Movies About Writers: Colette

A movie about writing is impossible, and a movie about a writer is almost worse, some form of unsatisfactory voyeurism. But still, there I go, watching movies about writers, even writers I don't care about. I have two books on our shelves by Colette, I have not been able to read much of either. I have Creatures Great and Small, which is a collection of dialogues between her cat and her dog about what they see of the human world. This seems like a slam dunk for me, but the book mark I found in my copy shows I made it 25 pages. I have no memory of even that many pages. There is another book of hers I have called Claudine's House that has a cover so unsettling, I am afraid to read it for fear that I will upset people walking by. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1843914158/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

I got a dvd from Netflix and the bonus material has this 30 minute film about Colette made for the French State Department back in 1951 or so. It's not bad. Maybe because its so short. There was a time near the end that I was hoping the details were not lying and this wasn't full length. How do you make writer's compelling to watch? Their job is to ignore the world and focus on the blank page (god I wish I didn't write that sentence, the blank page....oh how droll, how dripping with portent, bleh....)

The answer is have a vain writer of failing health talk from her bed. There was a good amount of shots of where she used to live and the photography and the narration are lovely. Makes you want to live in 1888 Provence. I liked how Colette said she didn't want the movie made because who wants to see what she looks like now. Of course, that comment was filmed, so of course Colette wanted to see herself filmed.

There was a strange conversation between her and a man who I found out was Jean Cocteau, where they talked about idleness and the way she made book writing look easy. It was an odd, stilted exchange. I didn't know what to make of it. My favorite part was Colette looking at the produce her maid brought in from the market. The Maid was obviously uncomfortable with the fakeness of the exchange being done for the camera, as she was leaving, she caught herself giggling and quickly left.

Here is a few minutes of the film, the quality is poor, the one I saw was much better preserved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F452Uxq4_7Y&feature=related

Silent But Deadly Inspiration

Yesterday I was talking to someone about films that do not age well. He said as a kid he loved Black Hole, and now he finds it the dullest kind of crap you possibly could watch. I said that the Original Willy Wonka movie is pretty dull, the first 40 minutes at any rate, man that is one of the worst beginnings of any classic I can think of.

This brought to mind movies I loved but don't want to see again because now I might find them ridiculously pretentious. In my twenties, I loved the obscure film. Now, in some cases I think they are little known for a reason.

Which is why I will not see La Grande Boufe again. I saw it 18 or so years ago and I thought it amazing. Four middle age french guys hole up in a villa and eat themselves to death. That's it. They eat a lot and one by one they die from over eating. I thought it the shit. It was something. Now I wonder what I would make of it?

I mention this film because I was inspired to write the latest Short Order Mad Man story while thinking of this flick. In one scene, one of the characters farts for 2 minutes and then is dead/ That always tickled me. On thinking of it, I put that idea into the rarefied world of the Short Order Mad Man.

here it is http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/08/the-short-order-mad-man-on-silent-but.html

What we talk about when we talk about talking about what we talk about

I forgot I wrote this piece. Linguistic Erosion put it up yesterday. I went to a writing workshop at a great bar in Worcester, Nick's and Nick Davis was running a drunken workshop. It was just me and him. I wrote about a conversation I heard at the bar. Usually, I have a "no stealing a person's story" policy. But this time I read it to him and he was flattered. I was happy he didn't slug me, so there you go.

The title is not from Raymond Carver's What we talk about when we talk about love. But Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about running, which he admits taking the title from Carver, so does that mean I took it from Carver twice removed? It's like Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with high falutin literature instead.

http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/08/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-in-bars.html

Lou #5

I found a great a mini-comic, Lou #5 from Melissa Mendes. She is part of this thing I subscribed to from Oily Comics. They are doing mini comics and for a fee, they send me everything they made for the month. I got five mini comics and they are across the board on style.

Lou is great, about a tom boy living in an isolated area. What  I love is that at the end of this brief eight page story, some real adult menace shows up and you see how kids deal with it, and percieve it. I thought it was great.

I have already said that I like her work, at the Maine Comic Art Festival I bought one of her original water color strips and that inspired one of my "Grand Fiend" stories. So, yeah, I am a fan.

I think people who write flash and other short form fiction, like me, can learn from people doing eight page mini comics, the sense of timing and space.  Here is a link to a page from Oily Comics and what Melissa Mendes is doing. http://oilyboutique.bigcartel.com/artist/melissa-mendes

Cooking Books

One of the series I have been writing and sending over to Linguistic Erosion is the Short Order Mad Man, where I have a nutbag tell his crazy stories in the land of food and restaurants. This should be easy for someone who has worked in the food industry. But. Yeah, I ain't never worked in the food industry. I watch Anthony Bourdain, Top Chef and whatever thing I can use as background on Cooking Channel. I make this shit up is what I do. Its a writers thing. But I can't totally bluff so I have been reading up on cooking and the cooking world. I am slowly going through a MFK Fischer book and I finished two others.

The first one was Anthony Bourdain's novel The Bobby Gold Stories. I really wanted to like it a lot, but I thought it was just okay at best. Its about a mob muscle who works in the food and night club scene. Some of the moments were fine, but mostly, it was a poor imitation of the Friends of Eddie Coyle with a little bit of Big Night thrown in. But some of the tone was good, that hard boiled fiction meets soft boiled egg world was kinda cool and I am sure I will be stealing some of that voice for the stories as  I go on.

Here is a link to the second one I wrote. http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/07/the-short-order-mad-man-on-toast-club.html

This is David Macpherson's Blog

Some times I have dumb ideas. This dumb idea I had was having a blog, my only blog, be for my pen name and the writing I have put out under that name. Why was this a good idea? I don't know. I like how so far it is about the art and writing that influenced the work I am creating, but why stop at the stupid things I put out under Miles Gough? This makes no sense to me. This should not be a hardship to my huge amount of readers, being that this blog has gotten 10 views, anymore and my head will spin.

so let me say that this blog is about the writing of David Macpherson, which is me, and the things that influence what I write, which seems to be art, illustration and random pieces of writing. I think I will have more fun with this that way.

I have a book I picked up about five years ago called "Comics Gone Ape" or something to that effect. It is awful to think that I can easily look it up and verify the title, but I am too lazy to do so, oh well. The book is a pretty funny look at popularity of simians in comic books. It goes into the old saw that DC comics back in the 1960s realized that there was a sales bump everytime a gorilla was on the cover, so they put monkeys on the covers often to help with sales. I have heard this time and time again, but part of me feels that its kind of bull. Still, its a pretty funny story.

I started the latest Grand Fiend story with that in mind when I wrote the first line, but then put it aside because we had to go somewhere. The next day, I picked up the latest issue of Hogan's Alley in the bookstore, and lo, there was an article in it how in the 1960s, DC Comics used apes on the covers as a way to increase sales. This was fate telling me to finish the story, not really, but still a funny coincidence. The story was done that night.

Here it is, as always, at Linguistic Erosion

http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/08/conversations-with-grand-fiend-gorillas.html