"Hollywood has a story problem," said somebody in a newspaper interview I read recently. The suggestion was that Hollywood doesn't come up with as many clever, original ideas as television, so we're all at home watching box sets, et cetera, rather than queuing up for the cinema. I was reminded of this on my walk this (Friday) morning: I passed a movie poster showing a pleasant-faced young woman looking anxiously back over her shoulder at the same drooling and angry-looking Alien that used to make the mistake of threatening Sigourney Weaver in the West End premieres of my youth. They never learn, those aliens. Next along was a poster showing a certain well-known pirate of the Caribbean, plus a whole boatload of familiar faces from his day-to-day life. He never gets a makeover, does he?
There is a film coming up about a dog - a labrador, I think. Saw that on the side of a bus. Maybe, I thought, as the bus rolled on, it's a clever and original labrador, but clever and original in a way that we've never seen before. Not given to saving people who have fallen down mineshafts, nor to bringing families together, nor ... I thought about The Incredible Journey (1963), which actually includes a cat, and then about Fluke (1995), which was based on a novel by James Herbert and is really strange (I remember enjoying the book a very long time ago; haven't seen the film). I was just thinking that the dog Bolt (2008) would make a good pet for The Incredibles (2004) when I spotted a 50p piece on the ground in front of me.
Once, I found a £20 note. Still, 50p was a good enough omen for the day. Then maybe 100 yards further along, I found 5p. Separate finds, and no, I didn't look wildly around for the rest of the hoard. But from the 5p on, I did have a story problem of my own. Any minute now, I thought, under the "third time lucky" rule, I'm going to find a suitcase of cash, and I'm going to pick it up, and it's going to be "mob money" or some other McGuffin, and that bad guy from the film version of The Equalizer (2014), who was played by Marton Czokas, is going to step off a private jet at Newquay Airport and start tracking me down...
This is where my mind goes during interminable general-election campaigns. Last night I caught a few minutes of an interview, possibly it was Channel 4 News, with three people, at least one of whom had written a book. Either the electorate are still miffed about the global financial crash, or the global liberal elite are failing to realise that the electorate aren't going to come round to their way of thinking because they're the ones who are wrong, or ... something else about populism. Uh huh. I woke up and reached up the remote. This morning, I flicked on the radio to hear somebody from UKIP putting a positive spin on their loss of every seat they'd contested in the local elections. You spell chutzpah - like that. But the depressing predictability of all such rebuttals is inescapable, however far beyond belief they might be.
And so it goes on. Happily, my walk also took me down onto Fish Strand Quay, where I stopped for another look at the slab pictured below. It was laid just before the bank-holiday weekend and left to set with a wooden frame around it. In my version of the story, Holly's admirer, I assume Dave, came from his hiding place immediately after the slab-layer and the frame-maker left, and wrote his feelings into the permanent record. When he showed Holly what he'd done - yeah, but he could tell that she was pleased really. The way I see it, Holly and Dave will be on the scene, incognito, long coats out of Casablanca (1942), final scene, to watch through the Blade Runner-style (1982, if we're still doing dates) rain as a heavy nautical widget is lowered onto the slab, and then many years later, when the thing is removed again, they'll be there again to shed a meaningful tear, fade, roll credits.
The plot in between ... oh, I don't know. The apparent involvement of Sid 'n' Nancy adds a disturbing narrative possibility, at least for anybody who remembers the late seventies, but I guess it'll be some kind of historical biopic (episodic story conducive to a TV series, for preference) in which Holly and/or Dave is/are present at every one of the major historical events of the next few generations. And throughout all of it, in the real world as well as my imaginary version, long after all the political hot air has blown away, one enduring memorial to the events and non-events of 2017 will be a slab with the word 'LOVE' written on it.
I like that as a final thought, on a day of election-results analysis. Thanks, Dave.
There is a film coming up about a dog - a labrador, I think. Saw that on the side of a bus. Maybe, I thought, as the bus rolled on, it's a clever and original labrador, but clever and original in a way that we've never seen before. Not given to saving people who have fallen down mineshafts, nor to bringing families together, nor ... I thought about The Incredible Journey (1963), which actually includes a cat, and then about Fluke (1995), which was based on a novel by James Herbert and is really strange (I remember enjoying the book a very long time ago; haven't seen the film). I was just thinking that the dog Bolt (2008) would make a good pet for The Incredibles (2004) when I spotted a 50p piece on the ground in front of me.
Once, I found a £20 note. Still, 50p was a good enough omen for the day. Then maybe 100 yards further along, I found 5p. Separate finds, and no, I didn't look wildly around for the rest of the hoard. But from the 5p on, I did have a story problem of my own. Any minute now, I thought, under the "third time lucky" rule, I'm going to find a suitcase of cash, and I'm going to pick it up, and it's going to be "mob money" or some other McGuffin, and that bad guy from the film version of The Equalizer (2014), who was played by Marton Czokas, is going to step off a private jet at Newquay Airport and start tracking me down...
This is where my mind goes during interminable general-election campaigns. Last night I caught a few minutes of an interview, possibly it was Channel 4 News, with three people, at least one of whom had written a book. Either the electorate are still miffed about the global financial crash, or the global liberal elite are failing to realise that the electorate aren't going to come round to their way of thinking because they're the ones who are wrong, or ... something else about populism. Uh huh. I woke up and reached up the remote. This morning, I flicked on the radio to hear somebody from UKIP putting a positive spin on their loss of every seat they'd contested in the local elections. You spell chutzpah - like that. But the depressing predictability of all such rebuttals is inescapable, however far beyond belief they might be.
And so it goes on. Happily, my walk also took me down onto Fish Strand Quay, where I stopped for another look at the slab pictured below. It was laid just before the bank-holiday weekend and left to set with a wooden frame around it. In my version of the story, Holly's admirer, I assume Dave, came from his hiding place immediately after the slab-layer and the frame-maker left, and wrote his feelings into the permanent record. When he showed Holly what he'd done - yeah, but he could tell that she was pleased really. The way I see it, Holly and Dave will be on the scene, incognito, long coats out of Casablanca (1942), final scene, to watch through the Blade Runner-style (1982, if we're still doing dates) rain as a heavy nautical widget is lowered onto the slab, and then many years later, when the thing is removed again, they'll be there again to shed a meaningful tear, fade, roll credits.
The plot in between ... oh, I don't know. The apparent involvement of Sid 'n' Nancy adds a disturbing narrative possibility, at least for anybody who remembers the late seventies, but I guess it'll be some kind of historical biopic (episodic story conducive to a TV series, for preference) in which Holly and/or Dave is/are present at every one of the major historical events of the next few generations. And throughout all of it, in the real world as well as my imaginary version, long after all the political hot air has blown away, one enduring memorial to the events and non-events of 2017 will be a slab with the word 'LOVE' written on it.
I like that as a final thought, on a day of election-results analysis. Thanks, Dave.
Too good an opportunity...
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