Linereading place-holder

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

Damn, nearly finished writing this blog about the nature of "scripts" when it suddenly disappeared. Ffff... okay until I get back, class, watch the following clip then discuss among yourselves what instructions you think the actors were given that led to this:

What was on that tape? Do we know? Do the actors know? Does either actor seem a little put out by how long this scene is going on for, and if so why? I'll be back.

The Cowboy and the Frenchman (David Lynch, 1988, "Whut the Hell...?")

 

 Well yee-hah! Back in 1988, it turns out that stone-deaf David Lynch – THE great artist of unsettling alien hospitality – decided to make a film from the HOST's point of view for once, a gorgeous little project for... 

 Actually, before I go on, if this sounds like your kind of thing and you've half an hour to spare, then watch it here first. Very much not the kind of thing Lynch would make nowadays, but SO MUCH the kind of thing he made back then, it's funny to see just how starkly his mood has changed (his stuff's still fun, but not nearly so silly. This actually makes quite a nice companion piece to "Tomatoes Another Day", now I think of it.) 

 And no, all I was going to say before I cut myself off was that this piece was actually commissioned by a French television station for a season "The French as seen by..." And the reason I cut myself off was that I only learnt this fact after I'd watched the piece and can't be sure I'd have enjoyed it as much if I'd known before. 

 Conversely though... if I hadn't known beforehand that it was directed by David Lynch I might not have enjoyed it AS MUCH. I don't think I was cutting the film more slack, I just think that, this way round, I was seeing more in it. More than if I'd known it was a film made specifically for an audience with English as a second language in order to address views on the French (which it beautifully doesn't do anyway). Authorship though, hm...

 

Another point of reference for Money's machine now I think of it

Random Acts of C***ness

(originally posted on myspace here)

The scene of the crime

BLOOD AND GUTS UPDATE: Well Hywel's go on the laurels was pretty short lived because Friday night (Banker night) saw ME become the hero when - you remember! - your boyfriend Belmondo'd me in the face halfway through a show (Cliveowened me, Danielcraiged me, Neesoned, Mitchumed, "nutted" - what you will,) then ran off and abandoned you while the show went on, as it must, with blue roll up its nose. Good thing there was a doctor in the house, our own esteemed Dr. David Rosenberg who having been denied entry to South Africa because there was literally not enough room in his passport for another stamp (true true!) found himself freed up now to give Hywel the crash-course on Thursday, and on Friday witness your boyfriend hit and run mid-show leaving behind only you, mumbling and panicked, and of course all his booking details at the box office.

Nice men. Do not hurt them.

Crikey you were drunk, weren't you, whoever you were, and terribly annoying. You must have known that. And I guess I sort of know where your boyfriend was coming from because even I felt a bit bad about singling you out when you were so clearly barely able to even stand. Then again though, it could be argued you actually singled yourself out by wibbling on about carbon in the corner of the auditorium, I don't know... but I mean why didn't your boyfriend make any attempt to try and keep you quiet, that's what I don't get, or to even acknowledge your presence until you wanted to be escorted out of the show? Why did he try and take it out on that volunteer in the riot gear? Did your boyfriend not get that it was pretend? Did your boyfriend just have a bad day? Was your boyfriend actually, secretly mad at you? Well this is all academic I guess... Man I just can't believe your boyfriend ran out and left you like that, that's all. 

And poor old Hywel! A second baptism of fire for day two. (Oh yeah, fire. Did I mention the pyrotechnics? Yeah he's great, Hywel.) And Nigel's had his appendectomy now I hear. They eschewed keyhole surgery in favour of the full Jack the Ripper, that's all I know. Dr. David only works on electro-shock therapy cases these days, says he misses the smell of an operating theatre, the smell of cauterised meat. And me? Well I almost look TOO gorgeous but on the down side every face pressed towards mine on the tube now makes me just that bit more bristly. Like I said, I don't know. Things fall apart, mistakes are made, the Machine begins to warp and split but the run continues, and Friday Night will always be Banker Night. Applying Goode's Pertinent Binary (see Feb 18) we deal with it... Honestly though, your boyfriend! It almost makes me wish now that I'd listened to your Dad! 

(Thank you videogum.)

The devastating effects of a Belmondoing 

MONEYNEWS

(originally posted on myspace here)

Here's Shunt looking over the script for Money as it stood on the 31st of March, 2009. Way back. But the good news is it looks like the the show's run will now definitely be longer than the rehearsal period as we're extending it to the end of June, imagine that! I wonder who'll be Prime Minister. In other, appalling news: Nigel - lovely big, works-forty-hours-a-day, stars-in-the-show, runs-over-to-the-vaults-between-shows-to-be-Mussolini-or-Walter-Raleigh, just-had-a-bloody-KID Nigel, was taken into hospital yesterday with appendicitis. We have no Nigel. Now this was going to have been Nige's last week on the show anyway, as the National Theatre of Wales was commandeering him to appear with Michael Sheen in Peter Morgan's "Jesus: The Meetings" or something as of next Tuesday, so he HAD been training in his mate Hywel as a replacement, but still. This meant Hywel now found himself having to go onstage last night instead of the following Tuesday, and do two shows with one day's rehearsal, in Nigel's clothes, in the dark, over the trapdoors, with exits that can only be opened if you remember to keep a handle on you. Which he did, and he was incredible. A bear like Nigel but a more innocent bear, and like Nigel an absolute engine. Boy was he paying attention. So we plough on.

But Nige, baby, get better.

Goode's Pertinent Binary

Hooray! Chris Goode* is back on the blog: 

"I sometimes have recourse to what I take to be one of the most pertinent binaries in contemporary culture: the underlying social philosophies of, on the one hand, Disney, and on the other, Sesame Street. In Disney World (or Land or whichever you prefer), "it's a small world after all": people are all basically the same, once you get past their superficial differences. This is Peter Brook's line, and it ends up being a reason to not bother trying to penetrate those superficialities: which is why 11 & 12 is so unbelievably gay. On Sesame Street, the message is not that everyone is the same, but conversely, that everyone is different, and it's your job to deal with that."

 "The Persauders" Charlie White

 * That link doesn't seem to work. Mm. Okay, it was meant to take you here... Still not working - Oh just copy and paste it. Maybe I've been infected by a poem. 

Napping 4D

It's big, the Eiffel Tower. Terribly big. It's easy to forget but it's an honest-to-goodness skyscraper, like nothing that had come before. And at its apex there's a genteely furnished living room diagonally bisected by a gigantic girder where two wax likenesses of Eiffel and Edison sip tea and listen to cylinders: time captured and the sky scraped, both for the very first time, they must have felt like gods. And I thought when are we going to see anything that exciting again? We'll have to wait until Time Travel.

And then about a month ago it hit me that would never happen. Time Travel. I was watching old videos of life in the year 2000 and there we were in our twenties pissing around in the garden that's now next door and it was suddenly clear to me that the past was just gone. It's there in our heads, and in what we own, but there's no reaching it. And I know we talk about four dimensions but this is a dimension we can only move forward in and it takes no energy to do so and it requires no force, so it's really not the same. Which is fine. Everything's closed and cosy in this finite Universe, fine. Except... well I had been planning to get back into harness on the Doctor Whoey vehicle I used to go on about before the fire and now I suddenly find I don't believe in the central concept. It's only pretend I know, but there's nothing to explore in an idea I've dismissed unless, UNLESS I could somehow work out a practicable method for our hero to travel anywhere in time without cheating. So that was sort of it. 

Right, 80's break.

Brilliant! The only thing they got right was the hand dryer.

And on Sunday evening after the Dungeons, Transboundy Gal (hmm... maybe another name) and I went to the pictures at West India Quays, a location that has totally kept faith with what a place should look like in 2010. We watched A Single Man, and THERE was the past... I mean they must have gone to 1962 to film it, it was extraordinary and all the sadder for it. Outside and the water was still, a thousand lights were on and nobody home, and I realised coming here on a school night was more exciting than the Tate, so much more exciting, we risked a cigarette and I once more pondered: future, future, but how do you get back?

Monday was a write-off of course. In a good way. Mondays are normally a write-off these days. But, but, but... hanging out the washing I had a moment that merited if not the full "Eureka" then at least a little "Eurekeeny", when it suddenly occurred to me how you might be able to visit the past without having to travel backwards through time after all. All it would require is infinite patience, for time to be cyclical, and a big-bounce-proof container. But that's MY idea, Science, you're not allowed to nick it. Still, great! Right time to get out of bed... although meh*, anything I miss I know now I'll be able to catch next time around. Ah yes, legs this has.

* And it's surely a sign of this country's increasing civility that we finally have our an English word for "bof".

(originally posted on myspace here)

It's Singles' Dawn here at the Ole Unattended (We'll always have Paris)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Five thirty-eight ayem you guys. In two hours I'll be cooking myself breakfast and heading off to the Dungeons once more. I remember my first Valentine's day there. That was - What the Hell? -SEVEN YEARS AGO?! No. No wait I'm glad I stuck it out this long because of course that is where I met - well what should I call her here? I can't keep calling her my baby so let's fire up that right brain, start making sounds with our mouths and just see what happens: Lilly Bambazaan? Transboundy Gal? Mima Nunahangamban? Lass Booms? Mm. Anyway I'm up this late/early/stupid because I was hoping to finally squeeze in a little post about my trip with Miss Transboundy to Paris what with this being Valentine's Day and me now proudly tamed. But that clearly hasn't happened so here's what I call "the better idea". A little shout out to the singles.

Hey, look at you, singles! This day is yours, you get that right? I mean, you can't have a day for couples! The very nature of a "couple" (uyergh, just listen to that word: Couple. Khhhuahaharphul! Aclk!) precludes any celebration, for "celebration" surely suggests a coming together of people in numbers GREATER THAN TWO. Don't we couples know that true love WAITS? Don't we know that life is PAIN, HIGHNESS! You get it. You've read at least the first half of the Female Eunuch. You don't want to wake up one day and find you've turned into Don Draper / nearly-every-woman-in-fiction. No, there is a WORLD out there! And YOU are it's hero. Well you're my hero anyway. And this day, o singles - hey this whole WORLD - is nothing but your party. At our expense. 

(Okay actually I'm not sure if anyone in this picture is single BUT imagine how much more fun they'd be having if they were. And I'm pretty sure looking at them they were all at least FEELING single the second this photo was taken. And that's how you feel ALL THE TIME, SINGLES! And might this song below be your anthem? Probably not but boy can that guy dance! He's single, right?)

I LOVE YOU FOREVER SINGLES, BYEEE! XxXxXxXxX