Previously
|
Tuesday, May 6, 2003 In Praise of RaLet's get something cleared up. There is a dog of a movie out there called Darkness Falls. A real horror-stinker. It's about a Tooth Fairy. A lot of people are getting confused, thinking that this is the movie based on my script of The Tooth Fairy. No no no. Don't be. Confused I mean. By the time you see the movie based on my book there probably won't be any references at all to the Tooth Fairy, because the studio are removing them even as I write. Should it prove to be another horror-stinker and just as bad as the above-mentioned tub of guts and gore, you'll be able to tell the two movies apart in this way: the one based on my book the Tooth Fairy won't mention any Tooth Fairy. The one not based on my book will have a Tooth Fairy, doing a lot of the things that appear in my book. Clear enough for you? Don't pull faces - I didn't invent Hollywood, now did I? Drinking in London with Rob Grant of Red Dwarf fame we inevitably swapped dodgy Hollywood stories. I was bellyaching about the studio wanting to ditch The Tooth Fairy from my screenplay of The Tooth Fairy. Those of you who have seen Rob's fabulously funny Red Dwarf series will know that the eponymous Red Dwarf is the name of the spaceship on which the crew of Lister, Rimmer, The Cat et al make uncertain progress through space. I guess his story trumped mine when he told me he was asked, 'Does it have to be set on a spaceship?' Is Hollywood a spaceship, do you think? Where else could you set these kind of conversations Writers appear to keep having with Producers? I mean you wouldn't get away with these bits of dialogue in a novel of social realism, would you? You need tag lines, so that they say things like, 'We must set this scene somewhere else - in praise of Ra!" (Exterior, desert-planet with a green sun, day: Producer stares without blinking into the green sun while Writer retrieves small piece of hardened wax from his ear.) "Let us change the main character - in praise of Ra!" Enough about Hollywood weirdness. Change the subject, quick. I was delighted to be nominated for a "Seiun Award" which I understand is the Japanese version of the Hugo Award presented at the Worldcon. The nomination is for the short story Partial Eclipse, which you can read online. This is actually the only work I've ever had translated into Japanese. The awards presentation takes place in the Tochigi prefecture of Japan in July. I'd love to get out there somehow but it's a tricky time. I bet they don't talk shit all the time in Japan. I bet they don't talk Ra-tongue anyway. Although they do say >go< when they mean >come< in the sexual sense. Perhaps I shouldn't go to Japan. Oh, crafty parenting tip # 98. I found a trick that I will bequeath to all parents. When your kids are squabbling in the back of the car have a Tom Waits CD handy. Threaten them that if they don't stop fighting you will play the Tom Waits CD in praise of Ra. Always works. Always. I sold the TV film rights of my very first novel Dreamside. This has been bought up by the Fireworks Media group who make TV films for the Science Fiction Cable channel. The idea is to make a pilot TV movie that hopefully has series potential. This would work as a series since the possibilities for returning to the Dreamside location are theoretically limitless. It seems odd for new life to come back into this novel, since I actually wrote the thing back in 1998 when I was living on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Crete. My God that's fifteen years ago, which is longer than the time lapse between the initial dreaming in the novel and their later reunion. That time period was supposed to stand in for the kind of time zone that could make a funky young guy turn into an old fart. I don't think I'll pursue this line of thinking much further. I have to get my evening cocoa, cos at 10 pm it's getting very late. Nice about the film deal though. I'd like to write the script. I could have characters say, "Does it have to be set in a dream?" I could have characters dream that they had sold a book to Hollywood, then have them wake up on a spaceship, speaking a strange tongue. Hours of fun. But this is what happens in real life. Who remembers the band The Specials? Years ago I used to drink in Coventry at The Golden Cross and The Lady Godiva (The Dive) with some of the band members, including guitarist Roddy Byers. Roddy now has a band called Roddy and The Radiators. (That's a Friday afternoon band name Roddy, if you don't mind me saying.) He came to my booklaunch party, and nice to see him again it was. Then I ended up reading something he'd said about how I hadn't changed over the years. According to the journalist - stitch that! And that! - he'd said, 'Yeh Graham was always a bit of a boffin.' Boffin????? I was never a fuckin' boffin. I'm not hundred per cent sure what a boffin is, but I know I was never one. As for you Roddy, you, you were always a dandy. Meanwhile another short story of mine has just been published. It's called Tiger Moth and is published in an anthology edited by Ramsey Campbell, Jack Dann and Dennis Etchison. The antho is called Gathering the Bones and collects stories from the UK, the US and Australia. I've written the first draft of the next novel after The Facts of Life. Still some way to go with it to get it into shape, but the stone is hacked clear. It's called Listening To The Hare. It's a novel about witchcraft, but in a "quiet" sense. I don't think you could call it a Horror novel like Dark Sister, though there are some connections. It's getting harder. Each novel gets harder to write than the last one. That can't be right. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. The urge to compress more and more is ineluctable. Maybe I'll end up with poems on my hands. Now that would be a disaster. Why disaster? The police, that's why. I have a young friend who busks his poetry. Sounds like a hard life to me (yes, I too was a poet once, but I recovered and very few people can tell when I go out) but it seems it's getting tougher. He got arrested the other day. His offence was that of declaiming poetry in public. This was outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon. (Yes, a place with just a hint of irony about it). But you're right: people like him are scum and they deserve all they get. I hope they throw the book at him. So to speak. We can't have people declaiming poetry in public places can we? Not while our forces are fighting for oil in the Middle-East. Sorry, for freedom not oil. I forgot for a moment what it was all about. I'm glad the Stratford police are out looking for work however. Nearer to home I have another pal who is a farrier. Nice, very tough guy. The other day he saw two blokes driving away in his pick-up truck. What really upset him was that his dog was still in the car. Worse, he recognised the thieves as two blokes from a nearby gypsy camp. So he went to the camp and identified his truck. The gypsies were aggressive so he went to the police. The police wouldn't go into the gypsy camp. Too scared. They had two squad cars and a helicopter and they wouldn't go in. This is a true story. Meanwhile a friendly gypsy at least got the dog back for my pal, who then made a midnight raid on the camp and recovered the pick-up himself while the gypsies slept. It now had false number-plates. While driving away that very night my pal was stopped by the police for having false number-plates. Get this: he is now being >charged< for this offence. Are we in Hollywood, coming up with these preposterous, disposable story-lines. Do we speak Ra in the English Midlands? Of course not. It isn't about the oil. Look at the green sun when you say that. Gosh I need help. I'm collapsing under the weight of global and local nonsense. Maybe like they do in Hollywood I should just change the setting of my life. I'm thinking of becoming a Frenchman. Surely they don't have all this in France. I'm going out now to declaim a page of my new book in front of the French Embassy. Let's see if I get busted. Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net | |
| powered by blogger |
Biography
Interviews
Opinion
Site
previously
11/07 08/07
03/07
01/07
12/06
10/06
09/06
08/06
04/06
02/06
12/05
10/05
08/05
07/05
01/05
12/04
10/04
08/04
04/04
02/04
11/03
09/03
06/03
05/03
02/03
09/02
07/02
04/02
02/02
12/01
10/01
08/01
06/01
05/01
04/01
02/01
01/01
11/00
10/00
09/00
 |
 |
 |
 |