The Difficult Second Week
The fact I'm writing this at all means I just lost a bet with myself
As David Mitchell said, correlation is not causation. But as Frasier Crane said, there are no coincidences. So when we examine the facts of the matter, and find that just a few days after last week’s newsletter, in which I fulminated on the bowdlerisation of Roald Dahl’s oeuvre, Puffin has announced that it will be publishing a new “Classic Collection” of Dahl’s books, only one conclusion is possible.
That’s right: Penguin Random House has bowed to my Substack. It feels good to have this much power.
Besides loving my new status as literary kingmaker, I do quite like Puffin’s move to put out the Classics Collection, for people who enjoy Roald Dahl’s writing, alongside the new editions, for people who hate Roald Dahl’s writing but for some reason wish to buy his books. It’s a very sensible solution to the problem. Not quite as sensible as not causing the problem themselves in the first place, or as just abandoning the plan, but you can’t have everything.
In other news, this week I have been thinking over the problem of having too much to do. Not too many things I have to do, you understand: although certainly I’ve got enough obligations on my plate to be going on with.
No, I mean having too many things you want to do: too many things that you’ve set yourself the goal of doing; too many things that it’ll burn you up inside if you never do them. I find myself in that situation: twenty years past my prime, having achieved only about 2-3 percent of the things I want to achieve, and with the unfortunate condition of thinking of new things to do every day.
So here I am, with 30-40 books, 10-15 TV shows and an assortment of films and plays to write, and also to convince someone to publish/stage/produce - and rapidly diminishing years to do any of it in.
The fact has to be faced: I’m not going to fit it all in.
It’d be terrible if life ended up being a desperate scramble to get things done, only to fall short. But that’s not nearly as terrible as the real threat.
The real threat isn’t only getting some of your work done. It’s being so overwhelmed by the impossibility of getting it all done that you get paralysed and end up with none of it done.
In other words, the likelihood of failing to achieve 50% of my goals could well lead to me failing to achieve 90% of them. Which is scary. And the scariness just makes it even harder to get moving.
But despite all this, it’s important to remember one thing about working in the arts: if you never produce a single piece of work of any value, it really won’t matter to anyone. So that takes a bit of the pressure off.
The Weekly List
Carry On Films, Ranked In Order Of Quality
Up the Khyber
Don’t Lose Your Head
Cleo
Camping
Abroad
Henry
Loving
Spying
Doctor
Follow That Camel
Screaming
Cowboy
Matron
Cruising
Again Doctor
Cabby
Constable
Teacher
Regardless
Behind
Dick
Girls
Nurse
Sergeant
At Your Convenience
Up The Jungle
England
Columbus
Emmannuelle
That’s Carry On!
The Weekly Fix
How To Fix Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Obviously I wanted to like the latest Ant-Man movie. I mean, I want to like every movie. When it’s a movie about Paul Rudd fighting evil, even more so. What kind of sick bastard wishes any ill on Paul Rudd?
And there were bits of it I really did like. But not enough bits. It was disappointing. All the more so because the premise - and the cast - had massive potential. Here’s how they could’ve fixed it, but sadly didn’t.
Make it an Ant-Man movie, not a Star Wars movie. I don’t know if it’s because Disney owns both Marvel and Star Wars these days, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is, for well over half of its run-time, a rather blatant Star Wars knock-off. Alien landscapes. An evil empire. A gutsy grassroots rebel alliance. Spaceship battles. A rough and tumble dive bar filled with exotic otherworldly creatures that could well be described as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The laziness with which they tick off Lucasfilm tropes grates very early on. And what’s more…
Take advantage of the premise you’ve come up with. There’s a great scene in the movie where Ant-Man is confronted with thousands of versions of himself - potential Ant-Men created by the possibilities of different choices he might or might not make. This is brilliant, because it makes use of the whole concept of the film: they are in the quantum realm. The fact that, as above, the film just degenerates into an inferior Star Wars entry is even less forgivable because it’s not even set on another planet - it’s set in the quantum realm, which should provide all kinds of narrative possibilities far more interesting than just “it’s a weird place with weird people in it”. You’ve created this sub-atomic universe where myriad manipulations of physical laws should be on the table, yet apart from that one scene you don’t do anything that couldn’t be done in any sci-fi flick set on a different planet? For god’s sake, Marvel, the quantum realm is a fascinating idea - why won’t you USE IT?
Make a decision regarding what Ant-Man is doing in this movie. Early on, the film is about Scott Lang worrying about his daughter, and aforementioned daughter’s desire to do good in the world and her contempt for her father’s cautious avoidance of altruism - as well as her dabbling in quantum shenanigans without his knowledge. Every now and then we return to this theme: little Ant-Girl wants her dad to join her in saving the quantum realm from Kang the Conqueror, but he just wants to protect his daughter. Fairly cliched themes, but potentially powerful ones. But it all becomes a mess as the script repeatedly forgets what it’s actually about. In the end, the question of whether Scott has come around to his daughter’s way of thinking, or whether she’s better able to appreciate where her dad is coming from, or exactly what kind of personal journey any of the characters have been on, are basically unresolved, because at some point everyone just threw their hands up and said, “Whatever - let’s just have a big fight”. Of course, it would probably be easier to make the whole father-daughter relationship an effective core for the story if they had decided to…
Not make Ant-Man’s daughter such an annoying little douchebag. The character is utterly insufferable, which is a problem when she’s presented not just as one of the heroes of the piece, but the movie’s moral centre. The fact that she keeps abusing her dad on the basis that he refuses to do anything to make the world better, when she knows full well that he played a pivotal role in saving the entire freaking universe from Thanos - not to mention his exploits in his solo outings - is a brilliant way to prevent any viewer from sympathising with her in any way. She’s Bratty Teenage Stereotype dialled up to eleven. And she gets an inordinate amount of screen time, which is more than we can say for…
The Wasp. I get that the last movie was Ant-Man and the Wasp, and they’re now a team. But while a movie about Ant-Man is a great idea, and a movie about Ant-Man and the Wasp is a great idea, a movie about Ant-Man with the Wasp sort of flitting about the edges just for the hell of it kind of sucks. Either give her a proper part or leave her out altogether - the latter, to be honest, would probably have been a better choice. If Ant-Man, his daughter, Hank and Janet had gone to the quantum realm without the Wasp it would’ve been fine. Although…
Give us more of Janet’s trauma. The plot of the film rests upon the fact that when Janet van Dyne was trapped in the quantum realm, she inadvertently unleashed Kang on the realm’s innocent population. We get a flashback showing how this happened, and a little bit of guilt and shame playing across Michelle Pfeiffer’s face - which, incidentally, through either amazing makeup, great CGI or extensive surgery, is so smooth that she looks quite a bit younger than Evangeline Lilly, who plays her daughter. But we see so little of what Kang actually DID to the quantum realm. We get very little sense of what his “conquering” entailed, and just what sort of society the quantum realm now has as a consequence. Once the exposition is over, we just zoom about in spaceships, and the lack of feeling for just what has been going on here is exacerbated by the fact that Janet, whose redemption arc is surely a big part of the story, really does very little to redeem herself. She beats up a couple of guards, but plays almost no role in actually defeating the baddies - would’ve been nice if she had.
Leave out MODOK. Kang the Conqueror is a great character: a cold-blooded tyrant with no desire but to crush everyone and everything. His sidekick is MODOK, a comedy floating head with hilarious baby limbs who turns out to be the bad guy from the first Ant-Man film. There was no compelling reason to put MODOK in this movie. All he does is suck any sense of seriousness out of it, because the makers knew he’s a ridiculous character and leant heavily into it. Which would be fine if the movie was ridiculous all the way through, but it’s not. Rather than a serious superhero movie with a dash of comic relief, or a superhero comedy that nevertheless has characters you care about and cool action, what we get is a cookie-cutter MCU-cum-fake-Star-Wars number that keeps shoehorning in wink-at-the-fourth-wall stupidity. Every time we’re on the brink of taking any of it seriously, MODOK arrives to remind us that it’s all just a dumb cartoon - and what’s worse, while he’s on the screen everyone else in the movie acts like they know it’s just a dumb cartoon too.
The Weekly Creativity
This week: A Soldier’s Tale
Boffard chewed his tobacco pensively and spit it into the thick brown mud, where it mingled with God knows what. Nobody could tell just what a man was treading in when he walked these hellish trenches with blood and fire raining overhead. For example, last week he had stepped on a small Easter egg. "What the hell is this small Easter egg doing here?" he'd bellowed at his fellow Diggers. He'd felt terrible when he found out it was supposed to be a birthday surprise for him from young Cranberry. he'd felt even worse when he'd found out young Cranberry had been captured by the Turks and eaten alive by trained horses. Not that much worse though, because the Easter egg thing had really shaken him.
God, the air was foul here. Taking his head from the latrine, Boffard breathed deep and felt better. The air smelt of spiced wine and sugared plums. That was the Turkish way. Lure you with fine fragrances, then came the hard-sell. He'd bought fifteen carpets this week already. Johnny Turk, he was a wily one. Of course, in some ways, it was even worse when he stuck a bayonet in your eye. But at least it was cheaper. And there was something honest, almost noble, about stabbing a defenceless 17-year-old repeatedly with a long, sharp sword on the end of a rifle. It recalled the golden age of chivalry. Boffard hadn't been there for the golden age of chivalry, but he thought he would have enjoyed it, because he'd always had an affection for putting large birds on his wrist.
At the moment, he was holding an owl. Shaking it off, he realised there was work to be done. He put his eye to the periscope and saw something strange and disturbing. General John Monash was sitting naked in No Man's Land making amusing shapes with his scrotum. Boffard sighed. The irrepressible larrikin nature of the hard-working Aussie soldier was a great thing, but it could go a touch too far. He waved to the men in the dug-out, and they all groaned. They would have to get the hovercraft out again.
Boffard lit a thoughtful cigarette. Sometimes he didn't understand war. You went out, dug a trench, hunkered down, shot at Turks...it all seemed so simple. That's why most of the time, he understood war perfectly. But sometimes, sometimes...he was drunk. He'd have to be VERY drunk, though, not to understand war. It wasn't exactly rocket science. He wasn't like Sergeant Friedkin, who had a big sign on his gun reading "POINT OUT OF TRENCH". He was more like Sergeant Ansoul, who had photographs of pig embryos above his bed. He wasn't much like Sergeant Ansoul, but definitely more like him than Sergeant Friedkin. All in all, he was most like Lieutenant Grable. But then again, no, Lieutenant Grable was a Red Indian.
He waved a cheery hand to Simpson and his donkey, who were curled up in a hammock feeding each other strawberries. He was glad they'd found each other, they deserved happiness after all they'd been through. What with the war and everything...
A shell exploded above his head, snapping him back from his metaphysical musings and into the harsh, cold reality of war, in all its gruesome brutality. He looked at the place where his legs used to be. It was a nice spot. Better than the place where his legs were now. He walked back to the first spot. It was nicer to have his legs here. The rest of his body enjoyed it too.
He wondered how Wendy was. When he left her he had told her not to worry, but he had known she would. She had sent him a care package, with three pairs of woolly socks and a bag of pubic hair labelled, "Guess Who?" He'd laughed at her girlish sense of humour, and sent back a postcard with a picture of a headless Turk, reading, "Hey Baby, Look at this dead fucking Turk". She'd sent him back a letter saying, "ha-ha" and another bag of pubic hair, which worried him a little. Where was she getting it all? He'd shown the pubic hair to Albert Jacka, who'd blushed prettily and swished his petticoats. It was amazing how a man could kill five Turks with his bare hands and still retain his femininity. Inspiring, in a way.
As a bullet whizzed through the air and punched a bloody hole through Private Aspen's skull, Boffard sighed and sat wearily on a nearby chaise longue. Why was he here? To secure the Dardanelles? He'd heard that one before. That was what Wendy said she was doing the night she stayed out till three. He hadn't believed it then and he didn't believe it now. Winston Churchill had something up his sleeve. Eczema, probably.
In the end, what did HE have against the Turks? Granted, they were dirty and disease-ridden and Godless and had no souls, but surely that was no reason to kill them. A good reason to kill them would be if they had committed some sort of white-collar fraud. But Turks didn't even wear collars. They wore turbans, or so he had heard. He had seen pictures. It would have been more helpful if they had been pictures of Turks, but they were very nice pictures.
As he loaded his rifle, he felt close to tears. Just because the Turks were inherently evil heathen psychopaths was no reason to shoot them in cold blood, any more than one should kill a German merely because God had instructed you to wipe them from the face of the earth, or kill a Chinese woman just because she short-changed you on your laundry. They were things one had to do, but Boffard didn't have to like them. He did like them, but he resented the inference that he had to. He meant "implication", but there were weevils in his hair and he wasn't thinking straight.
He stood, poised by the trench ladder. He was ready to go "over the top", an old army expression deriving from the fact that it involved going over the top. He grew a little misty-eyed. For some reason the tune of an old music-hall favourite drifted into his head: "Gracious, Captain Wobbly, That’s A Scrumptious Swede". His favourite song. Wendy hated it; she had seizures when he played it. But oh how he loved it. He would be leaving that song behind now; the only music he could hear was the harsh babble of the Turkish guns, the whine of shells, and some rather catchy jazz. Johnny Turk, he smiled - such good taste. He turned and winked at Corporal Smethwick. She winked back. He turned again, and cocked his trusty rifle. Literally.
And then...they were over the top...and the smoke, and the flame, and the roar of cannon, and the screams of the dying...and the howling, indecipherable war cry of the Turks...all it swirled around and filled Boffard's head and didn't impress him as much as he thought it would. He strolled casually through No Man's Land and six minutes later was sitting in the Turkish trench licking blood from a swarthy captain's eyebrows.
The first eight Turks had been problematic, but after that it was simply a matter of pulling out Jacka's internal organs and choking the Turks to death with them, one by one. He always felt like a genuinely desirable, sensual human being after he had slaughtered a few men of middle eastern descent. He was wondering if there were any good cafes nearby when a few hundred Turks wandered into the trench and stabbed him repeatedly in the face with dull bread knives. He couldn't, in all honesty, call it a pleasant experience. In fact he couldn’t call it anything, because they pulled out his tongue and slit his vocal cords.
Still, funny thing, war. He'd be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for bravery under fire, and yet General Monash would be sent home in disgrace and replaced by a man with exactly the same name. The irony would be as delicious as a well-carved Turk.
Though Boffard was dead, the battle was won. All the blood and sweat and tears and sperm had been worth it. The Turks retreated to Constantinople, where they started up a boutique funds management business. Simpson and his donkey returned to Australia and married. They had three children, the youngest of which was an inquisitive boy with a twinkle in his eye and a vestigial tail. And that little boy grew up to be Academy Award winner George Chakiris.
So it all ended up all right, for the most part.
Lest we forget.
The Weekly Plugs
Plugs for Myself
Here, look at this: I read the classic Choose Your Own Adventure SPACE AND BEYOND. Leave a comment to vote for which page you want me to turn to!