The Obama Effect

If we are to ignore the dubious spectacle of a seven year old Sammy Davis Jr. performing song and dance numbers while clutching a piece of fried chicken as Rufus Jones for President’s eponymous hero in 1933 - and please, let’s - the first black actor to be cast as the American President was James Earl Jones in The Man, a Rod Serling-scripted satire in which a series of improbable mishaps befall the governing hierarchy and eventually lead to Jones’s senator being sworn into office. The Man was released back in 1972 - coincidentally the same year that Shirley Chisholm, a New York Democrat, became the first black person to run for a major-party’s presidential candidacy - and further examples of black Commanders-in-Chief have been pretty thin on the ground since.

The Man, 1972

The few we have seen have ranged from the eminently sensible to the very odd: Morgan Freeman was born presidential, and 1998’s Deep Impact provided him with a wholly adequate dry-run for his inevitable portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Invictus; conversely, former wrestler Tom Lister, Jr. - aka “That Monster From Friday” - was hamstrung by a complete gravitas-deficiency in the previous year’s The Fifth Element, and his presence is evidence more of director Luc Besson’s wilfully unconventional casting strategy than of any tangible suitability for the role. Chris Rock attempted to transfer his brash, streetwise stage persona to the character of an ultimately successful presidential candidate in Head of State (2003), with mixed results. And that’s pretty much it: add to the list Louis Gossett Jr. and Terry Crews - Left Behind: World of War (2005) and Idiocracy (2006) respectively - and you can count the number of post-Jones, pre-Obama black movie presidents on one hand. So the question is: will we now, with the first black president in the White House, see more black actors being given a chance to take on the role of the world’s most high-powered individual? Will the “Obama Effect” extend to the movies?

These are early days - even if it has been more than eighteen months since his inauguration (glaciers have nothing on the inherently conservative collective Hollywood mindset) - but there are signs that it might. When Roland Emmerich was putting together the cast for his latest end-of-the-world jamboree, 2012, the director (no fan of the previous administration) specifically wanted a black actor for the role of POTUS as a direct nod to the current real-life incumbent. It’s not a great part, truth be told: saddled with the role of the dithering President Wilson, Glover is unable to bring to the party the same brand of decisive leadership Freeman did in Deep Impact, when the Earth was similarly staring into the abyss. (And he wasn’t granted the same opportunity for gung-ho flyboy heroics that Emmerich afforded Bill Pullman in Independence Day, either.) But issues of quality aside, the director has at least issued a marker for others to take note of and emulate. Whether they do so, and the paucity of black presidents in theatres is therefore redressed, remains to be seen.

In fact, in the first decade of the 21st century - pre- and post-Obama - it has been the small screen that has seemed to lead the way in this regard, as it has in many others since cable channels like HBO and Showtime began habitually raising the bar. 24 had given us a sort of African-American spin on the Kennedys when Dennis Haysbert and D.B. Woodside played brothers who both at one time occupied the Oval Office, before Heroes revealed (within a month of Obama’s victory over John McCain) that the president of its fictional America was none other than Michael Dorn, known to millions of Trekkies as Worf, the acceptable face of the once-nefarious Klingons.

But the biggest indication of a shift in attitude has come at the American network NBC - an organisation whose acronym industry insiders used to joke stood for “No Black Characters” not so long ago. The first episode of their new conspiracy thriller The Event is scheduled to air in September, in which Blair Underwood will star as President Elias Martinez. If that name sounds like it may be better suited to a president of a more Hispanic origin, it’s because that was indeed the original intention. The show was originally conceived in 2006, but after Obama’s victory the creators decided to change the character to a black president of Cuban descent in order to offer a cultural reflection of the historic result. The fact that Underwood was cast adds a further twist: the actor was a fervent advocate of Obama’s candidacy, and even spoke at some of his election rallies. Art imitating life, indeed.

Blair Underwood in The Event

If this is the start of a trend, there is one cold, hard factor that will have to play its part: Money. If people buy a ticket for, or tune into, something featuring a black president, then there will be a proliferation of them in theatres and on television screens. In this respect, the fact that 2012 has almost quadrupled its $200 million budget is an extremely encouraging sign. On the other hand Lisa de Moraes, TV critic at the Washington Post, pondered in the weeks after Obama’s victory what that result might mean for black actors in prominent roles, and their hopes rested, she argued, not on President Obama’s shoulders but on Laurence Fishburne’s. The Matrix star was in the process of taking over the mantle of leading man on CSI - one of the most watched shows in the history of television - from its long-time star William Petersen. “If the numbers on CSI stay strong with Fishburne, that’s good news for black actors,” she wrote. “If he flops, it’s bad news.” The viewing figures subsequently dropped from an average of 19 million in season 9, when he and Petersen made the swap, to just under 15 million the following season, when Fishburne headlined the show alone. Much may depend on Underwood and The Event.

Ashes Interrupted

The second test match between England and Australia, unfolding within the confines of the hitherto sunny and picturesque Adelaide Oval, has just been called off because of rain. It was obvious that this was going to happen because a) England, through their ruthless and sometimes exhilarating batting (especially KP's, who is on 200-something and looking like he could turn this into an exhibition or something should the mood take him), are in an extremely strong position to win the thing, and b) because I made a decision to fetch some more beers to see me through to the end of play, all six of which now seem redundant and knowingly mocking, though I think and hope I'm imagining that last bit - they're in the fridge two doors away, if they're mocking me it's not to my face. And if they are anyway, shame on them.

Um... my hero.

I had help though, oh yes: my house mate first cajoled, and then convinced me to do it - he's the guy who's now passed out to my left, a stance he's steadfastly adhered to since our return to base some time ago. I hold no hope of him stirring, and why should I? It is, after all, still raining in Adelaide. But for how long? How long? In other news, the world keeps turning.

Shameless Plug

A book containing one of my short stories is available to buy now at a very reasonable £2.99. Cannot say fairer than that. Find it here:

http://blankscreenbooks.co.uk/index.php?p=1_19

Meet A Guy Who Talked To A Guy Who Met Tom Savini (First Guy's Me)

Interview, conducted by yours truly, with director Jeremiah Kipp here:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/jerimiahkipp.html

...and my review of his film Contact here:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/contactreview.html

Freddie Flintoff

I bought the 2005 Ashes box set the day it came out, actually. It's been gathering dust for some time since its initial frenetic burst of activity in my DVD player, which is as it should be. Past glories mature better in the memory than they do on screen. And the memories are abundant, and most seem to feature Andrew Flintoff, who announced yesterday, after what must have been a close to soul destroying two-year programme of surgical procedures, bouts of ungodly rehabilitation, and ultimate failures to put back together his crocked knee, that he is finally retiring from all forms of cricket.

The timing could have been a lot better. Coming as it did on the final day of the most exciting County Championship finale in recent years, the announcement became the day's big story, overshadowing what proved to be an enthralling dénouement to the title race. A calculated move, I'm sorry to say, and one I hope had more to do with his advisers than himself. Even if that is the case, he has in the last few years proved himself very media savvy in his attempts to build the Flintoff brand, something the old school have sneered at but with which I've never had a problem - if a charisma-bypass like David Beckham can do it, why shouldn't he? But that was a step too far.

Now I'm going to talk about how he will be remembered.

He always said he was a batsman who bowls; his own insistence aside, it turned out to be more the other way around, but either way he was that rarest, most valuable of cricketing breeds: a genuine all-rounder. His statistics don't quite much up to past all-round greats like Botham and Khan, and they are dwarfed in comparison to his peer Jaques Kallis. But you ask any neutral cricket lover from Bombay to Brisbane which of those two they would hand over their hard-earned to watch, and they'll plump for Freddie Flintoff every time. At any rate, statistics are, as a wiser man than I once noted, the obsession of the unimaginative - and it's the imagination that Flintoff inspired whenever he came out to bat or got ready to bowl. He had the ability to make grown men weep - and not just supporters of the opposition, either. Lumps in throats were a by-product of Fred on a cricket field.

It's something of a cliché, so I'll allow Michael Vaughan to say it: "He cleared bars," the former England captain wrote yesterday, "and he would then go and join them in it afterwards." As a batsman, he was a stroke-making thug of a player. At his best, his brutal power meant that, if his game was in synch, his six-hitting could take the game away from the opposing team in less than a session, less than ten overs. The magic that seemed to twinkle around the ground when he was in the mood was like no other; I recall him swatting, seemingly at will, these mighty sixes on (I think) the way to a Test hundred against the West Indies in 2004 - with one of these he managed to pick out his own father in the crowd. Flintoff Snr. brought a bit of reality to the proceedings by contriving to drop the catch, but the look on Fred's face more than made up for the aberration. As a fielder, standing there at second slip with the batsmen's nicks disappearing into his huge mitts like they were just happy to get home, he was simply peerless.

His bowling was always quick and hostile, his strength and height enabling him to bang it in and shit up the opposing batsman, but in the second half of his career he picked up a bit more pace, in spite of his catalogue of injuries. Now a genuine fast bowler, he also added to his game the ability to get prodigious swing, both conventional and reverse. And late swing, to boot. The combination comprehensively overpowered Ricky Ponting in one of The Great overs in 2005, a defining point in a series that came to be known as Freddie's Ashes long before any news broke yesterday.

For all his mighty deeds on the field, the strange thing about him was his almost contradictory sense of familiarity. Despite his being a top-class sportsman, you knew someone just like him. You got the feeling that if you ever struck up a conversation with him down the pub, the evening might end with you round his gaff, closing the curtains against the break of dawn while he scoured the kitchen cupboards for a bottle of coffee liqueur he swears he saw in there last week or whenever. One of my favourite images was him being interviewed by the BBC or ITV before one of the England football team's 2006 World Cup games, at the ground it was being played at. Pissed as a fart (it was a lunch-time kick-off, I seem to remember), he rambled on almost incoherently while his good friend and England team-mate Steve Harmison stood by, sniggering like a loon. Anybody who's ever been to a proper house party that somehow just didn't manage to end would have recognised the tableau immediately. Not just a great, inspiring player, but a hoot to boot. Nice one, Freddie, we'll be lucky to see your kind again - and I'm dusting off that box set tonight.

Winston and the Black Dog

I was dreaming of a long flight of stairs, and in the dream I knew there was a park at the top of them. I had just decided to ascend when I felt something tugging at my leg. I woke up and saw Winston sitting at the end of my bed. He was staring into the laptop.

"You were snoring," he said.

"I was sleeping."

"Well I wish you wouldn't."

"Sleep?"

"Snore."

I knew he'd been drinking even before I saw the Highball next to the computer. He pointed at the screen and I saw he was on Gumtree again. He was fascinated by it for some reason.

"What's a WAG?" he asked.

"It stands for 'Wives And Girlfriends'."

He half turned to me and I could see in the weak light of the screen how his eyes glistened beneath his furrowed brow. "They are advertising on here a website which young ladies can join in order to become one of these WAGs. Can they not go about it in the normal fashion?"

"Well, a WAG is the girlfriend of a rich, professional footballer. It's kind of a thing now."

"So this website is for women who want to marry a rich football player."

It wasn't a question but I answered anyway. "I guess."

"So they themselves can become rich and, presumably, famous. By association."

"Well there are varying degrees, Winston... But yeah, sounds like it."

"Jesus Christ," I barely heard him say.

He turned away from me and raised the glass of Scotch to his lips. He took three long, deep swallows, but when he put the glass down it contained no less liquor than before.

I pulled the covers off and sat next to him.

"How bad is it?" I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

He made a snorting noise through his nose and then was silent.

We sat like that. The steady flow of traffic outside was mesmerising, and I began to doze. I was jolted back by Winston's elbow digging into my ribs.

"I am dead, you know," he said mildly.

"That's right. You're a ghost."

He laughed, and just then he sounded young, and his eyes began to sparkle with something more than booze and sadness as he recited to me: "'A ghost! One trusts such things? In will, and sight?'"

I had no idea what he was talking about. "Is that... Shakespeare, or something?"

"Ha! Close - Master Winston Churchill, I believe it was." He smiled, and whatever had been dancing in his eyes vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

He took another drink from his bottomless glass, and I waited. He drank and drank and when he was finished he slammed the glass down. "This," he bellowed at it, "no longer fucking works!"

I nodded my head. "I know man, it doesn't help anyth-"

"I didn't say it doesn't fucking help, I said it doesn't fucking work! When you are dead, alcohol no longer has any effect on you. Whatsoever. Point of fact."

"But I've seen you drunk loads of times. Like... now?"

His shoulders hunched and he held his hands up before me as if they held something. "What you see is a pantomime," he said, his voice wavering almost imperceptibly on the last syllable. "A placebo. Psychosomatic bullshit. I go through it because I know how to, do you see? But it doesn't work, and because it doesn't work it doesn't help. And so it rolls in, as it always did whensoever it would desire... and I'm powerless." He stared into me, his eyes wild, and what I saw within them wasn't fear or anger but a perplexed despair far more dreadful to witness than either. He turned away and bowed his head. I tried to put my hand on his shoulder but it went straight through him.

After a while he looked up, but not at me. "What time is it?"

I did not want to get into this.

"What time is it?" he repeated.

"It's six to midnight," I said eventually. "They haven't moved it since you last asked, Winston. They haven't moved it since January - and that was to put it back."

He wasn't listening. "Six minutes," he muttered under his breath.

"It's not..." But I didn't know what it wasn't. "It's not... so bad," I finished weakly.

He took another drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A faint smile appeared as he patted me firmly on the back. "Stephen, you're an idiot," he said - not unkindly - and then he faded away, taking his Scotch glass with him.

A Somewhat Feeble Defence

procrastinate verb prəʊ ˈkræs.tɪ.neɪt

to keep delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring

(Cambridge Dictionary)

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes a piece of work that should take me, say, two hours, takes me two hours. These are joyous, momentous occasions. They restore my faith in... all sorts of things. Actually that isn't really true. They only restore my faith in myself. But I suppose under the header "self" lies all sorts of things I could be referring to, like, er, ability for one, I suppose? Competency, definitely competency. So, those two. They - the occasions when I complete a piece of work on time (not before, though, never before) - restore my faith in my ability and competency. Which is rather lovely, when it happens, which, as I mentioned in the opening line, it doesn't very often.

So I'm happy and pleased and maybe a little bit smug until I realise that the only reason I finished it in exactly two hours is because I had exactly two hours in which to finish it. Do you see? I had no choice. I was panicked into forced creativity. It doesn't count and must be stricken from the record. I lose, somehow.

Of course, it's now harder than ever for writers to keep focused when trying to bash something out on their laptops.

Not like that.

Facebook, for instance. Cursed, wretched thing. Why don't I just ignore it completely, or even deactivate my account, and get some work done? The answer is... well I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. The suggestion makes perfect sense to me. But would it really do any good? What about e-mails? Gotta have e-mails. Got to have 'em. So if I had no Facebook, I'd just be checking my non-existent new e-mail messages every ten minutes, which I do anyway. And then there's, you know, the internet. Who's that guy that played that guy in that thing? I might idly wonder while attempting to navigate some tricky opening paragraph. Buggered if I know... but I bet IMDb does! As for Wikipedia, I just don't want to talk about Wikipedia.

So, cunningly, I disconnect the internet. But my laptop has Solitaire. Now I hate Solitaire, and after my ninth or tenth game I remember this, so I close that down too. Now it's just me and the blank page... and maybe just one more quick game of Solitaire. Or Minesweep, do computers still come with Minesweep? No, this one doesn't, I'll just reconnect the internet and download a version... And so on. So it's the fault of computers, then? So when writers were using word processors and typewriters they didn't have any of these problems, right? Wrong. Ever heard of pens? Ever heard of paper? Ever heard of doodling?

So let's say for argument's sake that you could successfully ignore all these distractions like a professional, whatever one of those is. What happens then? Why, then the questions start, of course: Have you brushed your teeth? Are you seriously happy with the layout of your room? A snack, do you fancy a snack? I bet there's some Wotsits left. Somewhere. In the world. Go find them.

You might be reading this and thinking to yourself, "Gee, this guy is lame." And the truth is, I couldn't agree more. My only comfort is the knowledge that this is not an uncommon affliction. Down the ages, writers of all levels of experience and stature have done virtually anything to get out of writing. Not all of them, but enough to keep me from losing my happy thoughts completely. It can be incredibly satisfying, writing, but it can also be like volunteering daily to have your head put in a particularly belligerent vice. So if my constant meandering stops me from putting my own noggin through the computer screen, so bloody be it.

The Great Curb-Seinfeld Controversy...

... that continues to rage (inside my head) is explored on Butnu:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/seincurb.html

Stephen King: Under The Dome

They say an artist produces their finest work in the first ten to fifteen years of their career. Something to do with that hoary old chestnut, "the hunger of youth". Or, as Simon David Williamson so memorably put it: "Well, at one time you've got it, and then you've lost it... and it's gone forever." I really don't know about that in general (take Clint Eastwood - you really gonna tell me Firefox is a better film than Mystic River?), but in the case of Stephen King the theory seemed to hold some water. The author's canon is front-loaded with classics and I had, without really knowing it, resigned myself to the reality that he would never write anything else that could sit truly comfortably upon the shelf next to Salem's Lot, The Shining, It, and of course, The Stand. Those four have always been the benchmark for me, populating the highest of grounds with the likes of The Dead Zone, Pet Sematary and Carrie scattered about a few feet below them.

Under The Dome, published last year, probably is not destined to join the former group; after one read I'm not going to commit either way. But what is certain is that it is his most absorbing, muscular novel since It, not to mention the most ambitious. (I'd like to make it clear at this point that I am not including the Dark Tower books here, mainly because I've not read the last three having found the fourth, Wizard and Glass, rather dull. Yikes!)

The premise is simple: what would happen if a small town suddenly became encased - exactly along its borders as they would appear on a map - in an invisible, impenetrable bubble? As you may have noticed, and much to King's surprise, this is the exact same plot device used in The Simpsons Movie, and so the publisher has been at great pains to promote the fact that he first attempted the novel in 1976 and, according to the author himself, subsequently "crept away from it with my tail between my legs". The Dome, you see, is big.

The inside back-cover trumpets that it took over 25 years to write (erroneously, if he first attempted it in 1976, but anyway), as if King had been working on it all that time. God knows what sort of gargantuan manuscript we'd have on our hands if that really were the case because as it is the thing clocks in at a very weighty 877 pages - more than the original, edited version of The Stand, in fact, and it is that previous epic concerning the good and evil within mankind that Under The Dome most resembles.

To call it a companion piece is, I think, correct: both books deal with the idea of a complete breakdown of recognised structure and what might occur thereafter, though the scales of each differ completely - one takes place in a single small town, the other an entire continent. Both, though, feature the rise of evil in the aftermath - although unlike Randall Flagg in The Stand, Big Jim Rennie, the town of Chester's Mill's Second Selectman, is all too human. He plays the situation for his own political gain and - like Flagg - wants absolute power. Rennie is "Born Again", and the theme of fundamentalism that runs throughout may invite some to imagine King is in allegorical mode here: Chester's Mill is the U.S.; Rennie is Dick Cheney to First Selectman Andy Sanders's George W. - Sanders is a puppet, an incompetent who Rennie controls in order to get what he wants from the town, without ever having to stick his own neck on the line. Sound familiar? If that doesn't convince you that King was thinking of a certain presidential administration of recent vintage, he has an airliner crash into the Dome just to ram the point home. No-one ever said subtlety was the author's strong point.

To say King's prose has gotten tighter as his career has progressed is not exactly news; it would be a bigger surprise if it hadn't. But I've always felt that the charm of his earlier novels - besides demonstrably being the work of an author who has yet to become "Stephen King: Cash Cow" - lay in the somewhat loose approach to narrative. His attitude seemed to be, why write a scene in three pages when you can easily do it in ten? This was of course a stick his lazier critics often used to beat him with, but I've missed it myself as his work has become pacier and more direct. Having said that, Under The Dome fairly rockets along and is all the better for it. Particularly when it comes to the book's big set-pieces, of which there are many - one in particular rivals the blistering opening chapter of Cell for adrenalin-fuelled savagery on an apocalyptic scale, and another involving a simultaneous prison break and the mother of all town meetings would have Michael Mann twitching uncontrollably in appreciation.

King has stated that he expects to continue writing until he is physically incapable (and even then he'll probably start using a Dictaphone), but he may only continue to publish for another ten years. I don't know if Under The Dome will in time be regarded as one of his absolute classics - we'll decide on that in a couple of years, shall we? But if this is the start of an Indian summer in the man's career, I hope that prediction is conservative. There's no-one to fill the void, you see... not on this kind of form.

Test cricket and pants

See below:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/sittinginpants.html

Bad Lieutenant (2009)

The following is an industry standard-style review for the purpose of demonstrating my professionalism. Please note I don't suddenly think I'm better than you.

BAD LIEUTENANT

Synopsis:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Detective Terence McDonagh investigates the murder of six illegal immigrants. Prescribed Vicodin for a chronic back injury, he detours regularly from the case to procure illegal narcotics for himself and his prostitute girlfriend Frankie. As he gets deeper into debt with his bookie, and his drug-take increases, he becomes personally involved with those under investigation. Soon, his fate and theirs are intertwined.

Review:

As one phoned-in blockbuster performance followed another, we started to fear for Nicolas Cage. Like a once-incendiary comedian now happy to headline a never-ending succession of Disney family films, he appeared increasingly content to grab the cash and slip smoothly and without fuss into the role of Hollywood elder statesman. He had even started voicing cartoons. Would we never again see on-screen the hungry wild man David Lynch once turned to when he needed an actor capable of anchoring his crackpot fairytale Wild At Heart? And speaking of peckish, was the commitment that compelled him to eat a live cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss gone forever? Well, not quite. Judging by his enjoyably feverish portrayal of Det. Terence McDonagh in this update of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult original, there’s life in the crazy old dog yet. Not that he didn’t have help. In Werner Herzog the actor has the perfect accomplice: turns out the cheerfully crazed stalwart director is the perfect conduit for channelling Cage’s hyperkinetic tendencies. Who’d have thought?

Set in the months after Hurricane Katrina wreaked such devastation in New Orleans, the story follows McDonagh as he trawls through the city’s underworld in search of those responsible for a multiple homicide, but in truth Herzog doesn’t allow the plot to get in the way of the action. In fact, the police procedural genre is merely a hanger on which the director gleefully drapes such oddities as a stakeout seen from the point of view of an (apparently tripping) iguana, and - in a scene which in the hands of a lesser (saner?) director would have been laughable for all the wrong reasons - the sight of a recently dead man’s soul exiting his body and proceeding to break dance. Indeed, more than anything it’s a faintly black comedy, and often a pretty broad one at that - the ridiculously large .44 Magnum that Cage habitually wears tucked down the front of his trousers makes him look as if he’s wandered in from a lost Laurel and Hardy sketch.

And much of the fun does come from watching Cage turn in his most convincingly loopy performance in years. Sometimes when the actor goes off the deep end you just wish someone would throw a net over him - here, Herzog instead gives him a rope and dares him to hang himself, and the results are often hilarious. The intensity and regularity of his manic outbursts increase throughout the film as Herzog lessens the slack, but there is some nuance to be admired here, too. At one point a fellow cop accuses him of being high, to which he deadpans, “Whatever I took is prescription… except for the heroin.” And a scene in which he recollects a childhood fantasy to his prostitute girlfriend - played with a noble sensitivity by Eva Mendes - is surprisingly touching amidst the surrounding tomfoolery. The character’s actual physicality is important to Cage, too - McDonagh’s chronic back condition is in fact the catalyst for much of this bad behaviour (the Vicodin he is prescribed for the pain soon leads to the cocaine and heroin he swipes from the police evidence room) and Cage wants us to know it. His posture deteriorates throughout until by the conclusion he is practically bent double. It looks painful, and shows a dedication that perhaps has been lacking in recent times.

A welcome return to form for Cage then, in collaboration with a director who has the good sense and instinct to point him the right way and “let the whore loose“, as Herzog calls it. The pairing seems so obvious you wonder why they never thought of it before. Who knows… perhaps the director has found his new Klaus Kinski?

Verdict:

Bad is best for Cage as his Lieutenant cuts a swath through one of the most entertaining films of the year.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon - Sam Bicke is not the the man in the Cadillac

This right here is a link to an article I wrote about a little known gem, up on www.butnu.co.uk - a veritable smorgasbord of things that are not boring:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/assassinationrichardnixonreview.html

Winston Again

My morning stroll up and down the stairs concluded, I opened my bedroom door and there he was. "Hello, Sir Winston," I said.
He was sitting at my computer next to the window, which was letting in the bright morning sunshine as I had opened the curtains before leaving the room three short minutes before. This light mostly shone through him, but the little that did catch his jowly, apparitious features made them look incredibly wise... but also thunderous. As in, thunderclouds - grey, foreboding thunderclouds that are the opposite of bright sunshine, really.
"Morning," he said, glancing down at the laptop. "Been reading your blog."
"Oh cool, what did you-"
He cut me off - dead - with the raise of a single eyebrow. He's good, I thought. No point denying it.
"Not posted much lately, I see?" he said. "Been busy with a new, full-time, permanent job?"
"Er..."
"Spending a lot of time with an alluring new lady acquaintance, then?"
"Ha! Um, no, no I haven't."
"Oh," he said, smugly. I decided there and then that this was a quality unbecoming of icons, unless they were Joey from Friends or someone. His expression changed suddenly to one of affected innocence. "Is it because you have no access to a computer of some kind?"
I sighed. "That... that one right there is mine, Winston. It's in my room. Look, you're pointing right at it."


My muse, with hump.

"Silence!" he roared moments after I'd stopped talking. "Choose your next words carefully, Stephen, as I will ask this only once: what is the reason for this indolence?"
Just then my phone rang. Winston nodded and I answered it. The person on the other end was an acquaintance of mine who had hidden his number. I ended the call immediately and turned back to my muse.
"Sorry. What were you saying?"
"What's with the indolence?"
"I don't know. What's an "indolence"?"
"Laziness, you dolt."
"Oh," I said, my mind kicking into high gear. I furrowed my brow slightly and looked sadly at the floor. Winston is a Shrewd Operator... but so am I. "Well, I... I don't think anyone's reading it." Finally, like it was a real effort, I looked up into his face, into his eyes. It was brilliant.
He met my gaze, I met his. It went on like this until I thought one of us was going to cry, probably him. Then he said: "Well, boo-fucking-hoo."
He'd bought it, but the ploy had backfired. I could either go with it or pull out, but if he knew I'd got him he'd be extra-cautious from now on, so I chose the former option.
Concentrating on making my eyes go shiny I muttered, "Sir Winston?"
"Look, we all know you're Mummy's super-sensitive special little guy..."
"Hey..."
"...And God knows you'd never be mistaken for a real man..."
"Fuck you, Churchill."
"...But you've got to get some balls on you, my friend."
"I've got balls. Ask your Mum." Your dead Mum, I thought. Zing!
"Whatever. Listen, do you think it was easy taking over from that appeasing Nazi-fucker Chamberlain? Well, it bloody wasn't. It was hard, Stephen, hard like rock-hard. But... every day you make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending..."
And I have to admit I zoned out the rest. When I came back he had begun to fade, a sure sign he was leaving this earthly world. "Don't let me down, Stephen. You think I like coming back over to this side?"
"Er, you're here all the time? You watched Jerry Maguire with me last night." I could barely see him now.
"I most certainly did not."
"You were sat right there. You think I didn't notice you? You were smoking a cigar."
"He he. 'Show me the moneeeeeeeeey...'"
And then he was gone. But I knew I'd see him again. I just knew it.

Rafael Benitez

There was a time during Liverpool's magnificent failure to win the 2008-2009 league title that I was a jinx. I was no good to the team, no good at all, and if you ask anyone who was around me at the time they will tell you the same. Some of these people could not have given two shits about football, the title, or where it ended up - but they were genuinely stunned at the shadow I cast over Liverpool whenever I watched them, so I took one for the team and I simply stopped doing it.

So when, in the second half of that season that has now proved to be the fruitiest of false dawns, first Real and then United got so stylishly obliterated in the space of a week - eight goals in total, four of them at Old Trafford - I wasn't watching that live. Radio commentary has always been too hairy, so I had a website rundown and the odd drunken phone call to go by, and that my friends was it. Shame, you might say. And I agree, but at the time it was all I could see to do. I've seen all of those games since, and been enthralled, but in retrospect? Jinx or no, I missed out on some really, really good stuff.

Retrospectively, though... Ah, it is a shame. That Liverpool team, Rafa's team, in the final period of that season - just the season before last - when all the mistakes had been mostly toned down, and Gerrard and Torres were not just beginning to appreciate each other's game but actually seeming to fall in love with each other's game... they were a match for anyone in Europe, and certainly more than a match for the team that ended up with more points than them in England. So it goes. But I thought then, as I do now, that there, but with the grace of God, we could have gone.

If only:
One season - just one - without injuries to Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres.
If only whatever the nebulous breakdown in whatever undeniable understanding that once existed between Xavi Alonso, that deep-lying midfield composer, and Benitez had not ever occurred.
If only Babel had somehow been coerced into fulfilment of potential.
If only Alberto Aquilani, Alonso's eventual replacement, had not been dishonestly sold as a player who would be team-fit in a "few months".
And so on.

There are many things that make or break managerial reigns, those that cannot fall back on an obscenely infinite supply of sudden cash anyway, and most of those things have to do with luck. I can still remember the Mark Robins goal that kept Alex Ferguson in his job in 1989, as I am sure he does - I imagine that despite all of the trophies he has accumulated since, when he closes his eyes he can recall that goal as perfectly as any other. Rafael Benitez will not leave a mark as similar to Fergie's in the English game, nor even will he have, it transpires, come close. But with Liverpool's supporters... oh, he leaves a lot. He means a lot. Istanbul, of course we've heard all about that. But there are other things to do with the man, this most appealing - to me anyway - of stark contrasts to Mourinho.

His humour, for instance. Not for Rafael Benitez were these easy pickings... To him, each press conference must have been full of tumbleweeds and bemused faces, these hacks all reared on 'Appy 'Arry soundbites. But, my friends. His Ferguson-directed "facts" press conference - "infamous" now, according to some papers - was an amazing piss-take at the same time as being, like the man said, the "facts". The fact that it almost seemed to pave the way for an utterly shambolic run of form doesn't matter - it didn't at the time. The "Rafa's cracking up!" chants were sardonically turned on their head and delivered back to the home supporters at the Theatre of Dreams, anyway. With interest. And even though he never ever smiled down on the touchline, you know he was smiling then, somewhere. These people, Phils Thompson and Neal chief among them, professing now that that's when they new it was all going awry for Rafa's reign to Sky News, after the man has gone... well it's shameful huckstering, and a bit rich in Thompson's case certainly, coming as it is from a man who once managed, in Gerard Houllier's absence through a mid-season, near calamitous heart scare, to turn a free-scoring team of title favourites into top four hopefuls, at best, by the time of Houllier's recovery. And managed to completely ostracise one Robert Bernard Fowler to boot. Top job.

A close friend of mine - a gooner - and I had a drunken conversation about Rafa a few months ago, during which he listed all the reasons he hated him. I accepted it as best I could. The next morning he woke me up to tell me about, and get me to watch, the press conference Benitez had given after beating Sam Allardyce's Blackburn, who had been fairly lucky to not be disqualified outright from the league, the world in general, for their antics in that particular game. Allardyce - a man whose dislike for Benitez is matched only by his admiration for Alex Ferguson - had been complaining of Liverpool's apparently negative tactics in the match. Benitez in the press conference very soberly said that he had taken these comments on board, and had heard that Pep Guardiola had been looking into adapting the Blackburn style of play. You know, to make Barca more entertaining. Anyway, the first words out of my gooner friend's mouth upon crashing my door open and waking me up, were: "I take it all back about Rafa - he's sarcastic as fuck!" And, for once, that silly gooner had seen the light.

Sons of The Sopranos

Even to a casual observer it's fairly obvious from its advertising campaign exactly which demographic the American cable network FX was going after when it greenlit Sons of Anarchy, first shown on that channel in 2008. Emblazoned across countless posters on the London underground, featuring a couple of moody, automatic-toting greasers, is the assertion that the programme is "the natural successor to The Sopranos", and that it "steps into the dark terrain vacated by The Sopranos". Now, those quotation marks are misleading, in so far as I can't remember the exact wording and so technically they aren't quotes at all, but believe me when I say I've given you the gist. And it's from the Guardian so, you know, you have to take it seriously.

Anyway, that sounded like an okay thing to me. What I didn't expect is how literally they meant it. Basically, it is The Sopranos... if that show had been told from the viewpoint of Christopher Moltisanti instead of Tony. And if Christopher had been tortured by a conscience, instead of Adriana La Cerva and a fondness for the ol' chemistry set. And if instead of amoral New Jersey mafiosi they were all amoral California bikers.


Not pictured: Morality.

Take the show's central triumvirate of characters: Jax (Charlie Hunnam) takes the aforementioned Christopher role; related by blood to the Big Cheese, he's being groomed for the top spot... but he's beginning to have doubts. Following in the conniving footsteps of Junior Soprano is Jax's mother Gemma, the twist being that Gemma is played by a woman. (That woman being Katey Sagal, in what must be a towering performance because I actively despise her character. How do you despise Peg Bundy and Leela from Futurama? I don't know but I do.)
And then, as the head of the organisation slash family, we have Ron Perlman as Clay. Clay glowers a lot, smokes big cigars, and appears quite sweaty. He's Tony in leathers and without the symbolic dreams.

Clay also has a Silvio Dante stand-in to confer with - Bobby Elvis (Mark Boone Jr.), whose rendition of "I Can't Help Falling In Love" is a genuinely moving counterpoint to the various pieces of nastiness unfolding over the pilot episode's closing scenes - and a vicious hatchet man named Tig who makes Paulie Walnuts look refined. It has to be said that creator Kurt Sutter has soundly trumped David Chase in the evil sociopath stakes; I cannot stress this enough. Okay, so Paulie's a cold-blooded killer who's not averse to a bit of betrayal and casual prostitute-beating. Fine, whatever. Tig proudly does all that too, but his really big moment comes when, in a very uncomfortable morgue scene, he reveals to Clay that he is in fact a necrophiliac... and Clay barely even pretends to be surprised. Touche, Mr Sutter. It helps greatly that Tig is played by the incomparably sleazy Kim Coates, who I last remember seeing in Tony Scott's The Last Boy Scout, where he played the bin bags to Bruce Willis's dustman in The Greatest Scene Ever (see below).



Now. Having said all of that, I'm going to do the manly thing and completely backtrack. Well, not completely - the template is lifted from The Sopranos, but a template is all it is; you still need to make it sing and dance, which Sons of Anarchy most definitely does. The acting is great across the board. Perlman is superb - hard, violent, and resolute as his character's position needs him to be, there is just a hint of self-doubt swimming around in there, something which I hope season two will explore in some detail. And Charlie Hunnam manages to anchor the show with his portrayal of Jax by making his character likeable and sympathetic, something which his gait alone should render impossible (you'll see). I even had an Idris Elba moment when I realised he was from Newcastle. He does not sound like he's from Newcastle.

And, while it lacks the humour and subtext of The Sopranos, and is not to be taken as seriously as The Wire, it is at the end of the day about a hard-core god damn Motorcycle Club: they call themselves "Outlaws" and each other "Brother"; volumes and volumes of bourbon are drunk (from the motherfucking bottle); girlfriends are called "Old Ladies"; there are at least three other rival gangs trying to kill them and each other; Drea de Matteo is in it (big surprise). In short, it's a very promising start. If I ever manage to downl purchase season two, I'll be looking forward to seeing if they can keep it up.

Moon (2009)

Moon was co-written and directed by Duncan Jones (or Zowie Bowie, as his not-in-any-way-under-the-influence father David originally named him), and produced by Sting's wife Trudie Styler, but there is nothing rock and roll about this cult classic-to be. (Unless you count Chesney Hawkes's "I Am The One And Only" blaring out of an alarm clock at various stages - a cruel and unusual wake up call, to be sure, but a cute touch by Jones for reasons that soon become clear.)

Instead, it’s a thoughtful, introverted character piece with only one character - well, one human character and a robot. Well, a robot and two human characters who are in fact the same person... It’s that kind of film.

Sam Bell, played by the mighty Sam Rockwell, is an employee of Lunar Industries, mining moon rocks containing solar power (Earth’s main source of energy in the future the film depicts) on a three year contract that has almost run its course. He sends and receives pre-recorded messages to his wife back on Earth, he communicates with his corporate bosses, but other than that he’s been alone the whole time, except for a sentient robot called Gerty.

As he readily admits, he’s beginning to get a bit flaky. However, talking to plants and seeing phantom girls in your favourite armchair is one thing; waking up one day to find another actual person walking around wearing your slippers is quite another, especially if that other person is you. From this point on the film alternates between each Sam's points of view, and the question is soon asked: which is the real Sam Bell?



Like a lot of the best science fiction, Moon is less concerned with the world it has created than it is with those who inhabit it, and, while the moon base set is impressive in it’s minimalist, functional realism, and the lunar landscape itself realised through good, old-fashioned and - you should pardon the pun - earthy models, as opposed to CGI, the story is more about Sam Bell and his inner turmoil than it is with any of those trappings. It could have taken place miles under the ocean, for instance - it would have been a lesser film, but the story would still have worked.

At its heart the film is about simple human desire for redemption. At one point, Sam tells Gerty that his wife had left him prior to his arrival on the Moon, only to give him a second chance. He admits he has done wrong, but avoids specifics, as if he cannot bring himself to talk about them, even after three years of contemplation.

In a key scene, it’s implied that he may have been violent: the brooding, intense "new" Sam - as we shall call him for the purposes of this article - instigates a tussle with the other. When he injures him, new Sam reacts in shock, as if unable to comprehend what he has done - an echo, perhaps, of a similar reaction in the past. It is telling too that, before the standoff escalates into violence, he insists the old Sam put down a knife he had innocently been using to whittle a model, as if he knows what they are both capable of.

But he’s wrong about that. The original Sam is a vastly different person now, as expertly symbolised in something as simple as their respective exercise regimes: for new Sam it’s a punch bag and skipping rope, the tools of a boxer, a fighter... but we only ever see old Sam on a treadmill.

This difference is even more starkly revealed in the physical deterioration that the first Sam begins to undergo, alongside the mental disintegration that is arguably already underway in the film‘s opening minutes; even as his spiritual and emotional rejuvenation comes to an end, his body itself starts to disintegrate, placing in jeopardy his capacity to ever experience that which his transformation was necessary to obtain: a reunion with his wife and child, who he has never met.

Sam Rockwell is great in the dual role. His career has taken a strange trajectory: his first brush with widespread critical acclaim was in 1997’s Lawn Dogs; then George Clooney fought Miramax tooth and nail to cast Rockwell in his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which should have made him a star. But despite delivering a superb, tightly-wound performance as real life Gong Show host and serial bullshit-artist Chuck Barris, that never quite came to pass, and Rockwell has instead settled pleasingly into a pattern of character actor (and often the best thing on show) in high-profile pics like The Green Mile and Frost/Nixon, interspersed with leads in small-scale indies that take his interest (Moon was in fact written specifically with the actor in mind).

And here he is presented with what is surely the ultimate acting challenge: carrying an entire film with nothing but props and stand-ins to bounce off and react to, and never once allowing phrases such as “split-screen” or “trick photography” to enter the audiences mind. What’s more, the two Sams may be poles apart in terms of temperament and character development but they are still intrinsically the same person, and he never lets us forget that. It’s a performance imbued with tortured nuance and impotent bluster in equal measure, and in any kind of fair world Rockwell would have been battling it out with District 9’s Sharlto Copley for the 2010 best actor Oscar (Jeff Bridges having already won his for The Big Lebowski).

(A word here about Kevin Spacey, who provides the voice of Gerty the robot - as a sentient computer programme charged with the safety of a human counterpart, the similarities between Gerty and 2001’s HAL are obvious and inevitable, and Jones realises this; far from a piece of billboard-pleasing stunt-casting, using Spacey to articulate Gerty cleverly plays to audiences expectations - if the thing sounds like both John Doe and Keyser Soze, of course it’s gonna be malevolent.)

But it’s not the robot or the moon buggies or the lunar landscape that carry Moon over the line into territory populated with excellent, humanist science fiction debuts such as Primer and Pi; it’s the premise of a man prepared to accept responsibility for past mistakes, to atone for them in the only way he knows - by penance, by committing to a purgatory amongst the stars just a floor or two below Heaven - only to find that with redemption does not necessarily come salvation...

At least, not for both versions of yourself. I'm pretty sure this is a message unique to Moon, so catch it if you can.

Winston

As I clicked on the link in the “General” section of the Gumtree job page, the ghost of Winston Churchill tapped me on the shoulder once again.
“Another fundraising job?” he asked, the 45-year old Highball on his breath far more tangible than he.
“Yeah. Look, this one pays £12 per hour… plus BONUSES. And it says you get to ‘meet new and interesting people‘.”
“And shoot at them?”


My muse.

“No, it’s… it’s actually to save people. Maybe. It doesn’t really say.” And it didn’t. It just mentioned the word “ethical”, over and over. But whose ethics were we dealing with? Whose?
Winston sighed, like an exasperated statesman, like I imagine he used to sigh at Hitler and those guys before slapping them with an exaggerated advance on one of the fronts somewhere.
I expected something brutal - not physically violent, but certainly scathing and reminiscent of his finer insults. It was just too bad, I supposed, that no-one else was around to bear witness… I would not be entering the annals of putdown history, that grandiose roll call of folk who had gained everlasting notoriety as the recipient of one of Sir Winston’s eviscerating jibes, like the woman he called an ugly bitch that one time when he was shitfaced.
But when he spoke, his voice was gentle.
“Stephen,” he said, waving his hand in the vague direction of the Gumtree ad, “this is not for you.”
“No, it really isn’t.”
“Approaching strangers in the street all day? Chatting to them? Come on…”
“I know. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so miserable.” I moved to slam closed the laptop - but his hand stayed mine. My God, I thought, he can be solid when he wants to be.
“Now this is not the end,” he said. “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
“Wha-?”
“Nothing. Look, you should start a blog.”
“Why? Listen Winston, I got to get paid-”
“Exactly. So you should start working on your web presence.”
I let his words sink in, like a dry sponge absorbing some kind of liquid, probably water: blog… web presence… web log… a BLOG! Sure, why not? Except…
“What would I write about?” I asked him.
“Fuck should I know? What kind of things are you interested in?”
“I dunno… sports, movies, music, that kind of thing?”
“Well there you go. I bet hardly anyone’s writing about that sort of stuff.”
I shook my head in wonder, amazed at how this great man, who I had never even met whilst alive, had managed to turn my own life around with such ease. He must have noticed my expression, and read it, because just then he shot me a look, and the look said: “It wasn’t me, Stephen… it was you.”
“And remember,” he then said, aloud, “History will be kind to me… for I intend to write it.”
“Hey, that’s a good one.”
“Yes,” he said, his ghostly presence beginning to fade before my eyes. "It is."
“You said that once before, right?”
“Yeah it’s still valid though.”
“No arguments here.”
“Kind of appropriate, don‘t you think?”
“No doubt.”
“Good. Ahem.”
And then, like that, he left me forever… or did he?