Listen to This

Now that I've been shown my destiny, it's time for Inspiration to flow my way (now, of course Csikszentmihalyi would say that being creative has nothing to do with these Romantic ideas of divine messages working through the artist independent of the artist themselves, but he's the person who tells you what a sausage roll is made of while you're eating one - the Spoiler, I call him. Everyone can be creative? Oh, fuck you. I'm going to read Nietzsche. He'll tell me I'm special, like the wonderful, crazy, adorably-bearded elitist that he was).

Well, because I am so very special, it didn't take long for Inspiration to come for a visit, put the kettle on, make me a cuppa and give me some choice material. So here it is in two words:

MODEL CITIZEN

It's Citizen Kane meets America's Next Top Model. Pret-A-Porter meets The West Wing. Tyra Banks meets her destiny. It's pure US sitcom poetry.

The pitch: Due to a polling error, a famous supermodel is mistakenly voted into office as a congresswoman for a small town. Rather than correct the error, the model's agency decides it will boost her career. The staff of the office must deal with the model and make her look as competent as possible to keep their jobs in the face of overwhelming new public scrutiny.

American sitcoms. They're so wonderfully reliable. A limited range of settings (office, apartment, house, bar, coffee shop), stock characters (the ditz, the sleaze, the bitch, the gay -- always male, why is that?) and ridiculous situations repeated endlessly (Janice. Oh. My. Gawd).

And Model Citizen has all this and more! The limited location -- the office of the congresswoman. The ridiculous situations repeated endlessly -- the show is, the staff do the model's work because she's stupid. Great! And it also has the stock characters; the ditzy model, the sleazy researcher, the bitchy personal assistant and the gay public relations guy. It's basically what Spin City could have been if someone had completely fucked it up (which they didn't. Well, not while Michael J. Fox was in it, anyway).

The problem with my deliciously cheesy sitcom pitch is that it sounds brilliant. It's an ironic, comedic examination of the conventions of the US sitcom (but that's been done with the wonderful Matt Stone/Trey Parker show That's My Bush! I wonder if that's available on DVD...) and could be considered the best piece of work I will ever create.

And if you think about Jane Feuer's point that "in order to perceive subversion, we must look at something besides narrative closure...these are the moments that one remembers (Feuer in Creeber 2001, p.68)," Model Citizen could be seen as the ultimate comment on our obssession with celebrity and our need to popularise affairs that play out in the public eye. It's also an analysis of the way in which we can only allow ourselves to engage with something if celebrities are attached to it. The line between politicians and celebrities has been blurred and this ridiculous sitcom is the dramatic manifestation of an ideology already becoming dominant in society.

What a load of shit.

Reference: Creeber, G (Ed) 2001, The Television Genre Book, British Film Institute, London.

Ode to a writer

"All I do, is sit down at the typewriter, and start hittin' the keys. Getting them in the right order, that's the trick. That's the trick." -- Garth Marenghi.

Isn't it funny how sometimes, the person you wanted to be when you grew up is actually what you end up being?

When I was little, I went through several future occupations; librarian (so I could read books all day), writer (so I could read and write books all day), fashion designer (my Beverly Hills 90210 dress was the toast of the season), marine biologist (so I could read books with dolphins), filmmaker (so I could read books with Leonardo DiCaprio), and now I'm back to writer.

After three years of pretending to myself that I like performing risk assessments, struggling with trying to make a budget, ringing actors and trying in vain to keep crew members from killing each other, I realised something: being a producer sucks balls. To quote Mr Dylan, 'it ain't me, babe.'

And so, I want to pay tribute to one of my idols. F. Scott Fitzgerald? Well, yes, but that's not who I mean. Oscar Wilde? Lovely, but no. Hunter S Thompson? Well, of course, but no. I'm referring to a man who has essentially defined for me the art of genre analysis (it could be Daniel Chandler, but again, wrong. You suck at this.).

Of course I mean Simon Pegg. And let me count the ways:

He wanted to write a sketch about a man named Peter Parker who thought he was Spider-man.

Each and every project he makes with Edgar Wright shows such as detailed knowledge of genre and proves time and time again that they are aware of exactly what a set of conventions are; a game played between the producer and the consumer of a text.

This article about zombies: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set

He introduced us to Tyres O' Flaherty, and gave him pearls of wisdom like the following:

"Last Night was an A1, tip-top, clubbing, jam fair. It was a sandwich of fun, on ecstasy bread, wrapped up in a big bag of disco fudge. It doesn't get much better than that. I just wish that I could control these fucking mood swings!"

He managed to make David Schwimmer's dumbed-down version of British comedy fun.

The scar on his forehead, left forever unexplained...sigh.

On The Buses

A couple of years ago in a creative writing class, one of my classmates wrote a short piece about a collection of interesting strangers on a bus, observed by an unnamed protagonist. Discussion arose over who the unnamed narrator might be. I suggested that it was the bus driver.

But of course, Salad! That's what you're thinking. You obviously weren't in that class. And you're intelligent. And I think I love you because you recognise my brilliance. The author looked at me as though I was the most intellectually-deficient person and said, "yeah, but he's the driver. If he was watching people he would crash."

Never mind the term artistic licence (but he only has his bus licence), or the fact that there is such a thing as a rear-view mirror or that the bus driver has contact with everyone who gets on the bus. The thing is, the public transport system is a fertile ground to be farmed by even the most inept of writers.

Every day I witness a new narrative. A man finding God through music (possible drug addict raving about Jesus to an elderly lady), a mother and daughter bonding (they sat together every morning until the daughter's school friends started taking the same bus, but now the daughter's at uni they sit together every time), teenage boys becoming men (bunch of idiots texting their friend about a movie). It's all there!

The guy I like the most is a man who gets on the bus and reads from what looks like a diary. Yes, a diary. Not only that, but it looks like a girl's diary. It's pink, with a picture of flowers on the front. I see his lips move as he reads the diary and he always seems totally engrossed.

It is his diary? Has his teenage daughter run away and this is the only explanation, the key to unlocking the mystery of young women? Is he a creepo?

I prefer not to know, because the guessing is what makes it interesting. But the other day it was almost ruined by a woman desperate to bring down the walls of art, reveal the artifice of narrative like the Brechtian swine that she is. How did she almost achieve this coup for the realists?

She leaned over and asked him what he was reading. And he answered. But fear not, patrons of the arts! I didn't hear his response. What a relief.

Today a girl got on the bus with her baby. I've seen her twice before. Beautiful girl with clear skin, lovely hair, shining eyes. Every time before now I haven't heard her talking, just watched her playing with her adorable little girl. Well, tonight for the first time I heard her speak. And was disappointed. She is a total bogan. Oh well. That one was ruined but there will always be strange, beautiful people on the bus.

I wonder what they think of me in my corporate getup, white earphones jammed in my ears, my wayfarers concealing from no one that I'm asleep? Actually, I don't care. I'd rather just wonder about them.

Secret diary of a film nerd

Things I've learned this week:

I've learned that not many people know how to pronounce synecdoche. Boy will they have trouble with Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. For those of you playing at home, it's like this: see-neck-dough-key. There we are. Now if only we could all remember what it means when we walk out of class.

I've learned I can actually make my incredibly boring essay about international media and cultural imperialism a 2000 word ode to Michel Foucault's analysis of the subject and power.

And that if Michel Foucault could be reincarnated as Robert Pattinson I would marry him in an instant.

I've learned from finally reading The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl that deep down, men just want the same thing; to come in a high-class hooker's mouth.

I've learned that my office can seem a lot like the panopticon. Foucault is the gift that keeps on giving. Sigh.

I've learned that once Safety Dance gets stuck in your head, not even New York Telephone Conversation can absorb it.

I've learned that if I want to be a fan of the Kills I have to listen to Alison Mosshart coughing up her lungs on at least one track of each album. Ah, but it seems such a very small price to pay...

I've learned that the extent to which I am impulsive refers solely to impulse purchases.

3 times!

They say that in the classical Hollywood cinema everything is said three times; you'll see it onscreen, you'll have people looking at it, and you'll have people talking about it.

In writing, you shouldn't have to tell people anything. Show, don't tell! Scriptwriting coaches will tell you. Graham Linehan thinks that Smoke and Mirrors (IT Crowd, series 2 episode 5) suffers for talking about Moss's AbracadaBra without showing it enough.

I think show don't tell is preposterous in real life. We all think we're smarter than the classical Hollywood but the truth is, I don't think we are. Or maybe that's just me.

Today marked the third time I have had a ridiculous argument with a bus driver. What do these people want? This one called me dear in a patronising tone and I was so close to telling him to fuck off. I'm not a confrontational person. In confrontation I clam up, shake and go red, then think about all the cutting remarks I could have made. This time, I needed the bus driver to get me to work. And I couldn't think of a civilised substitute for cunt.

I also think that I'm such a whinger. Instead of being active and making my own opportunities, I choose to whine.

(when I was a full time student) Why am I broke? Because you refuse to get a crappy job to support your shoe fetish.
(allll the time) Why can't I lose weight? Because your food pyramid consists of chocolate, tea, diet coke, chicken schnitzel and brie.
(frequently) Why can't I get that fabulous job in media production? Because you're too used to having a fantastic income to beg for unpaid work experience.

My trip overseas was supposed to change my whining, procrastinating ways, but instead I've succumbed to it. Waiting for other people to tell me what to do, I sit around and whinge instead of planning. Well, that's it: I'm just going to book my flights and that will be that.

At lunch the other day, a colleague suggested that the rest of us watch too much television, and urged us to look outside at the blue sky and the clouds. I remarked that I'd seen them on tv, which earned me high-five (I believe it was well-deserved). Following lunch, I went to a class in which we talk about the increasing prominence of the screen within our daily life, and that we are constantly interacting with the world through a screen. Maybe my stupid remark reveals a knowledge that within culture we need a screen between ourselves and the outside world. As if I'm that intelligent.

I'm going to watch The Night Porter instead of finishing my essay. Who cares about cultural imperialism when Charlotte Rampling's around?

The language of film

Since I started making films instead of talking about them, I've had a hole in my heart. A hole that could only be filled by the artful examination of distance in film, the articulate appreciation of the zombie film, and the proper use of cinematic language.

A film lecturer I had once said that film critics could go on to make good films. He was referring, of course, to the Cahiers boys; Rohmer, Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut, but I'm holding out hope it can refer to me too. So far, hmm. Doubtful.

But upon the woeful absence of film studies as a requirement within my current studies, I feel that you cannot be a good filmmaker without being a film critic. And I'm not simply justifying my own existence, here. The amount of times we have been told that in order to communicate effectively in the workplace you need to be able to follow the discourse of the particular workplace, and I would still be reading shot lists that look like they've been prepared by Noah's wife in Wayne's World - I'm not in the film industry, but I watch a lot of films. Here's a list of your key terms, and trust me, you'll find them in any first-year textbook (it's actually the only one we have to buy):

Pan: this is where the camera moves from left to right, imitating a panorama. You do not pan up. You do not pan down. You do not pan forward or backward.

Tilt: Ah, now this is where the camera moves up, often referring to the way in which the camera moves when affixed to the tripod.

Crane: This is when the camera moves, often on, what is this? A crane. It's when you want to shoot something high up in the air. Wow!

Tracking: Oh, now see this is when the camera moves forward and backwards. On a series of tracks. Hence, the term tracking shot. It can move around too! Genius!

Why do I care about this shit so much? Because I just do. And everyone I know has gotten quite tired of hearing me rail on the subject. So now it goes into the Happy Spider Web, otherwise known as the world wide web.

If you can't speak the language of film, how will you ever communicate in the film world? We argue that every shot, every movement, every word of dialogue is a conscious creative decision, yet if we don't know why, isn't that sad? Or is it truly Csikszentmihalyi's utopia, in which we are so well trained in our culture that we do not have to make any conscious creative decisions at all? Is the entire point of learning in order to be completely unaware of having learned anything? Or is that the excuse I can use next time I can't articulate the meaning of the word Subjugation? And now, I'm thinking; do we use the institution of education to make verbs think they are inferior to us when we subjugate them?

This from a girl who has been preparing for her overseas trip by planning her haircut and colour.

But the thing that I missed most in my practical study of film is that no one really discusses film. Genre, conventions, the function of the music video as a means of synaesthesia, this all seems to fall by the wayside. Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Do filmmakers hate critics so much that they recoil from studying film for fear of simply uttering the words that will be used to heap scorn upon their masterpiece? Martin Scorsese was a film lecturer, for fuck's sake. And look at the magnificent dialectic of masculinity and violence he has been engaging in for thirty years!

Maybe we do just have an inherent understanding of some of these crucial concepts in films. All I ask is that you never direct me to pan backwards ever again. Ever.

Twilight

Picture it: A bored housewife sits at home listening to Muse and thinking to herself; how do I teach the kids the important values of faith and saving yourself for marriage without them laughing in my face or ignoring me?

The answer is the Twilight saga. And the values have become dressed up as vampire fiction, prompting vampires to become cool again (my friend Kass knew this months ago, but whatever). I don't know if that's actually how Stephenie Meyer's creative process got kickstarted, but I can see it in the books loud and clear, and it's very annoying to me.

But the kids love it, and I must say I took a week to read the entire series, so unable was I to put the books down. And so with everyone else I was excited to see the film adaptation of the first book in the series, Twilight. Not least because the kid who played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was playing Edward Cullen.

I have some very serious problems with the books. Other than being preachy, it seems to support a very oppressive position for young girls to put themselves in; namely, find a boy to look after you. On a literary level, I find Twilight incredibly frustrating. I know the kids like long books now (good old J.K.!), but seriously, you don't need three hundred pages to get to the point.

And while it's supposed to be a love story essentially, it's annoying that nothing of note happens until right at the very end, and that when it does happen, it's a huge anticlimax (hey, just because Bella and Edward aren't allowed to have any kind of climax until they're married, doesn't mean the reader can't have a good one, right?). Every time Bella is in danger, it just sort of, goes away. Alllll the time.

I wondered how the film would handle that and decided they would handle it well. Some film adaptations thrive with flawed source material. Kubrick did with A Clockwork Orange. Not that Twilight is anywhere near as good as that book. It's not hard to see what needs to be cut; mostly Bella's annoying lack of self-esteem, the introduction of real conflict earlier in the piece, and the endless descriptions of how hot Edward and his vampire family is.

Which, for the most part, the film does pretty skillfully. There are problems that can't be avoided - the apparent insistence by Meyer that we see what Edward's skin looks like in the sun (terribly fiddly special effects required, and it doesn't work very well, either), the fact that the danger at the end couldn't be sexed up enough without straying from the book (which I think they should've done), the insistence on hand-held camera work to give the film a 'realistic grounding' (totally pointless because it doesn't really suit the rest of the visual style, but if you're going to pursue it, at least make it good handheld camera work), and some dodgy casting (Nikki Reed is very pretty, but with her olive skin and dark brown hair she was always going to look awful as Rosalie Hale. She scrubs up ok but she's totally wrong for the part - Rosalie is described as being incredibly beautiful, beautiful as a human and even more so as a vampire. And the girl who played Alice was ok, but come on, did no one consider Nora Zehetner? She would've been awesome!). However, there is much that is good about the film.

The film looks beautiful, capturing the feel of the books perfectly. Everything is awash in muted blue and grey tones, contrasting with the green of the forest. Bella might hate it but the Forks of the film is incredibly pretty to look at. And so are the vampires. Well, mostly. They are exactly as they are described in the books, which must be a relief for fans and Meyer alike. And while the camera work can be dodgy, there are some really interesting moments (who knew pulling focus could look so cool?), and some nice subjective pov shots that remind you that this is Bella's story. Which is good, because Kristen Stewart portrays Bella as a smart, interesting, introverted character who is easily identified with.

The scenes of Bella with her school friends are probably the best, because director Catherine Hardwicke has experience realistically portraying teenagers. It provides a strong foundation with which to introduce the fantastic elements. Essentially, the story is about two teenagers experiencing their first love, and it's that element of the story that is done perfectly.

The vampire stuff is still pretty good, but I find those parts to be the weakest in the book, so perhaps it was always going to be the case. It's not that the film fails on this point, it's just that there's not much to work with.

The soundtrack is pretty good too. I expected much emo nonsense, but it is actually pretty decent. As an actor, Robert Pattinson is, well, a great musician. His contributions to the soundtrack are perfectly placed, hardly looking like shameless promotion at all. But the best part of the film, musically speaking, is the end. I heard 15 Step by Radiohead was a late inclusion, but it works beautifully. The first time I saw the film (yes, I've seen it twice. I am that lame), I was a little disappointed until the end credits. The end credits are really cool. It may not be a good thing that the best part about the film is the end credits, but they are really good.

I'm a bit worried about the rest of the series, but Twilight is good enough to keep the fans happy at least. Except for this douche bag who sat behind me and loudly exclaimed at the start that she'd been waiting to see the film for ages because she'd read all the books (you and every other 13 year old girl and her mum, honey)and then proceeded to explain the story to the kids she brough with her (to see a film about vampires. But the worst part really is that she talked during the film), only to say, again very loudly, that the film was disappointing. Maybe because you ruined it with your talking, bitch!

And Robert Pattinson is going to need a lot of help fighting off adolescent girls and finding one his own age after this, because he may just be the new Orlando Bloom.