Oh, erm, hello! This is just a quick message to say that I will one day soon write an essay that will blow your mind and it will appear right here on this very blog.
This is more of a to-do note for myself, but I would rather like to explore the following idea:
A lecturer once said in a class that some guy (can't remember - this always happens to me when I try to tell stories. I suck)once said that in the end, all classical Hollywood films are a romance.
I think I've mentioned previously that this is something that is becoming evident in the emergence of films that are now being identified as 'the bromance' (I prefer Bromantic Comedy, or Brom-Com), but I do believe I've found a filmmaker whose work perfectly sums up the idea that all films are a romance.
I'm not talking about the emergence of films focusing on the relationship between two guys (but I will one day), I'm talking about the idea that each film in some way follows the generic conventions of the romance genre. And Edgar Wright's work represents the clearest evidence that this statement that every Hollywood film is a romance is correct.
Even on the surface, it's pretty obvious; Shaun of the Dead was promoted as a romantic zombie comedy (or rom-zom-com) about a guy fighting off zombies to show his girlfriend he's capable of following through on his promises and is willing to embrace change. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is about a slacker musician who defeats 7 evil exes in order to be with the girl of his dreams.
The two that are perfect examples of Wright's interest in the romance genre and may not be so obvious are the tv series Spaced and Hot Fuzz.
So that's what I want to talk about, and hopefully find out exactly who said the thing about all films being a romance, a bit of genre analysis and some research on the generic conventions of the romance genre. Then apply it all to Wright's work and proving why once again I win at being a film geek.
Catch ya on da flippidy.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Adoxography: Skilled writing on an unimportant subject
In keeping with the theme of last week, I feel that sometimes, the title of this particular post could easily apply to me. I often wonder what the term is for skilled speaking on an unimportant subject.
I've been pulled into the world of buzzwords, procedures, processes, customer service, etc, and I find myself dabbling in adoxography less and less. And it pains me. Because my writing on those subjects isn't that skilled.
After reading interviews with Eli Roth and thinking he was going to reinvent the horror film because he's a filmmaker who really knows his generic conventions and therefore his films will be awesome, and being subsequently disappointed (you know I love you, Roth. Right?) I realised that perhaps it's true: critics talk better than they film. The exception to that rule is of course the critics of Cahiers du Cinema who would go on to create the Nouvelle Vague. But apart from them, who else? Scorsese is a film historian - does that count, I wonder?
My directorial debut (student of course) required me to go into detail about my infleunces and what I wanted the film to communicate and I think that what I wrote about the film promised something I ultimately couldn't deliver. And I remembered that my last project for my degree in Australia was much the same - my exegesis (document of creative practice and creative process in regard to a particular work) was about genre and genre transformation and if you hadn't seen the film you'd probably think it was some amazing work. The term 'new Simon Pegg' might be thrown around (a gal can dream, can't she?). But it wasn't. We saved it from being a complete disaster but in the end I was still embarrassed to show it to my peers in Manchester. Which brings me back to the subject: is my own analysis of my work simply a form of adoxography?
I've started reading yet another book and hopefully I'll finish this one (and then finish Brideshead Revisited, Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Brothers Karazmazov, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Mrs Dalloway). It's called Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. As a lover of fiction and hence buying it in its most accessible and economic form (cheapskate) - it's a Popular Penguin edition (you know, the orange and white one you can pick up for a tenner while lamenting the fact the prettier edition next to it in Borders is almost three times the price?) and it had a little bio of Waugh. The thing that caught my attention was a quote from Mr Waugh himself, which is the following:
"I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me."
What I think he was saying here is not that character is of no consequence to him in his writing, but more that he writes as someone with an interest in the structure of how we communicate - that is, it is the structure of the novel that primarily moves him; language, words, sentences, chapters. Psychology and motivation are secondary, but nonetheless important.
Which made me happier about the way in which I approach my own work. I'm often inspired by the language of film before characters. I like to place my characters in a particular film world and the filmmakers I admire all use their films primarily as an invetigation of the structure of film just as much as the stories and the characters who inhabit that world; Hitchcock, Tarantino, Scorsese, and Wright in particular.
And it is rather nice to be able to say to people, 'well, my approach to my work is in much the same vein as the likes of Evelyn Waugh.' Because I'm white.
Waugh has given some delicious delicacies for thought, but the advice I think I always come back to came not from a famous novellist or groundbreaking filmmaker (yet!) but from a friend of mine in Manchester,a fellow writer who helped make me realise that writing is my passion. Whenever I told her I was stuck on a scene she would say what do you want it to say?
Anyone who knows me will say I have too much to say - maybe that's my problem and I always wonder if what I'm saying is actually of any value in this world, but I'll say it anyway. And I figure that if I'm speaking the language of film, which is primarily visual, at least I'll be saying it without opening my great big trap of a mouth.
I've been pulled into the world of buzzwords, procedures, processes, customer service, etc, and I find myself dabbling in adoxography less and less. And it pains me. Because my writing on those subjects isn't that skilled.
After reading interviews with Eli Roth and thinking he was going to reinvent the horror film because he's a filmmaker who really knows his generic conventions and therefore his films will be awesome, and being subsequently disappointed (you know I love you, Roth. Right?) I realised that perhaps it's true: critics talk better than they film. The exception to that rule is of course the critics of Cahiers du Cinema who would go on to create the Nouvelle Vague. But apart from them, who else? Scorsese is a film historian - does that count, I wonder?
My directorial debut (student of course) required me to go into detail about my infleunces and what I wanted the film to communicate and I think that what I wrote about the film promised something I ultimately couldn't deliver. And I remembered that my last project for my degree in Australia was much the same - my exegesis (document of creative practice and creative process in regard to a particular work) was about genre and genre transformation and if you hadn't seen the film you'd probably think it was some amazing work. The term 'new Simon Pegg' might be thrown around (a gal can dream, can't she?). But it wasn't. We saved it from being a complete disaster but in the end I was still embarrassed to show it to my peers in Manchester. Which brings me back to the subject: is my own analysis of my work simply a form of adoxography?
I've started reading yet another book and hopefully I'll finish this one (and then finish Brideshead Revisited, Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Brothers Karazmazov, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Mrs Dalloway). It's called Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. As a lover of fiction and hence buying it in its most accessible and economic form (cheapskate) - it's a Popular Penguin edition (you know, the orange and white one you can pick up for a tenner while lamenting the fact the prettier edition next to it in Borders is almost three times the price?) and it had a little bio of Waugh. The thing that caught my attention was a quote from Mr Waugh himself, which is the following:
"I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me."
What I think he was saying here is not that character is of no consequence to him in his writing, but more that he writes as someone with an interest in the structure of how we communicate - that is, it is the structure of the novel that primarily moves him; language, words, sentences, chapters. Psychology and motivation are secondary, but nonetheless important.
Which made me happier about the way in which I approach my own work. I'm often inspired by the language of film before characters. I like to place my characters in a particular film world and the filmmakers I admire all use their films primarily as an invetigation of the structure of film just as much as the stories and the characters who inhabit that world; Hitchcock, Tarantino, Scorsese, and Wright in particular.
And it is rather nice to be able to say to people, 'well, my approach to my work is in much the same vein as the likes of Evelyn Waugh.' Because I'm white.
Waugh has given some delicious delicacies for thought, but the advice I think I always come back to came not from a famous novellist or groundbreaking filmmaker (yet!) but from a friend of mine in Manchester,a fellow writer who helped make me realise that writing is my passion. Whenever I told her I was stuck on a scene she would say what do you want it to say?
Anyone who knows me will say I have too much to say - maybe that's my problem and I always wonder if what I'm saying is actually of any value in this world, but I'll say it anyway. And I figure that if I'm speaking the language of film, which is primarily visual, at least I'll be saying it without opening my great big trap of a mouth.
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