March, 2007

Blood Moon

Le Festival Du Film Fantastique at the ski resort of Gerardmer was roughly fantastic from my point of view, since I was invited to be a member of the jury for the movies in competition. This involved being chauffered two or three times daily from the Grand Hotel in Gerardmer to the screenings in the company of enormously famous film personages and beautiful actresses. This energy and morale-sapping job also involved being shuttled from the screenings to fabulous lunches and barnstorming superb dinners. I've no idea why I said yes to it all. If all the foregoing wasn't difficult enough for me I was also put to ignoring the wrinkled brows of the papparazi as they struggled to decide who the heck I was, exactly, but who took my picture anyway and often: though usually because I was flanked by someone famous or beautiful or both.

According to my agent Luigi I was there represent "the intellectual". Apparently every jury has an "intellectual" stiff or deadbeat to restore the semblance of gravitas to the levitas of fame and beauty. Well I did my best to live up or down to the role. I wore my spectacles throughout the proceedings: that made me look pretty brainy; and I had a fortuitous attack of dry scalp (whether from the mountain air or the air-conditioning of the hotel) which contributed the necessary blizzard of dandruff intellectuality seems to demand these days. What can be more intellectual than that?

But my fellow jurors were just so wonderful I fell in love with all of them. If you want to know who they were you better dust off your French and go here: http://www.gerardmer-fantasticart.com/ The jury was presided over by the legendary Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back, The Eyes Of Laura Mars and many, many films besides. Clever, informed, entertaining, wise like Yoda, funny, modest and unassuming. Just listening to him talk about the films in competition was a study. I learned more about movies just from his casual conversation than I have done in certain three-day seminars. If the international movies on show were French subtitled, Kersh and his son Dana (who had accompanied him to France and who told me I am officially allowed to call him Kersh, so there!) and I were given a screening with English subtitles in an alternative theatre. This saved us from the papparazi parade on a couple of occasions and gave us the chance - three of us in a full-sized cinema - to roar our approbation or bellow our disapproval at the screen.

The winner emerged rather cleanly. It's a Norwegian film you probably won't see in commercial theatres, but if it makes your local art house cinema you should go and see it. Haunting, funny and profound (and just to reduce its commercial chances even further it rather bafflingly seems to have two titles in English): Norway of Life, A Bothersome Man is a moving dark fantasy which is also a brilliant and satirical critique of modern life in the Western cultures.

Watching ten films in three days is pretty gruelling. But it certainly shows up in giant relief the gap between originality and cliché. Not to mention the cheap trick of cranking up the volume levels every time the editor makes a quick-cut. Sometimes just the opening of a refrigerator door might be accompanied by a bang loud enough to loosen the wax in your ears. Yes, opening it: you figure it out. When I noticed this happening for the fifth time I called it the device of: "He slammed the door open." Neither can I be bothered to watch people arguing/singing/spooning in a fast-driven car since I know they are going to hit somebody in the middle of the road, only to find nothing in the road. I called this one: "Hey, it was nobody again!" Meanwhile in another category called "The Transcendent Floating Finger" pale and loitering ghosts who don't speak all point slowly at the middle distance whereupon someone (usually the dandruff-afflicted intellectual of the group) says, "Do you think it's trying to tell us something?"

The heck with that: I got to go skiing with the fabulous Julie Dreyfus who was in Kill Bill. In one of the movies she sank her fingernails into my thigh when a fridge door opened VERY LOUDLY. I hope the scratch marks never fade. I also got to sit around the piano after the screenings as the gorgeous trip-hop chanteuse Emilie Simon http://www.emiliesimon.artistes.universalmusic.fr/ captivated everyone by playing for us in the hotel bar. Lunch and dinner always included the sparkling company of Charlotte de Turkheim (I learned that the word comedienne means actress in France) Lea Drucker, Richard Bohringer and Pierre-Paul Renders. I didn't really want it to end, but there's only so much distinguished company and sensational haute-cuisine a person can take. Irvin Kershner beamed at me as we assembled our suitcases in the hotel lobby ready for the departure. "Back to anonymity," he said. "Yes," I told him. "And beans-on-toast."

Meanwhile here is a link whereby you can see me at Gerardmer jawing about The Limits of Enchantment. The introduction is in French then the interview is conducted in English. http://www.riv54.com/v2/riv_54_la_television/video.php?p=videos&vid=199

Writing. I've produced a first draft of my latest novel. It's called Howz Yer Belly For Spots? No it isn't. Of course it isn't.

It was to be called The War Declared By Levity On Gravity but Simon Spanton, Adam Roberts and Rob Grant laughed that off at the Century Club Xmas quiz. Then it was going to be called Five Six Seven. Or maybe Five, Six, Seven. I spent a few weeks agonising over those commas. Why called thus? Because Five is the number of Man, Six is the number of the Devil and Seven is the number of God. So now you know. I'm a big fan of The Pixies and there's this number they did years ago called Monkey Gone To Heaven which has a refrain to that effect. Anyway, though I still love The Pixies I've moved on. Instead of the above I'm going to call it Ascent Of Demons.

Oh, thank you to all the people who wrote to me about Belle after the last posting. It's amazing how many people connect to small furry animals.

An old friend French editor Patrice Duvic died recently, aged 61. I just read a biography of Philip K Dick called "I am alive and you are dead" in which Patrice was cited, almost, as the man who sent Dick off the rails. Apparently Patrice had told him that Ubik was one of the most important novels in the entire history of the world. The trouble seems to be that Dick believed Patrice implicitly, and his behaviour changed thenceforward. Look, your editor is supposed to tell you that your writing is terrific; he or she isn't a good editor if they don't tell you that; you're supposed to know that; and they're supposed to know you know that. Even so they add a bit more lavish praise, to account for the praise you just subtracted on account of your knowingness. And you know that too. You're not supposed to go around believing it. Look what happens if you do. Patrice was my first editor in France and he was always very kind to me. He said great things about my writing, because that's what good editors do.

I wish I had something to report about the film projects. (Tooth Fairy and Dreamside) but I haven't.

The night of the 3rd March saw a total eclipse of the moon, sometimes called a Blood Moon because when the eclipse is complete the moon shows up orange or red. Well pink at least. Anyway I'd allowed the savages to stay up late to watch it and the best vantage point with the aid of binoculars and telescope is from the attic window of my study. The savages had friends staying for a sleepover that night so there was a little too much excitement going on in my study for my comfort. I mean, there are manuscripts and unpaid bills and letters of invitation and unpaid bills and vital documents and more unpaid bills, all filed carefully in easy-to-access places on the floor or the sofa. The savages were less interested in the antics of the blood moon than they were in dancing over my manuscripts or rebounding from the sofa. I was getting pretty grouchy long before I blew my top and called them to order. I reached for one foot-scrunched document - let's call it Exhibit A - as evidence of disorder and chaos to wave in the air.

"Look at the state of this!" I yelled at the savages and their savage friends. "Do you know what it is? It's an E-ticket! An important document! If I'd lost that I wouldn't be able to attend the Awards ceremony in Scotland next week-end! Do you see?" (Okay, I was slavering by now.) Ella scanned the paper in my hand. "It's for tomorrow," she said.

I checked the date. I looked at Ella. I looked at the Blood Moon in the sky. "I knew that," I said firmly. "I knew that."

So, fortunately, I did manage to travel on the right day to the South Lanarkshire Book Award, which for some reason I'd thought was the following week-end. I had to cancel the lads-'n'-dads football I'd arranged on the park and fly up to Glasgow. It's a good thing too because Do The Creepy Thing won the award. And if the organisers or all the school students who voted for me read this then they'll see what an incompetent fool I am, and they will want their handsome crystal trophy back. Anyway it was great to run into lovely Cathy Forde again, who was also short-listed with Brian Keaney, Rachel Anderson and Sandra Glover. The young people I met in the schools I visited were terrific. What is it about young Scots that makes them so smart, good looking and sophisticated? I'm not just saying that co they keep giving me awards. I'm not.

Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net