This notebook might explain why the last one was so neglected. No page is blank, although none are so handsome as in the green book. Anything I worked on from 2014-ish onwards, I suppose, was worked on a little in this, including a theory I'd completely forgotten about, that Arthur Conan Doyle invented the language of cinema (I admit it's possible authors may have been pointing out what
characters saw even before Sherlock Holmes.) There's also a little more Time Spanner material, a sketch for a Ulysses 31 knock-off comic that Martin Gay might have tried to sell in school (obviously based on Power Socket), and lines from later episodes that would never be said. All opinions are the characters' own. (Click to enlarge.)
The novel's full title is The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, and for Joseph Conrad maybe it was, but there are definitely simpler tales. Roger Ebert declared it Conrad's most unfilmable book, but he only had Christopher Hampton's pudding of an adaptation to go on, and even Hampton's fudge threw up sparks: the uncredited casting of Robin Williams, for example, as sociopathic bomb-geek "The Professor" – one hand forever clasped around the bulb in hs pocket that would blow him up – comes years before his similarly chilling work in One Hour Photo or Insomnia. For my part, I first read the book in 1997, shortly after catching The Conversation on television – a perfect 1970's paranoid thriller, starring a mopey Gene Hackman (in a Parrot Shop Sketch mac) – and I was struck by the similarities in tone. I thought it read like a prophecy, was very filmable, and as longtime readers of this blog might know, I've been pondering how to film it ever since.
1996
"It sounds like Watchmen" said Adriano Shaplin when I told him the story, which meant I was probably telling it well. The most interesting correlation is Conrad's boldest departure from the failed bombing on which the novel's based: In The Secret Agent, the bomb is not the work of terrorists, but of a supercilious peace-keeping force. The everyday anarchists in The Secret Agent are harmless. Even The Professor just makes "the stuff". He never expects anyone to use it. He's a low-rent, walking testament to the theory of mutually assured destruction. The book's most obvious villain is actually the bullying youngblood Vladimir, the celebrated ideas man of the Imperial Embassy. His ultimately ineffectual nemesis is the Assistant Commissioner, a whimsical, nationless embodiment of a comfortable respect for civil liberties, shown no respect himself by his baffled Chief Inspector. And the Assistant Commissioner is ultimately ineffectual because he loses his star witness, not to the anarchists, nor to the Chief Inspector or the agents of Vladimir, but to... SPOILERS. There are definitely simpler tales.
1992. Poor sods.
There are strange future echoes in the book too: The secret agent and his wife are called Adolf and Winnie, the Professor says "Exterminate! Exterminate!" And there are images that seem taken from the very earliest cinema, specifically comedies: a man throwing himself from a train, another man blown literally to pieces (another invention of Conrad's)...
It is a heap of characters – a batty clash of world views on the cusp of a new century* that ends in hopeless chaos. Except there is no end. Life, or if not life, stuff goes on. That's the tone, as far as I could make out. It's not unlike the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading, which is why I like Burn After Reading. You should read it.
OR...
There's this!
I knew there had been a television adaptation a few years before Hampton's, with a heavily mustachioed David Suchet as Adolf Verloc, and Peter Capaldi as Vladimir, and I'd been dying to see it for a over decade, but couldn't find it anywhere. Well, it's finally up on youtube, I've seen it, and I adore it. Dusty Hughes' adaptation gets everything right that Christopher Hampton couldn't be bothered to, preserving politics, consequence and tenderness. The cast is tremendous, and all seem to belong in the same film, unlike Hampton's (as well as losing Robin Williams last year, we also lost Warren Clarke and David Ryall. Both are brilliant here.) Suchet's make-up looks stupid in the photos – an obvious attempt to distance himself from Poirot – but works in action, and Barrington Pheloung's score puts the tin lid on it. That's the other thing: in my unmade head-movie, the music was vital. I knew it had to be like the solo piano in The Conversation, or the solo zither in The Third Man – it had to play against the hopelessness, be pitilessly light-hearted, and say "That's life. That's entertainment. Stroll on."
What I'm saying is, I can't think of a better way to open what is already looking like a terribly serious year, so let's all watch this, and if I can get you to do that, can we pretend that's the same as me actually making the film, and move on too? Great!
(And if you want a shiny one, it seems to be available here.)
P.S. Thanks to all those who have suggested how I might stage Jonah Non Grata again. Basically, I need a producer. All suggestions welcome. Jonah, of course, is not a million miles away from Fat Adolf.
* P.P.S. I've just remembered, the book's dedicated to H.G. Wells.
Remember how I occasionally went on about that film I wanted to make of "The Secret Agent"? Well this isn't it, but it has a tang. Presenting: Mirrorboy –
Embiggen.
Gerard suggested making a video for this song after he saw it performed at the fundraiser where my friend Katy broke her fist punching a fish which is why we have rehearsals. He also suggested the locations, mixed the track, and kept the camera rolling as I attempted to restage some happy accidents. So we had a hoot, met some Father Christmasses, and fourteen months later, here's the finished article. Enjoy responsibly.
(And if you liked that, or even if you thought "seven bloody minutes???" there's more of Gerard's magic here, featuring a robot, Nick "Colonel Dalby" Lucas, and a proper song from possibly London's Last Londoner.)
Ahahaha indeed. Here, try playing this simultaneously underneath. It might help:
And welcome to the new look Unattended. Yes, the old myspace blog has finally become unnavigable - de-evolving from codex to ROM-sapping scroll - so I heaved the whole lot over here to blogspot like a grownup and have been up late sewing tags, all to ensure the Blog Mark Two is hopefully user-friendly now to the point of harassment. What do you think? Too noisy? Try the "Obama", it's delicious...What a haul it's been. "Fat Adolf" remember that? That Secret Agent screenplay I kept going on about which I still haven't written or started to write? - Ah, it's 7:16 in the morning - that would call for a "Sleeping/Not sleeping". It's good to have a system. Happy rummaging!
I have written no screenplay-he-dee-dee-doe. I have written no screenplay-he-dee. Done nothin all the livelong day but written this song And then whittled a fiddle out of whicker from a skip And stuck it up me bum-dee-doe.
Dear
Hollywood, I'm afraid I did not get round to writing "Fat Adolf" in the
end but here is a song I just done instead, can you make a film of
that? Yes? Excellent, phew that's a load off.
Writing isn't hard
you know. Graham Linehan said in an episode of Screenwipe I have left
it now too late to link to, it was like "doing a poo". Perhaps I should
get off the pot then. Certainly I'm not going to get anything written at
the British Library; people are distracting, and I've never written
anything in a library I now realize. When I write I tell myself a story
and take it down, and that means being on my own, maybe in bed, with
warm low lighting. Sounds nice enough but I'm still not doing it, I'm
simply filing these reports. Some excellent writers were interviewed for
that Screenwipe and the only thing, disappointingly, they had in common
was that they all dreaded writing. And willies. They all had willies in
common I mean, they didn't all dread willies. Russell T. Davies' one
piece of Advice To Writers was "Finish it", which is sterling.
Wednesday's
the half-point, yes? The half-point of the week? So I'm at the
half-point of my paid holiday now and that's five livelong days of
procrastination (ten day week, yup... You weren't told? You're in for a
big shock come Stansday)... five days in which I have written nothing,
and done very little else either because I know I'm meant to be writing.
Everything has been put off, even sleep. I mean I've been for walks.
And into second-hand bookshops, as should now be obvious (NICE FACT TO
STAVE OFF PANIC NECESSARY TO GET MY ARSE IN GEAR: Shunt have asked me to
be in their next show, which is based on "L'Argent" by Zola. I've been
looking for a copy). And I've been eating out a bit (SECOND
PROCRASTINATION-FRIENDLY FACT: The money came through from those
Mitchlook and Webbell sketches, the ones with this
in,
on the back of which I have now been invited to write for BBC 3's "The
Wrong Door" following a very friendly meeting with – I think – the
producer and receipt of a brief in which "Edgeyness" was misspelt.) I've
been swimming. I've been running baths. I've found an old sitcom of my Dad's
in its entirety on youtube, and been reminded yet again just how kind a
writer he is, and how glamorous ITV used to be back in the eighties:
that handover from Thames to LWT, those floodlit office blocks along the
South Bank promising such good times for the weekend (recalled to
perfect life in the opening credits of "Man To Man with Dean Lerner"),
and Richard O' Sullivan in a pastel blue track-suit toppling suavely
into Regent's Canal... I mean, yes, the BBC had the world for its logo,
but ITV had the South Bank! And the West End! AT NIGHT!
And
what am I going to see of that glamour, eh, in this day and age? Where
will I find all the magic bits in a W1 I now know like the back of my
tiny hand?... Anyway sitting in front of the laptop this morning looking
at – I don't know – this maybe –
- I received a text out of the blue from Dr. Meikle of
Foix: "Lazy bottom..shift and do something other than pretend you know
what its like ouside!scoot!i think you should go to....maida vale
today!why not." So I got up and headed out. I went to Maida Vale. I'd never been. It
was sunny. I had ciabatta on a barge. I picked up a leaflet called
"Little Venice Circular Walk". I hit Regent's Canal and attempted a run,
like Richard O' Sullivan. I felt queasy and slowed down. Ibis to the
left of me, dingoes to my right and up ahead moored to the Cumberland
Basin, the top-heavy Feng Shang Floating Restaurant just waiting to be
hijacked. I continued my way to the top of Primrose Hill and, similarly
buoyed, awaited further instructions.
The
Proscenium Arch: My little cameraphone can do no justice to the
cavernous, blackboardish, mouldering oddness of the three large brick
arches that make up the space in Shunt called the Arena. Having found
myself at the wrong attention-end of the table in the pub after work I
popped into the Shunt Vaults and the netaudio
festival being hosted there (whence these photos) just in time to catch
a gothic dance piece based on the works of Spike Jones and Doodles
Weaver.
I
couldn't remember when I'd last seen the Arena look like such an
attractive proposition for a performance. It may be because I'd never
seen it look so bare, or it may have been because I'd learnt on Thursday
that our days in this place were finally numbered. Or it may have been
that I'd recently been thinking about Jonah Non Grata thus (and thank you again, Andrew Haydon, for that review): If I were to perform it again in the Vaults much of the set I'd used for the promenade version back in January (the lobby, the lift)
had now been dismantled, so restaging that wasn't an option, and as
much fun as running around with the audience and pulling tricks with
doors and light had been, there was always an argument for taking the
show back to what it had started out as ie. a man gutting about onstage
for an hour in front of an audience allowed to keep their places and, as
a consequence, their anonymity... an argument now made all the stronger
by the rich, found seediness of this Arena. It really did look like a
great, godawful place to see one man stand.
But
how likely am I really to perform Jonah here agan? What have I already
got on my plate? For a start there's this film I'm going to make with Gemma Brockis,
although neither of us really have any idea what it's going to be.
We've mentioned "Fat Adolf" of course (I'm finding it very useful to
write Winnie Verloc with the casting of Gemma in mind) but should LA not
come knocking, or - Heaven Forfuckingfend - I never even get round to
writing the bloody thing and live out the rest of my days teetotal, we
also considered making a short. The one idea I had was to get Gemma to
play me, film it in black and white and call it "The Git." Gemma, a
little to my surprise, really seems to like this.
Okay,
so what should the Git do? Well as of last night I think he should
stand in the Arena and perform to the camera. Start with what you know.
Gemma, now I think of it, is also fascinated by the proscenium arch (for
her upcoming curatorship of the Vaults I think she's going to turn the
long corridor into a series of Pollock Toy Theatre style flats) while
I'm having enough problems working out how to make Iago work outside of
the traditional thearical seating arrangement and I'm only doing that
because it's going on the radio, so I see no need to fight this any
more: REGARDLESS of the medium, there is clearly something about a
person standing on a stage (preferably a big, bare stage) and facing
front that I find potentially hilarious and complicated. Let's start
there then, and just hope we get the whole thing wrapped before they
move us to the sewage farm.
Viva
La Vida indeedah! Mark Cousins is currently curating a season at the
BFI of... well basically just films he really, really likes that
nobody's seen, he's calling it "Levelling the Field" and last night it
was the turn of Paul Leduc's 1986 Frida in its ONLY SURVIVING PRINT, mind. If you get the chance to see it again
this Tuesday do, really do. This is particularly sage advice for anyone
among you who saw and appreciated the following aspects of last year's
Ian Curtis biopic Control:
That nothing in it feels like a dramatic reconstruction, there's none
of this "dialogue moving the action along" balls, not so you'd notice
anyway, the talking's always part of the portrait... That the casting is
spot on (in the case of Frida, Ofelia Medina)
so you never feel you're being shown something, rather the camera's
left rolling to pick up a living subject going about its human
affairs... That it's surprisingly funny. And that the songs are good.
It was towards the end of this bit that I fully
regained consciousness - That's one thing, if you do go Tuesday, wrap up
warm. I keep forgetting about the BFI's cryogenic air conditioning. I
ushered there back in - hell - the twentieth century and have never to
this day managed to stay awake for a single screening, which is why I
look so well-preserved. It was still a very good film though, and
timely. Timely because in my frustrated non-knuckling down to the Secret
Agent screenplay, hereafter known as "Fat Adolf", I had completely
forgotten what it was I had been hoping to achieve when I started, and
"Frida" brought a lot of that back. As the five-year-old note plastered
two posts back testifies I had never initially intended to write a pithy
thriller, I wanted something where a scene might simply consist of a
lost fat man failing to rescue a fly from his tea, something that would
take care of the pence and let the pounds take care of themselves, like
pretty much everything I've ever really enjoyed writing.
What's
the real stumbling block? Dialogue. I love dialogue, but the more a film
can say without it the better. Staring at this unwritten screenplay I
had forgotten that. I'd groggily assumed this professional
sketch-writing gig would inevitably hone my skills as a screenwriter,
but that's all nonsense, isn't it, bum maths and a false lead. Instead
I'm going to write this screenplay with as little dialogue as I can get
away with... There's a lot of important talking in "The Secret Agent"
but I have the answer: Birdsong. Like in Big Brother. Not necessarily
birdsong, but that same unsynchronized ambience reminiscent of
surveillance, and the silent movies. In English-speaking countries
wordless performance seems far more embraced by theatre as an option
these days than by cinema, which is odd, and bad, because it's so much
easier to not be heard on film.
(Mark Cousins introduced Frida
with an overwhelmingly infectious generosity. In his notes to this
season he writes about "the cultural forgetting whereby not many people
have heard of Paradjanov and Diop Mambety" CLEARLY going for the two
maddest names he can think of, but still meaning EVERY word of it. His
enthusiasm is fearless. Pick up a BFI guide and have a read, it's
stirring stuff. I love him.)
Yesterday day of writing: Wake eight, eat, hoover, review blog, replace jumpy shoe with dancing soldier,
change mind, change back, wash smoke from hair, wash dishes, change,
wash sheets, shop, bury remains of canvas chair from bonfire, find three
blackberries, eat, watch tim bell on telly, hate tim bell, fall asleep
in front morse pederast murder case, go for walk like writer, decide
join british library to have somewhere to write, don't, home, find this...
drown
it, hoover bed, change sheets, saw bits off bed make mattress lie
flatter, hoover, knock candle off bed-post, replace candle, light candle
so dripping wax reinforce join bed-post, watch candle so don't burn
bed, eat, get call from mitchell webb look go onset scientist sketch
next week, love being writer, eat, fall asleep in front telly juliet
stevenson pederast murder case, wake, bathe, dave, dave, dave, sleep.
Today:
Happy dungeon morning huge laugh at top office boss bring home proud
giant plastic hand trophy with raised middle digit red nail varnish for
sticking it to business across road. Me laugh boss go "wot?"
Now: Bathe, read old notebook, see notes exciting scene secret agent film written work at actual bookshop 5 year ago:
Tomorrow: join british library, something, something.
Last night, my assistants sent me drama students, philosophers, and
sex therapists. None of them played the piano. All of the women wanted
to try on my hat. Why? In films, Nazi Germany seems full of parties with
women doing nothing but trying on soldiers' hats. Maybe that's why we
wear them. Actually, I wasn't at my desk much, it gets hot under that
bulb. I hung around the bar and the doorways to lecture halls, quiet and
inherently objectionable. Somebody was presenting a pretty
crappily-prepared argument with a lot of clips from youtube about the
future of privacy ("Here is Tom Cruise's eyes, in the future, being
scanned in GAP, and that is in the future, and will happen in ten...
twenty years, yes") but his central idea – that most of us don't
actually WANT privacy – I found pretty interesting, particularly as I've
just left facebook.
(Heather
made these out of industrial concrete, using sex dolls as moulds.
They've been removed now to make way for the People's Republic.) Quite
early into this second evening of interviews, I realized I had to make
more of an effort to curb my automatic impulse to GENUINELY engage with
the interviewees. There has to be a distance. So I introduced a little
monologue from a later draft from "Iago's Little Book of Calm" about
confusing the need to weep with the need to pee – just threw it into the
interview, like the kind of thing Derren Brown might hold your
attention with while making you forget your own name. And two of the
interviewees started weeping. Not sobbing, just weeping, and they smiled
as they wept. But it wasn't really the pay-off I was looking for... I
don't know what I'm looking for. I should probably read the KUBARK files
for some tips, although I'm beginning to doubt their authenticity – Oh!
By the way! Googling "kubark" and "hoax" (good Martian law firm:
Googling, Kubark and Hoax) I found this: another crappily-assembled
non-argument using a lot of clips from youtube, but stuffed with
esoteric government goodies for those of you who like that sort of
thing, particularly the CHARMING Russian cover of "Let It Be" at the end
(the more astute might recognize the humming lady from Ken Campbell's "Brainspotting"):
When I got home, there was was a late-night movie I
hadn't heard of before, called "The Final Cut",
in which Robin Williams in his underrated "wrong 'un" mode, plays a futuristic funeral director
charged with splicing together compilation reels of dead people's
memories, using footage from the cameras implanted in their heads at
birth by rich parents. It was good, and made me think some more. Then I
bunged on Christopher Hampton's mainly not-good adaptation of "The Secret Agent",
in which Robin Williams turns up again, uncredited, as a greyish,
Victorian suicide bomber. He's the best thing in it, which is one of the
reasons I want to see it remade (I'm also keen on the idea of steampunk
brainwashing). Here's some more of Heather's concrete sex dolls, now
destroyed:
Oops, wrong paste. That's something I pasted into Google trying to find out the name of that song (turns out it's "Uptown Top Ranking" by Althea and Donna). Hang on, this is what I meant to paste:
It hangs in Uncle David's House, or did a year ago.
But
I can't pretend to any continuity with my last post really. It's been
almost a month. Of course this always happens when I end a previous post
on a cliffhanger - Jonah, Contains Violence, Hamlet, the funeral...
Every time I go "So this important thing is happening next and I'll tell
you about that - " like I'm writing some book or, worse, like I'm
living some bloody book... Well of course I had no idea what to write
about Uncle David's funeral: the Garden of Remembrance was nice, rose bushes and
wind chimes and little terra cotta figures and space for many more
bushes and chimes, I don't know, David's life was extraordinary, well no
it wasn't, just exquisitely-lived, he lived through the Blitz as a
child but so did everyone, do I rattle on about church some more, or
numbers, or the eclipse of '9(9?) that he'd waited to see ever since he
was seven - No I had no idea what to write about, or at least what to
write about HERE. Sorry... here. Anyway there's the dear man, standing
on the right.
And since, Geoffrey Perkins has died, and I'll never get to work with him, and Ken Cambpell
has died, and I'll never get to work with him (and feel a little like
the world's been expelled). Since, the switch has been flicked on the
Hadron Collider at CERN (or the voice-command given or the knob turned
or the button pushed and held down for two seconds or whatever it was.
"THAT was a nice day!" to quote Bill Murray). Since, I've seen every
episode of "Arrested Development". And "Xanadu". Since, I've visited my
parents again
in Languedoc (it was through Ken Campbell's stuff in fact that I first
learnt of the existence of either CERN or Languedoc - SEE "Reality on
the Rocks"! READ "Violin Time"!
- you see, that would have been a good post - most of the more
interesting ideas posited on this blog I'm pretty sure are trains of
thought set into motion by that man). Since, Zoe's visited from LA where
she writes movie scripts now for Stan Lee (it's fine that I felt so
little at Uncle David's funeral, that doesn't make me a sociopath, she
said, maybe just a narcissist, and suggested I look it up, which I did,
and I am, look it up). Since, the Republicans have wisely plumped for a
Despair ticket yet again (the WHOLE POINT being to find a candidate who
stands for everything worst in America to terrify the Democrats into
another coma). Since, I've learnt that the Mitchell and Webbs will be
filming a whopping four sketches of mine for the new series (three of
which I have written about here, which is pleasing to me). Since, I've
played a magic baker on Southwark Bridge.
What else, since, in
the public domain? I've given up smoking for a month. And I've given up
drinking until I finish a screenplay (I wanted to write something about
Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" I said to Zoe. Oh, she said, Warners
want to make a film of that. Write it.) And also, as of tonight, I've
given up
facebook
No more "friend requests",
"relationship status", cryptic misreadable messages snuck into "status
updates", not for the time being. This isn't the fucking sci-fi channel.
Actually it's me that's the problem, not it. I am a newly
self-diagnosed narcissist and the last thing I need is another empty
inbox. If I feel like issuing a status update I'll just have to post it
here now, which is as it should be. Status update: Simon Kane has a new
phone fit only for happy-slapping. That kind of thing. Let's see if my
next post is any more pleasant. I found this great A Team colouring book
today for 5p on a stall at the Thames Festival so maybe I'll just put
up some NO! NO CLIFFHANGERS!!!
Hh. Still, hello. Oh it's just not been the same since they got rid of the Scrabble. Night.
