Yet another reason why I’m hanging out for Tropic Thunder. From Ad Age:
LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) — Before the start of a recent press screening for Ben Stiller’s forthcoming action comedy “Tropic Thunder,” a fake, over-the-top commercial for a fictitious energy drink called Booty Sweat appears, provoking great hilarity from the industry crowd in attendance.
In an unusual move for a movie studio, Paramount Pictures is licensing the fictional brand as a real beverage available nationwide to help promote ‘Tropic Thunder.’
Riffing on Hollywood’s often ham-handed product-placement deals, Booty Sweat also appears sporadically throughout “Tropic Thunder,” which tells the story of an out-of-control, over-budget action movie of the same name that’s shut down by a cost-conscious studio chief. In order to finish his epic, the auteur director takes his churlish and unmanageable cast of fake soldiers into an actual war zone without their knowledge.
Now, in an unusual move for a movie studio, Paramount Pictures (maker of the actual “Tropic Thunder”) is licensing the fictional brand as a real beverage available nationwide to help promote “Tropic Thunder” in advance of its Aug. 15 wide release.
Brand could have legs
“Not to my knowledge has this ever been done before,” said Michael Corcoran, president of consumer products at Paramount Pictures. “We’re very excited, because it has the potential to live for quite a while, well beyond the film.”
Paramount licensed the energy drink to novelty-products firm Boston America Corp., which will debut Booty Sweat at retailers including Hot Topic, Hastings, Wherehouse and Coconuts, as well as Amazon.com and college bookstores across the nation. Mr. Corcoran declined to say how much the deal was worth to Paramount, but did note that “several hundred thousand” cases of Booty Sweat had been produced.
The idea to make Booty Sweat, the beverage, a reality occurred to Paramount executives last February, after they wandered into Boston America’s booth at the Magic Marketplace, the nation’s largest apparel and accessory trade event, held annually in Las Vegas.
Two versions available
The can’s label will be customized for “urban” and “rural” markets. Metropolitan stores will carry the description of the concoction as a “delicious and bump up struttin’ energy drink that will pump up a brotha’s ass right-pronto. This swill will crank yo’ metabolism up skippin’ right over jiggy to straight G-pimp level, word to your mutha. Brothas will be layin’ down the 2-3 on the wiggy jig focusing the energy flow into cold-face benjamins that will fill yo’ pimp pockets to burstin’. Damn straight! Booty Sweat will keep a brotha pitchin’ straight game all night to the baby-dolls.”
Rural stores will get a can that simply has the Booty Sweat moniker, but no street slang.
(Contrary to its moniker, though, Booty Sweat has a taste that’s more effervescent cherry than Perrier of the derriere, at least according to Paramount director of licensing Tammy Stockfish, who tasted a can for herself last week.)
A handful of other films have licensed formerly fictional products, but until now such deals came long after the picture left theaters.
For example, last December, a futuristic energy drink called Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator appeared in convenience stores on the East and West coasts. Savvy consumers of pop culture immediately recognized it as the key plot device from “Idiocracy,” Mike Judge’s sci-fi comedy about an ordinary man (Luke Wilson) who takes part in a cryogenics experiment; when he awakens 500 years in the future, his ordinary intellect makes him the world’s smartest man in a nation of dumbed-down nitwits. (Mr. Wilson’s character ultimately saves the world from starvation when he suggests not feeding crops Brawndo, but actual water.)
Brawndo believers
Fox had abandoned “Idiocracy” to only a handful of theaters after a dispute with Mr. Judge over its dark tone and dystopic view of the future, but an Oakland, Calif., entrepreneur named Pete Hottelet wouldn’t let the product die. Mr. Hottelet and his wife, Wendy, contacted Fox about licensing Brawndo as an actual energy drink.
Savvy consumers of pop culture immediately recognized Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator, a futuristic energy drink which appeared in convenience stores on the East and West coasts last December, as a key plot device from Mike Judge’s sci-fi comedy, ‘Idiocracy.’
“It took them several months to call me back, and several months more to do the deal,” Mr. Hottelet said. He later said he paid Fox “probably a lot more than I should have” to license the drink. “But you only live once.” So far, Mr. Hottelet said he has sold some 10,000 cases of the elixir by partnering with Redux Beverages, which also makes the controversial Cocaine energy drink.
Mr. Hottelet’s lessons in dealing with Fox lead him to make a better deal with Paramount recently for Sex Panther, a faux cologne featured in 2006’s Paramount/Dreamworks’ Will Ferrell comedy “Anchorman.” In that comedy, Mr. Ferrell refers to the fragrance as “150% More Awesome Than Any Cologne. Ever.”
Now, Sex Panther will find release nationwide this September, in a partnership between Mr. Hottelet and Illinois-based Romane Fragrances.
More than a novelty
“If you make a high-quality product that people would buy on its own merits,” said Mr. Hottelet, “then having it attached to a major film property gives you an advantage over other products in the marketplace, or even a new brand launched with no big idea behind it. I feel very strongly that Brawndo can replace Red Bull, because it’s a good product. No one’s going to say, ‘It tastes like crap, but it’s funny so I’ll drink it.’”
Added Mr. Hottelet, “The same thing goes for fragrances: Sex Panther is designed to compete with Drakkar Noir or a CK One. It doesn’t smell like the inside of a taxi cab.”
As with all books that I have enjoyed, I wrote a personal review of THE ROAD. For the first time, I will publish it here, and I may start doing this with others I have written to share with the world what some great books and writers have meant to me.
THE ROAD
By Cormac McCarthy
I reread THE ROAD today. It didn’t give me any more than my previous reading but there’s much to like about this book, which is easily McCarthy’s second best effort so far.
The connotation of the Golden Rule that runs throughout the book I think is closer to that of ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus’s understated “What thou avoidest suffering thyself seek not to impose on others” rather than that which we take more commonly as “Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do unto You”. The image of Norman Rockwell’s Golden Rule painting came to mind at times. Indeed, the man in the painting with his considering hand to his chin may well be the Man of McCarthy’s book, and I like to think its perspective could be that of the Boy as he is seeing this image in a dream where he sees other “Good Guys” and lost children looking to him, the One, illuminating the scene with the fire he carries. George Bernard Shaw once said that “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules” and further criticized it in a language that I could almost hear from the McCarthy’s Man in his words or perhaps within the ellipses: “Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”
One sticking point I had with THE ROAD, again upon rereading, was the appearance of the “Good Guys” at the end. I wont give too much of the ending away here, but I wonder what kind of process McCarthy went through in adding this coda to the continuation of the “Fire within” and that God continues on in some people who have miraculously appeared in the boy’s – The One’s – path. Was it his publisher and agent who rallied for an ending not as bleak as we have come to know in his best work? I think surely that is much the reason for McCarthy’s commercial success with this novel, and its appeal with the likes of the Oprah Book Club: it is a Hollywood ending in the verse of McCarthy’s omnibus, a punch pulled after it had delivered a KO.
Consider the end of BLOOD MERIDIAN, still McCarthy’s strongest work and an unsurpassed look at an apocalyptic America in a Western setting (prior to the timeline of THE ROAD). We have seen through the book a masterpiece of blood and violence against landscape and language and conceptions that build as good a novel as Melville and Pynchon and DeLillio had and have achieved. The novel’s antagonist, Judge Holden, has been compared by Harold Bloom to Iago and the influence of Shakespeare on McCarthy’s writing does not end there; he has, quite brilliantly, gone back to the source material of Shakespeare and painted it in such a veil as we are at once living the characters afresh while being reminded of where they were and who they were and who they’ve been in our minds and hearts since their inception or at least our own personal discovery of them. Too often novelists will take from novelists in a progressive watering down of interpretation – see Steinbeck’s prose as Hemmingway’s biblical read rather than his own interpretation of the Book – and seldom have we read an interpretation that is new at the same time as being Right. Our closing scene of BLOOD MERIDIAN is as bleak as McCarthy has written and deservedly so; it matches the novel and is satisfying in the way that it is despairingly unfair. Just before Judge Holden destroys the Kid and goes on in perpetuity as War Everlasting, there is the sublime conversation that moves us as the final scene in THE ROAD would have if it had of ended with the Boy by his father’s side repeating his name. The Judge of BLOOD MERIDIAN says to the Kid, who we now know will have to give up his soul this night yet shows more defiance than we could expect or dream:
Where is the fiddler, and where the dance?
I guess you can tell me.
I tell you this. As war becomes dishonoured and its nobility called into question those honourable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior’s right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?
You aint nothing.
McCarthy should have made the penultimate scene of THE ROAD that where the Boy is saying the father’s name over and over again. This is by far the strongest moment in the book and suitable crescendo of emotions that have slowly knotted to get us here. We are so invested in this relationship by this point, as symbiotic and untangleable and eternal, that we have here, finally, reached the point of no return and total and irreconcilable finality of the physical. Yes, we need a coda, as we needed with BLOOD MERIDIAN, but it lays a few pages too late in THE ROAD in the form of the final paragraph. What happens in-between is McCarthy’s shaky ground, his hopeful discourse that would be better served as a lesson earlier in the travels of father and son rather than a lesson learned in the solace of grief interrupted. My scepticism here of these few pages immediately lead to foreboding for what may be imparted on this Boy by these few, a Boy who had promised up until this point so much.
As BLOOD MERIDIAN does not let death – The Judge – have the final word, neither does THE ROAD. Where the formers epilogue is set at dawn and signals some faint form of hope in the new day as a man uses a two-handed implement to strike “the fire out of the rock which God has put there”, THE ROAD ends with a paragraph that takes us back to the reminiscence: “Once there were brook trout in the streams of the mountains” and that “On their back were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming.” Again, we a left with a sense that life goes on, albeit not as we have known it nor as we could foresee it, but that hope, somehow, be it in the hand of man or God or nature or probably where they all collide, springs eternal.
THE ROAD is a book at its best in its monotonous repetition of the mundane of survival. It’s also where it falls on its own sword. McCarthy doesn’t quite have the deftness of Hemmingway’s sparse poetry but he’s nonetheless a worthy disciple as a lyricist. As we remember Hemmingway more for his accomplishments with the short story over his attempts at novels, so goes THE ROAD, to be remembered like BLOOD MERIDIAN as a prose epic. As a drawn out short story it is a canonical novella alongside THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, and like Hemmingway’s attempt it is the poorer for its excesses. Hemmingway said in an interview with George Plimpton “…In writing you are limited by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have tried to learn to do something else. First I have tried to eliminate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to the reader so that after he or she has read something it will become part of his or her experience and seem actually to have happened.” There is something hauntingly Hemmingwayesque about this quote and McCarthy’s THE ROAD, almost as if Hemmingway had not suicided he may have written it himself. Certainly the parataxis has trace marks. Perhaps THE ROAD is better as a eulogy to the late lyric master than it is a love note dedicated to McCarthy’s son; more a tip of the hat to Faulkner for his art of the sublime and a tribute to Shakespeare’s legacy as the Creator of Humanity. It could be that here we’ve seen a link in what is a perpetual passing of the baton between generations of great writers.
I heard Neil Young’s “The Heart of Gold” somewhere in the endless wanderings of McCarthy’s Man and Boy, maybe even “Old Man” as well such as when they come to the farmhouse and the Man finds the arrowheads which he give to the Boy and then the coin which like Young’s will not get tossed. The Boy, like Young’s, proves he’s a lot like his father yet has the beautiful disposition bestowed such an innocent and, whether he knows it or not, needs love too. There are echoes of Melville in THE ROAD too, either washing ashore at the beach or in the surf or under it and in the mystery and romanticism and pull of the sea. At the end of reading THE ROAD I was left with the feeling of my life’s excesses. I no longer wanted so much food or drink, nor did I feel like walking a path that might take me to some horizon that offered more light or warmth or humanity or God. I wanted to glue up the windows, turn up the heating, clean what I had, ration what was left. I thought of myself as Boy, that age that I lived in twenty years ago and it seemed close and barren and beyond the now yet I could still taste the memories and feel the cold and hear the silence. My field of view closed and without my glasses seemed an apt reminder that I have not travelled that far and that there is comfort to be had if one is willing to see the world and life for what it is.
I am left with wonderings of the Boy as much as my own fate. I can’t help but think that he would be better off alone with nothing but conversations of his father and, perhaps, the rare kindness of strangers to remind him of the fire that he’s carrying. I’m reminded of the brief vision that Shakespeare gave us of his “Boy, Son to Macduff” (and indeed of Lady Macduff when thinking if McCarthy’s Man). I have often thought of this boy, someone too wise for his age and graced with the Bard’s wit and tongue, who was dispatched with what proved be one of many such acts to come back and haunt the perpetrators and ultimately Macbeth as a sign that we do indeed carry more than fire within us. I wonder what a man he would have become and I suspect I will do so with McCarthy’s creation: it is in their possible futures that we must explore ourselves and perhaps learn to live by and at the very least carry in our hearts forever as a chip of ice among the fire. I saw McCarthy’s Boy much like a longer divulgence on Macduff’s son, and when we see him though a tight lens and hear him speak he may well be one and the same and I can’t help but relish his dialogue as it as if finally Macduff’s son has visited us again and told us It’s all right, I am still here, and so are you, and so we will be. In both Boy’s naïve questioning of a parent and their heart-breaking repetition and familial insights of character’s knowledge as nature-nurture by-product, I see a Boy who can walk the road as well as any man.
Finally, I’ll end with the scene of Macbeth about which I’ve spoken. It would do well to compare the Son’s dialogue with the Boy’s, and to let the imagination fill in the gaps and wonder, eternally, if this is a boy we have personally known.
Macbeth, Act 4
SCENE II. Fife. Macduff’s castle.
Enter LADY MACDUFF, her Son, and ROSS
LADY MACDUFF
What had he done, to make him fly the land?
ROSS
You must have patience, madam.
LADY MACDUFF
He had none:
His flight was madness: when our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.
ROSS
You know not
Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.
LADY MACDUFF
Wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes,
His mansion and his titles in a place
From whence himself does fly? He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch: for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
All is the fear and nothing is the love;
As little is the wisdom, where the flight
So runs against all reason.
ROSS
My dearest coz,
I pray you, school yourself: but for your husband,
He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows
The fits o’ the season. I dare not speak
much further;
But cruel are the times, when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea
Each way and move. I take my leave of you:
Shall not be long but I’ll be here again:
Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward
To what they were before. My pretty cousin,
Blessing upon you!
LADY MACDUFF
Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless.
ROSS
I am so much a fool, should I stay longer,
It would be my disgrace and your discomfort:
I take my leave at once.
Exit
LADY MACDUFF
Sirrah, your father’s dead;
And what will you do now? How will you live?
Son
As birds do, mother.
LADY MACDUFF
What, with worms and flies?
Son
With what I get, I mean; and so do they.
LADY MACDUFF
Poor bird! thou’ldst never fear the net nor lime,
The pitfall nor the gin.
Son
Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not set for.
My father is not dead, for all your saying.
LADY MACDUFF
Yes, he is dead; how wilt thou do for a father?
Son
Nay, how will you do for a husband?
LADY MACDUFF
Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.
Son
Then you’ll buy ‘em to sell again.
LADY MACDUFF
Thou speak’st with all thy wit: and yet, i’ faith,
With wit enough for thee.
Son
Was my father a traitor, mother?
LADY MACDUFF
Ay, that he was.
Son
What is a traitor?
LADY MACDUFF
Why, one that swears and lies.
Son
And be all traitors that do so?
LADY MACDUFF
Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.
Son
And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?
LADY MACDUFF
Every one.
Son
Who must hang them?
LADY MACDUFF
Why, the honest men.
Son
Then the liars and swearers are fools,
for there are liars and swearers enow to beat
the honest men and hang up them.
LADY MACDUFF
Now, God help thee, poor monkey!
But how wilt thou do for a father?
Son
If he were dead, you’ld weep for
him: if you would not, it were a good sign
that I should quickly have a new father.
LADY MACDUFF
Poor prattler, how thou talk’st!
Enter a Messenger
Messenger
Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known,
Though in your state of honour I am perfect.
I doubt some danger does approach you nearly:
If you will take a homely man’s advice,
Be not found here; hence, with your little ones.
To fright you thus, methinks, I am too savage;
To do worse to you were fell cruelty,
Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you!
I dare abide no longer.
Exit
LADY MACDUFF
Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defence,
To say I have done no harm?
Enter Murderers
What are these faces?
First Murderer
Where is your husband?
LADY MACDUFF
I hope, in no place so unsanctified
Where such as thou mayst find him.
First Murderer
He’s a traitor.
Son
Thou liest, thou shag-hair’d villain!
First Murderer
What, you egg!
Stabbing him
Young fry of treachery!
Son
He has kill’d me, mother:
Run away, I pray you!
Dies
Exit LADY MACDUFF, crying ‘Murder!’ and pursued by the Murderers.
This time two years ago I had finished my edits of FOX HUNT and it was on its way to the printers. It seems like a lifetime ago yet I sometimes wonder what I’ve been doing in the meantime… Perhaps one of the harder things about being a full-time novelist is convincing myself that what I’m doing is work. Certainly the last few weeks of a deadline, and the numerous edits, and the touring, they feel like work. But all this in-between time kinda melds into itself and now, having completed the final edits of BLOOD OIL (actually, I have a proof read copy coming my way this week, for one final finesse), I’m looking at the calendar and wondering where the first half of 2008 has gone. Anyway, my reason for this blog post is a reflection on FOX HUNT. More specifically, some of the themes and events in there, starting with Chechnya.
Sadly, the “Second Chechen War”, which started in 1999, is still going on. It is still a spot on the globe where the worst happens on a daily basis yet since September 2001 Western press has been relatively quiet about it due to our “front-line on terror” being Afghanistan and Iraq. One of many books that I found interesting in preparing FOX HUNT was “Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror”, written by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky. The book explains in close detail the 1999 terrorist bombing campaign that precipitated Russia’s second war with Chechnya and propelled Putin to the presidency - and provides varied evidence that it was in fact organised by Russia’s own security services. This, and 1962’s Operation Northwoods of the US military, are grounds for many conspiracy theorists (and I’m not among them) when arguing that the S11 attacks were designed by the US. The book has its faults inherently built in as it straddles a need to protect some informants as well as the lives of the authors. Sadly, that failed.
Felshtinsky is still alive and lives in America, and was in some ways inspirational for my character of Vladimir Pushkin. I’d originally given much more background to Pushkin’s defection, including the later referencing in a White House scene of some of the papers that Pushkin published before he was assassinated by the KGB (now FSB). And yes, I did use the name Pushkin as a tip of the hat to the poet Alexander Pushkin.
Litvinenko was assassinated in 2006 in England. He was poisoned with radionuclide polonium-210, and the British government has since sought the extradition of a Russian national to face criminal charges. The Russian government has declined all extradition requests.
Litvinenko left the following statement:
I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me, the British police who are pursuing my case with vigour and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honoured to be a British citizen.
I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.
I thank my wife Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.
But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.
You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.
You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value.
You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women.
You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.
I remember reading this at the time of its press release, and feeling helplessly sad. Clearly we’ll never know the full details of what goes on behind closed doors of power, whether in Washington or Canberra or Moscow. But when civilians are targeted for murder or rape or any violence, particularly when they are making a stand against such acts, I am despaired that we are still living with such violence in our world. That we don’t have a type of freedom of speech that is protected - rigorously protected - by a global body, shows how far we still have to travel in our societies. I’ll leave the final word here to Litvinenko:
“If your partner bilked you, or a creditor did not pay, or a supplier did not deliver - where did you turn to complain? …When force became a commodity, there was always demand for it. “Roofs” appeared, people who sheltered and protected your business. First it was provided by the mob, then by police, and soon even our own guys realized what was what, and then the rivalry began among gangsters, cops, and the Agency for marker share. As the police and the FSB became more competitive, the squeezed the gangs out of the market. But in many cases competition gave way to cooperation, and the services became gangsters themselves.”
Okay, I really should just call this section “Top Ten” and be done with it.
In no order:
Butterflies and Hurricanes by Muse
Jigga What/Faint by Linkin Park & Jay-Z
Kashmir by Led Zeppelin
Numb/Encore by Linkin Park & Jay-Z
Closer/In da club (remix) by Nine Inch Nails & 50 Cent
Till I Collapse by Eminem
Loose Yourself by Eminem
The Pretender by the Foo Fighters
Shrinking Universe by Muse
Clubbed to Death by Rob Dougan
and a close outsider:
In The House - In a Heart Beat by John Murphy
In no order:
‘Creep’ by Damien Rice
‘Karma Police’ by The Bad Plus
‘Just’ by Mark Ronson Feat. Alex Greenwald
‘No Surprises’ by Shawn Lee
‘Paranoid Android’ by Sia
Okay… coming in at number six:
‘No Surprises’ by Marissa Nadler Feat. Black Hole Infinity. BTW, her album “The Saga of Mayflower May” is brilliant background music for a dinner party or backing cocktail hour down the beach with the wind blowing and the sun setting and the booze flowing.
Here is a loose collection of notes from my research on oil.
Fact: oil is a fungible global commodity. Any change in supply or demand ANYWHERE affects prices EVERYWHERE.
In 1999, oil was $8 per barrel. As I write this, less than ten years on, oil is over $138 pb.
Since the end of World War II, we have lived in three geopolitical regimes, broadly understood:
- The Cold War: between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the focus was on the military balance between those two countries, particularly on the nuclear balance. During this period, all countries, in some way or another, defined their behavior in terms of the US/Soviet competition.
- Globalization: the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall until 9/11, when the primary focus of the world was on economic development. This was the period in which former communist countries redefined themselves, East and Southeast Asian economies surged and collapsed, and China grew dramatically. It was a period in which politico-military power was secondary and economic power primary.
- War on Terror: the period from 9/11 until today that has been defined in terms of the increasing complexity of the U.S.-jihadist war - a reality that supplanted the second phase and redefined the international system dramatically.
Obviously, the winners in this game are those who export oil, and the losers are those who import it. The victory is not only economic but political as well. The ability to control where exports go and where they don’t go transforms into political power. The ability to export in a seller’s market not only increases wealth but also increases the ability to coerce, if that is desired.
Certainly India and China are driving the demand. China is facing higher energy prices at a time when the U.S. economy is weak and the ability to raise prices is limited. As oil prices increase costs, the Chinese continue to export and, with some exceptions, are holding prices. The reason is simple. The Chinese are aware that slowing exports could cause some businesses to fail. That would lead to unemployment, which in turn will lead to instability. The Chinese have their hands full between natural disasters, Tibet, terrorism and the Olympics. They do not need a wave of business failures.
Therefore, they are continuing to cap the domestic price of gasoline. This has caused tension between the government and Chinese oil companies, which have refused to distribute at capped prices. Behind this power struggle is this reality: The Chinese government can afford to subsidize oil prices to maintain social stability, but given the need to export, they are effectively squeezing profits out of exports. Between subsidies and no-profit exports, China’s reserves could shrink with remarkable speed, leaving their financial system — already overloaded with nonperforming loans — vulnerable. If they take the cap off, they face potential domestic unrest.
Most OPEC countries have experienced their own huge growth in the use of oil domestically as their economies are expanding and opening up. Nigeria is no exception. More on this next week.
Okay, this one is hard. I could easily give you fifty of my fav soundtracks, a hundred even. Or a list of great moments in cinema that are beautifully matched by the score: Stevie Wonder’s “I believe” at the end of High Fidelity, Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” in the bus scene of Almost Famous, “Mad World” in Donny Darko, any of dozens of John William’s scores - such as the fight scene at the end of Star Wars Ep 1. Anyway, my desert island, all time TOP FIVE most memorable film soundtracks - that can be appreciated as great albums all on their own - in chronological order:
Paris, Texas (1984) - this formed part of the soundtrack to my youth, particularly summer holidays in high school.
Pulp Fiction (1994) - heap of great songs that takes me back to the mid nineties.
I am Sam (2002) - interesting Beatles covers by some great artists.
Man on Fire (2004) - the Scott bros have long had great soundtracks, and I think this is the pick.
Into the Wild (2007) - I grew up on Pearl Jam and Nirvana, so Eddie Vedder’s songs here are nostalgic for me and perfect for the film and main character’s journey.
Okay I couldn’t help myself. Some other notables are:
Dead Man (1995), Neil Young’s brilliance lifts this movie.
Romeo and Juliet (1996) - probably more due to Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For a Film)”
High Fidelity (2000), great mix.
Closer (2004), particularly Damien Rice.
Four Weddings and a Funeral, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, 28 Days Later, Good-morning Vietnam, Moulin Rouge, Four Feathers, Donny Darko, 2001, Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream, Heat.
I’m often asked this question. My answer has always been something like “Whatever my last book was”. I think this still stands but it’s not that simple.
When I finish a book and send it off, I feel a sense of relief mixed with the anxiety of wondering if they like it. And there’s a blissful time there where I think “that is by far the best book that I have produced”. Afterwards, once the book has been edited and I have read it dozens of times, there is a limbo period of a few months before it is read by Joe Public. I think by the time of release, I am so far onto the next project that there is some nostalgia involved in talking about the newly published book, which by now is old news in my mind. I have the definite sense that with each book I am learning something of myself and something of the wider world around me, which now that I think about it subjectively, seems kind of odd. I get that I care so much about writing that I have somehow defined who I am though the creative process. To learn about myself and the world, from something that I create from nothing with some kind of supposedly ‘god-like’ authority, is the magic of being an author. I suspect it is the same for other writers, and painters, composers, and some directors. Perhaps it’s is also true of some interpretive artists, such as singers and actors.
The Independent Newspaper ran some of Shekhar Kapur’s director’s notes from his brilliant film “The Bandit Queen”. Here’s a small excerpt:
I think the best films try an not resolve themselves. They set up more questions than they can answer. Or even try and answer. Leaving issues in audience minds and emotions. That to me is one of the strengths of Bandit Queen. People came out feeling uncomfortable and angry. A lot of the anger was thrown back at the film maker. And why not ? I was angry when I explored the story. I was also guilt for the horrendous inequalities in our society. I was guilty of every act in the film myself. We all are. For this is not the story of one woman. It is a story of millions of women in a society that each one of us have in some way condoned or contributed to, even by not expressing strong dissent.
Bandit Queen is guerrilla film making at it’s very hight. It was adventurous, dangerous, rebellious, exploratory film making. But it was honest film making. All I asked for from my crew and actors was moments of honesty. And they gave me back more …
And more …
And in the midst of the expansive desert of high end, big studio film making, I remember Bandit Queen as an oasis of the truest, the most instinctual expression possible. I ache to go back there”
I’m reminded here of an interview with Robert Redford that Time ran on the news of Sydney Pollack’s passing. Pollack was a genius and I’m sorry he has left us early but thankful that he left us with so much. Here’s a part of that interview:
Time: Much like you, Sydney was an actor, director, and producer. Did he enjoy tackling all those roles?
Redford: “I think he always had it on his mind he would like to be a producer. I think that in his later years, he went in that direction because perhaps he got more tired of directing. I think that the best times that he and I had were when the film industry was a different business. It was mainly because, in more of the films he and I did during the time we worked together, we were going against the grain. The business has so drastically changed now, it’s just a completely different business than it was. And I don’t know that we could ever produce the fun he and I had during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, when we were constantly trying to forge projects that were going to be hard to get the studios to go with and working against those odds. A lot of the appeal was it was great fun. Success I think kind of changed that.
I think when success comes, something else enters the picture. There’s a new kind of pressure that enters the picture and you’re no longer in the position you were when you were working uphill and so much against the grain. I think around the time that came, Sydney became more interested in being in total control and being more of a producer. I think that’s sort of where he went. And I went in a slightly different direction. I went more in the world of independent films.”
This notion of success and its impact on creativity is an interesting point and one which I will address in another blog post, another day.
JP.
