Reasons to be Cheerful Part 1: The first 41 seconds to Leftfield’s Phat Planet

Yes you do know it. It was used in the legendary Guinness Surfer ad, the one with passages from Moby Dick in the voice-over: ‘I don’t care you who are, here’s to your dreams’

Phat Planet’s intro is the probably the most malevolent bass build-up ever in the history of popular music. Roughly 40 seconds of pulsating, throbbing, deeply ominous bass.

It’s the sound of seven samurai warriors preparing for battle, they’re up against an Emperor’s army of thousands. By the end there’s nothing left of the army.

A Frank Confession

I haven’t written any new material for nearly a year. I realize this is hardly a world-shattering fact. But it’s an unusual position I find myself in. I usually write like a nutter. And I love it. Especially at 2 in the morning. This is when I work best. When all I can hear outside my window are the occasional bellow of a gang member or screech of cat-fight, otherwise silence “like an abattoir in the dead of night”. Um, that’s actually a line from Hard Man Les, a character in my play Gob, but I like it, so there. Punching away on my keyboard in the early hours always brings to mind Dylan Thomas’s lovely poem about writing not for fame or riches, but for the secrets of common humanity:

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

I can picture Thomas in his cottage in the village of Laugharne, whirring away with his typewriter, fingers permanently curled round a whisky glass, fag butts spattered across the carpet, collapsing finally sweaty and puffy into bed at seven in the morning. I’ve done this too, except I don’t come up with poems like 'In my craft or sullen art'. No, I come up with unintelligible drivel.

I wonder though. Was Thomas really a total piss-head when it came to writing or does it suit the Welsh hell-raiser myth? Personally the only time I’ll allow myself a beer when I’m writing is when I’m doing stage directions. I mean, anyone can do stage directions. They are beaucoup boooorrrng. Writing is an art (Thomas subconsciously acknowledges this by putting the word in the title of his poem!) and requires a good deal of concentration, a bit like driving, and you wouldn’t drive drunk would you? And if you did, you’d probably crash…hope you see my point?

I digress. The fact of the matter is I haven’t really wanted to write any new plays for a while. This is partly circumstances. Two simple equations will illustrate my point nicely:

Demanding job = knackered = less energy to write
Relationship = weekends taken up = less time to write

The relationship has gone, but the day job remains. In other words, life has got a bit in the way. But the other reason I haven’t written for a while is nothing has really got my goat lately. I don’t feel particularly churned up about anything. Really good plays have this starting point. You get worked up. It won’t go away. Follows you around day and night. Face it, you’re obsessed. The play’s gotta get written.

Martin Amis said: I don’t want to write a sentence that any guy could have written’. No, I don’t want to inflict on the public a play they couldn’t give a damn about either. So it’s not writers’ block that worries me, it’s can I get worked up enough these days? Watch this space…

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it: I debunk my Heroes. Part 1: De Niro/Scorcese

It’s a self-evident truth that it’s a looooong time since De Niro and Scorsese did anything as powerful and memorable as their holy trinity of movie male self-loathing: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull. And they’re not going to are they? Falling in Love? Analyse This? The Colour of Money? Bringing Out The Dead? You get the picture I think.

Let’s not kid ourselves. De Niro’s and Scoreses’s reputations are built on three movies and three alone. And no one but no one can take that away from them. We’re talking reputations made in Mount Rushmore stone. Which is just as it should be. But c’mon, after the Big 3, it’s strictly downhill. (Okay, I’ll give you Goodfellas, but it sure as hell ain’t De Niro’s movie like the Big 3 are).

Those early movies have one obvious thing in common; they’re deeply uncomfortable to watch and yet you can’t take your eyes of the screen. So how did we end up with The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwhinkle? Maybe you can’t sustain that level of intensity for long: psychopaths, loners, losers, and bums takes it out of you. Or maybe it’s the Golden Age of movie-making that’s gone, the fabled 70s where the Director ruled the earth and Hollywood just said yes. Everybody knows what would happen to Taxi Driver if it was made today. Travis would cop off with Cybil Shepherd and after a few ups and downs (a little bit of an incident with a gun but nothing serious) he’d settle down and maybe stop doing night shifts.

Of course De Niro and Scorese are soooo good they only need three movies to secure their place in cinematic iconography. And that’s the thing. Everything after seems…well…a little tame. I keep harking back to the old days, like a lover who can’t accept it’s over. Hey, Bobby, remember that scene in Taxi Driver where you watch the dancing couples on TV with a gun in your hand and it's Jackson Browne’s Too Late For The Sky on the soundtrack?

Ever wanted a really memorable definition of great acting? Mick Jagger’s character Turner nails it in the film Performance:

“The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness”

Don’t get me wrong, De Niro and Scorsese still make good movies, it's just that they’re a little too normal for me.

Kubrick: he ain't that good

I was watching Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket the other night and a dark thought came over me. I say dark because Kubrick is the Zeus of movie-making and you’re not supposed to fuck with Gods. But as rent-an-inspirational-quote Ghandi used to say: “The truth is the truth even if you are a minority of one”. So at the risk of being chained to a rock and having an eagle gnaw at my bollocks forever, or whatever it is the Gods do to you when they’re pissed, here goes; the film’s crap, folks.

Holy dogshit! My flat’s surrounded by Stanley-groupies and they’re all dressed like Alex from A Clockwork Orange and I think they want to perform a bit of the old ‘ultra-violence’ on me! Hey, back off, this is the democratic UK, not the cinematic Taliban. Can I speak? Thank you. Okay, call me glib, but the reason why I groove over FMJ is simply because of one man: R Lee Ermey. Who? No, you do remember him. Frankly, it maybe all you remember. He’s the Marine Drill Instructor with a unique way of motivating his new recruits, here’s some examples:

“I bet you’re the kind of a guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddam common courtesy to give him a reach-around”

“Did your parents have any children that lived? I bet they’re regret that. You’re so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece”

“I’m gonna give you three seconds, exactly three fuckin’ seconds, to wipe that stupid lookin’ grin off your face or I will gouge out your eyes balls and skull-fuck you!”

After Lee’s been blasted away by Private Pyle, let’s face it, the film reverts to a bog-standard American Vietnam war movie; kill gooks, feel a little bad, start shooting again.

All you Kubrick-nuts will of course know that Lee was originally a technical advisor on the film, but he was so good as the Instructor Kubrick hired him on the spot. Now that’s what I call common sense, not genius. Sorry, Stanley

O, yes, and another thing…the award for the most pointless voice-over ever in movies goes to…FULL METAL JACKET. I mean, we know they’re in Vietnam and war is hell and blah blah yawn yawn…

And another another thing: have you noticed how Kubrick’s been served by some master stories and storytellers? Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Stephen King's The Shining, Arthur C Clark's 2001. Interesting how when it’s a shit story it’s a shit film, no, not even Stanley could rescue Wide Eyes Shut. I mean, how far can you go wrong with stories like the above?

Unlike good ole' Lee, I welcome of course debate on the matter.

Ground rules

I’ve resisted blogging so far because frankly I don’t give a crab-eating macaque's backside (it's a species of monkey if you're wondering) what you had for breakfast or where you're going for your holidays, so here’s the deal. If I turn into one of those “sadly our beloved cat Alfie died today” blog-bores, I swear I'll plead with a friend or loved one to kill me, much like Romero’s zombies do when they become infected. (see below, if you have a copper or SWAT officer for a friend, he'll do the job very efficiently)

Plus my missives will be like the gunfire in the film Full Metal Jacket; short and controlled. This is because I know from 'da kidz' on my well-'ard working class estate that we live in a new 3-second attention span world order, but you know that’s a not altogether a bad thing. At least as far as American theatrical imports are concerned. Anyone agree with me that we should have a moratorium on all state-of-the-nation or anti-American Dream plays lasting over 2 hours? Arthur Miller wouldn’t have liked this. My friend and I went to see Death of a Salesman a couple of years ago, and it went on for so bleedin' long we missed last orders and understandbly were furious. So furious that I decided there and then that I’d never see another Miller play. See how counter-productive interminable American Dream plays are? Let the audience have a drink for chrissakes Arthur! That's the dream for some of us!