursues wealth will be ultimately unhappy. Beauty is fading, and those who privilege it above intellect and compassion are doomed. Criminals should be punished for their crime, and if they aren't punished by the law they should be punished by their own conscience.

But what happens when art shows us that this may not be the case? What if a man pursues wealth at all costs, only to find that he's pretty happy. What if he commits terrible acts in order to gain everything he desires and founds that it was worth it?

That's the idea I'm currently working on. I guess it's a little derivative in that these moral questions are a big part of the idea, but I want to really examine these concepts that we invent in order to reconcile ourselves to our situation and ask what it means if we can see that they are merely fabricated? A lot of people in the 'real world' know that they're not. Well, we suspect. But is this a case of art catching up to the spectator? For after all, Oscar Wilde tells us that “it is the spectator, and not life, that art truly mirrors.” Interesting, innit?

What are your thoughts? Are there films you feel perfectly articulate these ideas? Any I've missed out (and before you start, I know I've forgotten No Country For Old Men)? Do you think sometimes that art moves slower than society in the use and discarding of ideas?
Better yet, how about films in which characters who act morally are portrayed as dangerous? I'm thinking Travis Bickle, but please tell me more!

References
Books
Adorno, T and Horkheimer, M 1973, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp120-167.
Falzon, C 2002, Philosophy Goes To The Movies, USA and Canada, Routledge.

Plato, Republic.
Wilde, O 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Films
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989)
On The Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)
Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987)

Apologies for the incredibly inconsistent referencing.

Cinesthesia and Quadrophenia

Vivian Sobchack believes that there exists between the cinema and the spectator a powerful relationship that goes beyond the limits of the mind. She argues that the film image can produce a bodily effect on the spectator and not only that, but the cinema represents a crossing over of the senses – in effect, a kind of synaesthesia that she calls 'cinesthesia.'
To me, this article is fascinating because I'm incredibly interested in the relationship between the viewer and the text, and the ways in which this relationship is played out. The idea of the cinema as producing cinesthesia has informed me before when researching the concept of 'seeing' music in music videos. I find that sometimes, I am affected by a song more when it is used in a film.


For example, the moment I realised I loved The Smiths was while watching Episode three of Blackpool. To sum up Blackpool, it is a dickensian study of a man using murder, intrigue, the 'family entertainment' business, sex, and setting it in a Northern England resort town. Oh, and did I mention it is all accompanied by pop music?

Well, in episode three, DI Peter Carlisle decides to try and get more dirt on his enemy Ripley Holden by scaring his son Danny into giving up information on his dad. The local police know Danny has been dealing drugs and set up a trap for him. A handsome young man solicits him for drugs and just as he's about to deliver the goods, the young man reveals his badge and Carlisle and back-up head toward him. Do they walk toward their catch? No. They dance toward him, and sing along, to The Boy With The Thorn In His Side.
The sight of David Tennant singing and dancing to Morrissey moved me and I decided to stop thinking of the Smiths as 'emo music for snobs and intellectuals' and give them a listen. My only regret is that Blackpool wasn't made sooner.


This seems a trivial reason for stumbling across your favourite band (and to be honest, I had loved How Soon Is Now for ages and been known to burst into tears upon hearing Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I want for years, but I never really associated these songs with The Smiths – again, with scenes from movies; The Craft and Ferris Bueller's Day Off – and covers were featured in both of those films!), but when a film is able to combine audio and video perfectly to express an emotion or an idea, it affects the spectator and they take both of those elements with them. The binding of sound to image remains etched on your brain, and you forever connect those emotions to the sound and the image both separately and together.
This is also how I came to love Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. Jeff Buckley's version had always moved me to tears, but Cohen's left me cold. I think it was because Buckley's version is so blatantly designed to produce an emotional response. My friend Amanda commented that the strings on Buckley's guitar as he plays the song are designed to literally pull at the heartstrings, and my friend Victoria agrees, arguing that the changes Buckley made to the composition provoke an emotional response to the song. And they always did for me. If it were a film, it would probably be called a tear-jerker (read Linda Williams for another great analysis of what she calls 'body genres'). It's a powerful song. But whether I desensitised myself after repeat listens, or if The OC ruined it, I stopped having the same response.

The song is most often used with images of love lost, which is beautiful, but when I analysed the lyrics, to me it's about feeling abandoned by God. The biblically-themed verses make that seem quite obvious when you really think about it, but I guess because Buckley didn't use a lot of these verses , people think of it differently. It's only when you pair the song with images of hopelessness and desperation, or with images of death and grief that this connection becomes quite strong.


John Cale's version has been used both as an accompaniment to heartbreak and lost love, but it's also been used as an accompaniment to grief. An episode from the first series of Scrubs, which dealt with Turk, JD and Eliot all losing their patients, featured Cale's version and it was haunting.
So, how did I finally experience the song in its original form, by the fucking amazing Leonard Cohen? Er, while watching Watchmen. Yep. A comic book movie.


The film, and I'm assuming the graphic novels do too really explores the completely unheroic side of life as a hero, or as someone placed in a position of authority. For some, it is too much. A licence to indulge in whatever sin and corruption they like. For others, it is a tiresome burden that you must eventually dissociate yourself from. For others, it is a youthful adventure that stops being fun. Some have pure intentions but lose hope, and for others, logic takes the place of compassion.

Set in alternate 1985, President Richard Nixon rules a dilapidated, grey New York. The Cold War has escalated to the point of nuclear war again feeling like an inevitability. And superheroes are now outlaws, vigilantes with nothing more than a desire for blood and chaos. The band of superheroes who invoked this ban, the Watchmen, have all gone their separate ways. At the film's beginning, one is murdered. The others must come back together to discover who murdered one of their own and maybe stop the impending doom.


Now, the ways in which this story unfolds is powerful, dark stuff, different to every other comic book film. A lot of comic book movie fans, whom I call idiots, hated this film. I loved it. I don't know if it captured the essence of the graphic novels, but for me it totally subverted the cliché-laden superhero narrative.


There is a montage in which the surviving Watchmen are at a loss as to what they should do and the situation seems entirely without hope. One member is dead, another imprisoned, the other has escaped to another planet, tired of the human need to always assign blame to others for their plight. Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is absolutely the perfect sound for these images. And it just entirely sums up the emotional pull of this sequence of the film.
Now I'm a great champion of this song and as lovely as Buckley's version is, it just can't touch the subtlety and intelligence of Cohen's or even Cale's, for that matter. But enough of that, because I feel as though I've been arguing about this for ages. And it isn't the point that I'm trying to make.


The point is that I've found that the inspiration for many of my ideas, or for sequences in my scripts, come directly from music. The sound perfectly expresses an emotion I want to evoke, or the images just spring from the music I'm listening to. With that in mind, I'd like to note down the ideas that have been strengthened by music and the music that has inspired moments for my ideas.


Any Way You Want It – Journey
The film it inspired: MacCormack and Jones
The idea: The song was the perfect soundtrack to a moment in which MacCormack and Jones, two dishpigs in a restaurant, high-five their way to a successful crime-fighting team. I wrote a version of the script for a media production project and for very obvious reasons (we didn't have any money to buy the rights and we weren't sure how to contatct the right people about it), we couldn't use the song in the film. However, the song's rousing vocals, guitar licks and complete cheesiness set the tone for the entire project. We even used it in our pitch. I fully intend on making this film as it was always intended, and you can bet your bottom dollar that this song will accompany a high-five. Even if it's the only thing I spend money on.


Les Temps de L'Amour – Francoise Hardy
The idea: I don't have a film in mind. This song represents a song inspiring an image. It's not attached to an idea I'm already working on. Whenever I listen to this song, I get this lovely, 60s-style black and white image. It's an ECU of a young woman, the wind whipping her hair around her face. She appears to blink back tears, but before we witness any change in her expression, we fade to black and the song continues over the end credits.


Now clearly, it's some sort of romantic take on the final image of The 400 Blows, by Francois Truffaut, which isn't a musical thing at all. However, it is the song that inspires this take on that haunting image. Now, I just need to craft an entire work around one final image.
Often, I'm reading a book and I think about how I would make it. Some music has inspired me along the way.


Brave New World
Fashion – David Bowie
The sequence: the organised social activity. I always think 'turn to the left, turn to the right,' and 'listen to me, don't listen to me, talk to me, don't talk to me...' and the kind of ritualised dance that the people take part in.


The Picture of Dorian Gray
Newborn – Muse
The sequence: the ominous undertones of the song seem to perfectly encapsulate the darkness that informs Dorian Gray's transformation from naïve young man to student of hedonism. His decision to let the portrait bear the burden of his sins rather than as a moral compass represents a dark rebirth, a new journey into the depths of true sin.

This may be an unwanted interpretation of the original story, but I've always wanted to do a version in which Dorian is a woman. People will argue that this robs the story of it's study of homosexuality and the social taboo surrounding it, but I think what lies at the heart of Wilde's story is not simply the exploration of his own sexuality (don't do what Basil laments – perceive art as autobiography), but the idea of art as a reflection of the person consuming it; the spectator. And on the issue of sexuality, a third interpretation of the story on film would provide yet an another interesting portrayal of gender relations in the story. The Hollywood film was seen as inferior, completely removing the intelligent study of gender relations, turning it instead into a man making a horrible choice and seeing the chance for redemption within the love of a woman (donna reed). I know there is another version in the works starring the guy out of Prince Caspian. I can only assume that this version will be more faithful to the novel.

In changing the gender of the protagonist, it will instantly change the gender relations within the story. People may suggest that it is a cliché that a woman is obssessed with her own youthful image, or another way of denying a homosexual voice within the narrative (not necessarily, of course – Sybil's gender doesn't have to change. I guess people would say that audiences are more receptive to two women together, but there have been a lot of films lately adressing homosexual men and relationships), but really, but I guess it's a dramatic comment on Simone De Beauvoir's writings on the subject of the Gaze. She argued that women are so used to be subjected to the gaze of others that they begin to internalise it, so that they are constantly subjecting themselves to the Gaze (think about how long you spend looking at yourself in the mirror, turning yourself into parts and not a whole). There's a great example of this in Mad Men, in which the women deal with so much objectification from men that they exercise it over each other.

But enough of my grand ambitions.


A lot of the times, I have an idea but can't quite work it out until I hear music that inspires me. I've been working on this time-travel meets Vertigo kind of idea for a while, and three particular bands have really inspired me and moved the story forward in my mind; The Smiths, Midnight Juggernauts and Klaxons.


a lonely young man is drawn into a plot spanning decades by a beautiful, enigmatic and charismatic young woman from the future. It's a film noir science-fiction film. Yeah, because that totally hasn't been done before! Cough. To me, it's an homage to two films; Vertigo and La Jetee. I know, why am I bothering to do a sci-fi version of Vertigo when La Jetee and Twelve Monkeys are both such wonderful explorations of the film? To me, it's that idea of moments in time converging on one another, and the film noir trap of the vulnerable man being disempowered by a devious woman . In Vertigo, the woman is a victim too, and her destruction is the way in which the man attempts to claim his own power back, but it's useless. The damage has been done. I like the idea of creating a sense of anachronism, of being out of time. Things that seem to have a timeless appeal can become a symbol of a character's stasis. The music is a big part of this.


Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now – The Smiths
The idea: Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now is the perfect way to establish my protagonist, and the image I have is of him walking through a grey, depressing industrial estate on his way to a party. And the kind of party? A costume party, and he is dressed as, you guessed it – Morrissey. His time-travelling femme fatale will be Marie Antoinette, a figure blamed for the downfall of the French economy, punished for someone else's poor financial decisions (supporting the British in their fight against the Americans), and while she'll represent three seemingly random periods of time (a woman from the future living in a time she considers the past, dressed as a figure from the 17th century), it will make so much sense, given the situation she's about to tangle my protagonist up in.


Across The Galaxy – Midnight Juggernauts
The idea: The idea, as mentioned before, is to use completely different kinds of music to represent the present and the future, but while that music will seem perfect on the surface (given that the two different kinds of music will distinctly portray the past and the future), but they will be anachronistic in that the present music will already be from the past, and the music from the future will be from the present. But not even that, because the music that I would like to use for the segments in the future are already old – by a couple of years at that. There should be this disjuncture between what the music is supposed to represent and what it really is. Across The Galaxy by Midnight Juggernauts inspired the actual time-travelling within the film, though now I'm not sure I actually want to show any travelling at all. I've been toying with the idea that the whole idea of the future is a con, but I don't know. The cover of the album it comes from, Dystopia, features a painting of the Northern Lights and this, combined with the light sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2046 (and by association I guess the warp-speed effect in Star Wars) provided the idea for the way in which these symbols of the future are so firmly grounded in the past.


Isle Of Her – Klaxons
The idea: the Klaxons' fusing of synthesisers and guitars, while in no way original, is done in a way as to create these eerie, ominous tunes. This song, about a doomed mythic journey, inspired the dark deeds my protagonist is forced to participate in with my femme fatale and her devious lover. I guess, just as I think Midnight Juggernauts (which some could argue are a pale imitation of klaxons, but they're a bit mean) does, is create a sense of elements colliding and create a dystopic vision of the future, as the title of the Juggernauts album suggests, I guess. And yes, I'm well aware I'm indulging in the modern sci-fi cliché of the ruined future.


Two Receivers – Klaxons
The idea: I see the protagonist and the femme fatale coming together whenever I listen to this song, and inspired by the video for Put Yourself In My Place by Kylie Minogue, they're enjoying conjugal bliss in zero gravity. Don't know how it all works in space, but I'm sure astronauts would be able to fill me in...


Like A Drug – Kylie Minogue
The idea: musical inspiration can strike at any time, and even if the idea has already been crafted and formed, music can often provide a concretisation of ideas that seem unformed. I was listening to this song as I was writing the previous paragraph and thought; this song could bring together the elements of romance within this idea of time colliding. I always planned to return to the costume party, and I think that Like A Drug could replace a song used earlier at the party to represent the binding of the future and the present. Hmmmm.


I don't think I could ever write without music and I'm currently working on an idea that goes entirely hand-in-hand with music.


The Beautiful and The Damned
Adding the second 'The' is not the only way I want to interpret F. Scott Fitzgerald's incendiary analysis of self-destruction and the debauchery of the idle rich. If these people are represented by the new aristocracy in Fitzgerald's work, rock and pop stars seem perfect for the modern age. Of course, the aristocracy in America and Britain are now the children of rock stars, so maybe that's something to add to it? I was thinking that Anthony, the protagonist, would desire to be a famous rock star, but the desire for fame and money without working hard would be the bigger pull than the actual music. As I'm writing this, I feel a change in the whole narrative coming. Son of a rock star, Anthony wants to be a rock star but really he just wants to spend his father's money. Gloria, his perceived love interest, sees Anthony as her meal ticket. Her talent is wasted by her new status in the modern day upper echelons of society. Their perceived musical prowess provides the soundtrack for their adventures, and their playing out of the rock star clichés seems informed by their knowledge of pop music. As their youth and naivete give way to their inflated egos, the music will change with them.


Poor Boy – Nick Drake
The scene: Anthony sits busking at a train station, playing this song. I love this song, because I think it's a very cheeky song from Drake. The saxophone and the piano seem to exude this self-awareness of the image Drake creates of a lonely young man. To me, it's not really a song about loneliness and the need for love, but a man's plea to a woman to take pity on him. It's that line, “he's a mess, but he'll say yes/If you just dress in white,” that does it for me. And I think this is the perfect description of the image Anthony is trying to project; the attractive, lonely, struggling musician who just needs love. He's playing with stereotypical ideas of the struggling musician. Gloria happens to go past, stopping when she recognises the song. She begins to sing the backing vocals, revealing not her love of the song and their shared musical knowledge, but their shared knowledge of popular culture.


Gloria – Patti Smith
The scene: In essence, I want music to be the narrator of the film. It drives the narrative and provides the emotional and visual cues to propel the story along. This is the moment in which Anthony finally wins the heart of Gloria. Unfortunately, their reckless passion will ruin them and ultimately fade, but this will be a genuinely beautiful moment. This song is absolutely perfect because, for one, it's about a girl named Gloria. What girl wouldn't want a boy to serenade them with a song about them (I fell madly in a love with a guy in my class who, on hearing my name, began to sing Long, Tall Sally. Aaaah)? But more importantly, it's not really a song about love at all but about lust. The song is about the glorification of sin, really. It's about a guy who seduces a girl for fun. The confusion of lust for love will be Anthony and Gloria's downfall, and this is only the beginning.


Sawdust Man – Ben Kweller
The scene: The moment in which Anthony and Gloria's only real taste of fame isn't really inspired by this song but by Russell Brand. My Booky Wook is as much the literary inspiration for this film as Fitzgerald's novel is. He recounts in the book a moment in his drug phase in which he singlehandedly ruined a television production (not a one-off event, obviously). The idea was to travel around the UK in a van and interview people on the fringes of society. As they were about to set off on their first interview, Brand decided that rather than get in the van and do his job, he would instead make camp on top of the bus and refuse to budge, despite the pleas of the producer, director and his friend and collaborator Matt Morgan. It was his drive toward self-destruction, his need to test the limits of normal behaviour (he often asks himself, what would happen if I just keep doing this?) and of course, his drug addiction, that leads to this childish urge to refuse to do what is asked of him. And the line from the Ben Kweller song, 'I'm on top of the Greyhound Station, won't you please come home?' seemed to cement this scene in the narrative. After a fight with Gloria that results in her threat that she quit the band, and a night of drugs and debauchery, Anthony climbs to the top of the tour bus and refuses to budge until Gloria returns to the band, howling this line of the song at the top of his lungs.

I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us.

Do you ever think that people aren't really people, but merely points along your personal narrative? Visual cues designed to allow the protagonist, i.e. you, to move forward?


A lady at the bus stop began talking to me about her mother, Lucy, who had terrible asthma but the loveliest singing voice. The neighbours knew when she was home for the day. “Lucy's home today,” they'd say. Instead of being the kind of neighbours who'd tell this woman to shut the fuck up, they enjoyed the sound of someone genuinely joyful.


She also told me about the time her mother was ridiculed for wearing a beret to church (not a proper hat), and when she couldn't afford to put money in the collection plate, she didn't go. She took her daughter outside where they could hear the service and they sang along in their backyard. Everyone missed her. The priest asked her about her absence and she said she didn't have a hat. The next week, the priest gave a sermon and said something like, “it's important to worship God, it doesn't matter what you wear on your head when you do it.” lucy was embarrassed.


Lucy also made cakes and sweets all the time, randomly. She'd tell her daughter to invite her friends around for afternoon tea. She always made desserts for their local doctor, who drove past their house every night on his way home. He'd just come in and eat dessert. It wasn't unusual to wake up in the morning and find him alseep on their lounge. She also told me about a teacher who'd pretend to keep her after class so that the other children wouldn't see that her lunch was wrapped in newspaper, and one day in class mentioned that some of the great figures of the past may have been so poor that their food was wrapped in newspaper.


She said she found herself thinking of those times fondly, because even though at the time it seemed embarrassing, horrible and unfair, she realised how lucky she was. Her mother's beautiful voice, the afternoon teas, the kind teachers. She could only appreciate it for what it was now that she was older.


And I thought; is sentimentalism such a bad thing? Or is it just another way of telling ourselves we don't need what we can't have? We're poor, so we decide that there are more important things in life than being rich, and we comfort ourselves with the idea that rich people are unhappy (so much so that some rich people buy into it). We tell an infinite number of stories to reconcile ourselves to some depressing fact. We die, so we develop an afterlife that promises to be even better. Or we talk about the value of living life to the fullest. We warn ourselves that the worst part of committing a crime is the effect it has on your soul, or your conscience.


Woody Allen explores this idea in Crimes And Misdemeanors (and in a less refined way in Match Point). What if there is no inner moral code? What if the only thing keeping us from committing dreaful acts is the fear of getting caught? And what happens if we realise this is true?
The basic storyline is this: Martin Landau is at a party. He strikes up a conversation with a documentary filmmaker, played by Woody Allen. He tells him the story of a man who is having an affair (with Anjelica Huston, no less). The mistress becomes obssessed, convinced that they need to be together and that he needs to tell his wife of the affair and leave her. He can't do it. Instead, he decides that the best thing to do is to have her taken care of. He hires his dodgy brother to do it.


He is racked with guilt. He sees his other brother, Sam Waterston, going blind. He has committed a sin and is receiving no punishment, while his priest is being punished, seemingly for his commitment to God. He considers turning himself in, his life is in ruins, everything is wrong and then suddenly, he just gets over it. He stops feeling guilty. He realises that he isn't going to get caught. And he's fine.


He asks Woody Allen's character what he thinks that means. Allen responds that it is Man's worst nightmare realised. If we have no moral compass, no conscience, in effect no soul, then it is the ultimate proof that God doesn't exist.


These questions and the texts that adress them always come back to religion. This is an ultimately horrific idea – that there is no innate need to be moral. I think it is, too, but no text ever really just lets this idea wash over people. Even a text like The Picture of Dorian Gray (oh, how I love it!) eventually surmises that we cannot rid ourselves of the consequences of our misdeeds.


The question at the heart of the novel is this: what would we do if we could see the corruption of our soul? Would we use it as an ever present guide, ensuring our soul stayed in perfect condition? Or would we let it bear the burden of our sins, and merely watch it's degradation with fascination? If our soul is separate from us, do we ever really have to deal with the consequences of our choices in life?


Wilde decides in this instance to say no, we can never free ourselves from these consequences. What Dorian thought would free him from his inhibitions and his restraint becomes his prison. He lives with the constant fear that someone will discover his terrible secret. He begins to live a double life. He murders a man to hide it. And in the end it makes him paranoid. And it kills him (well, he essentially kills himself by killing the picture which has become his soul).


Wilde's idea, that the consequences of our actions become manifest in our physical features, was merely a dramatic expression of widely-held thought. There are a lot of other things going on in this book (our immersion in art, the double-standards of society of the time, etc), but this is what fascinates me at the moment – no text that explores the idea of what it means to be moral, and the ways in which human beings use myth and art to console themselves to their situation, ever really wants to say 'No, there's no innate need to be moral. There are no consequences. You really are wrong about things.'


I guess one film and book that does actually leave this idea with you is No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy (film directed by the Coen brothers). The end of that film suggests that this is merely the way it is. Sometimes, people don't get what they deserve. There will always be things that are horrifying. There are things, and people, in this world that defy understanding or belief. Why does that shock us so much when we see it in art?


Which brings me to my point. I had an idea for a story that does this. The myth that the poor are richer for having friends and family and for understanding that money isn't important. Rich people put too much emphasis on money and as a result, lose all the things that should matter. In the end, all they have is their money and this makes them profoundly unhappy.
People sometimes forget that in a capitalist society (sorry guys, but that's what we're living in. In the West, anyway), money can sometimes mean freedom. But anyway. Maybe I just want to rip off Crimes and Misdemeanors and make it even more depressing. But is that a bad thing?