THE STORY SO FAR: PART 281: SUNDAY

HOW NOT TO DRESS FOR A FIGHT—WEAR A TIE

One of the many pleasures of being an author is that I don’t have to wear a tie—subject to the rarest of occasions.

In truth, I loathe ties, and associate them with some form of oppression—where one is forced to wear the things for no better reason than to force you to conform. Also, particularly because I have a short neck, I find them exceedingly uncomfortable. Most men do—and you’ll notice that one of the first things that men do is to loosen or remove their ties,

In my younger years, I got into quite a number of fights and early on I learned—the hard way-- that to fight while wearing a tie merely invited your opponent to strangle you with it. And, let me tell you from first hand experience, it is no fun being strangled.

I am glad to say that Richard Branson agrees with me in the matter of ties. Let me quote him:

While out walking in London recently, I passed a group of uniformed schoolchildren moving in an orderly, single-file line, with teachers in front and rear.

Nothing unusual, except for one thing that made me laugh out loud: their identical school ties. Or more accurately, what was left of them. More than half the kids had cut their ties so that only three or four inches remained below the knot.

Intrigued, I asked the teacher who was bringing up the rear, “So what happened to the ties?”

He chuckled and said, “Well, the kids hate wearing them, but school rules say they have to. What the rules fail to specify, however, is how long they have to be -- so, snip-snip!”

Why didn’t I come up with such a naughtily innovative solution when I went to school?

I have always hated ties, maybe because I’ve never seen the point. They are uncomfortable and serve no useful purpose. I am lucky to have always worked for myself, and therefore have never been a victim of corporate dress codes. For years, a sweater and corduroy trousers were my standard business attire. Someone once joked, “The day Richard shows up at the bank wearing a suit and tie, you’ll know that we are in serious trouble.”

Sir Richard Branson is a thoroughly likeable man, who not only speaks a great deal of sense, but has managed to make himself over $4 billion. My only connection with him is that a rather beautiful woman, that I was once very fond of, became one of the first air hostesses for Virgin Airlines.

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 280: SATURDAY

THE EFFORT THAT GOES INTO GREAT CREATIVE WORK EXCEEDS AWESOME—BUT THE RESULTS JUSTIFY IT

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the guidelines I follow when writing a thriller movie, but when I tried to recall a definitive example of the real thing, my mind went blank. Well, it had been a long day.

Today, inspiration struck and I realized that you need look no further than the awesome LA CONFIDENTIAL. It is stunningly good.

On the once hand, you can follow the plot with relative ease—and each sequence is satisfying in itself—but you still get hit with surprise after surprise until the totality of the plot becomes clear.

LA Confidential is also beautifully written by Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland, and despite being a decidedly grim story, still contains a refreshing amount of humor. The back story of its writing is fascinating and is a good example of the extraordinary effort and fortitude needed to write a phenomenal screenplay.

Let me draw on Wiki again:

Helgeland found that Hanson had been hired to direct and met with him while the filmmaker was making The River Wild. They found that they not only shared a love for Ellroy's fiction but also agreed on how to adapt Confidential into a film. According to Helgeland, they had to "remove every scene from the book that didn't have the three main cops in it, and then to work from those scenes out."^[1] According to Hanson, he "wanted the audience to be challenged but at the same time I didn't want them to get lost".^[2] They worked on the script together for two years, with Hanson turning down jobs and Helgeland writing seven drafts for free.^[1] The two men also got Ellroy's approval of their approach. He had seen Hanson's films, The Bedroom Window and Bad Influence and found him to be "a competent and interesting storyteller," but was not convinced that his book would be made into a film until he talked to the eventual director.^[1] He later said, "They preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main theme. Brian and Curtis took a work of fiction that had eight plotlines, reduced those to three, and retained the dramatic force of three men working out their destiny."^[

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 279: FRIDAY

IN A WAY, A STORY IS LIKE A STRIPTEASE. IT’S IMPORTANT NOT TO REVEAL TOO MUCH TOO SOON

Currently I’m wrestling with how much to reveal as the story progresses. My guiding principles are:

• To keep on surprising the viewer (appreciate that I‘m currently working on a screenplay, not a book).
• Not to show the villain too early, but to rely on the viewer’s imagination.
• To avoid making the plot so complex that the viewer will never quite understand it.
• In the interests of keeping up the suspense, to divert the reader where possible—but not to cheat. A red herring should have a legitimate place in the story.
• To avoid lengthy explanations as far as possible. Explanations are best delivered as part of the progress of the story.

Mind you, I don’t sit there with a checklist of working principles beside the computer (not that such an arrangement would necessarily be a bad idea).

On the subject of stripteases, I have never been a great fan of them—precisely because of the word ‘tease.’ I have always much preferred the real thing.

I saw my first strip tease in the South of France. The club was near empty because Johnny Hallyday was performing next door. In fact, I interviewed him after his performance. Johnny’s popularity is akin to that of Elvis Preslie, but virtually no one has heard him outside France and French Canada. Nonetheless, that has scarcely cramped his achievements. Here is what Wiki says:

An icon in the French-speaking world since the beginning of his career, he was considered by some^[3] to have been the French Elvis Presley. He was married for 15 years to popular Bulgarian-French singer Sylvie Vartan and the two were considered a "golden couple" for 20 years. Hallyday has completed 181 tours, had 18 platinum albums, and has sold more than 110 million records.^[4

^{Johnny also has an advantage over Elvis. He is still alive. He is actually one year older than me—which makes him 70. The above photo was taken in 2003.}

^{But I digress. Back to stripteases. Despite the nearly empty bar, the stripper proceeded to do her thing—and since I was just about all her audience, she sited herself, on the raised dais, directly in front of me. I would like to be able to describe my growing teenage excitement as all was revealed—which it was—but my strongest memory is of her sweat being flicked, as she danced, into my beer.}

^{Ah, the education of a writer. And that is all I’m telling you of that epic evening.}

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 278: THURSDAY

THE HERO IS A GERMAN NAZI WHO HOLDS HITLER IN HIGH REGARD—AND YOU WILL END UP ROOTING FOR HIM

A DEEPLY DISTURBING, YET MOVING, STORY—WHICH JUST HAPPENS TO BE TRUE

I have bemoaned the lack of thoughtful, intelligent, well written and directed movies—targeted at the sentient adult—a number of times in this blog.

Hollywood studios seem to have forgotten how to make them—or just don’t care to—perhaps because thoughtful, intelligent adults get short shrift in that town. Beneath the glitz and the glamor, Hollywood culture is deeply unhealthy, and corrupting.

Of course there are exceptions—SCHINDLER’S LIST being a notable example—but there are not many these days. And those that are made are invariably independent movies financed only after truly herculean efforts.

It is yet another American tragedy, because film (and its digital equivalent) constitute far too powerful and important a medium to be given over near completely to what appeals to the lowest common denominator.

JOHN RABE (2009)—a German-Chinese-French production—is a true gem of a movie which tells the truly remarkable true story of a senior Siemens executive, and a German Nazi Party member at that, who set up an International Safety Zone in Nanking, and helped to save over 200, 000 Chinese from the invading Japanese.

The scenes of the Rape of Nanking (which took place in late 1937 and early 1938) by the Japanese under the command of Imperial Prince Asaka, are portrayed unsparingly, and are quite horrifying—yet, fundamentally, it is the story of an honorable man, of late middle-age, doing his best under near impossible circumstances.

Many Japanese are still in denial about the Rape of Nanking, but it actually happened—and about 300,000 Chinese were killed during it for no particular reason except to demonstrate the superiority and power of the Japanese Army. Most of these were not combat casualties. They were either unarmed prisoners of war or innocent civilians—and they were slaughtered like animals. Officers held competitions to see who could cut off most heads in a given period of time—and had themselves photographed in front of their trophies. This was human behavior at its most callous and depraved.

Yes, it is a similar story to Schindler’s List in some ways, but it is a very different movie.

Strange to have a Nazi as the hero—but, as we say in Ireland, Nazi or not, he really was a decent man.

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 277: WEDNESDAY

IRELAND AND AUSTERITY—YET ANOTHER AUSTERITY CREATED DISASTER

Irish author, James Joyce—whose statue in Dublin, Ireland, is pictured above—remarked in his semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), “Ireland is the old sow who eats her farrow.”

This is about as accurate and cruel a statement about Ireland, and its self-destructive tendencies, as has ever been made. But, what else could you expect from Joyce—a writer of truly stunning originality—best known for Ulysses (1922)—which which was banned in Ireland for decades (in the fine tradition of repressed Irish sexuality).

Incidentally, Joyce’s other works are well worth reading, and rather more accessible.

In the spirit of his own assessment of his native land, Joyce emigrated permanently while still in his early twenties, and thereafter lived in continental Europe in such places as Trieste, Paris, and Zurich.

I was reminded of Joyce’s scathing comment when I recently read a headline: “One Irish person emigrates every six minutes.”

Good grief—and this was the Celtic Tiger!

I had to emigrate from Ireland to the UK to find employment, but eventually returned to Ireland, fired up by the dream of helping to build the country. To that end, I put everything I had on the line to try and fight the curse of unemployment—and achieved a pyric victory in that the economic activity I created produced the number of jobs I was after; but I lost almost everything in the process.

In other ways, it was a very real victory for me, because in 1986, I committed to become a full-time writer—and thus fulfilled my true calling. Beyond that, the satisfaction and sheer pleasure I have gained from writing have exceeded all my expectations. And the financial rewards haven’t been so bad either.

Do I regret my earlier idealism? Not really; in the context of the time, it was the right thing to do. 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 276: TUESDAY

THE TROUBLE WITH SLEEP IS THAT IT DOESN’T MAKE BIG PHARMA ANY MONEY—HOSPITALS MAKE IT NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO SLEEP FOR A REASON

I’m writing this in arrears, so I cannot recall exactly when my back injury happened. I know I took about five weeks to recover, and was in such serious pain for the first couple of weeks, that sitting and writing was complete agony.

Funnily enough, I could stand, and lie down, without much pain, but doing what I love to do—need to do—was virtually impossible. What is more, I didn’t seem to be getting better, which was worrying.

Someone suggested going to the hospital. Based on previous experience, I rejected that option. ERs are not too good at dealing with back pain—and the all purpose solution seems to be medication.

In the end, I slept most of the time for several days, and then napped regularly once or twice a day for quite some time. That turned the tide and slowly the pain started to recede.

It felt wonderful.

Enough of that boring subject. I am only mentioning the subject to try and justify my letting six weeks go by without blogging. And I had been doing so well. I expect it is my Catholic upbringing. Guilt is their thing—and they are very good at it.

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 275: MONDAY

PUT GREEDY FOOLS IN CHARGE—AND THE CONSEQUENCES ARE PREDICTABLE.

SHAME ON AMERICAN MANAGEMENT

It has long been my contention that the U.S. has a serious management problem which lies at the root of a great many of the economic difficulties we are experiencing today.

As best I can determine it, the rot started in the early Seventies when the Powell memorandum galvanized the rich—in the form of major corporate interests—to mount a counter-attack against the perceived decadence and liberalism of the Sixties, and the threat of what were judged to be anti-business attitudes.

Much simplified, in effect, managements declared war on their own workers (and the unions in particular) and adopted the notion that management’s only duty was to optimize shareholder value—primarily as expressed in the value Wall Street put on the shares.

Corporate loyalty towards workers, suppliers, customers, the local community,  and the nation went by the board.

Thus started the carnage which exported millions of jobs, destroyed much of our industrial base, virtually froze the earning power of workers for more than four decades, undermined the Middle Class, contributed to our losing ground in market sector after market sector, stunted innovation, eroded the tax base, corrupted Congress (even more than before)—and made CEOS, frequently executives of decidedly limited competence, extremely wealthy.

I was therefor not remotely surprised to read in THE BIG PICTURE, Barry Ritholtz’s outstanding blog, that nearly 40 percent of CEOs on the highest-paid lists from the past 20 years were either bailed out, booted, or busted.

People of true caliber and integrity don’t behave the way all too many of our CEOs have for decades. It’s morally wrong, financially irresponsible, short-sighted in the worse possible way, and very much against the National Interest.

We are now reaping what America’s top managers have sown—and what we are harvesting threatens the economic wellbeing of all but the rich.

The great recession was just a taste.