Teen girls: unlike teen boys

World-famous Twitter trending topic, Justin Bieber, arrived in NZ for a one-day visit and lots of girls screamed. The frenzy was much like that welcoming the Beatles when they arrived here in 1964

THE BEATLES ARRIVE IN NEW ZEALAND

I wonder, about the screaming and the hyperventilating etc etc. It’s clearly a social game, a kind of ritualistic process to achieve a heightened state of arousal (Justin Bieber as narcotic influence). But is this behaviour present in all cultures? How far back in history does it go?

Anyone know anything?

Day One

So, following the writery thoughts inspired by yesterday’s blog post, and a chat with Billy on Monday, I sat down yesterday with my handsome moleskine and proceeded to scribble out a bunch of useful stuff on what might be the next long-form writing project. I have a bunch of notes about it already scattered here and there – I wrote what will probably be the opening line when I was last in Edinburgh in late 2008 – but this brought them together and developed them in a very pleasing way.

The idea is one that has been kicking around in my head for a decade, and it will not leave me alone. I think it’s a good, sound idea, but all it’s been this whole time is an idea – not a story. It’s one I’ve played with in several media, the only version that ever made it to other people was a role-playing game using the idea in 2005 (Lucy, Gregor, Paul and Cat took part). This version will be massively different from that one, not least because of the different demands of the form.

As with every single long-form creative project I’ve done, I’m trying a different process here. I’m working hard on development of the idea before actually setting pen to paper to write anything. Character notes, scene ideas, lines of dialogue, potential connections. Not exactly outlining, more accumulating a dense cloud of potential around the core idea and the narrative starting point. It seems like it’s working for this project, so far, the notebook pages seem to carry useful content and there’s a definite increase in value looking at what I have now compared to where I was a month ago. It still feels open and free to potential, which seems important. It might be a happy medium situation, loose enough to breathe and explore, planned enough to go somewhere reliable.

I guess that deep down I’m terrified of creating another Ron the Body. I love RtB, I think it’s a good novel and that the right publisher could make money from it. But it took years of my life to get where it is, and I can see it with enough impartiality to know that the publishers who have turned it down have done so for good reason. I still hope to find that right publisher who’ll be able to get behind it, but I don’t begrudge anyone for not taking it on. (Side note – at the Hicksville launch, I bailed up VUP publisher Fergus Barrowman and introduced myself with “You rejected my novel”. He winced, but I told him I’d really appreciated his thoughtful, insightful and ultimately encouraging letter, which I guess did enough to convince him I wasn’t about to stab him. We talked for a few minutes about RtB, and it was a very worthwhile chat.)

I don’t want another RtB. I want to make something that I am creatively passionate about which is also clearly publishable. And I want it finished and submitted swiftly! This note-taking and development process feels like exactly the right way to head in this direction. My writing efforts have been tilted in other directions the last few months, but I’m itching to get back into my own fiction, and this is likely to be the project that gets the green light. We’ll see how it goes I guess.

The Writer’s Tale

I recently read the inelegantly named Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook. Davies (RTD) is the man behind the recent revival of Doctor Who, taking it from embarrassing forgotten history to pop-cultural behemoth. Cook is the young Doctor Who Magazine journo who sparks up an email correspondence about RTD’s writing process. The book collects this correspondence.

It’s a mighty tome, nearly 700 pages, and it’s fascinating reading. I raced through it. There’s a lot that’s great about it, as RTD writes expressively about his creative process, how his ideas come together, and where the final product comes from.

Although the book claims to be about the writing process, and that’s what I’ll talk about below, most of its length is about the production of the Doctor Who television show and all the challenges and problems involved. The writing focus fades away after the first hundred-fifty pages, never to return; the writing process becomes a scaffold to talk about what it’s like making Doctor Who in the UK in the late 00s. While I think the writing bits are great and useful for any writer, the rest of the book is really of interest only to people curious about TV production or about Doctor Who. It’s sold a lot of copies, so there’s clearly plenty of people in that category, but the writing sadly becomes less important as the book proceeds.

RTD’s time on the show has not been universally praised. His stories have been criticized for being over-stuffed, poorly structured and too reliant on deus ex machina endings. In this book you can see all of those flaws and limitations at work. For example, the sense that RTD doesn’t do endings well is clearly because he writes in sequence and usually doesn’t have a definite climax in mind.

You even get RTD’s defence of some of these flaws. Memorably, acknowledging criticisms that his scripts don’t develop plots effectively but just throw in incident and then race on to the next thing, he says (p679):

What I’m saying is, I can see how annoying that looks. I can see how maddening it must be, for some people. Especially if you’re imposing really classical script structures, and templates, and expectations on that episode, even unconsciously. I must look like a vandal, or a kid, or an amateur. No wonder some people hate what I write. Of course, I’m going to win this argument. (Did you guess?) Because the simple fact is: all those things were planned. All of them were my choice. They’re not lazy, clumsy or desperate. They’re chosen. I can see more traditional ways of telling those stories, but I’m not interested. I think the stuff that you gain from writing in this way – the shock, the whirlwind, the freedom, the exhilaration – is worth the world. I’ve got this sort of tumbling, freewheeling stule that somersaults along, with everything happening now – not later, not before, but now now now. I’ve made a Doctor Who that exists in the present tense.

However, most of these problems are not really dealt with and Cook isn’t interested in going on the attack about them. This is a shame in lots of ways. I would love to see Davies defend himself over the decision at the very end of his final episodes to marry off the two black characters in his ensemble, apparently for no other reason than they’re both black. But this isn’t even mentioned in the correspondence.

I think the book also does a good job showing Davies’ strengths as a writer – his sure-footed dialogue and ability to write to the constraints of TV production, his ability to edit and strengthen the work of other writers, and most of all his gift for great moments. Time and again you see how his ideas begin with one or two key scenes that he is confident will make great telly, and then he develops a script around them. And they are truly great moments. The revival episode of Doctor Who, “Rose”, finished with such a moment that had clearly been in Davies’ head for a long time. I wrote about it five years ago: “The last shot of the episode – that last one second – it just about made me cry.” This bit:

The Writer’s Tale has a website. Download RTD’s scripts!

Oor Hoose, and ANZAC day.

And so it is.

A week in, and we’re sorted at last – the internets and phone lines were the last things to get connected up. Boxes are now stacked empty in the garage and the rooms themselves are full of stuff. It feels comfortable, already. I think we’ll come to love living here.

Here’s a funny thing, though. If you stand at the front door and look out, you see directly across the way the house where my mother grew up. We knew was there was a family place somewhere on the street, but we didn’t know it was so close until after making an offer. I’ve since learned that my great-grandfather Felix used to sit on the steps outside the front door there and watch the passers-by. It was a railways street so I expect he knew most everyone who passed. I like the idea that our new house was one of the ones he watched over in the late days of his life.

The last few ANZAC days I’ve excerpted from Felix’s war diaries. Here’s 29 September, 1918:

3.30am. Away went a very poor barrage and over we went. Took Welsh Ridge and four lines of trenches and hundreds of prisoners and village of Vacquerie. Got to our objective and consolidated. Casualties very light. Got a lot of officer prisoners and our boys have loads of souvenirs, glasses, [?], matches etc. A very successful stunt. Especially as it was pitch dark until we got up to our objective and Fritz had a lot of wire in front. The Boache seemed to me to surrender very easily. One of our Companies got too far ahead and lost two platoons. The Huns only took the fit men, dressing our wounded and leaving them until we came along.

The action at Welsh Ridge was near the end of hostilities, part of the “Hundred Days Offensive” that broke through the Western front. It was also an important experience for Felix. John H. Gray’s Quid Non Pro Patria: The Short Distinguished Military Life of Henry James Nicholas VC MM relies on Felix’s diaries for detail and colour, for Felix and VC-winner Henry Nicholas were in many of the same places. It includes some words from Felix’s daughter Mary (my grandmother’s sister) on something that happened at Welsh Ridge when he found a bugle:

He told us that during the battle he was pinned down and took shelter where he could. In so doing he found himself alongside the body of a German soldier. On his back was an unusual article covered in scrim. It was the bugle, so covered presumably to prevent reflection from its shiny surface.

He turned the body over and was struck by its youth and by its beauty. An olive-skinned young man of fine features, little more than a child. Killed he presumed by blast as he was unmarked.

Her father had said more than once over the years, that the sight of that dead boy encapsulated for him the futility of war, and picking up the bugle he had said, at least to himself – “I’ll take this and keep it for you.”

Felix kept the bugle, and every night thereafter he prayed for that young German.

Pecha Kucha Diamond Necklace

Monday night at Downstage Theatre in Welly: my dear friend Eric is part of the Pecha Kucha lineup, talking about the show wot I wrote, Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

A Pecha Kucha night is an event format in which presenters show a slideshow of 20 images, each of which is shown for 20 seconds. Pecha Kucha Wgtn details here. Door sales only, $9 cash – Downstage Theatre, doors open: 6.30pm, start 7.30pm.

Be great to see people there. I won’t be online again until Tuesday I think, so don’t bother emailing to co-ordinate – just show up if you’re keen.

(Move went well. House chaos steadily improving to livable. Yay.)
(Hope the 48 hr film fest was fun for all my friends who took part this year!)

Four reviews

Things I’ve watched recently on DVD or big screen, in order of release date:


Adventureland (USA, 2009)
Boy becomes man at theme park job. Another comedy-drama male POV film as exemplified by the Apatow stable. Slow, meandering, generous in every sense. Not well-crafted drama, which actually works in its favour, a lot of it feels like biography in how loosely it plays out. However, this sits uncomfortably against the heavy, contrived schtick of minor characters like the comedy managers and the villainous stepmother. Martin Starr (Bill from Freaks & Geeks) is the only one who successfully straddles the divide, delivering delicious broad comedy and solid, affecting dramatic work in a seamless whole. Kristen Stewart nervously adjusts her hair a lot but there’s some depth to her that won me over anyway – girl could go far if she escapes the Twilight eternity trap. Overall: ramshackle, fun, not worth swerving for but watch it if it comes on TV.


An Education (UK, 2009)
The delightful Carey Mulligan anchors this film, which is a little bit Lolita and a little bit… er… something else? Schoolgirl is wooed by older man, finds out older man is not actually perfect, cue tears and decisions and personal growth. A small story well-told, with an absolute commitment to its 1961 setting. Although the schoolgirl-older man relationship is central, the best energy in the film was between schoolgirl and teacher (Olivia Williams from Dollhouse, Whedon fans) and schoolgirl and headmistress (Emma Thompson, who is just great). It’s an odd script from Nick Hornby that mostly plays its beats gently, but can’t resist making The Dad a caricature. Crucially, though, the big turning point in the film didn’t play for me at all. When the girl finds out for the first time that the older man isn’t perfect and starts walking away, he chases after her and gives her a big speech and slowly she relents and goes back with him. This is probably the most important scene in the film, and it didn’t convince me. In fact it failed so spectacularly that it bumped me out of the film and I annoyed poor long-suffering Cal by ranting and raving about how unconvincing it was. It just wasn’t enough – there was nothing in the scene that made me believe in her turn, which was the one on which the entire drama of the film rested. Even more frustrating: in the very next scene, the girl gets a big speech in which she figures out the hypocrisy and pointlessness of the world and asserts her right to find her own path. THAT should have been the turn! That scene I believed absolutely – it got me back into the film and I shut up again, all the way to the ending (which inexplicably uses a “now I’m older and wiser” voiceover to daft effect, but never mind). Overall: engaging and heartfelt but wounded by odd scripting, probably worth it just for the period detail and the great performances. A worthy DVD rental.


Boy (NZ, 2010)
Kid has his life change when Dad comes home. Taika Waititi’s new film is side-splittingly hilarious for the first 15 minutes if you’re a Kiwi kid born in the mid-70s like me. And if you don’t fit that category then you’ll probably still laugh a hell of a lot because it’s funny as. The rest of the film is still really funny, but also quite sad. If you’re a New Zealander you will end up seeing this film. If you’re not from Aotearoa New Zealand, well it’s still not a bad night out I reckon. See it.


Kick-Ass (UK/USA, 2010)
Teenage nobody decides to be a superhero, fails his way into a mad adventure. Good lord, this film made me laugh and wince to almost painful degrees. Breathtakingly over-the-top violent like some of those crazy Asian films that used to play late slots at the Incredibly Strange Film Festival. Completely, unrelentingly loopy throughout. It almost never makes a conventional decision. Dogged in pursuit of its strange, wet-suited vision of movie bliss. You’ll be hearing a lot about the 13-year-old sweary assassin, and I almost cried with laughter telling Cal about the scene where the hero finally gets the girl, but the best thing about this movie is Nicolas Cage. NICOLAS CAGE. The guy is an enigma wrapped up in a hunk of wood wrapped up in a feverish hallucination. His performances left behind anything that might be called “real human behaviour” about a decade ago, and seriously, does anyone understand what he’s doing now when they point a camera at him and say ‘action’? I can’t see him receiving direction. “For this take, dial it up a couple of notches, okay Nicolas?” No. Not credible. They just must point the camera and pray. In this film he is AMAZING. I never wanted him to leave the screen, except that his exits are some of his best moments. MOAR NIC CAGE. Dude, do you remember when he was a huge action movie star? Doesn’t that seem more and more like it was a weird dream you once had, rather than something that actually happened? Overall: See. This. Movie. It earns its (NZ) 18 rating, so be prepared for a few moments of hands-over-face violence, but it will be like nothing else you see all year.

An Incident at Immigration Control

My friend bekitty recently went to join her partner in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he is working until September. She didn’t make it. She tells her story in full, and it’s worth a read to see what happens when the eye of immigration falls upon you.

In particular, I draw your attention to her framing of the experience, as a reminder of how privileged she is. Here’s a hint:

In Tank 6 with me were 16 other women… I was the only woman who didn’t speak Spanish.

Just another in a long line of bad experiences with immigration controls. Although I can understand the need for limits, the ruthlessness with which borders are patrolled troubles me. The things that concern me in particular, in this story and others I’ve heard, are the huge scope for discretion by immigration staff, the lack of recourse for people who find themselves on the wrong track, and the high-stakes decisions being made under pressure without access to advice or support.

Although this story has the distinctive fingerprints of the U.S.A. all over it, I doubt somehow that this story would be massively different in any other country. I’ve heard bad stories about every first world nation. It would be nice to achieve a culture shift. Can’t see it happening any time soon though.

(Movie poster above is The Visitor, which covers some of this same ground. Nice film.)

ACTA: protecting your internet

ACTA isn’t well-known to those who aren’t web people, true internet natives. And it should be. From ACTA .net.nz, a description:

While in name it is about protecting consumers from counterfeit merchandise, the agreement is much wider in scope and addresses the regulation of Internet use by private citizens in an attempt to prevent unauthorised sharing of copyrighted works.

ACTA is being negotiated between a large group of countries in a series of secret meetings. This is a big deal. As internet use becomes more and more central to civic participation, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to fight against attempts to attach commerce-driven barriers and traps. (It’s the secret meetings that really set me off – the lack of transparency is appalling.)

The next (secret) meeting between the countries is here in Wellington, and on Saturday a group of local web-people produced and issued the Wellington Declaration, which calls for:

  • acknowledging fair use in copyright
  • no protection for technology that limits users interaction with their own files
  • preservation of normal consumer protections and due process
  • maintaining right to privacy
  • avoiding punishment of ISPs, hosts and search engines
  • preserving access to the internet for all
  • in a copyright violation, ensuring that Courts (or equivalent) determine damages, proportionate to intent and harm
  • setting a high bar for criminal liability

This is all very important stuff. I urge you to sign the petition. It will be given to the NZ govt and they will circulate it to all countries in the negotiations. This is not an NZ issue, this is a global issue, and I hope you’ll all take a minute to add your name.

More info: the PublicACTA site

Tooth Linky


Yesterday, went to dentist for first checkup in 3 years. He said “all good”. A dentist saying “all good” is one of life’s nicest, most reassuring things.

This one goes up the top because it’s amazing. It’s about the colour palette in blockbuster movies. Teal and orange: Hollywood please stop the madness! Lots of great photos to illustrate the point.

See also: the orange/blue contrast in movie posters

Write your own Kung-Fu movie

Cookie Monster and Om Nom Nom. This has been in my linky file for months. It is cool.

See also the Muppet Studio’s Easter special: a rendition of Stand By Me, by Carl

Ian Fleming interviewed Raymond Chandler – BBC archive material on YouTube [edited to add: this interview as one mp3 for download – thanks Matt!]

Fear and Loathing in Farmville – a discussion of how social games on Facebook are claiming the game-o-sphere

If there were websites in 1984, the Crazy Horses would have had this one

Master of Business Card Throwing

Shot-for-shot remake of Goofy movie intro (yes, the Goofy movie – I don’t get it either but)

Ruben Bolling is amused by Obama’s signature

History myths you probably think are true

And finally, invading shapeshifting reptiles are behind James Cameron’s Avatar.
OR
And finally, Satan is behind James Cameron’s Avatar.