Storm

I'm don't make a habit of posting other people's work on this blog as a quick fix, or something to simply fill the pages and supply content while I waste away my days trying to acquire that damn degree instead of posting stuff on this blog.
But truth be told, I'm not sure that's the case here. Even if I had the time to write a full blog right now, I'd still probably want to post this.

It's a beat poem written by a Musician/Comedian called Tim Minchin. He's utterly fantastic and this poem is truly something to behold. It speaks to me in so many ways.

I have posted the recorded version of Tim performing it below and under that I have posted the lyrics, thanks to Angry Feet Forum, kindly written out by Tim himself.

“Storm”

By

Tim Minchin

Inner North London, top floor flat
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,
Rice Paper partitions
Modern art and ambition
The host’s a physician,
Lovely bloke, has his own practice
His girlfriend’s an actress
An old mate from home
And they’re always great fun.
So to dinner we’ve come.

The 5th guest is an unknown,
The hosts have just thrown
Us together for a favour
because this girl’s just arrived from Australia
And has moved to North London
And she’s the sister of someone
Or has some connection.

As we make introductions
I’m struck by her beauty
She’s irrefutably fair
With dark eyes and dark hair
But as she sits
I admit I’m a little bit wary
because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy
Tattooed on that popular area
Just above the derrière
And when she says “I’m Sagittarien”
I confess a pigeonhole starts to form
And is immediately filled with pigeon
When she says her name is Storm.

Chatter is initially bright and light hearted
But it’s not long before Storm gets started:
“You can’t know anything,
Knowledge is merely opinion”
She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon
Vis a vis
Some unhippily
Empirical comment by me

“Not a good start” I think
We’re only on pre-dinner drinks
And across the room, my wife
Widens her eyes
Silently begs me, Be Nice
A matrimonial warning
Not worth ignoring
So I resist the urge to ask Storm
Whether knowledge is so loose-weave
Of a morning
When deciding whether to leave
Her apartment by the front door
Or a window on the second floor.

The food is delicious and Storm,
Whilst avoiding all meat
Happily sits and eats
While the good doctor, slightly pissedly
Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history
When Storm suddenly she insists
“But the human body is a mystery!
Science just falls in a hole
When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”

My hostess throws me a glance
She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance
That I’ll be off on one of my rants
But my lips are sealed.
I just want to enjoy my meal
And although Storm is starting to get my goat
I have no intention of rocking the boat,
Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle
Because – like her meteorological namesake -
Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:

“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy
They promote drug dependency
At the cost of the natural remedies
That are all our bodies need
They are immoral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs
When herbs can solve it?
Why use chemicals
When homeopathic solvents
Can resolve it?
It’s time we all return-to-live
With natural medical alternatives.”

And try as hard as I like,
A small crack appears
In my diplomacy-dike.
“By definition”, I begin
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue
“Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call “alternative medicine”
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”

“So you don’t believe
In ANY Natural remedies?”

“On the contrary actually:
Before we came to tea,
I took a natural remedy
Derived from the bark of a willow tree
A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free
It’s got a weird name,
Darling, what was it again?
Masprin?
Basprin?
Asprin!
Which I paid about a buck for
Down at my local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates
As our hosts collects plates
but as they return with desserts
Storm pertly asserts,

“Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and earth
Than exist in your philosophy…
Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality,
It can’t explain love or spirituality.
How does science explain psychics?
Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?”

I’m becoming aware
That I’m staring,
I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped
In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed
Or the eighth glass of wine I just quaffed
But my diplomacy dike groans
And the arsehole held back by its stones
Can be held back no more:

“Look , Storm, I don’t mean to bore you
But there’s no such thing as an aura!
Reading Auras is like reading minds
Or star-signs or tea-leaves or meridian lines
These people aren’t plying a skill,
They are either lying or mentally ill.
Same goes for those who claim to hear God’s demands
And Spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.

By the way,
Why is it OK
For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?
Is it not totally fucked in the head
Lying to some crying woman whose child has died
And telling her you’re in touch with the other side?
That’s just fundamentally sick
Do we need to clarify that there’s no such thing as a psychic?
What, are we fucking 2?
Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who?
Do we still think that Santa brings us gifts?
That Michael Jackson hasn’t had facelifts?
Are we still so stunned by circus tricks
That we think that the dead would
Wanna talk to pricks
Like John Edwards?

Storm to her credit despite my derision
Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision
Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

“You’re so sure of your position
But you’re just closed-minded
I think you’ll find
Your faith in Science and Tests
Is just as blind
As the faith of any fundamentalist”

“Hm that’s a good point, let me think for a bit
Oh wait, my mistake, it’s absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, homeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

You show me that it works and how it works
And when I’ve recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock.”

Everyones just staring at me now,
But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down,
So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:

“Life is full of mysteries, yeah
But there are answers out there
And they won’t be found
By people sitting around
Looking serious
And saying isn’t life mysterious?
Let’s sit here and hope
Let’s call up the fucking Pope
Let’s go watch Oprah
Interview Deepak Chopra

If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo.
That show was so cool
because every time there’s a church with a ghoul
Or a ghost in a school
They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide.
Throughout history
Every mystery
EVER solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.

Does the idea that there might be truth
Frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon
On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
That’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
With good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties.

And if perchance I have offended
Think but this and all is mended:
We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time,
For all the chance you’ll change your mind.

------------------------------------------------------------------

And on top of that, this poem is soon to be turned into an animated film, I'm not sure how it will be distributed, but it looks great. Here's the trailer.

Hope you enjoyed that.

Thanks for reading!

-- Dan

Five ways to Guarantee "Rage Against the Machine" are Number One this Christmas

Currently, over 550,000 people have agreed via facebook to purchase "Killing in the name" in an effort to get it to number one over the X-factor single this Christmas. But will it be enough? Some are skeptical. So here are 5 ways to guarantee we actually manage to put Rage Against the Machines "Killing in the Name" at the top spot this Christmas.

For more information on this campaign go here. ----> http://bit.ly/64J0wY


1. It doesn't stop at joining the group.

For this to work it isn't enough to just join the facebook group. You have to be proactive, and the majority of people in the group have to actually buy the track. Realistically we need at least 70% of people in the group to purchase to stand a chance of pulling this off, and as it stands (Based on last years Jeff Buckley campaign) only 60% are likely too.

So what can we do about this?
Well, first of all you can buy the track yourself, this may seem like an obvious one, but several people have already admitted that they have no intention of buying the track because they don't believe it is possible, but quite frankly, with attitudes like that we won't. Everyone needs to do their bit for this cause, and since it's only 99p, there is hardly much of an excuse.

Secondly, you could personally contact the people you know on facebook who are already in the group to make sure they are actually going to buy it, don't pester or irritate them, but politely ask them if they intend to buy it and remind them it's only 99p. If they tell you they have no intention of buying it maybe ask why and try and convince them otherwise.
Remember not to be aggressive, but definitely try to encorage people to part with the 99p to increase the overall percentage of people doing this. This really is the deal breaker, if we all contacted the people on our friends lists who have signed up we would definitely be able to achieve our goal of getting Rage to number one!


2. Blitz social networks and mass tweet.

Another obvious one, but one I'm not sure people are listening to. Invite everyone, not just the people you think are most likely to be apart of this. You have nothing to loose from spreading the word to absolutely EVERYONE in your contacts list and posting several statuses about it. Also, no matter what social networking tool you use, use it to promote this group at absolutely every opportunity you get, the more people who are aware the better.

Mass tweets are another good tool. I've been using the majority of my time using the facebook page and this blog to organise mass tweets for the last few days. I see twitter as our biggest untapped market. We have not yet been in the trending topics and once that happens we will make hundreds of thousands of people aware of us at one moment. It's an incredibly powerful tool and we haven't yet capitalised on it.

So I have been organising mass tweets at 9am, 2pm and 7pm every day since I joined. This involves everybody posting the phrase "ratm4xmas" within the exact same minute to attempt to get it into the trending topics. And with 570,000 people in the group this should be easily achieved. But as of yet, no matter how much I post about it on the facebook group only a few hundred people are actually tweeting at the two times I have layed out.

So please, spread the word, tell everyone and actually tweet at these specific times, when it happens and we actually break into the trending topics we will gain alot of attention and support very quickly. It's really worth doing.

For more information on this please visit this link -------> http://bit.ly/8nBZFx


3. Stop with the abuse!

By all means contact every media outlet you can, but please, be polite and represent the group well. I've read all sorts of horrible things people have said about DJ's or groups/sites people have contacted and failed to get a response from. These people are not obligated to help us, so please be polite and do not insult them. It doesn't matter if they refuse whatever your request might be, there is no need to go cursing their names. It does nothing to help our public images and might even cause groups who simply don't want to get involved to start actively campaigning against us.

This also applies to the less educated individuals who post on the facebook page itself. If someone posts something negative about the group don't be abusive, be kind and calm and explain your position properly. Try to persuade not insult. Remember, these are all potential sales that you throw down the toilet when you call the guy who doesn't think we can do it a "Wanker".


4. Wait until the 14th.

At this moment we cannot get confirmation of when the various sites start counting sales for the next week. And we have had all sorts conflicting information about weather we can buy on the 13th or not, so to be absolutely sure we are no wasting our purchases. Buy on the 14th instead.

It won't do us any harm to simply wait an extra day as long as the same amount of people purchase.

UPDATE: Just got word from the man who started this all Jon Morter and he seems to have finally received the official word from the company running the UK chart.
They have confirmed that we can start purchasing from 00:01 on Sunday 13th. They have confirmed it will count toward the chart so no need to worry about this!


5. Purchase from the right places.

Again, may seem like an obvious one but certain places on the internet down count towards the chart, amazon for example, right now the four main confirmed sources for purchase are... play.com, Itunes, HMV or 7 Digital. But there are more. The point is don't just go buying from any old seller you find online. Get links directly from the facebook page itself to ensure you are buying from someone who's sales actually count towards the chart.

And finally, be sure you are buying the right version of the track. Some people have reported that certain album versions of the track might not count, so again, to be sure buy from links found on the official site.

UPDATE: Jon Morter also informs me that the charts people told him it doesn't actually matter what version of the track you buy, it all gets collated into one title at the end of the week, even if several different versions are in the top 100 iTunes downloads for example.


So, there you have it, some advice to help make this campaign a success.
My appologies to those of you who found this article condescending or felt I was stating the obvious, after a few days of reading posts on the board it just became very obvious to me that some people weren't doing all the things they could, so I felt this post would help.

Once again, keep fighting!
The more united we are, the stronger we are!

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan

RATM4XMAS Mass Tweet

As most of you are aware from my last post, I'm supporting the Rage Against the X-Factor campaign. If you want to know more about it read this. http://bit.ly/64J0wY

To help promote this campaign people have been trying to get it into the trending topics on Twitter by tweeting the phrase "ratm4xmas" as much as possible. But it's not working because for that to work people would roughly have to do it at the same time and everyone is struggling to organise such a thing.

So I am proposing an organised mass tweet at 09:00, 02:00 and 07:00 (British Time) everyday starting on the 10th of December and continuing until the 19th.

If you feel lazy and don't want to write out a tweet just copy and paste the following and post it on your twitter at either 9:00, 2:00 or 7:00 everyday from now until the 19th.

"Help us stop Simon Cowell from hijacking the Christmas number one again this year! For more info ---> http://bit.ly/inthename #ratm4xmas"

Or you can just add "#ratm4xmas" to any old tweet.
If it works it will give the group an absolutely massive boost.
The more organised we are, the stronger we are. So let's do this!

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan


Next Mass Tweet: 2:00 PM on the 11th of Dec.

Rage Against the X-Factor

It's not often I find myself getting behind any kind of cause, but I can't help but get behind this one.

Let me explain, for the past four years, Simon Cowell has hijacked the the coveted position of Christmas number one. You might be wondering how?
Well, by scheduling his reality TV show "X-Factor" so it ends just before Christmas he has been able to abuse the popularity of the show to guarantee that the winner (someone he represents) makes it to Christmas number one.

After god knows how many weeks of television and newspaper exposure these acts, talented though some of them maybe, are easily making it to number one in the singles charts even though they don't deserve it. They aren't acquiring this position honestly and for four years they have deprived more deserving acts of this place.

If this keeps happening, slowly but surely the position of Christmas number one will slowly become worthless/meaningless and loose all prestige and another British tradition will die.

I say this needs to stop, and many others agree with me.
In fact, lots of other people agree with me. So many in fact that people are rallying together to get Rage Against the Machine to the number one slot this Christmas just to show Simon Cowell he can't cheat his way to number one.

From December 13th nearly 400,000 people have agreed to buy Rage Against the Machines "Killing in the Name" from digital sources like iTunes and Play.com in an attempt to show Simon Cowell that he can't buy his way into the number one slot at Christmas. They can be found on Facebook at this link... -----> http://bit.ly/inthename

Now, I know some of the X-factor singles profits are going to charity, but don't worry, the people supporting this cause have set up this fund raising group as well to make sure this cause doesn't deprive any charity of money. It can be found here. ----> http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas

And, both singles are with different companies who are both ultimately owned by Sony. But all companies involved have to run independent of each other by law. So a company Sony own will see profit, but the label Cowell runs will see nothing from people purchasing "Killing in the Name"

And just to clarify, this has nothing to do with who earns what.
It's not about money or an anti capitalist agenda.
It's about stopping someone using the popularity of a TV show to gain exposure not available to other artist to tip the scales unfairly in the favor of an act they represent getting to Christmas number one and depriving more deserving artist from getting it.

So please spread the word, through your blog, through your Twitter, through your facebook or through literal word of mouth. It doesn't matter, just alert as many people as you think might actually get behind this movement as you can.

It would cost no more than 99p for somebody to actively take part in this, it doesn't even matter if you already have the song, it's 99p to send a very clear message to Simon Cowell.
"You can't buy your way into our charts."

That is all.
-- Dan

Edit:
We are not getting anywhere with this casual tweeting of RATM4XMAS.



So I am proposing an organised mass tweet at 2:00 and 7:00 PM (British Time) everyday starting on the 10th of Dec and continuing to the 19th.

For more info go here. 


http://bit.ly/8nBZFx



Been away

For those of you wondering what has happened to this blog, things sort of got away from me after we performed at Edinburgh Festival. And I do intend to get it running with regular updates again, but first it's probably a good idea to catch people up on where I have been and how Edinburgh went.

I went to Edinburgh ready to perform, only to discover once I got there exactly how frightened and nervous I was. Even at the time, I couldn't find any words to accurately articulate exactly how scared I felt, so what chance do I have of finding them now?
I was so worried that the material wasn't good enough, that it wasn't going to be funny and that the crowd wouldn't respond at all, and it would be awkward and embarrassing.
At one point I even contemplated in my mind, how possible it would be for us to pull out of the gigs.

But as predictable as this sounds, as soon as I was there and was faced with the prospect of actually doing it I was absolutely fine. We went on stage and our first show was a success.
For completely the wrong reasons, but still a success.
It seems our performances were a little rusty and people were responding to the bits between sketches and all the improvised stuff, but not the sketches themselves.

Our second show didn't go as well, it was raining heavily outside and we had only managed to pull in a very small and drenched crowd. Which made me rather nervous and way more prone to fuck ups, and even worse, pointing out those fuck ups in a desperate attempt to validate myself and get at least a cheap laugh. This was a huge mistake and I should never of acted like that.
This was my personal low point of the week, I really blew it that day, and even now, I can't apologies enough to the other guys for these mistakes.

But that's when it all changed, with two days practice under our belt, on the third day we went out to one of our largest crowds and absolutely nailed it.
Not only was every sketch getting laughs and in all the right places, we were really starting to enjoy ourselves. In some way's I think I fell a little bit in love with that audience while on stage, those utterly wonderful people made every single second spent preparing that show worth it in an instant.

The fourth gig went just as well and did nothing but raise my spirits even more. The fifth gig brought us yet another rain swept audience that put in a good effort but ultimately didn't connect with the material as the previous two crowds had. But it was at this point that I realised that sometimes that just happens. Out of our control, we were just as good on stage as we had been the two previous days and yet we had a much more reserved reaction. I learned not to beat myself up about it.

The final day was an odd mix, the crowd found themselves somewhere in the middle, they laughed more often than the two soaked and small audiences but still seemed a little detached from the material, laughing occasionally at some gags but leaving us with nothing but awkward silence at others. Almost as if they weren't really paying attention all the time.

The week itself was excellent, when we weren't rehearsing, rewriting or performing we spent our time in pubs reading the audience reactions to our show they left on the appraisal forms we handed out at the end. Which were positive in the majority, and hilariously insulting in the minority. My favorite negative reactions included

"A scathing indictment of our education system."
and
"Better than going to work..."

Other than that we went and experienced some of the amazing things that festival had to offer. We saw and met comedians Matt Kirshen and Carl Donnelly as well as seeing all sorts of weird and wonderful free shows from unknowns like ourselves.

My highlights were...
Seeing Casper improve every night in regards to his stand up. His acting was always spot on, but he struggled on the first night with his stand up because of his nerves, and it was truly amazing to see his confidence grow to the point where he would just walk on and completely own that stage on the final couple of nights.
Meeting Matt Kirshen, he's a bit of a hero of mine and was an absolutely amazing on stage and a really nice guy off.
Living with all four guys for the week was a damn good laugh, there were some amazing moments, such as Casper asking us if a blue shirt would work as a black shirt.
Some amazing "On Stage" mistakes such as Casper getting his line mixed up and proclaiming he preferred Men.
Going to the random bar round the corner after ever gig and drinking while reading through the audience responses.
Getting to spend time with my friend Frankie who I hadn't spent a significant amount of time with in years.

So, after all that, I got back fully intending to blog about the entire experience as it was probably the most exciting things that has ever happened to me, but was simply too tired, and the longer I left it, the less relevant this blog felt. But It was an incredible experience, and I learned two very important lessons from it.

Number one, always have faith in your material.
And Number two, accept that not every audience is going to respond to your material the way you want.

So I thought I should recap the people who don't already know through following my tweets how it went.

And since then I have simply been busy with university work, since this year as well as our dissertation they want us too write two other essays, a film and pitch a separate project.
So that's been keeping me busy since.

So, sorry it's taken been me so long to get round to posting this, and hopefully now I will start updating this regularly again... well. At least as regularly as can be expected when I'm involved.

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan

PS: Damn, and I originally just intended to write a paragraph or so explaining where I have been. I think it got away from me, didn't it?

PPS: Will be back with some bloglettes soon.

Behind The Screen 1: My Nightmare

Some people have noted, and rightfully so, that the top of this page reads “The ramblings of student screenwriter Dan Doolan”. Those people have also noted, and also correctly, that this is slightly misleading since I rarely talk about television or screenwriting in this Blog.
If I’m honest, this was originally a conscious decision on my part.
When I first started this site in September I really didn’t expect that anyone other than my friends would read it. And while I admit that’s still mostly the case, I am starting to acquire readers from elsewhere on the magical thing sometimes known as the Internet. More specifically, Google. In fact, it’s these very people who have pointed out the misleading nature of the headline at the top of this page.

But at first with only my friends reading, I felt I had better not alienate them with talk of things they are simply not interested in. So I kept the blog neutral so it is easy access for everyone. But more recently I have felt increasingly that I really need to get off the fence and start discussing a specific subject. Screenwriting, Television and Movies being the obvious answer to the question of which topic.
I considered addressing this by starting a second blog called Behind the Screen.
But lets be realistic here, that would never work, I barely manage to update this one once a decade, how in the world would I manage a second? That and behindthescreen.com has already been taken.

Oh… and it sounds like a lot of work. And as I have already established I am a lazy procrastinator by nature.

So, this is my lazy mans solution, along with the Bloglette series I’m running, I am now going to post blog’s titled “Behind the Screen” that discuss all things TV and Screenwriting I want to talk about. That way the people who don’t care for things of a television-y nature can simply stick their fingers in their ears, hum a few bars of their favourite song and ignore it completely. Unless of course they don’t like music either, but if that’s the case they wouldn’t like my blog either way, bloody robots.

So let’s get to it. This week I’m only going to discuss one thing since I’ve wasted so many words introducing the damn thing.
This week I want to discuss horror film remakes and how concerned I was to discover that they are doing a remake of one of my favourite horror movie of all time… “Nightmare On Elm Street”.

Now, before I start ranting I want to make something clear. I am not against remakes. A lot of my favourite movies simply don’t hold up anymore due to the poor special effects being very noticeable and taking me out of the story every five minutes. I am 100% behind the idea of remaking these movies, cleaning up the visuals and special effects can potentially make something I love even better. And lets be honest, "Nightmare" certainly falls into that category. Three or four times over in fact… and yes, specifically I’m thinking of the scene when the phone turns into Freddie’s mouth and licks Nancy’s face.

So you are probably wondering what my problem is. If I think it’s a good idea to recreate the imagery what’s the problem? Well I’ll tell you…

These remakes, while being superior to the originals in terms of technical filmmaking and visual effects tend to be inferior to the originals in story. It’s almost as if the writers are so busy thinking up cool visuals and things they couldn’t do in the original that they forget what made the first one so great. THE STORY!
With special effects being what they were twenty plus years ago, filmmakers were forced to rely more on truly scary concepts and story’s to frighten viewers. Sure they crafted scary imagery as well, but never at the expense of a story.

Lets look at a couple of examples of horror movie remakes that recrafted the imagery but completely missed the point of the original. Forgetting what made it scary in the first place.

Firstly, I want to talk about Rob Zombies “Halloween”.

John Carpenters “Halloween” (Another one of my all time favourites) was scary because of the concept of a child going on a murderous rampage and killing his entire family completely unprovoked.
The idea that someone could just snap like that at anytime with no reason, especially someone as innocent as a child, was chilling to say the least. When I first saw that film when I was about 11, I immediately tried to put a lock on my 8 year old sisters bedroom door. I mean, by the originals logic, absolutely anyone could turn killer in a split second and that idea scared the crap out of me and made the rest of the film terrifying.

But Rob Zombie's film, while technically being very well crafted, completely missed that point. They tried to tell a part of the story we hadn’t seen in the original by explaining what bastards Michael Myers family were. They tried to explain his actions and give a reason to explain his mental state. In this version his mother was a stripper and his step-dad a rather violent drunk and they all treated him like garbage. But for me it took something very important away from the original. Of course someone could do something that terrible if provoked, but that’s not scary since I don’t plan to ever treat anyone like that. By this films logic my little sister couldn’t turn slasher overnight and that’s not nearly as scary an idea. Not to mention that the idea of some people who deserve it getting slaughtered by a child isn’t nearly as haunting as it was when they didn’t.

My second example will be the recent remake of Friday the 13th.
Which while being technically a brutal and entertaining gore fest, it followed in Halloweens footsteps and missed the point of the original. Well, in this case, not the original. Since the original didn’t even have Jason Voorhees in it. But I’m talking about the sequels, which this remake seems to be a remake of. Confused? Yeah, me to.

So in the original movies what made Jason such a scary character was how bloody unstoppable he was. He was stabbed through the shoulder with a machete, had an axe driven through his head and at one point was even tied to a big boulder and drown at the bottom of a lake. But no matter what you did he would just keep coming back and coming back until he killed you. This, for me at least, was what made the Friday the 13th films so scary. But, what I have failed to note here is that in the original movies they established this over multiple films. Having the heroes seeming kill him at the end and bringing him back at the beginning of each movie, slowly building fear in the audience of this unstoppable creature.

Now, I know what you’re going to say, the new Friday the 13th film DOES bring him back at the end after he is thought to be dead in a fairly definite way.
But while that is true, people are forgetting that this particular remake is actually the first four films combined into one. It tells compressed versions of the first couple of movies with the main bulk of the movie retelling the story of the fourth. So why in the world did they not show Jason being killed in the compressed versions of the first few movies? Without building up the unstoppable aspect of this monster it’s just another slasher flick and nowhere near as scary as the original fourth Friday the 13th movie.
What is the point of telling these compressed versions of the early films if not to set up how damn unstoppable Jason is?

And you can’t defend it by claiming that maybe they are approaching it like the original and building up that aspect of Jason over multiple films because if that were the case they wouldn’t of compressed so many stories into one film in the first place.
Although credit where credit is due, I was absolutely amazed at how seamlessly they combined so many films. It didn’t feel clunky or out of place at all… the only problem is that they didn’t take that opportunity to make Jason as scary as he was by the fourth movie.

So with all that in mind, I think you can understand my concern at the concept of a Nightmare On Elm Street remake.

I'm concerned about what changes they will make...

I can just see it now.
They are going to change the backstory so Freddie Krueger was originally a gardener who got caught in a bush fire and now arbitrarily haunts children in their dreams. Or maybe instead of getting them in their sleep, maybe they will rework Freddie for the modern age and have him get kids through Facebook or via their xbox’s.

I know how ridiculous it is for me to judge this movie before I have seen so much as a trailer. I know how ridiculous it is to assume that the story will be changed at this point. I realise that for all I know they have hired a competent writer who will handle the character and story with as much care as the updating of the images. It’s not unheard of, for example the remake of the Amityville Horror was incredible.

But despite that, I’m finding it hard to see this as a good thing.
I can’t help but shake the concern I have for this film falling into the same traps other remakes have…

Anyway, thanks for reading.

-- Dan

The Road to Placement Crisis

It’s been three months since I last posted a blog.
I know I know… shame on me.

I don’t think I need to explain what exactly I’ve been doing these past three months that’s kept me from writing this blog. I’m sure you all know by now that beyond finishing my second year of university, me and three friends have written, rehearsed and put together a one hour stage show for the Edinburgh Fringe festival which we will be performing at the festival in three weeks.

On the whole it’s been an odd experience. Unlike anything I have ever done before. Well, except for the writing part, I’ve kind of done that before. So I figure my first blog back should explain exactly what I have been doing these last three months.

Now if I’m honest, I can’t imagine this is going to interest that many people. So feel free to click that little x in the corner of your browser now if you don’t really care about the process of creating “Placement Crisis”. Because I really can’t imagine I’m going to be able to retell these events in a way that particularly entertaining.

I promise a more entertaining blog in the next day or so, but right now. I wanna get all this down as a record of the last couple of months of my life. Particularly the last 7 weeks.

So during our final month of university (May) me and the other guys putting on the show held several meetings, but found that they tended to quickly deteriorate from us discussing ideas for sketches into youtube sessions where we would just end up showing each other our favourite sketches from other sketch shows via the web.

It seems we were all so busy working on our final projects and essays for our course that we simply couldn’t bring ourselves to give up what little freetime we had for more work. But we kept trying never the less. We all had a couple of ideas, tried a few more meetings and were working on bits and pieces of ideas while we finished up the year, but ultimately it was futile, we were simply too busy to get any real work done.

On May 27th we did one of the final pieces of work our university required of us (A pitch). And the very next day we had what I considered to be the first real and productive meeting. We discussed everything from the content and tone of the show to the press release and photoshoot.

Yeah. That’s right…

Photoshoot.

This meeting is also significant as the first moment I regretted my decision to be apart of this project.

For the benefit of those of you who don’t know me personally, over the past 2 years I have gained two stone in weight. And for those of you who haven’t seen me recently, in what appears to be some cruel practical joke being played on me by the universe, all that weight appears to have gathered on my face.

As someone who has never had an issue with weight, I wasn’t used to it and the sudden image of me with 18 chins was more than upsetting, it was downright horrifying.

Don’t believe me? Allow me to demonstrate.

This is a picture of me drunk in a club in 2006 with my friend Simon.

This is a picture of me drunk in that same club in 2008 with my girlfriend Nadia.

Notice the change in face shape…
And now I have to do a photoshoot looking like I do these days? Not impressed.

But my current appearance wasn’t the only reason that a photoshoot was a problem, a day before we had discovered an old email informing us that we only had till the 31st to send off our press pack to the people organising the festival. Giving us only three days to take the photos, edit them into posters, write a press release and send it all off.

Wow, how well organised we all are. It all felt like a bit of a sham at this point… we had barely met, we had barely written anything and now we had discovered our inadequacies had led to us forgetting to do one of the most important tasks in this whole thing. Without the press pack how could the show be advertised, how would anyone even know it exists?

So, the very next day, the 29th, we found ourselves sat in Tom and Chris’s house on Evelyn road converting it into a set and having our picture taken. With a day notice we had managed to hire a photographer thanks to a contact supplied to us by a friend.

We couldn’t think of anything particularly original to do with our poster in the short amount of time we had, so we just ended up simply taking some pictures of ourselves and making them look as “Studenty” as we possibly could. Which has kind of become the theme of our show.
We also took several pictures with our faces pressed up against the glass doors of the house with the intention of making them look like we had shoved our heads in a photocopier using Photoshop later. This of course never quite turned out as we planned, but did look pretty good in the end.
We then spent the following day (The 30th) editing the pictures and writing the press release. Finally we sent it all off via email on that evening, a whole 24 hours before we had to.
It didn’t look great, nor was it particularly well written, but it was done, and we were finally starting to chip away at the mounds of stuff we had to do.

I can’t find the press release we sent of on that day on my laptop, but here are the posters.

So after that we decided the best thing to do was to each go away and write some sketches individually that we would later edit as a group. This was largely unsuccessful. By the 4th of June when we next met, we only had three or four sketches between us. Only one of which was ready enough for us to do a table read of.

That was the final straw, we needed to focus, we needed to knuckle down and get to work. We needed at least 15 sketches for the show and had previously decided we should write about 40 so we could guarantee the best quality material would get into the show. The problem was that from that day (the 4th of May) we had only six weeks left before we had to move back to our homes (The 19th of July) and would be separated an unable to work on the show, so even though the show itself was 10 weeks away, we had to be ready to perform in six.

We decided to not have a meeting for an entire week.

Now this may seem like a stupid idea, it may seem counter productive, but we decided that if we all went off and spent the week focusing on writing 10 sketches each we would have 40 sketches and be able to start the group editing session one week later.

Just two days later I moved into the house that Chris and Tom lived in as this had become our regular meeting place and it seemed like the logical thing to do since they had a spare room going.

Oh yeah, that, and I got kicked out of the place I was actually living. So you know… it made sense.

On the 8th of May Chris checked Chortle.com (As he often does) to see what was happening in the comedy world only to discover the website was now doing a feature on this years Fringe line up. And sure enough there it was. Listed with one of the images we had taken just two weeks before. Placement Crisis.

http://www.chortle.co.uk/shows/edinburgh_fringe_2009/p/17280/placement_crisis

This was both a glorious and terrifying moment.
Suddenly the whole show was very real. Much realer than it ever had been before.
It was suddenly dawning what we actually had to do. And it couldn’t of come at a better time, it really motivated me to work hard during that week.

So a week after our last meeting on the 12th of June we gathered (Which wasn’t so difficult for me since I now lived about 20 seconds away from the meeting place) with our sketches (On average about 9 each) and spent the entire day going round the room one by one reading them out to each other.

The original plan was to choose our 15 there and then. Meaning that when we next met we could start the editing and cleaning up process for those 15 as a group. But we didn’t feel confident.
I think we all knew we only had about 7 or 8 really solid sketches between us. And that wasn’t good enough.
We decided to give ourselves two more days to each write 4 more sketches. Of course due to someone being busy we ended up extending that gap to three days and didn’t meet up again till Tuesday the 16th.

This turned out to be an excellent idea. The sketches people brought to this meeting turned out to be stronger than most of the material we had presented a few days before.

Now in total we had roughly 50 sketches. And by the end of that day, we had chosen 18 sketches. The 18 sketches we intended to feature in our show.

We met up every day for the next three days and spent hours and hours editing each chosen sketch one by one. Adding jokes, improving dialogue, cleaning up stage directions and generally making them better. During this process we even decided to loose a sketch I wrote entitled “band”. There were several problems with that script, but the main reason was it simply didn’t feel as strong as everything else we had written.

So the end of the week came and there it was. On the 12th of June I was holding in my hand a 17-sketch script entitled “Placement Crisis”.

And that’s when it began. After two days off (The 15th of June) we were meeting again, doing our very first table read through of the show. It was exciting. Very exciting. We decided we would do four days of table reads, recording them in the day and reviewing the recordings in the evenings to help us lean the lines as fast as possible. After several 9+ hour days we took a couple of days off.

On Monday the 22nd we had our first rehearsals. This was where I really felt out of my depth as someone with only limited experience acting. It was more time consuming than I ever imagined it could be as we had to block out the sketches bit by bit, working out the positioning of the characters and moves around the stage. But it had to be done, and it gave us two extra days to get more familiar with our lines. In the end this process felt very valuable, and it was also exciting to finally get to deliver this dialogue while acting.

By Wednesday the 24th we had all learnt our lines and the show was really starting to come together. Now we had just three weeks to go over and over the show until we had perfected our performances and knew all the steps and lines off by heart.

And that’s what we did.

Every day from 10 o’ clock till 7 o’clock we ran through the show over and over again until we were sick and tired.

Sick of the rehearsals, of the house, of the material and if I’m honest, sick of each other.

The rehearsals were so tedious that despite the fact that lots of things happened during those three weeks, there is really nothing to say about them. Other than the fact that everyday we ran through the show as many times as our exhausted bodies would let us.

The show became my life, I was waking up, performing, eating, sleeping and then starting the cycle all over again. That’s all I seemed to be doing. It was one of the toughest few weeks of my life.

But I want to make it clear that as difficult as it was, I don’t regret a second of it. For every difficult moment there was a rehearsal so good it reinvigorated us, for every restless night there was a night of deep sleep, for every argument there was a fantastic or hilarious moment. (Like the time we suddenly burst into song during a rehearsal and started singing our lines in one of the sketches and performed the entire thing like a musical.)

About a week before I returned to Manchester for some well deserved rest we finally got the props and costumes sorted and got to do a full week’s worth of dress rehearsals, which were very exciting.

And now we are read. Ready to have a few weeks off so when we go to Fringe we are rested up and ready to kill it!

So, that’s what happened. A week ago I moved back to Manchester and have been catching up on sleep since.

Sorry this was so long and boring.

If you managed to read the whole thing I salute you.
Thanks for reading.

-- Dan

On the Fringe

Alright, alright. No excuses, it’s a month today since I last posted a blog (And that one wasn’t exactly great.) and for that I’m sorry. Let’s face it, that’s pretty poor on my part. Unfortunately I’m still in “insane and mass amounts of work from uni” mode and won’t be free much until my last substantial piece of work is handed on the 14th of this month.

But once I hand it in I promise I will post loads to make up for the gap. I might even start posting on Twitter and Facebook frequently again as well! Who knows!

Anywho, on with the topic at hand…

Two years ago I harassed a short conversation out of comedian David Mitchell after a live show in Bournemouth. During which I asked him for some advice on breaking into the world of comedy writing. He told me that the best thing to do is to take a show to the Edinburgh “Fringe” festival. He explained that a festival like that attracts the kind of people that matter, and in turn can be very beneficial to anyone’s career. So for the last two years the idea of playing the Fringe festival has been festering at the back of my mind until I just have to give in and accept that it was something I would have to actively pursue. But if my honest, at this stage of my career, actually performing at the Fringe festival seems a little unrealistic.

Even as recently as November (When I met some new and very talented people as I entered the second year of my screenwriting course) the idea was discussed, but being the stereotypical lazy and procrastinating students that we are, nothing came to fruition. This type of opportunity, no matter how great was unlikely to happen while university and money were a factor. Not to say it wasn’t ever going to happen, but not for a couple of years… or at least so I thought.

This year my university has been trying to get me to arrange a work placement for the summer. This is a mandatory requirement without which I will not obtain my degree. These six week placements are one of the many daft things my uni does to justify us paying £3000 a year for the course. I had something lined up at my old college, but it fell through last term and since then I have been living in denial and pretending that placements weren’t mandatory and did very little to actually pursue another one. Mainly because of that terrible habit I have of being bone idle. Of course this isn’t a recommended way to approach something as important as a section of my degree.

But Earlier this week, a friend of mine by the name of Sam Fletcher (Casper to those who know him) brought the idea of doing Fringe back into the forefront with the brilliant notion that we could do the Fringe festival to fulfil our placement criteria.

Now, how this all came about is a story in itself, but I feel that that is a story to be told at another time for reasons I will explain when that time arrives. The short version however, is that after an insane dash to meet the Fringe festival’s submission deadline, we managed to find a venue, fill out all necessary paperwork, make some pretty big decisions in regards to the premise and details of the show itself and convince our university to let us count this as our work placement. (Huge credit to Casper for his part in making this happen, what a legend he is!)

So now, myself, Tom Chettoe, Chris Billingham and Sam Fletcher (or tickthebox as we are now collectively known) are taking a show to Fringe!

We four will be writing and staring in the show, which is titled “Placement Crisis”, and will be a sketch show combined with some shot stand up segments. And anyone out there who is interested is more than welcome to come to show us some support during our six day run at “The Hive” in Edinburgh. We start on the 16th of August and perform between 1pm and 2pm every day through till the 21st. Oh, and it’s free.
Email tickthebox@areyoustilltalking.net if you have any questions or enquires about the show.

I am so excited.
It all happened so fast it didn’t even feel real at first. It felt like so much of an all or nothing move. We had to make so many decisions so quickly that it felt vaguely like we were walking off the edge of a cliff. None of us entirely sure weather we would land in a large pile of feathers after a short fall or plummet hundreds of feet to our deaths as we are impaled on jagged rocks.
But nothing brings you back to earth and slams the reality of the situation into your face quite as hard as seeing this. The blurb for our show as it will appear in the Fringe festival programme.




Scary huh?
Well I’d like to think that I am a perfect combination of scared and excited. I keep flipping between the two. But in truth, right now, the excitement is winning in a big way.

We intend to film some of our rehearsals and script readings and put them on our youtube page in future. So look out for that! Also, we might be doing a few warm up shows before we go for the festival. Although, admittedly that is all still incredibly theoretical. But for updates on that and the show itself you can either keep your eyes on this blog or add tickthebox on twitter.

Twitter.com/tickthebox

I can’t wait, I hope to see you all there!
Thanks for reading.
-- Dan

PS: Shit, it’s only four months away? I’m back to scared now! I had better get writing!

PPS: I have had to stop running the E-mail updates service for this blog. It was becoming more work than it was worth. Sorry to those of you who use it. If you want to know when I post new blogs you can add me on Twitter where I always post when I update. Twitter.com/dandoolan

PPPS: Here is one of our promotional leaflet ideas.
Any thoughts? Send them to tickthebox@areyoustilltalking.net

April First Sucks

I fucking hate April First.
There.
I said it.
It’s not even a real holiday…

It's quite possibly the most retarded idea since instant mash potato yet people still insist on waiting all year for this one day for the chance to pull some half arsed prank on their mates without consequence.
The annoying thing is, it doesn’t even work…

Let’s pretend you have a delicious pack of Salt and Vinegar flavoured Pringles and I want to steal them from you. Which incidentally if you did I probably would want to steal them. But that’s not the point. The point is I wouldn’t tell you that I planned to steal them and I certainly wouldn’t be moronic enough to let it slip WHEN I intended to do this. You would be on your guard and take necessary measures to ensure the safety of your delicious snacks.

April Fools day is like that. We know it’s coming and are ready for it, so why do you bother. It’s a day that causes mass suspicion as everyone in the world is expecting everything to be some form of prank. Of course this often backfires when news stories break and people decided they are false when they are not. EG; The death of comedian Mitch Hedberg in 2005, The 1946 Aleutian Island earthquake tsunami that killed 165 people and the introduction of the AMC Gremlin in 1970. Which I might of considered a joke no matter when it was announced.

The more ridiculous aspect of the day is that we don’t even know where it came from in the first place or even why we do it. My favourite theories to explain it’s origin include the one where the people of yesteryear were randomly mocking the people who celebrated summer too early or the theory that explains that April First was the first day of the year according to the France calendar at one point until some British King decided they should use January the first like the rest of us. He decided that the best way to make that stick was to have everyone who still used April First ridiculed, taunted and labelled April Fools. I prefer the second one... but neither could be accurate.

God I’m craving some Pringles now… I wish I used something different in that example…

Anywho…

Naturally, you think I sound like a bitter old man having a bitter old man rant. But it’s not like you can choose weather you take part in it or not.
No matter weather I like it or not I still have to take every piece of information I receive with a grain of salt and tread carefully with my friends.
Do you know how many time’s I’ve been Rick Rolled today?
Or how many fake news articles I have read?

Anywho, I'm bored of ranting now.
Enjoy the silliness of this non holiday.
I’m off to buy some Pringles.

-- Dan


PS. Did I mention it’s not a real holiday?

PPS. The short length of this blog is my April Fools prank.

PPPS. So is the fact that this is the first blog I have posted in about a month.

Who Watches The Watchmen?

I don't normally post reviews in this blog, but due to the length of this review I really felt this one needed to be posted here and not on my facebook page like my previous ones. So here is my review of Watchmen.
And just so we are clear...
HERE BE SPOILERS.

There are no words to describe how loved Watchmen is as a graphic novel. It truly is one of the most celebrated graphic novels of all time, and for anyone who hasn't already read the book, I truly recommend you do.
In many ways, the book is unfilmable. It's detailed and complex back stories, adult themes, political and social commentaries, episodic nature, philosophical ideals, subtle action and sheer length make this book the polar opposite of pretty much everything Hollywood has become.
Now with that said, I think it's understandable that many people and fans were concerned at the idea of this movie.

I am the kind of person who likes to go into a movie with no expectations to avoid disappointment but I'm such a fan of the original work that I found it very difficult to contain my excitement for this movie, combine that with a stunning trailer and a promising director and I couldn't help but have high expectations. And in the back of my mind I knew that ultimately, those expectations were going to tarnish my impression of the movie.

So imagine my surprise when it not only matched my expectations, but exceeded them.

Zack Snyders love, admiration and respect for the source material is obvious from the first frame, and that is exactly the kind of director a project like this needs. His stunning visuals and determination to keep this as faithful as possible are what make this movie so incredible to me.
Obviously, this could never be a shot by shot remake of the book, but it surprisingly isn't far off.

It manages to maintain all the key plot points and back stories, and it even manages to keep the nihilistic, political and social ideals that lie in the books core present. As well as making the bold move of maintaining the books adult themes, leaving the scenes of attempted rape and highly graphic violence in. This will no doubt surprise fans of recent and more family friendly comic book adaptations, but pleased me greatly.

The story itself is mostly coherent.
The first act is almost perfect, introducing us to the players and starting to dive into the back story without missing any key information. The only character I feel is a little under developed in this act is Adrian Veidt. Who didn't get alot of screentime.
The second act is where the problems, if any, lie.
Some of the characters motives are unclear and the development of the overall story starts to become a little convoluted. It's this act where someone who has read the book would be able to fill the gaps in, but Joe Average who isn't familiar with the source material would struggle.
Rorschach's backstory is given enough screentime to be developed clearly, but somehow this script fails to do that. It skips out key information and doesn't cover the story of how Rorschach acquired his mask. The same can be said for the conspiracy plot. It isn't made clear that the Comedians death, Rorschach's imprisonment and Dr. Manhattan's exile to Mars are connected and that events are being manipulated by an exterior foe. And once Nite Owl and Silk Specter free Rorschach from prison, the investigation that leads to the reveal of Adrian Veidt seems underwhelming because the character was underdeveloped and because the audience were not really clear on exactly what it is he is supposed to have done. The third act is alot more coherent and didn't confuse many audience members until Dr. Manhattan killed Rorschach as the motives for this killing were not made clear.
But, these issues are nothing more than a minor blemish on the achievement that this film is.

Now, on to one of the largest points of controversy, the changes made to the ending.
As excited as I was for this movie, the idea of major changes to the ending was worrying. But watching it I discovered that the major changes weren't so major after all. The only real difference is that instead of tricking the world into uniting to face the common threat of alien menace, the world is tricked into uniting against the common threat of Dr. Manhattan himself.
Now, I'm going to receive alot of hate mail for this, but this ending is an improvement on the original.
The idea that Adrian Veidt unites the world against Dr. Manhattan just makes so much more sense to me. And as much as I missed the visual of a giant squid decimating New York and the dialogue that goes with it, this made more sense and kept the plot focused on the characters. The people I as an audience member was invested in.

Speaking of the characters, the cast were phenomenal.
Every single actor was perfect for the role they were given, in looks as well as performance. I literally cannot emphasise enough what an incredible job these guys did bringing these characters to life.

Most of the omissions didn't bother me, as much as I loved the full story behind Rorschach's psychiatrist as it appeared in the book. It isn't relevant to the overall plot and was comfortably omitted to make room for central plot development. Removing things like this also kept the movie focused, which is a good thing because I think audiences would reject a movie that goes on as many tangents as the book did.
The only omission I was truly sad to see made, was the death of the original Nite Owl. In the book this was a truly important moment that fully demonstrated the chaotic place the world had become and this highlighted how necessary Adrian's plan was. The fact that is was removed also made the set up scenes, which were left in, seem clunky and out of place.

One thing that impressed me is that despite the fact they couldn't fit all of the plot's and characters in, every single one was at least referenced at one point of another in this movie. Everything from the snowglobe to the original Nite Owls book showed up briefly in one way or another during the film.
Many of these references were hidden, subtle or appeared in the beautifully shot title sequence. I have alot of respect for Zack Snyder for doing that.

One little gripe, the group were on two occasions named "The Watchmen" in dialogue. Which may seem like a confusing complaint to people unfamiliar with the source material, but they were never referred to that way in the book. The title derives from the graffiti that reads "Who watches the watchmen."

The real brilliance of this movie is how little it cares for Hollywood conventions. Much like the book from which is has derived it does not bend to tradition. No large action set pieces were shoehorned into the movie to pull in wider audiences, none of the characters were flawless perfect superhero types and the ending remained far from happy.

Overall, I cannot sing Zack Snyders praises enough.
I was thrilled with how the film turned out and cannot wait for the directors cut, which will contain 40 more minutes of film.

If you're a fan of the books, you MUST see this movie.
If you're not, should definitely consider it.

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan