Author: Rob

Writer. Film-maker. Cartoonist. Cook. Lover.

Five Days Of Script Frenzy

Well, so far so good. It should be noted that the first week of Script Frenzy has coincided with a Bank Holiday, and some shift time off. So I’ve been able to get my head down and hack out some serious scriptage.

Let’s do the maths. I’m writing a seven part comics series, each of which is 16 pages long. So far I have 20 pages down. But this equates to 33 actual script pages written, which means that whichever way you look at it I’m ahead of schedule. If I was to be positive, I could declare that I’m a third of the way there.

I wouldn’t say the story is spilling out of me, though. I have to break everything into pages and panels, and make sure that the story flows and works on a page, issue and collection basis. It’s not really a slog, but I’m aware that I can’t just blaze through a word-count in the same manner as Nanowrimo. I’m treading a bit more carefully than normal.

Further, the way Celtx (the scriptwriting software recommended for this adventure – Final Draft but free, thus with less of the bells and whistles but a dedicated comic-writing setup) formats a comic page is a bit, well, ODD. It breaks things down into an A/V script – that is, everything in boxes, description to the right, captions, bubbles and SFX to the left. It makes all kinds of sense, but it’s not something I’m used to. I really hope it’s acceptable for the final page count like that, otherwise I could be in real trouble.

Progress will also be delayed somewhat by an upcoming trip to Amsterdam for to partake in the drugs and ladies of negotiable virtue culture and maybe a small beer or two. I’ll be taking the Dell, but I expect my page rate to drop. Which is why I’m trying to stay as far ahead of schedule as I can now.

So, if you’ll excuse me. These coyote-spiders aren’t going to stalk my hero by themselves.

The Amazing Derek

When I was a teenager, a couple of friends and I used to jump on a train and head over to the bright lights of Clacton-On-Sea if we had a sunny school holiday with nothing better to do. It was a good place to get away from the parental units for a day, and generally misbehave. We’d hit the arcades, egg each other on into buying cheap lagers from the Spar on the esplanade, and try and desperately fail to talk to girls.

One event we always managed to fit into our itinerary was a visit to the Alhambra. This was a shabby cinema/theatre, tucked away in a side street. It had a bit of a reputation for showing obscure horror and sci-fi, and my friends and I made a habit of checking out what was on.

But if we were lucky, we would be in town while the management of the Alhambra made one of their regular attempts to pick up some of the spill-over crowd from whoever was playing at the pier theatre (Bobby Davro normally, if memory serves.)

Now. The management of the Alhambra had some strange ideas as to what constituted good live entertainment. Downright … bizarre ideas. Which was why me and my mates were always enthused when we crossed into Harold Road from the Marine Parade, to see signs up announcing the triumphant return of the Amazing Derek.

The Amazing Derek’s shows were short, sharp, and to the point. They were free to get in (the management made money off the concessions stand. We certainly ate our bodyweight in Revels whenever we pitched up) and lasted no more than ten minutes. It was closer to a sideshow in a fair than any proper theatrical venture. None the less, we scampered up, bought our chocs and settled down in the worn red velvet seating for the show.

The Rocky theme would blare out of rattling speakers, and Derek would stride out on stage. He was a short, wide man with a curious ruff of ginger hair nestling round the base of his skull. He wore a red silk dressing gown. On the back, wonky gold lettering proclaimed “THE AMAZING DEREK NOBODY DOES IT BETTOR”. The crowd, well, the three teenage boys in the front row, went nuts.

His stunning assistant, whose name I never did find out, then stepped daintily onto the stage. As daintily as you could do when you were dragging a heavy wooden sawhorse, anyway. She placed this in front of Derek. Then she dug in a hidden pocket of her costume (way too small and tight for a woman of her effusive dimensions, but she had our undivided attention while she struggled with her bustier) and after much drama and groaning of tortured fabric, produced a blue sateen bag. With much ceremony, she took three walnuts out of this bag and placed them carefully on the sawhorse in a line.

She withdrew. The lights dimmed a little.

Derek slipped his robe off.

I could describe the explosions of ginger hair that blazed over his chest and back. I could describe the taut firmness of a belly that had clearly made good friends with the Hofmeister Bear a long time ago. But really, all anyone was looking at when Derek disrobed was his gigantic penis. He was enormous. I mean, jaw-droppingly huge. His cock was as thick and wide as a police truncheon. It swung gently from side to side as Derek paraded across the stage, making sure the whole audience got a really good look at it.

Inevitably, this was the point where there were walkouts. We always stayed. We knew what was coming.

Derek positioned himself in front of the sawhorse, and grasped his manhood firmly. Then he lifted, and swung. CRACK. The walnut on the left shattered. Derek swung again. CRACK. There went the walnut on the right. CRACK. The walnut in the middle, sending nut-shards all over the delighted teenage boys in the front row. He stood back, to let us admire his feat of strength and dexterity, and then the curtains came across again. We would be on out feet by then, applauding wildly, but he never came out for an encore. We didn’t really need it. The act was perfect just as it was.

Last summer, I was at a loose end on a day off, and quite out of nowhere decided to visit Clacton. Have a wander around, have an ice cream, watch the sea. An aimless, nostalgic kind of a day.

Quite by chance, I found my route led me back along Marine Parade to Harold Road. I smiled, and thought I’d take a look and see if the Alhambra was still there.

It was. Not only that, but a faded banner outside declared “!!!TODAY LIVE IN PERRSON THE AMAZING DEREK!!!”

It couldn’t be, could it? I had to find out. Entrance was 50p, a concession to straitened times. The spotty girl at the concession stand seemed uninterested in my stories of past visits, and had no idea if this was really the same Derek. I slipped into the cool dark interior of the auditorium. The seats were a little more worn, but just as I remembered, and the seat I always took in the front row was free.

As I sat, the Rocky theme crackled out and the curtains opened. The Amazing Derek strode out on stage. He was a little plumper, and the ginger ruff had gone white. But it was clearly the same man I had seen twenty-five years earlier. The assistant, also the same, dragged out the sawhorse. I could hear her costune complaining from the immense strain it was under. But now she ducked back into the wings, bringing out a Tesco carrier bag. Out of this, and with great ceremony, she produced three coconuts, which she placed with the same care on the sawhorse.

She withdrew. the lights dimmed a little.

Derek slipped his robe off.

The ginger explosion had gone white, the belly had a bit of a sag to it. But Derek’s cock was as long and thick as ever. The damn thing could have qualified as an offensive weapon.

He took up position, and grasped his manhood firmly. Then he lifted, and swung. BAM. The coconut on the right exploded in a shower of white flesh and juice. BAM. The one on the left did the same. BAM. The coconut in the middle burst into pieces. I was picking coconut out of my hair all the way home. It was extraordinary. He stepped back, and the curtains fell.

I couldn’t help myself. I snuck backstage, and introduced myself as a lifelong fan. Derek was charming and polite. His voice was Essex gravel, but he was intelligent and erudite, if a little amazed that anyone would have remembered him. His stunning assistant Charmaine, his wife of thirty-seven years, made us all tea.

“I’ve got to ask,” I said eventually. “When I was a kid, it was walnuts. What made you upgrade? I mean, it makes for a better show, but what made you think of it?”

Derek smiled, and dug in the single pocket of his robe, producing a small pair of glasses which he perched on the tip of his nose.

“Thing is,” he said, “my eyesight’s not what it used to be.”


Oh, dear. Lou Charloff tells it better anyway.

Flash Stance


I should write more flash fiction. It’s a great way of keeping up your daily word count, while at the same time not having to commit to a bigger project or challenge. Lord knows, I don’t need the encouragement to get involved in those (hel-looo, Script Frenzy).

The format, for those members of the Readership unaware of the concept, is what I used to call a short short. A short story under 1000 words, frequently coming in at well under that count. I could, if I had the idea, knock out a piece of flashfic on my train ride to work in the morning. It can be a way of writing a quick joke, or to map out a concept, or simply to fire out a character piece. The choice is yours. The only restriction is the word count.

Yesterday I hammered out my first piece of flash fiction in at least a year. I had, for once, a proper reason to do so. I submitted the story to a new incentive, The Campaign For Real Fear. This is a competition jointly created and judged by horror authors Maura McHugh and Christopher Fowler. The aim is to find stories that tap into 21st century terrors, rather than simply rehashing the same old monsters and tropes. The limit is 500 words. As Maura and Chris say in their intro, “If you can’t scare us in 500 words, you won’t manage it in 5,000.” It’s a great idea, and one I’m happy to both participate in and endorse.

Closing date for entries is 16th April. I know there are members of The Readership who would excel at a challenge like this one. Gentlemen, start your engines.

(Flash fiction is a very different deal to slash fiction, which I can’t write. I’ve got no interest in writing about other people’s characters, and I’m no good at sex. Writing sex. Sex scenes. I can’t do sex scenes. Shut up.)
(That’s probably why I’ve never got on with LiveJournal. I keep trying to explore it, and end up mired in some Russian teenager’s Farscape/Stargate mashup. Which turns into an orgy. Topless Robot have a great thread of the worst slash fic on the web, which I applaud and view as a public service. They go there so you don’t have to. It’s a dark mirror to the excesses of the human imagination. The Pokemon abortion fetish story is especially eye-opening.)

(I shudder to think what that last sentence is going to do to my Google stats.)

(image from Flickr user degan’s stream.)

Rabbit, run.

I have a totem. A familiar, if you will. A spirit animal that is with me always, a nurturing friendly presence that helps to define, while at the same time disguising me. In some ways it is akin to the daemons of Philip Pullman, in others closer to a superhero’s secret identity. If you have seen me on the internet at all, you have seen my familiar too. I allow him to represent me out in the world.

I’m talking about the rabbit. More specifically, I’m talking about Frank Kozik’s Smorking Labbit, who in different guises serves as my avatar, my game face.

I have been fascinated by rabbits for a very long time. Mankind has an ambivalent relationship to them. On the one hand we view them as coote widdul bunnies, and keep them as pets, and wail like the world has ended when a fox gets into the hutch and chomps them up. At the same time, they are pests, turning verdant grassland into desert, breeding exponentially, causing massive damage and subsidence as they dig out their runs.

In myth and popular culture the rabbit is seen as both trickster and messenger. I’m thinking of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, the herald to new and psychedelic experiences. This figure reappears in the Jefferson Airplane song of the same name, and in The Matrix. When Neo is invited to “follow the white rabbit”, you know he’s not going to be led to the nearest McDonalds.

As trickster, of course, the popular embodiment is Bugs Bunny. Ostensibly, his battles with Elmer Fudd are simple hunter/prey stories. Except we know that the end to the story will not be Elmer sitting down to wabbit stew. But there’s a sheer glee to proceedings, and you know that Bugs delights on getting one over on his foe. He’s not looking to get away from Elmer. He’s looking to beat him. Br’er Rabbit’s adventures in the Song Of The South have a similar resonance. In those tales, though, danger is a little closer to the surface. You get the feeling from reading the stories that Br’er Rabbit is really thinking on his feet, surviving on his wits. If he fails, he’s dinner.

Finally, of course, there’s Roger Rabbit. He’s motivated by love of Jessica of course, but also by a creative urge. Witness the point where he and Eddie Valiant are handcuffed together. He can free himself, of course. But only when it’s funny to do so. This speaks very clearly to me as a writer. Going through hoops purely for comedic or dramatic effect – that’s me all over.

All these characters are masters of disguise too. They are fluid, ever-changing, trying on new clothes and faces in a whirl of re-invention. Bugs is especially mercurial, and his penchant for cross-dressing is well-known, and has led to endless internet discussion on his sexuality. I’m not so sure. I think it’s more the case that he’s bursting to constantly try new ideas, new ways of winding up Elmer, and he knows that dressing up as a girl is one way of getting a rise out of his enemy. Erm, figuratively speaking, of course. Although the question should be asked…

Me neither. Jessica Rabbit, now…

Ahem. Yes, well, moving on.

Frank Kozik is an American artist best known for his concert posters, coming out of the underground rock scene of the early eighties. But to me his most enduring creation will always be the Smorking Labbit. It embodies everything I love about their mythic qualities. It can be cute and decidedly not at the same time. And, because of the nature of the drawing, open to reinvention and reinterpretation. This really speaks to me. I love the idea of my disguise being able to wear a disguise. He can be custom fitted for different events and fora.
This here is the classic black labbit, sweet but a bit fierce. My icon of choice, and possibly ink someday.

This little fella is was up until recently my Facebook … face…,
Until I replaced him with this Kent Culotta image, which somehow seemed a bit more me.
And this chappie is ideal for SF and steampunk forums.

This is really just scratching the icing on the metaphor. Do an image search on smorking labbit and you can see how multifarious my little daemon can be.

One last story, which in a way describes where the rabbit idea came from in the first place. When TLC and I first started seeing each other, we were living a five minute walk apart. It was easy for me to spend more and more time at her place, until I had practically moved in. At which point I discovered that her flatmate had coined a nickname for me.

I was “Bobsy Rabbit, the lodger.”

It’s all been downhill from there, really.

A Writer’s Rites

As we’re coming up on another month of writing, I thought you might be interested to know how I go about knocking out 1670 words or four pages of script a day. It’s not as tough as it sounds.

My prime time for writing seems to be the morning. It’s when my brain seems to spark, and the words come out with very little effort on my part. Frequently, the only thing stopping them coming out in one big lump is my typing speed. This at least gives me the chance to think ever so slightly about what I’m slinging onto the page. After about two o’clock, I can feel my mental processes slowing a little, and writing then becomes a bit more of a chore. I’m an early bird, not a night hawk, and I work accordingly. I’ll only work after 8pm if the situation is desperate (which with NanoWrimo, it often is).

I write on the move. Specifically, on the train between Reading and London Paddington, which works for me on a ton of different levels. Firstly, it falls into the right time slot for creative thinking. Secondly, it’s distraction-free. I can’t hop onto the internet, and phone signal goes into a black hole at least twice on the trip. I have become adept at picking the train that will always have a free seat (the 6:56 from Worcester Shrub Hill, if that level of detail interests you) and for the half-hour journey into That London I can successfully immerse myself in the task at hand. A lot of my recent blog posts have come from the train. If I’m using my iPhone and the excellent WordPress app, then they can be written and posted before I get into Paddington. Anyone that bitches about the iPhone keyboard clearly needs to give it a bit more time, because if a fucknuckled gimp like me can knock out three hundred words in a train trip, then anyone can. If I have to work a weekend, which means slower trains, then I can easily get a thousand words done.

I can and do write at home, but then it’s in concentrated half-hour bursts, After that the temptation to hop onto Twitter or browse my Reader feeds becomes just too strong. I read somewhere that concentration on any one task will slip after 45 minutes. It’s slightly less than that for me, or maybe it’s just for the five years that I’ve been using this method I’ve got used to working in half-hour sessions. But really, it’s down to organisation. I find that if I break the word count for the day down into easily manageable chunks, then I’m less likely to give up and fart around on something else. In simple terms, if I have a day at home, three half-hour sprints would get me a day count of Nano. That’s not really such a bind, and if I work through the morning that’s me done before lunch.

My writing tool of choice nowadays is a Dell netbook, the Mini10v. Dirt cheap and simple to use, with a great, full-width clicky keyboard. It’s light and portable, and doesn’t have all my stuff on it, unlike my beloved Blackbook, which is starting to show it’s age after years of being lugged around.

The Dell is running Ubuntu, a version of Linux that I’m starting to really enjoy. It’s like all the good bits of Windows without any of the virusy nonsense. This is intriguing, as one reason for my choice of the Dell was that it was relatively easy to hack into running OSX, a process called Hackintoshing. I don’t plan to do that now. I’m having much more fun playing with an open system, and getting it to work in the way I want.

I’m not leaving The Church, of course. I am and remain a profound and evangelical Machead. However, working with Ubuntu has taught me that I’m actually less platform dependent than I thought. Without really thinking about it, I have been moving away from proprietary software and towards open-source equivalents. I’m a big fan of OpenOffice.org, which has great auto-correct and formatting tools. I haunt the internet using a mix of Firefox and Chrome, depending on mood. Both are pimped. There’s no excuse for anyone running Firefox not to add extensions like Flashgot and Shareaholic. And I rather like Scribefire, a fully featured blogging platform running in the browser.

My email and calender needs have been cloud-based for a while now, and an arcane net of apps ensure that events update to all our devices, both at home and away. Google Docs and the brilliant Dropbox take care of syncing and back up of all my writing.

The key is flexibility and mobility. I’ve learnt to my cost that I have no control over when and where an idea will drop on me. The seed for Pirates Of The Moon came out of a single misheard phrase in a conversation. Sometimes I don’t even get that much of a warning. The point is, I need to be ready. if an idea is not written down, if an appointment is not noted when I make it, then it may as well not exist. I have a small leather satchel (not a man-bag, alright? A satchel. Shut up.) which carries the Dell, chargers, notebooks, et al and means that I’m prepared for anything, anywhere. I carry my writing space with me. Give me a chair and a flat surface, and I’m good to go. Actually, at a push, I can write standing up on the train. But that’s maybe pushing things a little too far. I may be a nomadic writer, but I’m not a masochist.

Script Frenzy


Because I believe in making life difficult for myself, I am doing Script Frenzy this year. Hence the badge over yonder.

This is the script-based version of the Nanowrimo challenge that I’ve done for the past 4 years now. Same challenge, different discipline.

The idea is to come up with a 100 page formatted script in a month. That’s as restrictive as the challenge gets. It can be film, stage or comics based, and on any subject. As long as you get those hundred pages out, the rest is up to you, foolish writer.

This year, to add to the firsts, I’ve decided to write a graphic novel. My love and respect for the form knows no bounds, but it’s been a while since I did anything creative with it. It’s about time I put out and got some words on paper which is, after all, the ethos of Nano and Script Frenzy. Their logline should be Just Do It, but I think a plimsoll company got there first.

Just to make things even more complex, I’m trying an experiment in form. A couple of members of the Readership have been bored to oblivion already by me banging on about the transformative nature of the comic I’ll be writing, and you can probably figure out what I’m going to try if you look up my recent comics posts. I don’t want to say too much, because I think I’m onto something genuinely new here. Let’s just call it an old school response to the idea of digital comics.

It begins, appropriately, on April Fools Day. I’m prepping like mad now, working on format and structure. I did some sums last night, and realised that to do the story I have in mind properly, I will need to write 112 pages instead of the hundred required. Seven blocks of sixteen pages. I’m breaking the task down into managable bites, figuring out page counts for each day and week. This, to me, is the only way to do it. The breakdown works out to just under 4 pages a day. A hundred pages of script might not seem like much, but I’m planning on getting 25 panels into some of them. (Any comics professionals reading this just winced at the last sentence. Comics generally have between six to eight panels per page. Watchmen was notorious for sticking to a nine panel grid that is a pain to write and draw.) At some points, I think it’ll be pushing it to get a page a day done.

I’m nervous and incredibly excited about this project. It genuinely feels like a leap into the unknown. If it works, then I think I might just have hit on a new way of getting comics onto the page.
If not, then hey, it’s only a funnybook, right?

Cape Wrath

...and you really don't wanna know where he keeps his supply of web fluid...

I’ve had it with superheroes. There, I said it. I’m sick of capes, bored with masks. I’ve had enough.

There’s no one event that has led me to this point. No real tipping point. Rather, it’s a feeling that’s developed gradually, as I flick through the rows of books in Forbidden Planet, then gently put them back and walk away, shaking my head. It’s a terrible thing for a comic fan like me to say, but I don’t think Marvel and DC have anything to offer me.

Superheroes are no fun anymore.

I’ll try to untangle the sick knot of dread I get when I pick up a mainstream superhero book. If I could quantify it into a sentence, it would probably be “Oh. More of the same, then.” This is not really the fault of the writers or artists, who in some cases are doing splendid work. No, it comes down to the nature of the superheroes themselves, and how little they can change.

Consider. Superman’s first appearance on the front cover of Action Comics was September 1938. Batman haunted Detective Comics not long afterwards. Most of the Marvel heroes we love came out of a massive bolt of creativity blasting out of Times Square in the early 60s, although Captain America and the Sub-Mariner can be traced back to dubyadubyatwo. A fledgeling comics writer coming to these characters is faced with at least 40 years of backstory, reinvention, retcon, downright oddness and ill-thought experimentation. All of which is canon. All of which, if misinterpreted or misread, will have fanboys on your back like a horde of ravening ferrets. The Batcave HAS to stay the Batcave. Superman will never move out of Metropolis, and Wonder Woman will never get out of that ridiculous bustier. There’s the chance for great opportunity there, but it’s constrained within the tropes and iconography of characters that haven’t changed in a real sense in decades. You can’t change the costume. Well, you can, but it’ll change back within the year. You can’t change the thin slick of motive that clings to the characters as closely as the spandex they wear. Batman will never get over the death of his parents. Supes will always be the immigrant made good.

Most importantly, you cannot kill them. As Si Spurrier put it most eloquently, superhero stories have beginnings and middles, but no end. The death of a character is simply a hook to hang a year or so of storyline from before you bring them back. Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, and Bruce Wayne are both about to reappear after a year dead for tax reasons.

Both these resurrections have taken place after massive multi-book, months-long events that have promised to completely redefine the universes in which they are set – which will do nothing of the sort. There will be a big bang, and when the dust has settled, the landscape will re-emerge without looking any different. These books, which I call Crisis storylines, are at best bloated and self-indulgent, and are blatant marketing exercises

A trope of the Crisis storyline is that they involve deep trawls through the archives to dredge up characters and situations that really should have remained buried. They are convoluted, arcane in detail and expensive to follow, requiring the hapless reader to buy not just the core book of the series, but the rags of the associated characters as well. They are certainly no good as entry-points to the genre. In fact, if I have to recommend comics to the beginner, the current raft of superhero books would be the last place to start.

These events are the point where I really lose patience with superhero comics. They’ve been a part of the Marvel and DC universes since the 80s, and have to my mind never been up to much. They involve characters that are at best second-stringers being pushed forward, messed about with and then shoved aside. Often they will be reintroduced and then despatched by the Big Bad of the story in a couple of pages.

The most horrible version of this in recent comics history occurred in the Identity Crisis storyline, when the wife of Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man was raped and murdered. Ralph and Sue were always light, funny characters – the Thin Man couple with superpowers. By putting them at the centre of a hamfisted attempt to bring Law And Order – SVU to DC, the writer Brad Meltzer managed to make the Dibnys both pathetic and vulnerable. And as a result, a lot less interesting. Identity Crisis ended up making me feel like I needed to wash my hands after reading.

The trouble with taking your average superhero into dark places is that it’s too easy for the whole enterprise to collapse into silliness. It takes a writer like Alan Moore or Frank Miller to be able to take the inherent ridiculousness of the superhero concept and place it into a slightly more realistic setting. Notice I say slightly more here: Watchmen and the Dark Knight books are both set in places that are absolutely not supposed to be the world we recognise. That’s how they get away with it. Without a careful approach, you end up with a book like Identity Crisis, that manages to be both horrible and stupid all at once. A fair old achievement.

Finally, though, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Marvel and DC are starting to twig that something ain’t right. Both publishers have run storylines where most of their characters have been resurrected as zombies, which shows at least an iota of irony and self-awareness. If you’re gonna bring someone back from the dead, do it right. There is also a move towards a lighter, more inclusive style of storytelling, breaking from the gloom and darkness that has settled over the books for an awfully long time. There are always exceptions, of course – Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Connor’s work on Power Girl has been a joy, with the right mix of exuberant storytelling, self-deprecating wit and just the right level of cheesecake. And you can’t go wrong with anything coming from the desks of Jeff Smith and Darwyn Cooke. These guys do work that has a retro sheen, but modern sensibilities. Solid storytelling and art that isn’t afraid to laugh at itself.

I would point at DCs Wednesday Comics experiment as a template to adopt or at least an idea that’s worth a second look. Rather than massive and confused webs of storytelling, the focus here was on weekly, single page shots. Espressos instead of venti moccochoccachinoes. Based on the Sunday newspaper foldouts that were a mainstay of American comics experimentation in the 50’s (the funny pages were where Will Eisner, one of the masters, learned his chops, after all) the Wednesday comics are big, cheap foldouts that are best read spread out on the floor, to be pored over with milk and cookies to hand. Imagine a Crisis storyline run through a couple of issues of something like that, where each page brings a new character, a new struggle. I’m reminded of Paul Grist’s work on Jack Staff, which took the multi-story, multi-character approach of British comics like Victor and my beloved 2000AD, and then weaved a single storyline through them. There’s less inclination to ramble when you only have six pages to get your characters in and out of trouble.

They were a revelation to me when they appeared last year, and I feel appropriately evangelical about this format that my next writing challenge will involve a story using those formats. Trust me, no capes involved.

More news on that in my next post. Stay strong, true believers…

For Your Consideration

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Oscar season is over for another year, the tents and awnings are coming down, the pretty dresses are, for the most part, going back to their designers.

What have we learnt this time around, Readership?

1. It is possible to be both Best and Worst Actress at the same time.

2. You can win a Best Cinematography Oscar even when your cameras were principally used as motion capture devices.

3. You will win an Oscar eventually, if you hang on in there for long enough. The Oscar will never be for your best work, but for the one that most accurately portrays your public image. For example, Jeff Bridges didn’t win the Oscar this year. The Dude did.

4. Oscar ❤ Pixar, unconditionally.

Every year I can depend on the Oscars being even more bloated, self-congratulatory and pointless. There were no major surprises, no astonishing turn arounds. I’m pleased Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker grabbed so many awards, but what does that prove?

5. Oscar ❤ war movies.

5a. Oscar hates SF. Avatar was there because Oscar is scared of James Cameron. District 9 was there because Oscar ❤ Peter Jackson.

The question we should be asking is why does it take until the second decade of the 21st century for a woman to win Best Direction Oscar?

Further, the illusion of choice in the Best Film shortlist drives me nuts. Expanding the list out to ten does not give us more choice. There’s still a shortlist of 5. It’s just been bloated out with a B-list that have no chance of getting the award. Oscar has been capable of some deeply eccentric choices over the years, but it was blatantly clear this year which movies were in with a shot. The football movie? Uh-uh. The harrowing race/abuse tale? I don’ sink so. The cartoon? Gimme a break. There’s already a slot for Best Pixar Movie of the year.

And then there’s the Moon debacle. The short, sharp debut of a bright new talent, featuring an astonishing, nuanced performance from one of the best actors of his generation was ignored by Oscar this year. It’s partially the fault of Sony, of course, who decided that the film was not worthy of consideration (way to back your creative teams, there, guys. Nice work.) Nonetheless, there should have been an inkling that the film was perhaps worth a look after it did so well at the Baftas. By then, it was probably too late. Another missed opportunity for Oscar to show that it had interest in a broader range of films. But no. Once again Oscar showed hisself to be old, slow and out of touch. It’s the awards show that’s just too easy a target, too bloated and dumb to actively hate. It’s just there, wheezing into view every March like a despised older relative, staying that little bit too long, before blubbering away again leaving nothing behind but a faint whiff of cabbage water and a couple of trinkets that’ll just gather dust on the sideboard.

Until a horror movie wins Best Movie, I shan’t be watching again.

How A Geek Rolls


There seems to be a visual shorthand that film-makers employ when they want the viewer to quickly get the idea that their lead character is something of a geek. Oh, sure, there’s the usual sartorial (glasses, trousers that run slightly too high above the ankle, slogan tees) and home furnishing cues (retro SF movie posters, computers front and centre, toys EVERYWHERE), but there’s another, slightly more subtle method.

The film geek will not go to work or school in the usual means of transportation. No, we’re looking at grown men on bikes. Or cars that are falling to bits, strangely decorated or just plain don’t fit the landscape.

The humble bicycle is a great way of letting your audience know that your character is a bit … well, different. You will see them on their contraption within the first ten minutes of the film, frequently within the title montage. If your protagonist lives in a college town, or god forbid Oxford or Cambridge, then it’s a cert that they will be cycling to work. Steve Carell’s character in the 40 Year Old Virgin hits all these notes, negotiating rush hour traffic with an aplomb that he simply can’t apply to his love life. The fact that he doesn’t drive actually becomes a plot point later in the film, but nevertheless he’s easy to pick out of a crowd.

This trope doesn’t just apply to the movies, of course. Uber-geek Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory hasn’t been behind a steering wheel since driver’s ed. This again becomes a plot point in the season three episode “The Adhesive Duck Deficiency” when he has to drive Penny to hospital after she slips and falls in the shower. Hilarity ensues.

There’s a message here, of course. Geeks ride bikes because the rest of us drive cars.* If you choose not to drive, then there is by pure deductive reasoning something a bit odd about you, and the writer can use that off-key note for comic or emotional effect. Just look at John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, reimagining the universe while spinning through Princeton on a Shwinn.

If the geek can pull him or herself together and get behind the wheel of a car, then [deity] forbid that they are put into a Ford Focus. No, although the cues are a little more subtle, the geek choice of ride will be either an old banger or a wilfully obscure choice of marque. Take, for example, the Ford Pacer that Wayne and Garth cram into in Wayne’s World. Molly Ringwald drives a beautiful, if somewhat battered, VW Karmann** Ghia in Pretty In Pink. And of course, let’s not forget the geekiest transport of all – Professor Emmett Brown’s time-travelling Delorean.

I watched Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs this week, and was heartened to see my theory in action. The circusy recyclers of the title use a fine array of old lorries and that peculiarly French method of transport, the lawnmower-engine powered truck-trike, to get around. It’s a neat juxtaposition with the villains of the piece, who smooth about in high-end Peugeot limousines. In fact, it seems to me that the quirkier the transport, the more heroic the driver. Their ride seems to reflect their personality. Just look at the Munstermobile.

But to my mind, there is one car that rules them all. The car that belongs to fiction’s alpha geek. The quintessential loner, a technological whizz who has trouble with girls and spends more time in front of a computer in his basement than he likes.

But MAN, does he ever have a sweet ride…

*I ride a bike. This has nothing to do with anything.

**Due to poor research, I initially had Andie’s ride down as a Carman Ghia. Cheers to Charlie, the Readership’s motoring correspondent for setting me right.