Fantasy Film Theory

I love the idea of alternative Universe. The theory that at some point in time the life we know so well split and fractured, and that in the vast expanse of the space-time continuum another world, the same as our own but slightly different, exists. In that world Bush never made it to the Whitehouse, I never pay taxes, 9/11 is just a date not a disaster. In my personal dream alternative, Hendrix and Morrison form a super group with Keith Moon, Lennon is Prime Minister, and Bruce Lee lives, taking bit parts in martial-arts epics and showing how it’s still done, even in his late sixties. In my dream world, a lot of movies would have turned out very differently. Sean Hartter obviously thinks so too, and as such has created a series of brilliant alternative film posters that have me dreaming about the possibilities that might have occurred, and probably did occur in another life. He’s a talented individual with an obvious love of the grind house and exploitation style poster art, as seen below. You can look at more of his output at http://hartter.blogspot.com/

Nothing at all wrong with John Carpenter’s original. But just for a moment imagine if Hitch, instead of ending his career with the lacklustre Family Plot, decided he’d take one more shot at the psycho drama. That was an alternative universe Oscar for Mitchum right there.


Ben Affleck as Daredevil was one of the more hideous movie experiences of recent times. Billy Friedkin would have done things much differently.


Wow. Waken, Bowie, Bava. Did someone just say the best film never made? Oh yeah, I did.


Peckinpah does the Marvel Universe? With Clint? I don’t need to say anything else, we’re talking motion picture nirvana right here.


Malcolm McDowell and Steve McQueen as Luke and Han respectively? Toshiro Immune in Obi-Wan’s robes? Udo Kier! With batshit-crazy Jodorowsky at the helm this could have been a drug trip for a generation. God, I would love to see The Star Wars.

Stephen King’s epic Gunslinger saga has got a television and movie green light under the wing of Ron Howard. I’ll give it a chance, but just imagine the violent, epic possibilities of a Walter Hill directed version, say from around 1978 with a post-Josey Wales Eastwood and a pre-Shining Nicholson…

Phillip K Dick meets Joe D’Amato in a Corman produced, Kraftwerk scored vision of the future.

This genuinely saddens me, because if a brain embolism hadn’t taken the fittest man on the planet this is the type of movie Lee would have been making.

I mean, I love Bill, Danny and Harold as the Ghostbusters, but C’MON! The titans of terror with Bette fucking Davis?

Nice to dream for a while, to think about what might have been. Until next time friends...

Hammer Of The Gods

Last weekend saw the 30th Anniversary of the death of John Bonham, the hard-drinking, life-loving, legendary drummer from Led Zeppelin. Inevitably thinking of the man took me back to the music, and I listened to selected tracks from the Zep catalogue - Kashmir, When The Levee Breaks, Rock And Roll etc. - and reminded myself once again why I consider them to be one of the greatest bands to have ever existed. Over the same weekend I also found myself watching The X-Factor. I have a love-hate relationship with the show; on the one hand I hate the corporate, sanitised, manipulative creation of pop music that Cowell and the rest of his satanic crew feed to the teenage masses, but on the other I love the freakshow, voyeuristic beauty of the proceedings. It’s the car accident syndrome - horrible and disgusting to look at, but I just can’t force myself to turn away.

For me X-Factor can only be watched to make fun of. It’s not about the music, because to me this isn’t music. It’s bullshit, but it’s bullshit because of the people that are producing it. I don’t want my rock and pop stars manufactured, the ingredients fed into the machine and minced out the other end like the Scarfe cartoons on the Another Brick In The Wall video. I don’t want to see these fucking idiots clean cut, hair styled, smelling good and offering bleached smiles below vacant, soulless eyes. I want my rock stars to be legendary figures, to be quite literally Gods amongst mortals. I want to see and hear brilliant, untouchable heroes. Remember when Wayne and Garth dropped to their knees before Alice Cooper and kissed the earth? That was the truest moment in the movie. We are not worthy.

Zeppelin embody exactly what I’m talking about. Here are four individuals who came together to create some of the loudest, most beautiful noise ever pumped into human ears. Bonham, dressed in a boiler suit behind a mountain of drums, working over the skins like a one-man army, beating out rhythms in a frenzy of bloodied attack, occasionally dropping the sticks altogether and attacking his kit with bare hands, battering the beat with his own body. John Paul Jones, like most bass players the quiet, introspective one of the group, but picking out intricate lines and staring into the crowd with an evil shine in his wide eyes that suggest rape and murder are soon to follow. Jimmy Page, resplendent with legs apart and a sweat stained Les Paul hanging from his frame, string bending to heaven with licks stolen directly from the Devils own playbook, the only man in history who could make a black suit with an embroided dragon circling around it look cool. And up front, bare chested, hair flying and the mic lead wrapped around his arms is Robert Plant, jeans so tight you can see the veins in his dick, screaming and wailing for lost love, for breaking hearts and for dogs so black. For a decade this quartet were the greatest musical movement on planet Earth, across a series of astonishingly good albums that, at least for the first four, were so iconic they didn’t even have to be named.


Zeppelin, Keith Moon, Pete Townshend, Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Bon Scott, Dylan, John Lennon, Bowie. Some of them lived and some of them didn’t. The ones that are still with us, that made it through the shitstorm of heavy drinking and bad drugs, have slowed down somewhat, perhaps even revealing that they are just men after all. Of course they are; Keith Richards barely looks alive these days. But here’s the truth, and it may not be the most popular statement I’ve ever made, and it may not be politically correct in a modern world where we are taught everyone is equal, but it is this: THESE PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN US. They are heroes, they are villains, they are Vikings and Gods. We would love to be them, to have what they had, regardless even of the short lifespan encountered by some of the names above. We will never be them. They won’t speak to us, sign our programs, make friends with us. They have more stories surrounding them than tales in the bible, the difference being that ninety percent of them are probably true. Myths and legends surround them to create the beauty of rock and roll. The first real rock star, the first bad boy of music, Robert Johnson, went down to a crossroads in Mississippi sometime in the early 30’s, met the Devil, and sold his soul for the ability to play with lightning in his hands. Sometime later he walked back into Clarksdale and blew everyone away with his talent, drank a bottle of bourbon a night, and ended up sleeping with a white plantation owners wife. Johnson died at 27, screaming in agony on the floor of a juke joint while howling like a dog at the moon.

It doesn’t matter if Johnson made a deal, or if the truth is he went away for a year, practiced and practiced until his fingers bled, and then returned to town a better player. The story is a good one, is part of the appeal of the blues, and is the reason Johnson is the legend he is today. Blues players were on every corner in the south at that time, and some of them (Son House, Leadbelly) were more prolific and made infinitely superior music to the twenty-nine known recordings of Johnson. But only one of them met the Devil, and that is the making of a hero.

The great, untouchable figures of music have always had exaggerated tales surrounding them. Keith Richards allegedly flew to Switzerland every couple of years to have his blood drained, washed and returned. Johnny Cash crawled into a network of caves with the intention of dying and heard God telling him to live. Keith Moon got lost on the set of Tommy and returned three days later covered in blood, naked, and walked up to the catering truck and demanded brandy. The mystery surrounding these figures is almost as important as the music itself. Maybe that’s the problem; in this modern day world of internet, multiple music channels and ten thousand streams of live media covering every aspect of celebrity society it’s pretty much impossible to keep the mystery going. Thirty years ago the world of information was much smaller and quieter place, and as our thirst for knowledge has increased, our acceptance of mystery has diminished. Jack White knew the power of legend in the making of a band - when he put together The White Stripes back in the late nineties we were told it was his sister Meg on the drums. The band dressed only in red, white and black, said they were obsessed with the number 3, lived together in a house with no TV and only played vinyl recordings by candlelight. No one really believed any of it, but it didn’t matter, because the stories were cool and fun and turned The White Stripes from a simple little garage band from Detroit into a global phenomenon. And then someone ruined it and uploaded their wedding certificate to the web, and it turned out Jack and Meg were briefly married then divorced. Following that Jack dated Renee Zellweger, married a supermodel and obviously decided that if no-one else was going to play along with the fantasy then why should he? Shame, because for a while White could have been standing alongside the giants. The problem was the truth let him down.

The last great, truly legendary rock star we had was Kurt Cobain. The man was wild, sensitive, insane and depressed. Combine those elements with brilliant song writing, a split personality and a heavy reliance on hard drugs and you had a hero for a youth generation that had come through the excess of the eighties and landed hard into teenage years in the dismal, depressed nineties. There was nothing for these kids to look forward to and Cobain was their spokesperson, his attitude and music perfectly capturing the dissolution and anger of modern life. Kurt was never comfortable with his celebrity status, although he was clever enough to understand the power of the media in getting his views heard. For all his MTV appearances, the videos and the rock star wife he remained an enigma, occasionally frustrating but never, ever boring. I was lucky enough to be at the Reading Festival in 1992 and watched him bought on stage in a wheelchair, wearing a hospital gown, (a couple of weeks earlier he’d be admitted for yet another drug episode). It had been touch and go if Nirvana would make the festival, and word was that he was weak through therapy and would need to be seated for any performance. And then, after a nervous moment Cobain leaped from the chair into Breed, amps pounding the opening riff and sending the crowd into frenzy. It was probably the best two hours of live music I’ve ever witnessed, and one of Nirvana’s finest moments. The day Cobain put a shotgun beneath his chin and squeezed the trigger no-one could really say they were surprised, but his death left a hole in music that has yet to be replaced. Not to say there haven’t been fine rock and roll musicians since, but as yet no-one has risen to the status of legend. And it’s got nothing to do with the fact that Cobain and many others checked out early, died before their time. Sure, death often puts a seal on an iconic status, and who is to say what middle-age would have done to Cobain or Hendrix, but it’s not how they died that made these people legends. It’s how they lived.


In the end though, when all the drugs and dust have settled, it comes down to the music. The Doors, The Who, Zeppelin, The Stones, Bowie, Cash, Nirvana - all bands and artists with a fantastic catalogue of great songs. But also bands and artists with the charisma, attitude, talent and fuck-you attitude that can’t be learnt and certainly can’t be manufactured on a reality pop television show. Which brings us back to John Bonham. Here is a man who, through the power of rock and roll music and astonishing talent, not to mention a ferocious lust for life, was safe in the knowledge that he could walk into any room, any bar in the world and quite literally screw any woman in the place. You could be sitting with your wife having a quiet pleasant dinner in some high-class establishment somewhere, and within five minutes of Bonham walking through the door the kitchen would be on fire, the waiter would be bleeding, you’d have lost your shirt and be doing lines of cocaine from a knife and Bonham would have your wife’s dress up around her waist while bending her over the table and banging into her from behind. While you watched. And here’s the kicker… you’d let him, because When The Levee Breaks is that fucking good. Truly my friends, we are not worthy.

The Seven-Ups

It’s been a while since I posted an entry of things that have caught my eye or that I’m looking forward to. That may have something to do with me filling this blog with bizarre and generally unwanted fiction that no-one wishes to read. Not this time, friends. Your humble narrator will now take a backseat to people with genuine talent, starting with this brilliant little short film from British director Matthew Savage and starring Noel Clarke. You may know Clarke from his on-off role in the latest incarnation of Doctor Who, but he is also turning into one of the most influential people on the UK film scene, having written and directed Kidulthood and the recent 4, 3, 2, 1. Reign of Death is a science-fiction noir in the classic style of Bogart, and shows real style and love for the genre. The good news is that with Clarke’s input Savage is seeking funding to turn his short into a full length feature, and based on this five-and-a-half minutes that would be a very good thing.



It may have a ridiculous name, but the trailer for The Cup Of Tears is a thing of visual beauty, showcasing gorgeous CGI blended with live action and coming over like the bastard love-child of 300, Sin City and Kill Bill. It’s the brainchild of Irish commercial and music video director Gary Shore, who worked for six months on the trailer in the hope of securing funding to expand his vision into a full length feature. And Universal and Working Title have picked it up for development. If done right, this could screw with your brain and polish your eyeballs. Although I will bet my right hand the title will change.



I know very little about Amock, apart that it’s from the artfx students of French university Montpellier and that it features much screaming and running about in the documentary style of Rec and Paranormal Activity. And there’s also some pretty nice creature effects in it.



This is nothing new, just a fantastic trailer for one of the very best car chase movies of all-time, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. I saw this as a kid and instantly fell in love with Susan George (who was a staple of great 70’s genre cinema such as Straw Dogs, Fright and Venom) and desperately wanted to be the legend Peter Fonda. It’s a simple on-the-run tale as Larry and Mary pin the pedal across country in a beautiful, throbbing Dodge Charger with corrupt cop Vic Morrow in persuit. This story has been told a hundred times since, but never with this much style and just pure damn Seventies cool. Essential cinema for gear heads, beloved by Tarantino - a must-see action classic.



If you’re a fan of genre cinema, then you hold Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the God-like status they deserve. While director buddy Edgar Wright has been putting together his adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and preparing to go Global, Pegg and Wright have been making Paul, starring as two comic-book geeks who are on a road trip across America and pick up a friendly alien who has escaped Area 51. It’s directed by Greg (Superbad) Mottola and will be out early next year. All other details are shrouded in mystery, but if this first picture is anything to go by it should push all the film-nerd buttons - they’re at Comic-Con, for Christ sake…


If you’ve read my blog or social network shit recently you’ll know of my love for Canadian band Metric. Their Fantasies album from last year was a masterpiece of dreamy indie-rock, and Gimme Sympathy is the highlight, four minutes of the kind of music that moves the soul and makes you wonder why this four-piece isn’t playing everywhere. They’ve released a superb video to go with the song, and it perfectly captures the mood and spirit of this truly innovative band.



Finally, I know nothing of this except it’s about a young innocent who is drugged, brainwashed and abused by a corrupt clergy, receives a sign from God to seek vengeance on her tormentors with a huge arsenal, which she does, and then the church hires a motorcycle gang to track her down. IMDB say this is out next year. There hasn’t been a decent nunsploitation picture since MS.45, and I don’t care if this is so bad it’s good or just plain bad. I can be a cheap and easy date, and I’m sold on the title, that decription and this poster, and as such I WILL be watching a film called Nude Nuns With Big Guns.

Here's a thing

Feeling frustrated. Everyone but me is asleep and as usual the neurons and pulses that fire my brain are refusing to shut down for the night. I have a late 80’s/early 90’s rock mix coming from my stereo speakers - at the moment it’s The Pixies with Debaser - and all is quiet at Wilson Towers. I’m trying to write fiction and it’s literally like pulling teeth. It’s one word after another. Now I guess all writing is one word after another, but in my current condition it’s as if my fingers are pushing through syrup. I’m dragging the words out of my imagination, slowly, and the problem is what little is going down on the screen is, quite frankly, shit. Feeling frustrated. I really do wonder if this pursuit is worth it. Some days I can’t even write badly, and believe me, badly would probably be better than nothing - have you seen the money Stephanie Meyer is pulling in with the Twilight series of novels? Take it from one who has read a few pages with a mixture of grim fascination and a burning jealousy, Miss Meyer is never going to win the Booker prize. Feeling frustrated. I heard it once said that writing is the most solitary and loneliest of art-forms, that all those hours spent wandering around your own imagination can affect a person in unknown ways. Maybe it’s time I got out of the mind-station for a while, laid a cold flannel across my forehead and concentrated on the sound of silence. Maybe not. But I still feel frustrated.

Anyhow. I have a Blog and I write stuff here for people to read, and sometimes I put things on here that I like and I hope you will too. Tonights offerings are:

This amazing short film by Patrick Jean called Pixels. If you’re into old school videogames you’ll be grinning as Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Bomberman and much more attack and destroy NYC in two and a bit minutes that should make Michael Bay sit up and take notice before he pushes the go button on anything again. This is truly brilliant.



The Way Home by George Pelecanos. One of the writers on ace TV shows The Wire and The Pacific has been writing complex and emotional thrillers for almost twenty years, set in and around his hometown of Washington DC.. He’s one of my big influences and his latest novel is as good as anything he’s ever produced.

Letters Of Note is a fascinating website that will keep you engrossed for hours. Webmaster Shaun Usher describes it as “an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos.” The fact that most of the material on the site is from famous names throughout the 20th Century is a bonus, and the site has genuine and authentic scans and reproductions of the original material, like this letter below from Jimi Hendrix:



Finally, a fantastic remix from one of the best films of the last ten years. Shaun and Ed, dancing to electro at 4.00am makes Pete very, very angry. And makes me laugh a lot.



Until we pass by again. Goodnight sinners.

Save The What?

The whole recycling issue really leaves me cold. My wife loves it. We have a large plastic box in our under stairs cupboard where all cardboard, cans, junk-mail, boxes etc. are placed. All recyclable items MUST be placed in this box. There have been the rare occasions when I’ve forgotten the rules and tossed a can into the regular rubbish bin. On those occasions it has been a minor miracle that I’ve actually escaped without the skin being flayed from my back. If I make that mistake now it’s purely due to an absent mind and not any streak of rebellion. Cans go in the box. It doesn’t matter if the box hasn’t been emptied for a couple of days and the recyclable pile is the size of a mountain and as unstable as a Third-World dictator while the regular bin is empty. CANS GO IN THE BOX. Through pain, I have learnt.

The fun doesn’t end there. The box is then taken out for it’s contents to be transferred to the external bin. We have three bins now, large rectangular receptacles on small, neat wheels that stand in a line like soldiers of fortune keeping an ecological watch on my personal chunk of the planet. There’s a brown bin that’s designed for garden rubbish - grass clippings and hedge cuttings and the like. A green one that is designed to receive regular rubbish (although these days I don’t think anyone really knows what the hell regular rubbish actually is). And then, there’s the blue bin. Otherwise known as the recycling bin. We have a recycling box in the house, and it’s contents are transferred to the recycling bin outside. Easy, huh? Just lift the lid, throw the contents inside and-

NO! Of course it’s not that easy. Because paper goes into another box inside that bin while plastic and cardboard go into the main area. We’ve already done the separating, yet now we separate those piles into yet more piles. It’s roughly around this point I consider taking one of the rusty cans I’m in the process of chucking and slashing it across my wrists.

When I was a kid we had one bin. ONE FUCKING BIN. Imagine that! It was metal and round and sat proudly next to the shed and we threw everything into it. Why did that change? Why is it that I receive a schedule of recycling from my local authority every year that not only tells me how to recycle, but even hints with vague threats that if I don’t do it my rubbish won’t be taken away. Because we MUST think about the planet. It’s dying, don’t you realise? There are no trees left in Nebraska. A polar bear is now living on 4 foot by 4 foot chunk of ice because you’re to damn lazy to sort your Guardian from your bean cans. If we don’t make an effort, the ozone layer will burn and our seas will boil. We. Will. Die.



But here’s the thing. When I was at home the other Thursday I watched the huge, diesel-burning, atmosphere polluting garbage truck pull up our street. I watched the group of lads jumping out and emptying the blue bins. And not once, not once did they separate anything. Everything went into the back of the truck. Everything. Alright you say, maybe they were just storing it all in the back of the vehicle so they could sort it all out back at the depot? The fuck they did. The drove back, emptied that truck into the landfill hole and went for a cuppa. I’m sure it’s not their fault and that they do their best - they probably haven’t got enough man power or enough hours to do the job. However, I paid £112 a month last year in council charges and for that sort of money I don’t see why the council can’t keep up their part of the bargain if they’re demanding I do the same. I don’t see them spending my hard-earned on anything else. The roads are knackered (and of course we pay other taxes for that), I rarely set my house on fire, have a heart attack or get arrested, so I have no requirement of the emergency services. All my council appears to do with my money is take my recycling bins and mix them back up again. For £112 a month. Sounds like a bargain.

But the real issue of recycling is one of guilt. Yes, the planet is suffocating and choking on our fumes, beautiful species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate and the polar ice-caps are melting. It’s all true. But if I wash out my Ragu jars and put them in the right box they won’t. And it makes us all feel good, because we’re doing our bit and making the effort. We won’t feel guilty about all the other pollution we cause in the week - light pollution and high energy pollution and exhaust pollution and all that traffic that gets us to our hated jobs where we continue to make, build and design things that people don’t really need for a world that can barely sustain what we already have. It’s like going to Church for two hours on a Sunday morning and then spending the rest of the week sinning. You can get away with because you’ve done your bit.

I can’t give you numbers, but I’ll bet we could do some real recycling if for one week none of us drove anywhere. If our electricity and gas supplies were turned off at 6.00pm. If our power stations closed down during the hours of darkness. We could make a real, serious change. What’s that? You need to drive to the office because there are odd people on the bus. It gets cold at night and you don’t like wearing any of your sweaters. You really like slamming a pizza in the oven and having it ready just before the latest episode of Lost comes on the tube. Shit! Me too. I love my pepperoni special while Jack and Sawyer tramp across the island for the hundredth time…

The best thing to do is just keep separating those tins. Everything will be fine.

10 Thoughts From Navarone

Thinking that having the six pins and the plate pulled out of my ankle would have me back skipping around like Usain Bolt on speed within 24 hours is possibly the most misguided thought I’ve ever had.

Seven episodes of Lost left. Still no idea what’s really going on, and as time progresses, I’m fairly sure the writers don’t either. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

Jimmy Page’s guitar riff on Led Zeppelin’s In My Time Of Dying is pretty much the most perfect thing I’ve ever heard. Watching Page, The Edge and Jack White jam to this classic in It Might Get Loud just brightens my day every single time.



Writing is a frustrating, un-rewarding, depressing and lonely occupation. But when I’m on it, and I mean really on it, nothing makes me happier.

I have an awful lot of man-love for Jason Bourne.

Eating all your Easter Eggs as quickly as possible so you can’t see the mountain of chocolate any more will not stop the guilt. Especially when the cocoa smudges on your shirt are a constant reminder of what a greedy bastard you’ve been.

Why must they now release all the old classics on Blu-Ray? I’m broke, but that HD version of Lucio Fulci’s City Of The Living Dead is a must-have.

My PornStar T-shirt needs to go in the bin, because (a) it’s now so old and I can’t really tell where the holes end and the sleeves start, and (b) it’s blatant false advertising. Ask my wife. It’s more PornHope than PornStar.

I have a dream about taking my family and running away to somewhere remote, idyllic and peaceful, with long days filled with golden sun and nights dreaming beneath the stars. And as I get older, I realise that I must give it my all to make that dream a reality.

Repeatedly watching the trailer for Scott Pilgrim Vs The World will not make the August 6th release date come any faster.



I try and I try, yet still cannot find any Brain Salt on the shelves at Boots. If I could just take a spoon a day… Think how amazing my thought processes would be.

Jim Marshall

Photographer Jim Marshall died this week at 74. He was responsible for some of the greatest images of some of the most iconic musicians of all time. He captured the photo of Hendrix setting his Strat alight, of Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin, of Morrison in full flight with The Doors. He was the only photographer The Beatles allowed backstage with them on their final show in San Francisco in 1966. He spent three months living with Jimmy Page at the height of Zeppelin. The Stones took him out on the road during their legendary tour of debauchery in 1972. He was chief photographer at Woodstock. The man was arguably as influential as the artists he commited to film. In a world where image and look can be as important as sound he turned men and women into legends with his lens. The first photo below, of Pete Townshend on stage at 3.00am during the climax of The Who’s Woodstock set remains my favourite rock photograph of all time, and is pretty much the reason I picked the guitar up as a kid. Rest in peace, Jim. You will be missed.

Sane Man

If you have no idea who Bill Hicks is, I strongly urge you to find his work. Head over to YouTube and watch as much of his stand-up work that you can find, or get your hands on his albums Arizona Bay, Relentless and Rant In E-Minor. I was exposed to Hicks around 1992 after seeing his live show on late night TV. It was a revelation, changing the way I thought about comedy in the same way that hearing The Pixies changed the way I thought about music. I was used to and enjoyed edgy, dark comedy that was being offered by the likes of Ben Elton and Stephen Wright, but Hicks was something else. This pale, lank haired, spec-wearing American was part-comic, part-revolutionary, part-preacher, screaming his diatribe at an audience who were laughing sometimes with humour and other times with nervousness. Hicks was funny but he was angry, attacking corporate business, the LA riots, the Kennedy assassination, mass marketing, abortion and George Bush Sr. Listening to his routine got me thinking about politics, about alternative music, about the importance of making a choice in my life that didn’t have to fit in with a certain crowd and about having my own voice. I may well have discovered those things on my own or with a different guide, but it was Hicks who pushed me onto the path. As I started to track down his work and find out more about the man, I also discovered that he was dying of pancreatic cancer.

Bill Hicks died in February 1994 at the age of 32. To say that his voice was cut short to early is an underestimation of biblical proportions. In the years following his death I have often wondered what he would have had to say about the current state of the America and life in general. Certainly seeing George Bush Jr in the White House would have incensed the man to a white-heat rage. I would have loved to hear his thoughts on 9/11 and our so-called ‘War On Terror’. Or the cult of Celebrity. Or Reality television. Or the Internet. There would have been so much for Bill to turn his intellect and genius towards.

American : The Bill Hicks Story is a new documentary that examines his too-short life taken from over 150 hours of footage from his early days on the comedy circuit, back through his teen years and right up until his death. Bill’s journey was similar to many artists. Drugs, alcohol, temperamental mood swings, the works. But unlike most such stories Hicks righted himself, kicked the booze, kicked the drugs (even though it seems that Acid was what took him to the next level as a person and comedian) and didn’t lose any of his edge because of it. The documentary reveals Bill to be a deeply complex individual who loved and hated the world in equal measures. There’s a particularly incredible piece where Hicks picks up a tape recorder and starts discussing his deep-rooted fears of having to live up to being funny. It’s a raw and honest moment of insecurity from someone who just oozes confidence in every bit of moving footage I’ve ever seen. Writing this entry and re-watching some of his old work made me realise just how much I missed the man, one of my true, genuine heroes. His words today are more essential than they ever were. As The Smiths once said, ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out…’

Will Work For... What?

I was once again perilously close to redundancy a few days ago. The detailed background behind it is as dull and uninteresting as you could possibly imagine, but the facts are this. Britain is in recession, and I work in an industry in the vice-grip of it. My company isn’t making enough money, and so people had to go. Same story up and down the length of the British Isles. My bosses, in their wisdom (well, some would say wisdom, others would say delusion) deemed that I was better than someone else. Someone else went, and your humble writer kept his desk, his salary and his routine. At least, for now.

I’m not particularly attached to my desk. It’s a block of wood with an aesthetically designed corner for me to swivel around in and three drawers jammed on the side. It serves it’s purpose, but I couldn’t really say I need it. I could spread myself out anywhere, plug in a laptop, pick up a biro and I’m good to go. My salary… well, I’m not exactly the highest paid hombre in the world, but then who is these days? I’d love more money, and in truth I could really use a bit more money. But I pay the bills, put food on the table, manage to buy a movie now and again and occasionally even find that I can save a few notes here and there. I get by. Of course, if I’d been kicked out then I’d need to find some form of replacement, but what I’m saying is that I don’t make the kind of money I couldn’t find elsewhere. I could, and if I tried hard enough, could maybe even find a little bit more.

But…

Routine. If ever a word was designed to fill the human soul with equal parts dread and comfort it is routine. We are lost without it. We fucking hate it. And yet, above all the other fears I had during the 11 days I had between being told my job was at risk to finding out I was safe it was the thought of my daily routine being disrupted that kept me awake during the night. I am a slave to my daily routine, and so are you. Yes you are, and don’t even try to deny it. You will of course, because the thought of being a slave to anything is a terrifying one. Here, take my hand and I’ll show you a typical weekday…

Alarm. Same time. Every day. Ten minute lie-in. Up. Bathroom. Dress. Breakfast. Wearing same kind of clothes each day. Leave house same time. Travel. Listen to same radio station. Arrive work same time. Make tea. Fire up PC. Look at work to do. Do work. Same work every day. Talk to same people about same things - TV, holiday, what did last night, what doing tonight, sport, if I won lottery, how is wife/husband/girl boyfriend - Eat lunch. Same thing most days. Same time. Resume same work in afternoon. Have same conversations. Leave work same time. Travel. Listen to same radio station. Arrive home same time. Have dinner. Same things most days. Talk to wife/husband/girl boyfriend. Go out. Stay in. Watch TV. Read book. Feel tired. Go to bed. Sleep.

Now you can substitute various elements of the above (I personally will scratch ‘watch TV’ and replace with ‘write depressing blog no-one ever reads’), and yes, of course the weekends are a little different, but basically… that’s it. That’s our collective day. And when you break it down, split the time into words and add stops between them, it’s pretty frightening. Because… that’s it. We don’t really do anything at all. And the worst of it is losing my routine was what frightened me the most about getting made redundant! But I’m so boring! Why the hell would I want to keep on doing the same monotonous routine every day?

Because it’s comfortable, safe, easy. Routine is what keeps us going, makes us feel secure when we turn on the nightly news and watch 200,000 dying in Haiti or see kids getting their brains blown out in Afghanistan in the name of a war we don’t understand. Because we can switch off the news, go to bed and get up in the morning and carry on with a sense of purpose is what makes us sleep at night. But the routine controls us, holds us, forces us to do things we don’t want to do in order to pay for things we don’t really need. Chuck Palahniuk said it brilliantly in his classic novel Fight Club: “Eventually, the things you own end up owning you…” I am as guilty of that statement as you are. I need my laptop, my plasma, my sofa, my Xbox, my phone, my books, my DVD collection, my car. Or at least I think I do. Well, I’ve been told I do, by very important people on the top floors of very important buildings with very shiny advertising. Clever people who must be right. Right?

Maybe. One of the finest philosophers of the twentieth century, John Lennon, once said, “all you need is love.” Spot on. I am in receipt of love and am in turn a giver of the emotion, and anyone who is will be enriched by that. But, Jesus, I wish I could just let that daily routine go, cast all the rules aside and wake up at whatever time I wanted in the morning and think, “what am I going to do today?” But I can’t, because we’re slaves, you and I. Now tell me I’m wrong.

So, back to the title. Will work for…What? You fill in the blank here yourself. My answer? Will work forever. The third and final quote of this entry comes from George Orwell. “Fear will keep the people in line…” At least I think it was Orwell who said that. It might have been Tony Blair. Which brings us neatly back to the recession, in a roundabout sort of way.

Anyway, I’ve got to get up in the morning. Goodnight sinners. Same time, same place, tomorrow.
　

iShit

Found this while trawling through the cynicism and delights over at The Onion, which still remains the most essential portal for satire on the interweb. This, my friend, sums it up very nicely…
Genius. This is Rich Wilson. 37. Feeling like re-fried shit, wishing he could take his wife and family and just step out of the modern world. Build an ark, sail to an island, eat fish and rice, run in the surf and let the sun burn my skin. You can keep your twenty-first century life - who needs the fucking pressure?
Although, ironically, I’m typing this on my laptop in front of my blu-ray/HDTV/Sky+ while sitting on my sofa with my gas central heating on. Sometimes I hate myself.

Dust In The Wind... Dude

6 minutes and 31 seconds of awesomeness. You may feel very, very small after watching the clip below. What it says about the planet we live on, and the questions regarding life, other worlds, creationism or the existance of God... I couldn't say. But I do know that we surely can't be the only life in the vast expanse of the Universe.

Lost In Translation

The TV phenomenon of the past few years (I found myself writing ‘the noughties’ and then realized that whenever I read or hear that phrase being used I feel like inflicting physical harm on the user, so I didn’t) returns tomorrow. Lost has had five (generally) brilliant seasons and I am very excited to see what happens in the sixth and final one. I’m also nervous. Nervous because I don’t see how J.J.Abrams and his crew can possibly wrap up every story thread and tie-up every loose end. We’ve come so far since Oceanic 815 crashed and washed it’s collection of survivors up on that beach. What started as a fairly simple Robinson Crusoe meets Lord Of The Flies tale has morphed beyond all recognition into a time-traveling, globe-spanning, mortality-changing morality epic of such scale, featuring so many major and minor characters with huge background histories and complex plot arcs that I fear the planned 18 episodes that remain cannot possibly have time to resolve everything.

Here, off the top of my head, are just ten of the many questions I’ll want answers to:

1) How is it that Locke is dead, and yet reincarnated as who-knows-what as the nemesis of Jacob?
2) What the hell happened to the Polar Bear?
3) The smoke monster, the island’s defense system, is…?
4) What actually happened to Clare and Christian Shepherd in Jacob’s cabin?
5) How come Richard appears to be the only Islander who is immortal?
6) Who used to be those skeletons that Kate found in the cave in series 1?
7) How come everyone has returned to the island except Charles Widmore?
8) The numbers. The six numbers that seem to tie everything together, mean what?
9) Who keeps dropping those Dharma food packages on the island?
10) Where did Daniel Faraday disappear to for three years, and what the hell was he up to?

I believe in J.J.Abrams. Before Lost he created Alias, a show that was equally twisted into knots, equally as brilliant and yet resolved itself before the final credits rolled. He resurrected Star Trek to fabulous heights and in doing so created the most entertaining blockbuster of 2009. He is a geek like the rest of us and would never knowingly short-change the fans of the show. However, I just feel that this is a show that is so loved, so adored and so scrutinized by it’s loyal devotees that nothing he does can actually live up to expectations.

Personally, I blame The X-Files for my worries. There was a show that I invested so much time in, and for the first six seasons it was fantastic, running stand-alone stories alongside an ongoing plot involving conspiracies, aliens, shape-shifters and God knows what. The problem was that the makers kept it going too long. Instead of bowing out at the top of the game they took the money and stretched the idea way too far. The leads left and were replaced, ideas and threads were dropped like a stone, and it all wrapped itself up in a tragic two-hour finale that tried to address eight years of questions in around an hour. If you rocked The X-Files, if you championed it and talked about it from the beginning when no-one else did, then it felt like a betrayal from a lover.

Lost will finish this year, at it’s peak, and it will go down as one of the finest television shows ever created. I’ll be with it every step of the way, and I’ll miss it when it’s gone. I just hope that the parting is sweet, and not tinged with bitterness. We’ve all come too far for disappointment… 　

Friday Three

01
Mel Gibson's got a movie out this weekend. Edge Of Darkness is the hollywood remake of the superb BBC drama series from the 80's. If you've got half an interest in film you should see this.

Why?

Gibson has been gone for three and a half years; he hasn’t acted in a leading role in eight. He’s been taking shit constantly since Passion Of The Christ and became a bit of a joke after his drunken roadside arrest in 2006. Since then he’s done AA and gotten a divorce. But he has a legendary career filled with classic films and Oscar wins, and his directing career has been solid. He doesn't have anything to prove. So with all the shit he’s going to take, all the jaded interviews, all the sniggers and remarks about his opinions, every bit of tabloid dirt that is going to get tossed around, and a real Hollywood legacy at stake, you have to ask yourself this - how good does a script have to be to get a guy like Gibson to step out in the open and face all that?



Oh yeah. If that hasn't got your hair rising nothing will. This movie is from the writer of Scorcese's The Departed. It's directed by Martin Campbell, who gave us a bond for the 21st Century in Casino Royale. Ray Winstone, one of the finest character actors on the planet is in support. You need another reason? Okay, Max Rockatansky and Martin Riggs, two of the greatest bad-asses in cinema history, exist because of Mel Gibson. The man is a fucking legend and I grew up with him and I will be seeing Edge Of Darkness this weekend. You should too.

02
German Industrial Metal Gods Rammstein have released a new single from their latest album Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da, and like everything this band have done it is pure and simply very, very good indeed. Heavy, pounding, technical music that hits like a fist to the temple. Out of the many gigs from many bands I've seen in my years these guys are pretty much near the best. Theatrical and dramatic, they combine crunching guitars and drums with Till Lindermann's gutteral voice to fabulous effect, and I totally adore them. Their videos are always interesting, often controversial and frequently astounding. Ich Tu Der Weh is no exception:



03
J.D.Salinger died on Wednesday, aged 91. He was one of the greatest modern novelists and a true literary genius. If you haven't read his landmark work The Catcher In The Rye now couldn't be a better time to do so. His 1951 depiction of Adolescent alienation has never been bettered, not even by Salinger himself, despite the superb work he turned out in later years. He was never comfortable with his success and often refused interviews, and much of his work remained unpublished due to his own self-censorship. Salinger said he wrote for himself, and one can only speculate on the stories that went from his typewriter straight into his drawer. The New York Times posted a superb biography of the man here. Anyone who has ever put pen to paper or fingers to keys can only dream of achieving a tenth of his talent.

Pain and Horror

This goddamn headache is getting worse. When I awoke this morning the pain was a mild, manageable throb. Annoying, but nothing to write home about. Now we’ve progressed to a full-blown whirlwind of torture, a cranium-breaking Defcon 1 that feels like small creatures have been implanted through my ears, latched tentacles to my brain and have started to squeeze. My eyeballs are being battered from the inside like those huge drums that are hit by Japanese men wearing thongs.

Or maybe I’m just grumbling. Grow a pair and quit whining like a puppy, son.

Of course, my visual pain is only enhanced by this image:

This is from the new Alexander McQueen collection, and if one image has ever conveyed the utterly mind-numbing, pretentious and biblically stupid world of fashion it must surely be this. Seriously, what the hell is that chap wearing, and why would anyone pay good money to replicate this look and basically turn themselves into a tremendous arsehole? Would you walk down your street dressed like a Victorian Spiderman? Of course you wouldn’t. Maybe that’s the whole point of fashion – it exists to remind you that whatever happens in life you’ll always feel comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt, and under no circumstances do you need to pay a grand to look like a dick.

Department of Shameless Self-Promotion

So my wife has truly put me to shame this weekend. With only 35 weeks to go until she undertakes a complex six hour medical exam which she will only pass with a score of 90% or higher she has thrown herself into revision and study in the way she does everything - total commitment. Our dining table is strewn with medical texts and muscle charts and eye-watering genital descriptions while she has written page after page of detailed notes. She’s been working for hours - good, solid grafting, and I am in no doubt that come the 29th September she will hit the pass mark and become a fully qualified Accredited Clinical Coder, a job that most of you couldn’t even fathom and even less could do. As Thomas Dolby once said, she blinded me with science.

I, on the other hand, have written nothing this weekend except for these words.

And really, it’s not for wanting. I’m just struggling with the whole process. The Lost Weekend is really, genuinely about three-quarters complete. I’ve just thrown myself over the 95,000 word mark and that is a decent novel length, maybe 350 pages in general book-sized terms. I’m not the sort who limit’s a word count - I believe that the story takes itself from beginning to end and however long that takes it how long it is, but I have written a book amount of material and really don’t need to write much more. I know where it’s going, and I’m satisfied we’ll get there…

But, Jesus Christ, the getting there is, just recently, taking some doing.

Writers talk about writing out of love for the work, and I guess that is the main reason for doing it. But most of the time I don’t love writing. I tolerate it at best, and hate it at worst, but the fact of the matter is I can’t not do it. It took me a long time to actually figure out what I wanted to do with my life, but that realisation has bought me a huge amount of frustration and virtually no reward. And no, I’m not talking about reward in a financial sense, because we all know that there is very little money in fiction, especially not for unknowns such as myself. About ten to fifteen years ago there were some huge advances being handed out for first-timers with their dog-eared manuscripts, but too many publishing houses got burnt by handing out three book deals and only receiving one novel, so editors got wise and shut their wallets. And then, of course, J.K.Rowling turned up with her teenage wizard and sucked up most of the money on the planet.

So, no money. Surely then there must be some form of accolade, some form of praise? Don’t bank on it. Most people can’t even be bothered to read what you write, let alone comment on it in a positive/negative fashion. I have two critics in my life who will always tell me the truth when it comes to what I do. The first is my Wife, who I trust absolutely to tell me exactly what she thinks. She’ll do this with every aspect of my life, and I know my fiction is no different. If she thinks it sucks, she’ll tell me, and I thank her for that because every author needs someone who bring them back down to the ground with a bump and let them know they’re just a hack. Hannah is also my ideal reader, and what I mean by that is she is the person I imagine enjoying the story while I’m writing it. If I’m describing a scene, or writing dialogue, it’s her that I hope will enjoy it. The other top critic is my Father, who is always enthusiastic for my work and will always grumble if I’m not doing it right. But pretty much everyone else who reads my stuff? I’m lucky to get a nod of recognition - most of them can’t even be bothered with it (I don’t need to name names but you damn well know who you are). Truth of the matter is that most people haven’t got the time or the inclination to read successful authors with proven track records, so what chance the amateur with dreams of success?

So what does that leave? Not a lot really, because it’s not even a profession or hobby you can share with other people. Writing is a solitary business that alienates you from friends and family for hours at a time, frequently causes headaches and stress, is often frustrating and gives you a permanent crease in your brow. I find myself ignoring the kids, not spending enough quality time with my wife, lying awake in the middle of the night with my imagined conversations running around my head. Not being able to write, just like now, and banging my head in frustration because I want to, I want to, I want to. There is absolutely nothing to recommend it.

But here I am, tapping keys on the laptop again out of some kind of wanting, I guess you would call it an obsession. And I am obsessed, because I have experienced the moments. I don’t know what you call it - muse, mojo, creative juices - but when it happens it’s like the first time you see the ocean on a car journey to the coast, or that first beer after a long day of work under the hot sun, or the first time you kiss someone you care about. If you write for long enough a moment will come. It might be at 2.45am when your back is aching and your eyes are streaming after hours hunched over your screen, but suddenly the words start to flow smoothly, your characters start to breathe independently, and as the writer you’re just along for the ride, surprised at what just happened because the work has taken on a life of it’s own…That for me is what makes it all worthwhile, and I guess that what the love of writing is all about. So now I think I’m going to rub myself up against Hannah (no need to cover your eyes, the pants are staying on), get myself some of her energy, and get back to it. Love or hate, it’s what it is, and it’s what I do.

Page One, Column One

The decade is only eleven days old, but already my enthusiasm for 2010 is starting to fade. Naturally this is solely due to the fact that I’ve started back to work, and subsequently find myself spending each day submerged in a world of concrete, instead of submerged in a world of movies, books and my own fiction. In the real world where I'm an overworked and underpaid automoton I can occaisionally forget about the things that get my juices flowing. And that's one of the reasons for starting this site - to keep my momentum going in a creative sense, as well as having an outlet for my muse. I'm a fairly self-opinionated bastard, if I'm honest, and as a consequence I've always got something to say...

So… Page one, column one.

I’m Rich Wilson, a writer, a dreamer, a lover of all-things cinema. In my world Gojira is real, I watch the Watchmen and it all went downhill after John Bonham choked on his vomit. This Blog features my work, my thoughts, and whatever else I find troubling my sleep-deprived mind. Comments and interactions are always welcome. As are you all...