So I read this book...
The cover intrigued me - a super-imposed double of a leopard's face in lurid colours against a sea of black. The title intrigued. It's an old blues song, isn't it? The dust jacket was so weighted down with critical plaudits that it damn near doubled the weight of the novel.
Johnny Depp assured me from the back cover that it contained 'words of wisdom that I will carry with me into the fucking dirt'. Or something like that anyway. Keith Richards was also a fan and felt that author Nick Tosches was one who knew of whom he spoke with regard to the Devil.
From the blurb I could tell little more than that here was a dark prince of literary badassness; a black-hearted man of poisoned letters; a transgressive novelist in the vein of Burroughs, Thompson and the rest of the old, dead madmen.
The author photo was a fascination in itself - there was Tosches, dressed in a fine suit and smuggled in shadows. He had a sour, misanthropic scowl and John Hurt's eyes. The author blurb told me nothing, reveling in the mythology it hinted at: apparently Tosches is 'uniquely acquainted with the half-lit world in which this novel is set'. Or again, something like that; the book has gone back to the library now and no longer haunts my apartment.
In a bold move Tosches had made himself the protagonist (though the character's last name is never given) or at least himself incarnated as an embittered and ageing author, too crook-backed under his own weariness and misanthropy to write any more. It is, yes, another novel about a novelist.
Write what you know, I guess.
I sincerely hope that the novel is strongly fictionalized and the character of Nick is intended as a caricature of the real Tosches, but...hell, I just don't know. What it feels like is the work of a tired self-obsessed old man desperate to mythologize himself in the most lurid and inflammatory way possible. It's also rife with racist slurs, misogyny and anti-Semitism, so yeah, I really hope it's intended as caricature.
But anyway.
Novel-world Nick is a fatigued, bitter old dude with an impressive literary back-catalogue and a mouthful of plastic teeth. He finds himself longing for the youth he always cynically pretended he didn't have (Tosches has played the bitter old man card his entire literary life, apparently, even when he didn't have the years on him to match the world-weariness). He is wealthy and casual with his cash but can now take no real pleasure in fine food or the company of women.
Then he takes Sabine home; she who allegedly 'likes to be raped after bathing in warm, scented water and brushing out her hair' (or yet again, something like that - Tosches uses the exact same phrase about four or five times throughout the novel but I'm still not sure I'm quoting it right). During a sexual act Nick sinks his dentures into the trembling delicacy of her inner thigh and drinks her blood. This act of communion awakens a rush of fresh life and desire in him - he learns that he is able to literally consume youth. He begins to revel in all the luxuries that he had previously abandoned and thus we are treated to a rich, endlessly descriptive cavalcade of fine meals and carnal encounters - all described in lurid, lavish, pornographic detail (and that's just the food).
Apparently Nick, despite all evidence to the contrary (and pick-up lines that include 'can you change the tides by the crossing and uncrossing of your legs?' and 'do you like to watch old men masturbate and know that they too were once young?') is utterly irresistible to extremely young women (the book implies he's in either his late fifties or early sixties; the oldest of his conquests is twenty). Before you know it he has two extraordinarily beautiful and utterly devoted young women willing to let him lap at their sanguinary exultations.
Okay, they let him bite or whip them until they bleed. He then consumes the blood and grows ever more godlike (yup, Nick believes himself to be transforming into a new, bacchanalian god).
Did I mention that one of the young women has elaborate rape fantasies (leading to an extensive discourse on what one might refer to this fetish as in Latin terms) that Nick is all too willing to indulge and the other likes to don a transparent raincoat (and nothing else, of course) and be crucified and whipped. Or that Nick also strikes up a tumultuous sexual relationship with the former's stockings. I can't accurately remember either of their names - but I figure that's okay as Tosches doesn't give a toss about them anyway. Neither are any more than half-written ciphers whose sole purpose in the narrative is their beauty and their devotion to the masterly Nick. They are no more than blank-eyed sex dolls - an onanistic fantasy conjured by the novelist. When they speak it is with no more than his voice.
And so the reader is treated to a never-ending series of transgressive sex scenes (which wouldn't be erotic even if you didn't wind up picturing the guy from the author's photograph engaging in them). This in addition to a never-ending parade of lavishly-described luxury items (Nick has quite a thing for artisanal knives) and fine dining (seriously this frequently verges on food-porn). It is very clearly the work of a man reveling in his own wealth, infamy and imagined debauchery.
Oh, and there's no narrative drive between the endless descriptions and deliberately arcane language.
I read on. Waiting for the descent that I was certain must come. I knew that the narrator - Nick - must one day pay the price of this deviltry, and he keeps buying those damn knives... Even Keith Richards warned him against drinking blood and taking power from it (apparently it's way more addictive than heroine and Richards had seen 'things come out of people').
Oh, I didn't mention it. Keith Richards cameos in the book. He has a couple of dinner scenes. They're pointless but I figure Tosches wanted to make sure that the reader knew that he and Richards were pals - he's met Depp too and makes a point of putting that in the novel (which makes those sleeve quotes seem a trifle biased).
*SPOILER ALERT* (umm, maybe)
To an extent the descent does come. Black-outs sweep down upon Nick - consuming entire months of his life. It's also very likely that he butchers Sabine and her female friend at some point - slashing their throats and drinking their blood, obviously. Nick then meets the Devil while vomiting ghost-rats in his grimy apartment. They chat. The Devil likes high-quality socks and fine corduroy.
This lasts for about twenty pages. Nick is hospitalized, recovers. Starts going to the gym. Leaves his girlfriends. Then the book comprehensively sets about dismantling what little plot it has already established - abandoning the most interesting developments (Nick's changing blood-type, for instance) in favour of shakily ambling to it's vague and pointless conclusion. And he easily shrugs off any concerns he might have about y'know, probably murdering those women.
* END SPOILERS *
I kept reading; hoping for those words of wisdom that Johnny Depp promised me I would be taking to my grave. I never found a single damn thing. It actually left me wondering about Depp. As a novel it's plot-less, purposeless, pointless and hollow. Everything is overwritten and over-described (I know, I know...pot...kettle...black). The endless parade of luxury and debauchery is wearying (it's not cleverly satirical like Bret Easton Ellis' 'American Psycho' - speaking of Ellis, if you want to read a supernatural yarn that mythologizes the author read his novel 'Lunar Park').
Then there's the racism. It seems Tosches is working this anti-PC/shock tactic thing but the way I see it is if you're an old white guy and you're not starring in a Tarantino-scripted Blaxploitation/Western you really, really shouldn't use the N-word. As I mentioned before; he doesn't like Jewish people much either. And yes, to keep his bases covered, there's lots of misogyny too.
It's an adolescent wannabe-shocker. There's no wisdom. No real cleverness. Just bitterness and a definite masturbatory vibe. It even fails as a parable of addiction - as vampirism is a very easy-to-quit addiction, seemingly. However, there is something oddly, horribly compelling about it (and Tosches is quite a fine writer somewhere in there). The greatest enjoyment that I think can be gained from it is to pretend that Tosches saw the popularity of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and the whole vampire-porn genre (which, God knows, is plenty extensive) and decided to write his own contribution. Why he made himself the protagonist is beyond me - self-aggrandizing, definitely.
So there you have it; if you're looking for a rather tedious, self-congratulatory tome of Literary Professor-porn (with added vampirism and bondage) that nevertheless involves some nice descriptive language (although way, way too much of it) - then dive in, pal.
And last but not least; the human mouth is full of bacteria. A deep enough bite from another person; one that breaks the skin and potentially damages the tissue (at one point Nick accidentally bites through a young woman's femoral artery) would almost certainly become infected. Blood poisoning is a genuine threat. At one point Nick even sort-of (but utterly, horribly wrongly) ponders this - thinking that with the deep crevasses and pouches around his few remaining teeth it's fortunate he didn't contract any disease from his victims' blood. Other way around, buddy. Other way around.
Friday 28 June 2013
Random Thoughts on Random Things
Picture this:
A ball of stone hanging in the howling, infinite vastness of space; crowded in by dark matter. On a cosmic scale this ball is less than a mote of dust caught in the breeze. But it has a burning, molten heart and is just the right size; neither too small nor too large, to generate a sufficient gravitational field and thus sustain an atmosphere.
It is also neither too close nor too far from a medium-sized star and it rotates at precisely the necessary speed and in the necessary manner. So this ball of suspended rock and fire experiences both night and day. And life grows upon its surface. It turns blue-green. Glaciers form, oceans spread, mountains push out of the restless and churning earth. Forests crawl greenly across those ridges of stone and soil. Flowers perfume the days. From the stinking primordial muck life-forms crawl and slither and hop; they sprout limbs, form rudimentary lungs. The breathe their first sips of this new air. They become things of claws and scales, flesh, fur and feather. Millions of years from reptile to mammal. And from the mammals spring a line of gibbering apes. These apes learn to walk upright, learn to hunt. Little-by-little they learn to plot and calculate. Their brains grow and expand, their hands become more sensitive and dexterous. They become adept at making and using tools. Their fur disappears generation by generation and they fashion crude clothing for themselves; to remain warm.
They learn to shape the world around them. Become clever. Become powerful. Become human.
These humans; they build houses and halls, cathedrals and cities. They snatch the world for themselves.
Genetic lines form. DNA patterns echoed and replicated, twining like an eternal string of beads. These strings bind and wind through multitudinous generations. They bind cowards and kings, heroes and beggars, fools and geniuses, madmen and saints; all the countless shades in-between. These cords stretch through all of human history, across continents and oceans. They survive famines, plagues, war, tyranny, revolution. They pass through acts of horror and acts of nobility. They witness the Holocaust and the Renaissance. Through the entire seething roar of human history these same strands prevail, linking and re-linking together into millions of new permutations. Until finally two people (each the product of many others - a virtual forest of others) come together.
Exactly the right people, at exactly the right time. DNA codes combine - half from each and the end result of all these endless years of absolute randomness, the end result of this entire writhing possibility is...
You.
If any of the variables were changed, if any of the times were different, you would never exist. Not as you. Not as you are now. You are a single outcome borne of a colossal flux of randomness. Your very existence is a triumph against unimaginable odds. Every day that you inhabit this small blue-green ball of living, burning stone is the equivalent of winning some incomprehensible cosmic lottery.
Every moment is a miracle.
And this is true of everyone; all the uncountable billions that ever have or ever will exist on this scrap of cosmic dust. Every. Single. Person.
We should never forget just how tiny we are; how incomprehensibly minute the world is. Every point of light that we can see in a clear night sky is (or was) another sun - many considerably larger than our own. Space is infinitely vast. And utterly unknowable.
We should also never forget the staggering improbability of us existing at all.
And, I just realized that all this has been said before (and way more concisely) by Alan Moore in his comic 'Watchmen' - he even used pictures. And Monty Python's Flying Circus did it better with a song. "If you're feeling down, Mrs Brown..."
Oh well.
A ball of stone hanging in the howling, infinite vastness of space; crowded in by dark matter. On a cosmic scale this ball is less than a mote of dust caught in the breeze. But it has a burning, molten heart and is just the right size; neither too small nor too large, to generate a sufficient gravitational field and thus sustain an atmosphere.
It is also neither too close nor too far from a medium-sized star and it rotates at precisely the necessary speed and in the necessary manner. So this ball of suspended rock and fire experiences both night and day. And life grows upon its surface. It turns blue-green. Glaciers form, oceans spread, mountains push out of the restless and churning earth. Forests crawl greenly across those ridges of stone and soil. Flowers perfume the days. From the stinking primordial muck life-forms crawl and slither and hop; they sprout limbs, form rudimentary lungs. The breathe their first sips of this new air. They become things of claws and scales, flesh, fur and feather. Millions of years from reptile to mammal. And from the mammals spring a line of gibbering apes. These apes learn to walk upright, learn to hunt. Little-by-little they learn to plot and calculate. Their brains grow and expand, their hands become more sensitive and dexterous. They become adept at making and using tools. Their fur disappears generation by generation and they fashion crude clothing for themselves; to remain warm.
They learn to shape the world around them. Become clever. Become powerful. Become human.
These humans; they build houses and halls, cathedrals and cities. They snatch the world for themselves.
Genetic lines form. DNA patterns echoed and replicated, twining like an eternal string of beads. These strings bind and wind through multitudinous generations. They bind cowards and kings, heroes and beggars, fools and geniuses, madmen and saints; all the countless shades in-between. These cords stretch through all of human history, across continents and oceans. They survive famines, plagues, war, tyranny, revolution. They pass through acts of horror and acts of nobility. They witness the Holocaust and the Renaissance. Through the entire seething roar of human history these same strands prevail, linking and re-linking together into millions of new permutations. Until finally two people (each the product of many others - a virtual forest of others) come together.
Exactly the right people, at exactly the right time. DNA codes combine - half from each and the end result of all these endless years of absolute randomness, the end result of this entire writhing possibility is...
You.
If any of the variables were changed, if any of the times were different, you would never exist. Not as you. Not as you are now. You are a single outcome borne of a colossal flux of randomness. Your very existence is a triumph against unimaginable odds. Every day that you inhabit this small blue-green ball of living, burning stone is the equivalent of winning some incomprehensible cosmic lottery.
Every moment is a miracle.
And this is true of everyone; all the uncountable billions that ever have or ever will exist on this scrap of cosmic dust. Every. Single. Person.
We should never forget just how tiny we are; how incomprehensibly minute the world is. Every point of light that we can see in a clear night sky is (or was) another sun - many considerably larger than our own. Space is infinitely vast. And utterly unknowable.
We should also never forget the staggering improbability of us existing at all.
And, I just realized that all this has been said before (and way more concisely) by Alan Moore in his comic 'Watchmen' - he even used pictures. And Monty Python's Flying Circus did it better with a song. "If you're feeling down, Mrs Brown..."
Oh well.
Wednesday 26 June 2013
Horror flicks and memories
The past is a lonely place to visit. It is a treacherous place too - fragile, fleeting and full of holes. And you must go there alone. You can sit with an old friend, sure; drink a coffee and reminisce. But for all that you may have shared the same experiences, their past is not your past. Their stories are not your stories. The past does not exist, not in any real tangible way and the future is nothing more than a concept. Only the present is real and it is a slippery thing indeed - point to a single moment and it's gone as soon as it can be identified. But the past, your past, is only words and memories. And it is all in you.
When I first came to Wellington my then-partner and I moved into a two bedroom flat at the ugly end of a beautiful street. The road that ran past the flat was always busy and every night I fell asleep to the sound of cars. It was in Lower Hutt and anyone who is familiar with Wellington will know that 'Lower Hutt' is not a good thing to put on your address. It has a certain reputation - at least somewhat deserved. But for all that we would often walk home late at night along those streets we never saw or encountered anything bad. For the most part those streets were pretty empty after a certain hour and there were never any signs of trouble. We had very little money. No car. On weekends (or whatever days off we shared) we would often walk the short distance to the Queensgate shopping centre. There was a little joint there where they did the best fried chicken I've ever tasted. The skin was really crackly, crisp and savoury. When you bit through it all the clear, fatty juices would trickle out from underneath that skin. It would come with a huge platter of thick-cut fries, heaped with chicken salt. While you ate it the whole experience was bliss itself. It wasn't long afterwards, however, that you'd feel it - that bloated tightness in the gut that comes from eating something really freaking unhealthy. I used to rub my stomach and joke that the chicken was fighting back. Truth is, that chicken had probably had a short and deeply unhappy life and was completely justified in seeking some form of post-mortem revenge. But then the place changed hands and venue and the chicken just wasn't the same - the skin was greasier, the portions meaner, the chips soggy and unsatisfying. We stopped going there.
I was getting too old to keep eating that junk anyway.
Queensgate itself has become a whole other thing from how it was back in those days. Now it's at least twice the size, two-storied: a looming concrete edifice that squats in the heart of the Hutt.
And the cinema we used to go to is long gone now.
It was a weary little Hoyts venue - back when Hoyts still existed for Wellington. It was tucked away, near-as-dammit hidden, inside a worn-out arcade. There seemed to be only one person who worked there; a middle-aged woman who worked the ticket booth and the candy bar. She never tried to upsell us a damn thing, never asked how our day was going, seldom made eye-contact. We both thought she was fantastic. Most days the theatre was all but empty and we had the run of the place. Heck, the only time I ever saw it close-to-capacity was when they screened 'Freddy Versus Jason'; horror movies always brought out the Hutt crowd. The floor was so sticky that my shoes would make a little tearing sound whenever I lifted them from the carpet. But the picture and sound were good. And it felt like ours.
We saw 'House of 1,000 Corpses' there. It was a movie I'd been eager as hell to see. For a start, that is hands-down the finest horror flick title that I can readily think of: it just drips venom and menace and a sense of real danger. The early trailers and teasers had made it look grainy, gleeful and garish; a snarling throwback to the grimy exploitation flicks of the seventies and eighties but twisted and refracted through the post-modern styling of 'Natural Born Killers' and like a billion MTV videos (back when MTV still played music videos, that is). It looked set to restore some bite and danger to a genre that had become too polished, pre-packaged and safe. This was a horror flick made by an obsessive - someone who'd lived and breathed this stuff - who knew the tricks and the traps of the genre - a dude who knew how to give such a flick teeth and could teach it to bite. That someone, of course, being musician Rob Zombie whose music I'd always dug and who had directed a handful of his own music clips - which were, simply, kick-ass.
So we sat there, my feet making those little tearing sounds every time I shifted, and watched this long-awaited, much-delayed movie.
And we both kind of hated it.
My first impression of the film was that it was too ugly, too sordid. It struck me that the characters were not sufficiently developed - the protagonists that is; Zombie clearly loves his villains. It looked fantastic - a cut-and-paste collage of different styles, film stocks and camera angles, and it possessed a genuinely unhinged fever-dream quality that lingered long afterwards. But ultimately it left me feeling dirty, cheated. Betrayed somehow. It wasn't the film I expected to see. There was a nihilism there, a sense of futility that left a very sour taste inside my skull.
So, I was disappointed.
But the past is a lonely place...
Recently I watched Zombie's latest film 'The Lords of Salem'. I found it haunting, demented, oddly poignant and utterly visceral. It was an occult horror flick that variously seemed to recall 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Repulsion', 'The Sentinel', and 'Suspiria' all twisted and corrupted by the late, great Ken Russell. It still felt like a pastiche - like a love letter to a genre written by someone so deeply embedded in it that he couldn't see any way clear. But. That. Worked. And it worked brilliantly. What lingered with me the most from that film was that it basically lived or died by the characters within the narrative. There was a complexity and a richness to them that was almost wholly unexpected, and they were so full of sadness, so fragile and weirdly believable.
So, consider that my recommendation.
But it also got me thinking about the look and feel of 'House of 1,000 Corpses' and I realized that the reason I'd felt betrayed by it was that it hadn't been the film I expected to see (I did a similar thing with Alex de la Iglesia's stunning 'The Last Circus' a couple of years ago: the first time I watched it I was left feeling angry, the second time I realized it was a masterpiece).
That is a stupid way to judge a film.
I thought about it's downbeat tone and it's sense of encroaching hopelessness; whether he intended to or not Zombie might have pioneered the "torture-porn" movement - though 'House...' is not nearly as graphically violent as that sub-genre tends to be.
It also occurred to me: for all that folks tend to point to 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' as the single biggest influence on his work I suspect he may be a bigger fan of that film's sequel (a film, I myself, have very fond memories of). Just so you know, 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre II' effectively parodies the first film - it paints the characters broader, bloodier and with a bolder brush. The black comedy already present in the first film is far more apparent in the sequel (it's also every bit as gore-soaked and violent as 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' was reputed to be, but actually was not). But seriously, considering the blatant pun used for the murderous family's last name (Sawyer, really?) humour was always kind of a thing for Tobe Hooper.
There are echoes of TCMII throughout much of Zombie's work. The increasingly deranged cop in pursuit of the Firefly family in 'The Devil's Rejects' recalls Dennis Hopper's lunatic chainsaw-wielding sheriff. The house in 'House of 1,000 Corpses' is closer to the phantasmagorical style of the abandoned amusement-park-cum-house-of-very-real-horrors in TCMII. Heck, even the set up of 'The Lords of Salem' (a female DJ getting hold of a recording that propels her into the nightmarish narrative) is reminiscent of Stretch's plight in TCMII.
Oh yeah, plus he's nabbed one of the cast of TCMII for 'House of 1,000 Corpses' and 'The Devil's Rejects' - Mr Bill Moseley.
Anyway, all that aside. I decided it was time to take another trip into the 'House of 1,000 Corpses' and see if, all these years on, there were fresh horrors and revelations to be had.
The flick is set during the Seventies; which provides the design team with ample gaudy set-dressing and inspired costumes. A couple of sci-fi and horror-loving dudes (one of whom is Rainn Wilson!) are drifting across country, recording their observations on out-of-the-way rural attractions. They've dragged their long suffering girlfriends along for the journey, on their way out to meeting the father of one of the women. The four of them bicker. They banter. They run low on gas. This leads them to Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen (and fried chicken grease-pit).
Spaulding (Sid Haig) is a surly guy with a mouthful of bad teeth and a faceful of leering clown makeup. We know there's a dangerous man behind that greasepaint as we've just seen him lay waste to a couple of would-be robbers. Hell, their blood is still wet on the floor when our carload of spam-to-be arrives on his doorstep. He has a murder-train out back that takes them on a tour of serial killers, all bathed in burning, psychedelic light. Spaulding tells them the tale of an infamous local madman known as Doctor Satan. Legend has it he experimented on the mentally-ill at the nearby asylum - monstrous, Mengele-style experiments designed to create a master race, or something. Inevitably Doctor Satan's crimes were revealed and vigilante justice prevailed - he was strung from a tree by a vengeful mob. Then his body disappeared.
You just know our kids (okay, the two dudes - their girlfriends are less than smitten with the idea) are going to want to take a look at that tree. Spaulding begrudgingly draws them a map. Pretty soon its raining hard and they're half-lost. On the way they pick up a hitch-hiker - a strange, seemingly demented lass with a cowboy hat and a shrill giggle (Sherri Moon - the director's wife).
Things do not go well.
A man in a frigging bear-head hood shoots out their tyre and the hitch-hiker leads them to her house, not far from where they're crashed-out. And so they are introduced to the Firefly family - a sneering gallery of grotesques; from the murderous matriarch (horror veteran Karen Black); the straggle-haired and lunatic prophet Otis (Moseley); to the looming crooked thing they call Tiny, whose body is warped and rubbery with scar tissue from when their father tried to burn down the house with all inside. The Fireflys already have some guests - a small group of abducted cheerleaders. Some of whom are already in pieces.
Okay, so the narrative taps into, like, half-a-dozen genre tropes. It's more-or-less a manic reworking of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' but there is something else here - something smarter and savvier and weirdly inspiring. The film rapidly descends into an ever-tightening vortex - part nightmare, part fugue. 'House...' hits us with a series of blasted and lingering images: buckled papier-mâché masks, rabbit suits, mutilated dolls and occult rituals. A killer taunts his victim while wearing her father's dead face ('who's your daddy?'). A makeshift coffin is lowered into a wet pit of writhing...what...zombies?...ghouls?...failed experiments? A subterranean cathedral adorned with bones recalls the crypt of the Capuchin monks in Rome - the Bone Chapel.
Oh it's a horror flick all right, but what sub-genre within the genre?
'House...' transitions from slasher flick to torture porn to supernatural horror. 'It's all true. The boogeyman is real...and you've found him'. The final fifteen minutes certainly divided fans - some seeing it as the film collapsing into incoherence.
For myself it absolutely enhances the immersive experience.
It is the final tumble down an altogether darker rabbit-hole.
The last stop on this gnashing ghost-train ride.
While undeniably graphic there is more emphasis on queasy psychological dread here than would be exhibited in later (mainly within the torture-porn movement) films. There is a real sense of vitality and madness - from the cavalcade of cut-and-paste imagery (split-screen, reverse-negative, solarisation, the surreal and saturated colour scheme, continual cutaways; to excerpts shot on grainy film; stock footage; and sequences found God only knows where). It's a leering, dangerous and singular vision.
The soundtrack is inspired, while heavily reliant on Rob Zombie's own tracks (a trick he wouldn't repeat in subsequent scores). Here we have grinding rock, clanking industrial textures, and gleefully ironic choices ('I just Wanna Be Loved By You', 'I Remember You').
And that is delightfully inappropriate use of 'Brick House'. I just have to say...
It's not a perfect film. Heck, one scene feels like it only exists so Zombie can shoe-horn in his beloved 'Pussy Liquor' pun (and linger on yet another close-up of Moon's derriere). The 'girlfriend' roles are underdeveloped and largely interchangeable - to the point that it wasn't until the second viewing that I could be sure which one was the survivor girl. Also, while the film is dense with dread it is rather thin on tension; it never feels like our protagonists stand a chance against the assembled might of the Firefly clan. Moon's demented giggling does get a little grating - though it is a nice nod to the possessed woman in 'The Evil Dead'. And - as has been often pointed out - the core plot is derivative. But it's a wild ride, man, and one that deserves a little respect.
Zombie is a clever guy, while undeniably light on subtlety. He's definitely no charlatan; no pretender to the throne; no Eli Roth. In fact, on the basis of this re-watching (and my opinion of 'Lords of Salem') I would rate him as one of the boldest and most exciting directors working within the genre today. I haven't seen 'The Devil's Rejects' yet; and even Ebert rated that one (albeit with a considerable caveat).
Well, memory certainly is a treacherous thing. A decade on and the my re-watching of the flick doesn't just alter my first impression of it; it blasts it into a smoking, howling ruin.
Rob Zombie's cinematic debut is a delirious, poison-hearted marvel.
When I first came to Wellington my then-partner and I moved into a two bedroom flat at the ugly end of a beautiful street. The road that ran past the flat was always busy and every night I fell asleep to the sound of cars. It was in Lower Hutt and anyone who is familiar with Wellington will know that 'Lower Hutt' is not a good thing to put on your address. It has a certain reputation - at least somewhat deserved. But for all that we would often walk home late at night along those streets we never saw or encountered anything bad. For the most part those streets were pretty empty after a certain hour and there were never any signs of trouble. We had very little money. No car. On weekends (or whatever days off we shared) we would often walk the short distance to the Queensgate shopping centre. There was a little joint there where they did the best fried chicken I've ever tasted. The skin was really crackly, crisp and savoury. When you bit through it all the clear, fatty juices would trickle out from underneath that skin. It would come with a huge platter of thick-cut fries, heaped with chicken salt. While you ate it the whole experience was bliss itself. It wasn't long afterwards, however, that you'd feel it - that bloated tightness in the gut that comes from eating something really freaking unhealthy. I used to rub my stomach and joke that the chicken was fighting back. Truth is, that chicken had probably had a short and deeply unhappy life and was completely justified in seeking some form of post-mortem revenge. But then the place changed hands and venue and the chicken just wasn't the same - the skin was greasier, the portions meaner, the chips soggy and unsatisfying. We stopped going there.
I was getting too old to keep eating that junk anyway.
Queensgate itself has become a whole other thing from how it was back in those days. Now it's at least twice the size, two-storied: a looming concrete edifice that squats in the heart of the Hutt.
And the cinema we used to go to is long gone now.
It was a weary little Hoyts venue - back when Hoyts still existed for Wellington. It was tucked away, near-as-dammit hidden, inside a worn-out arcade. There seemed to be only one person who worked there; a middle-aged woman who worked the ticket booth and the candy bar. She never tried to upsell us a damn thing, never asked how our day was going, seldom made eye-contact. We both thought she was fantastic. Most days the theatre was all but empty and we had the run of the place. Heck, the only time I ever saw it close-to-capacity was when they screened 'Freddy Versus Jason'; horror movies always brought out the Hutt crowd. The floor was so sticky that my shoes would make a little tearing sound whenever I lifted them from the carpet. But the picture and sound were good. And it felt like ours.
We saw 'House of 1,000 Corpses' there. It was a movie I'd been eager as hell to see. For a start, that is hands-down the finest horror flick title that I can readily think of: it just drips venom and menace and a sense of real danger. The early trailers and teasers had made it look grainy, gleeful and garish; a snarling throwback to the grimy exploitation flicks of the seventies and eighties but twisted and refracted through the post-modern styling of 'Natural Born Killers' and like a billion MTV videos (back when MTV still played music videos, that is). It looked set to restore some bite and danger to a genre that had become too polished, pre-packaged and safe. This was a horror flick made by an obsessive - someone who'd lived and breathed this stuff - who knew the tricks and the traps of the genre - a dude who knew how to give such a flick teeth and could teach it to bite. That someone, of course, being musician Rob Zombie whose music I'd always dug and who had directed a handful of his own music clips - which were, simply, kick-ass.
So we sat there, my feet making those little tearing sounds every time I shifted, and watched this long-awaited, much-delayed movie.
And we both kind of hated it.
My first impression of the film was that it was too ugly, too sordid. It struck me that the characters were not sufficiently developed - the protagonists that is; Zombie clearly loves his villains. It looked fantastic - a cut-and-paste collage of different styles, film stocks and camera angles, and it possessed a genuinely unhinged fever-dream quality that lingered long afterwards. But ultimately it left me feeling dirty, cheated. Betrayed somehow. It wasn't the film I expected to see. There was a nihilism there, a sense of futility that left a very sour taste inside my skull.
So, I was disappointed.
But the past is a lonely place...
Recently I watched Zombie's latest film 'The Lords of Salem'. I found it haunting, demented, oddly poignant and utterly visceral. It was an occult horror flick that variously seemed to recall 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Repulsion', 'The Sentinel', and 'Suspiria' all twisted and corrupted by the late, great Ken Russell. It still felt like a pastiche - like a love letter to a genre written by someone so deeply embedded in it that he couldn't see any way clear. But. That. Worked. And it worked brilliantly. What lingered with me the most from that film was that it basically lived or died by the characters within the narrative. There was a complexity and a richness to them that was almost wholly unexpected, and they were so full of sadness, so fragile and weirdly believable.
So, consider that my recommendation.
But it also got me thinking about the look and feel of 'House of 1,000 Corpses' and I realized that the reason I'd felt betrayed by it was that it hadn't been the film I expected to see (I did a similar thing with Alex de la Iglesia's stunning 'The Last Circus' a couple of years ago: the first time I watched it I was left feeling angry, the second time I realized it was a masterpiece).
That is a stupid way to judge a film.
I thought about it's downbeat tone and it's sense of encroaching hopelessness; whether he intended to or not Zombie might have pioneered the "torture-porn" movement - though 'House...' is not nearly as graphically violent as that sub-genre tends to be.
It also occurred to me: for all that folks tend to point to 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' as the single biggest influence on his work I suspect he may be a bigger fan of that film's sequel (a film, I myself, have very fond memories of). Just so you know, 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre II' effectively parodies the first film - it paints the characters broader, bloodier and with a bolder brush. The black comedy already present in the first film is far more apparent in the sequel (it's also every bit as gore-soaked and violent as 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' was reputed to be, but actually was not). But seriously, considering the blatant pun used for the murderous family's last name (Sawyer, really?) humour was always kind of a thing for Tobe Hooper.
There are echoes of TCMII throughout much of Zombie's work. The increasingly deranged cop in pursuit of the Firefly family in 'The Devil's Rejects' recalls Dennis Hopper's lunatic chainsaw-wielding sheriff. The house in 'House of 1,000 Corpses' is closer to the phantasmagorical style of the abandoned amusement-park-cum-house-of-very-real-horrors in TCMII. Heck, even the set up of 'The Lords of Salem' (a female DJ getting hold of a recording that propels her into the nightmarish narrative) is reminiscent of Stretch's plight in TCMII.
Oh yeah, plus he's nabbed one of the cast of TCMII for 'House of 1,000 Corpses' and 'The Devil's Rejects' - Mr Bill Moseley.
Anyway, all that aside. I decided it was time to take another trip into the 'House of 1,000 Corpses' and see if, all these years on, there were fresh horrors and revelations to be had.
The flick is set during the Seventies; which provides the design team with ample gaudy set-dressing and inspired costumes. A couple of sci-fi and horror-loving dudes (one of whom is Rainn Wilson!) are drifting across country, recording their observations on out-of-the-way rural attractions. They've dragged their long suffering girlfriends along for the journey, on their way out to meeting the father of one of the women. The four of them bicker. They banter. They run low on gas. This leads them to Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen (and fried chicken grease-pit).
Spaulding (Sid Haig) is a surly guy with a mouthful of bad teeth and a faceful of leering clown makeup. We know there's a dangerous man behind that greasepaint as we've just seen him lay waste to a couple of would-be robbers. Hell, their blood is still wet on the floor when our carload of spam-to-be arrives on his doorstep. He has a murder-train out back that takes them on a tour of serial killers, all bathed in burning, psychedelic light. Spaulding tells them the tale of an infamous local madman known as Doctor Satan. Legend has it he experimented on the mentally-ill at the nearby asylum - monstrous, Mengele-style experiments designed to create a master race, or something. Inevitably Doctor Satan's crimes were revealed and vigilante justice prevailed - he was strung from a tree by a vengeful mob. Then his body disappeared.
You just know our kids (okay, the two dudes - their girlfriends are less than smitten with the idea) are going to want to take a look at that tree. Spaulding begrudgingly draws them a map. Pretty soon its raining hard and they're half-lost. On the way they pick up a hitch-hiker - a strange, seemingly demented lass with a cowboy hat and a shrill giggle (Sherri Moon - the director's wife).
Things do not go well.
A man in a frigging bear-head hood shoots out their tyre and the hitch-hiker leads them to her house, not far from where they're crashed-out. And so they are introduced to the Firefly family - a sneering gallery of grotesques; from the murderous matriarch (horror veteran Karen Black); the straggle-haired and lunatic prophet Otis (Moseley); to the looming crooked thing they call Tiny, whose body is warped and rubbery with scar tissue from when their father tried to burn down the house with all inside. The Fireflys already have some guests - a small group of abducted cheerleaders. Some of whom are already in pieces.
Okay, so the narrative taps into, like, half-a-dozen genre tropes. It's more-or-less a manic reworking of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' but there is something else here - something smarter and savvier and weirdly inspiring. The film rapidly descends into an ever-tightening vortex - part nightmare, part fugue. 'House...' hits us with a series of blasted and lingering images: buckled papier-mâché masks, rabbit suits, mutilated dolls and occult rituals. A killer taunts his victim while wearing her father's dead face ('who's your daddy?'). A makeshift coffin is lowered into a wet pit of writhing...what...zombies?...ghouls?...failed experiments? A subterranean cathedral adorned with bones recalls the crypt of the Capuchin monks in Rome - the Bone Chapel.
Oh it's a horror flick all right, but what sub-genre within the genre?
'House...' transitions from slasher flick to torture porn to supernatural horror. 'It's all true. The boogeyman is real...and you've found him'. The final fifteen minutes certainly divided fans - some seeing it as the film collapsing into incoherence.
For myself it absolutely enhances the immersive experience.
It is the final tumble down an altogether darker rabbit-hole.
The last stop on this gnashing ghost-train ride.
While undeniably graphic there is more emphasis on queasy psychological dread here than would be exhibited in later (mainly within the torture-porn movement) films. There is a real sense of vitality and madness - from the cavalcade of cut-and-paste imagery (split-screen, reverse-negative, solarisation, the surreal and saturated colour scheme, continual cutaways; to excerpts shot on grainy film; stock footage; and sequences found God only knows where). It's a leering, dangerous and singular vision.
The soundtrack is inspired, while heavily reliant on Rob Zombie's own tracks (a trick he wouldn't repeat in subsequent scores). Here we have grinding rock, clanking industrial textures, and gleefully ironic choices ('I just Wanna Be Loved By You', 'I Remember You').
And that is delightfully inappropriate use of 'Brick House'. I just have to say...
It's not a perfect film. Heck, one scene feels like it only exists so Zombie can shoe-horn in his beloved 'Pussy Liquor' pun (and linger on yet another close-up of Moon's derriere). The 'girlfriend' roles are underdeveloped and largely interchangeable - to the point that it wasn't until the second viewing that I could be sure which one was the survivor girl. Also, while the film is dense with dread it is rather thin on tension; it never feels like our protagonists stand a chance against the assembled might of the Firefly clan. Moon's demented giggling does get a little grating - though it is a nice nod to the possessed woman in 'The Evil Dead'. And - as has been often pointed out - the core plot is derivative. But it's a wild ride, man, and one that deserves a little respect.
Zombie is a clever guy, while undeniably light on subtlety. He's definitely no charlatan; no pretender to the throne; no Eli Roth. In fact, on the basis of this re-watching (and my opinion of 'Lords of Salem') I would rate him as one of the boldest and most exciting directors working within the genre today. I haven't seen 'The Devil's Rejects' yet; and even Ebert rated that one (albeit with a considerable caveat).
Well, memory certainly is a treacherous thing. A decade on and the my re-watching of the flick doesn't just alter my first impression of it; it blasts it into a smoking, howling ruin.
Rob Zombie's cinematic debut is a delirious, poison-hearted marvel.
Saturday 22 June 2013
Kontempt
So, Kanye West's latest album 'Yeezus' (yes, as in 'Jesus' and the internet is rife with images of West looking noble and wounded beneath a crown of thorns - dude, it's as if he's just begging to be mocked at this juncture) swaggered onto record store shelves in the last week or so. Could be longer, I'm not really abreast of release dates. Today is certainly the first time I've had a chance to eyeball a copy. Now, I can't claim to know much of a damn thing about West, beyond what even the most cursory skulk through women's magazines or entertainment pages is likely to tell you. I've watched his development and transformation from rap artist to fame whore at a distance, with a kind of detached disinterest. I know that he is kind of a big deal; a self-styled media messiah and possessed of probably the largest and most unrestrainable ego in the entirety of the musical world.
I've seen the Taylor Swift humiliation, the 'George Bush doesn't care about black people' clip (totally worth watching for the look on Mike Myer's face alone), the weird little creature committing hara-kiri in that odd Spike Jonze video. I know about his relationship with Kim Kardashian (herself easily the best and most concise example of all that is wrong with this era's vacuous celebrity-obsessed hollowness and narcissism) - and I am aware that their baby is going to be named 'North' (for the love of God...). I have even heard a bit of his music. I don't hate it. I have a particular fondness for some of the early tracks - the clever use of novel samples (sampling Shirley Bassey was a masterstroke), the sense that here was an artist who was interested in more than macho posturing and braggadocio. Hell, as a rapper he was (while not as phenomenal as his fans would breathlessly assert) at least possessed of good flow and knew his way around a lyric.
I guess I've always been casually intrigued by him as a person. There seems to be a weird conflict in him between self-aggrandizement and self-loathing. This is readily apparent in the track from 'Yeezus'; 'I am a God' which could either be read as ridiculous onanism and self-promotion, or as a sarcastic, sneering attack on the emptiness of the media figure he's become. And with West there's simply no way of knowing for sure which way it's meant to swing.
But I can't talk about West in any depth. I'm not familiar enough with anything he's done to offer any more than I have already typed. The reason I bring him up at all is for something simple and snide and petty.
What the hell is up with the packaging of 'Yeezus'?
Seriously, have record labels just given up even pretending that they're trying to shift physical copies of their releases? For those who haven't seen it: it's a basic jewel-case release. The disc is one of those plain silver suckers that always give the impression that they're upside-down. There is no booklet. No artwork. Nothing. Just a bare clear-plastic case and an anonymous disc. The tracklist, credits and copyright information are all printed onto some sort of transparent sticker or insert that's somehow affixed to the back of the case. It's pretty hard to read. It beats out even 'Steal This Album' by System of a Down for laziest release design ever (and at least that disc was being subversive). It's nothing. It screams 'this is worthless', a thing of no physical value. I seems like the final stage in the worrying descent I first observed when some CDs started being released without cover booklets (i.e. the first European pressing of 'Silent Force' by Within Temptation) Now, I know it's all just ephemera and that it's the music that matters, man. But seriously...
I'm old. Okay. I remember being a spotty kid saving up what little I could from mowing lawns and other such nonsense so that I could throw down $20.00 on a cassette tape the next time my family and I were in a town/city large enough to have a record shop. I remember poring over those tapes (yes, tapes, okay - see the 'I'm old' thing) - that tiny, reproduced artwork. I used to unfold the little covers. Read the lyrics. Study the images.
As I was a peculiar and craft-obsessed child I would make little figures and dioramas out of papier mache and polymer clay and I often based these on album covers. I remember making my own 'Walls of Jericho' (Helloween's first LP) diorama; a huge ghoul - hooded and fanged - destroying the wall of a keep. I also fondly recall doing the 'Holy Terror' album cover: an oil-black serpentine monster coiling over a cross. And yup, I made the divided severed head locking lips with its other bisected half from the cover of Pungent Stench's 'Been Caught Buttering' (an image I now know as one of the fine and utterly disturbing photographic works of Joel-Peter Witkin).
I listened to a lot of metal.
Hell, for a while there I even made little fimo figurines of the band members themselves. And not even interesting-looking metal guys like King Diamond and Alice Cooper - these were mostly just generic long-hairs, based on the photos in those booklets. In hindsight, these craft-pieces were probably pretty rubbish.
I spent much of my childhood living in a very small, rural township. Why do you ask?
For me the artwork isn't something to be overlooked on the way to the music itself; it's the first taste of that music. Album artwork done properly should create a context for the music - because for the most part that's the first thing you'll encounter of the album proper (with the exception of an odd pre-album release single or two).
It helps create a world for the music to inhabit.
And over the years I have seen some staggering, beautifully-packaged works; discs in printed tins, heavy gatefold digipacks, ornate cardboard boxes, hardbound digi-books. One underground metal act; Negura Bunget (I think), even released an album packaged in a hand-crafted wooden box that was half-filled with Transylvanian dirt. You can't ask for more than that.
The artwork becomes something of an album's legacy - a means by which to instantly recognize it. Honestly, I'd say the cover of Nirvana's 'Nevermind' is easily as iconic as any of the actual music on the LP. And there have been many fine visual artists who have used the medium to spread their name and extend their reputation. There are loads of hefty coffee-table books entirely dedicated to record covers. As well as magazine articles, interviews with the artists/photographers. The motivations behind the artwork are often questioned and explained...because, hell, people want to know. It's interesting. Some vinyl obsessives even frame and wall-hang LPs simply because the artwork is so good and holds so much meaning for them.
Plus, where would we be without 'worst album covers' lists on the internet? That shit is hilarious.
So, what does the nothing-artwork of Kanye West's latest tell us - that there is no context for him? That he doesn't need one? Or just that the record label was too cheap and contemptuous of his audience to bother with it?
They know that he could release damn near anything and the fans would clutter the internet message-boards to mouth-breathe all over it, while the critical community would all rise up in unison to heap praise onto his colossal (and apparently thorn-crowned) head. He has after all redefined modern music. You know, again.
I really hope that this isn't going to become a thing, at least in the near future. I'd really like it if labels could continue printing artwork and releasing physical copies of albums for a while yet.
I've seen the Taylor Swift humiliation, the 'George Bush doesn't care about black people' clip (totally worth watching for the look on Mike Myer's face alone), the weird little creature committing hara-kiri in that odd Spike Jonze video. I know about his relationship with Kim Kardashian (herself easily the best and most concise example of all that is wrong with this era's vacuous celebrity-obsessed hollowness and narcissism) - and I am aware that their baby is going to be named 'North' (for the love of God...). I have even heard a bit of his music. I don't hate it. I have a particular fondness for some of the early tracks - the clever use of novel samples (sampling Shirley Bassey was a masterstroke), the sense that here was an artist who was interested in more than macho posturing and braggadocio. Hell, as a rapper he was (while not as phenomenal as his fans would breathlessly assert) at least possessed of good flow and knew his way around a lyric.
I guess I've always been casually intrigued by him as a person. There seems to be a weird conflict in him between self-aggrandizement and self-loathing. This is readily apparent in the track from 'Yeezus'; 'I am a God' which could either be read as ridiculous onanism and self-promotion, or as a sarcastic, sneering attack on the emptiness of the media figure he's become. And with West there's simply no way of knowing for sure which way it's meant to swing.
But I can't talk about West in any depth. I'm not familiar enough with anything he's done to offer any more than I have already typed. The reason I bring him up at all is for something simple and snide and petty.
What the hell is up with the packaging of 'Yeezus'?
Seriously, have record labels just given up even pretending that they're trying to shift physical copies of their releases? For those who haven't seen it: it's a basic jewel-case release. The disc is one of those plain silver suckers that always give the impression that they're upside-down. There is no booklet. No artwork. Nothing. Just a bare clear-plastic case and an anonymous disc. The tracklist, credits and copyright information are all printed onto some sort of transparent sticker or insert that's somehow affixed to the back of the case. It's pretty hard to read. It beats out even 'Steal This Album' by System of a Down for laziest release design ever (and at least that disc was being subversive). It's nothing. It screams 'this is worthless', a thing of no physical value. I seems like the final stage in the worrying descent I first observed when some CDs started being released without cover booklets (i.e. the first European pressing of 'Silent Force' by Within Temptation) Now, I know it's all just ephemera and that it's the music that matters, man. But seriously...
I'm old. Okay. I remember being a spotty kid saving up what little I could from mowing lawns and other such nonsense so that I could throw down $20.00 on a cassette tape the next time my family and I were in a town/city large enough to have a record shop. I remember poring over those tapes (yes, tapes, okay - see the 'I'm old' thing) - that tiny, reproduced artwork. I used to unfold the little covers. Read the lyrics. Study the images.
As I was a peculiar and craft-obsessed child I would make little figures and dioramas out of papier mache and polymer clay and I often based these on album covers. I remember making my own 'Walls of Jericho' (Helloween's first LP) diorama; a huge ghoul - hooded and fanged - destroying the wall of a keep. I also fondly recall doing the 'Holy Terror' album cover: an oil-black serpentine monster coiling over a cross. And yup, I made the divided severed head locking lips with its other bisected half from the cover of Pungent Stench's 'Been Caught Buttering' (an image I now know as one of the fine and utterly disturbing photographic works of Joel-Peter Witkin).
I listened to a lot of metal.
Hell, for a while there I even made little fimo figurines of the band members themselves. And not even interesting-looking metal guys like King Diamond and Alice Cooper - these were mostly just generic long-hairs, based on the photos in those booklets. In hindsight, these craft-pieces were probably pretty rubbish.
I spent much of my childhood living in a very small, rural township. Why do you ask?
For me the artwork isn't something to be overlooked on the way to the music itself; it's the first taste of that music. Album artwork done properly should create a context for the music - because for the most part that's the first thing you'll encounter of the album proper (with the exception of an odd pre-album release single or two).
It helps create a world for the music to inhabit.
And over the years I have seen some staggering, beautifully-packaged works; discs in printed tins, heavy gatefold digipacks, ornate cardboard boxes, hardbound digi-books. One underground metal act; Negura Bunget (I think), even released an album packaged in a hand-crafted wooden box that was half-filled with Transylvanian dirt. You can't ask for more than that.
The artwork becomes something of an album's legacy - a means by which to instantly recognize it. Honestly, I'd say the cover of Nirvana's 'Nevermind' is easily as iconic as any of the actual music on the LP. And there have been many fine visual artists who have used the medium to spread their name and extend their reputation. There are loads of hefty coffee-table books entirely dedicated to record covers. As well as magazine articles, interviews with the artists/photographers. The motivations behind the artwork are often questioned and explained...because, hell, people want to know. It's interesting. Some vinyl obsessives even frame and wall-hang LPs simply because the artwork is so good and holds so much meaning for them.
Plus, where would we be without 'worst album covers' lists on the internet? That shit is hilarious.
So, what does the nothing-artwork of Kanye West's latest tell us - that there is no context for him? That he doesn't need one? Or just that the record label was too cheap and contemptuous of his audience to bother with it?
They know that he could release damn near anything and the fans would clutter the internet message-boards to mouth-breathe all over it, while the critical community would all rise up in unison to heap praise onto his colossal (and apparently thorn-crowned) head. He has after all redefined modern music. You know, again.
I really hope that this isn't going to become a thing, at least in the near future. I'd really like it if labels could continue printing artwork and releasing physical copies of albums for a while yet.
Saturday 15 June 2013
Riot
About a month ago a friend laid down a challenge to me; posting a link on my Facebook page.
This is the same friend that awesomely-dubbed my approach to literary technique 'word frenzy' and who has often (and completely accurately) hassled me about my tendency never to use three words when fifteen will suffice.
I'm one verbose son-of-a-bitch, what can I say.
Seems that every year they (yup, that inscrutable anonymous force - 'they') run a national flash fiction contest. The rules are clear: all entries must be fiction, short-story form, on any genre and in any style. But they must not be more than 300 words long (excluding title). The woman that challenged me to this thought it would be fun to see if I could do it.
Honestly, I had some doubts myself. Hell, this opening is probably more than 300 words long already.
But somehow, by hook or by crook, I did.
Twice actually. In the end I submitted two entries. The first, entitled 'Five Fragments; a Love Story' made the long-list (but alas, not the short-list). The other one was called 'Riot' and did not place anywhere. In truth, I hardly expected it too - I figured if one of my entries were to make it to the next level it would be the former - it had more of the necessary ingredients: it was sentimental and (hopefully) poignant. The other - 'Riot' was much darker, nasty, vicious and bleak as hell; it was also sufficiently heavy on adjectives to more closely resemble my normal writing style.
And I didn't really write it especially for the contest.
Instead I found it when I was transferring a bunch of files onto the hard-drive of my new laptop. There it was, a page-and-a-half of some manuscript thing that I'd started and subsequently abandoned. Re-reading it I remembered that it was to be some pitch-black, disturbing dystopia or whatever. It was intended to open with a Columbine (and now tragically; also Sandy Hook) - style school massacre and to climax with a city wide riot.
It was to be some seriously heavy shit, man.
I'd planned for it to depict a society heavily dosed and tranquilized on prescription medication, numb from years of mindless entertainment and junk food. A society grown fat and passive, grown fearful of its own passions and its capacity for violence. It was to be a world of burned or 'sanitized' books and secret prison camps. Etc.
Basically, I was a really angry young man, okay.
So, I got a page and a half into it before I realized that I really didn't know how to write a dystopia or where I should roll with this one. Seems odd, actually as virtually every dystopian novel since George Orwell's masterpiece '1984' has basically used his recipe for the first few turning points of the narrative.
i.e. We meet the protagonist - usually a man. They are a true believer, almost fully embracing the values of their society. But they have some nagging doubts; something in them cautions that all is not right...
So they pursue these doubts - secretly going against the ingrained rules of their society. They meet another character - usually a woman - who has fully embraced this doubt and is actively working to defy the dystopian society.
These two fall into a relationship that becomes itself an act of subversion; the protagonist getting drawn deeper and deeper into rebellion. Typically they are then betrayed by someone both of these characters has come to trust and handed over to the authorities. They are then tortured, brain-washed and perhaps executed (or something even worse in the case of '1984').
The end.
Heck, even 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk follows a surprising number of these rules.
But, I stopped and shoved what I'd written away on a hard-drive somewhere. When I found it again I thought, heck, that opening paragraph isn't too bad, perhaps I should pick this up again at some point. When I heard of this contest I figured that I'd dust off said opening paragraph, add a bit/delete a bit and then enter it. Just for kicks.
I got it down to 300 words exactly.
So here it is: it doesn't feel like a self-contained story - it feels like a frigging opening paragraph (which yup, isn't all that surprising) and yeah, it didn't win a damn thing. But I still rather like it.
(P.S. If I'm permitted to I will also post 'Five Fragments; a Love Story' on this blog - I think the folks who run the contest are still hanging onto some kind of rights with it as it may or may not get read out at the awards ceremony in Auckland next weekend. After that, I figure it'll belong to me once more.)
(...)
My lips are red from the heat and licking-wet, I curl them back from my teeth like a dog. The ash cracks and blisters in my mouth and I am laughing. For the first time in forever I am laughing.
This is the same friend that awesomely-dubbed my approach to literary technique 'word frenzy' and who has often (and completely accurately) hassled me about my tendency never to use three words when fifteen will suffice.
I'm one verbose son-of-a-bitch, what can I say.
Seems that every year they (yup, that inscrutable anonymous force - 'they') run a national flash fiction contest. The rules are clear: all entries must be fiction, short-story form, on any genre and in any style. But they must not be more than 300 words long (excluding title). The woman that challenged me to this thought it would be fun to see if I could do it.
Honestly, I had some doubts myself. Hell, this opening is probably more than 300 words long already.
But somehow, by hook or by crook, I did.
Twice actually. In the end I submitted two entries. The first, entitled 'Five Fragments; a Love Story' made the long-list (but alas, not the short-list). The other one was called 'Riot' and did not place anywhere. In truth, I hardly expected it too - I figured if one of my entries were to make it to the next level it would be the former - it had more of the necessary ingredients: it was sentimental and (hopefully) poignant. The other - 'Riot' was much darker, nasty, vicious and bleak as hell; it was also sufficiently heavy on adjectives to more closely resemble my normal writing style.
And I didn't really write it especially for the contest.
Instead I found it when I was transferring a bunch of files onto the hard-drive of my new laptop. There it was, a page-and-a-half of some manuscript thing that I'd started and subsequently abandoned. Re-reading it I remembered that it was to be some pitch-black, disturbing dystopia or whatever. It was intended to open with a Columbine (and now tragically; also Sandy Hook) - style school massacre and to climax with a city wide riot.
It was to be some seriously heavy shit, man.
I'd planned for it to depict a society heavily dosed and tranquilized on prescription medication, numb from years of mindless entertainment and junk food. A society grown fat and passive, grown fearful of its own passions and its capacity for violence. It was to be a world of burned or 'sanitized' books and secret prison camps. Etc.
Basically, I was a really angry young man, okay.
So, I got a page and a half into it before I realized that I really didn't know how to write a dystopia or where I should roll with this one. Seems odd, actually as virtually every dystopian novel since George Orwell's masterpiece '1984' has basically used his recipe for the first few turning points of the narrative.
i.e. We meet the protagonist - usually a man. They are a true believer, almost fully embracing the values of their society. But they have some nagging doubts; something in them cautions that all is not right...
So they pursue these doubts - secretly going against the ingrained rules of their society. They meet another character - usually a woman - who has fully embraced this doubt and is actively working to defy the dystopian society.
These two fall into a relationship that becomes itself an act of subversion; the protagonist getting drawn deeper and deeper into rebellion. Typically they are then betrayed by someone both of these characters has come to trust and handed over to the authorities. They are then tortured, brain-washed and perhaps executed (or something even worse in the case of '1984').
The end.
Heck, even 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk follows a surprising number of these rules.
But, I stopped and shoved what I'd written away on a hard-drive somewhere. When I found it again I thought, heck, that opening paragraph isn't too bad, perhaps I should pick this up again at some point. When I heard of this contest I figured that I'd dust off said opening paragraph, add a bit/delete a bit and then enter it. Just for kicks.
I got it down to 300 words exactly.
So here it is: it doesn't feel like a self-contained story - it feels like a frigging opening paragraph (which yup, isn't all that surprising) and yeah, it didn't win a damn thing. But I still rather like it.
(P.S. If I'm permitted to I will also post 'Five Fragments; a Love Story' on this blog - I think the folks who run the contest are still hanging onto some kind of rights with it as it may or may not get read out at the awards ceremony in Auckland next weekend. After that, I figure it'll belong to me once more.)
(...)
Tonight the
city is melting back into the dirt.
The sky is
full of salt and fire. Dark snowstorms of ash drift through the streets. They
melt on my cheeks, blackening my skin. They could be the pages of a thousand
banned and burned books drifting to pieces on the dusking breeze. I can hear raised
voices churning the air; they could be shouting anything. Far away you can hear
the stutter of automatic weapon fire - the kind of guns you can order through
the post if you know the right web addresses, have the right connections. We
had the connections, we had everything we needed.
But I was
wrong about how far away they were. They
weren’t all that far away at all.
The city
screams as it dies, it sounds like a hundred sirens, a thousand babies wailing,
the grinding roar of statues falling, all underscored by the dull timpani-thuds
of homemade explosives.
Like I
said; we had the connections.
Concrete
and tyres, metal, wood and flesh, paper and fabric, gasoline and bone – it all
smells pretty much the same as it burns.
I wonder if
the smoke of our burning will reach as far as the camps. Will the people there
– less than people now, truth be told - watch those black waves curling over
the barbed wire: will they stare with eyes like boiled marbles, clutching at
the wire fences with fingers of picked bone. Soon the militia will come with
batons and assault weapons, high-pressure hoses and tear gas. They will be too
late.
My lips are red from the heat and licking-wet, I curl them back from my teeth like a dog. The ash cracks and blisters in my mouth and I am laughing. For the first time in forever I am laughing.
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