My wife and I watched The Artist last night. I’m no film critic, but feel compelled to share some thoughts about a movie that genuinely filled me with joy. That sounds a bit vague and fuzzy. Indeed it is. It took me some fifteen minutes to unmuddle my thoughts and work out quite why it had such an impact on me. The unfuzzy version is this:

The Artist manages to do something quite unique. It delivers nostalgic charm through cleverly contemporary story-telling. Old silent movies have charm, but fail to connect with me; they lack sophistication; they are detached from the psyche of a contemporary audience. A modern film can deeply affect me, but through its sophistication lacks the naivety required to make me take my guard down.

In short, it does what should be impossible. Many people ache for the past and are catered for with often superficial veneers of nostalgia. This movie refuses to be so cheap. It is in many ways as contemporary as a movie can be. It is both charming and knowing, simple and clever. It is a fine example of how the craft of storytelling itself can alter how the viewer allows himself to perceive it. Wonderful.

Prrrrph peee-burrrph!
Edgar lowered the trumpet from his chapped lips and did his best to ignore the laughter and judgemental stares. His fingers were stiff from the cold. Inside the theatre he could hear the faint sounds of the rest of the orchestra. He sighed and read the Fire Assembly instructions for the fourth time. More laughter.
‘Of course you’re part of the orchestra,’ the conductor had insisted. ‘But if you’re in here, we have no depth. You’re my lost soldier, cooing from the horizon!’
So here he was, cooing, outside the fire exit, in his tuxedo. Doing his part.

If not, you have now.  Well, the final film has finally been catapulted onto the web:

It feels like an incredibly important cultural artefact, especially in light of the current SOPA shenanigans. I can’t think of a better counterpoint to all the ignorance, cynicism and powermongery (that’s a word right?) than this video and project. The fact that it concerns such a ‘mass-breach of copyright’ on one of the most lucrative entertainment franchises in history makes it even more poignant.

I’ve watched about twenty minutes of it so far. It’s a fascinating experience. Although the disparate vignettes make it a little hard to follow, the iconic characters and famous story hold it together. I found that the effort required to connect memory with the idiosyncratic fragments actually makes the experience very rich. You can’t glaze over and passively consume.

SWU is a wonderful metaphor for what is great about the web: Chaotic, imperfect gestures colliding around a shared passion and generating something raw, beautifully clumsily and spectacular that no one person could have achieved alone—and at no detriment to the original film. I.e. It merely rekindles one’s Star Wars love, more likely inspiring purchase/viewing of the original, than in any way harming it.

This film is symbolic of an ocean of other projects and experiences that would never see the light of day if SOPA, PIPA, or their next iterations got their way.

A few things struck me:

1. It was quite smart to have a TV to distract patients (especially children)
2. Why – oh God why – did it have to be Friends?
3. Of course it had to be Friends: it’s inoffensive (questionably) and populist
4. This tension between the thoughtfulness of providing entertainment and the frustration that it was the one TV show it’s impossible to get away from was a strange experience; like being comforted after an accident by being fed the vegetables you hated as a child
5. TVs are bloody everywhere
6. The volume is being adjusted in unison with the light’s repositioning, reinforcing the feeling that both are playing an equal role in my dental experience
7. It’s a bit lazy isn’t it: using a TV – screening Friends no less – to hypnotise people into a docile state (much how parents sometimes use TVs as babysitters)
8. I thought we had quite a nice, adult, conversation – why didn’t they say: “You clearly don’t need this on, Sir, I’ll get you a copy of the Economist”?
9. C’mon Joey, you love her! Ross will understand!!

I am completely with her and always have a side project or two going on myself (biting my lip to not talk about the next one to launch). One of the things I like about side projects is that you end up dealing with more of the creative/production process than you might in your day job (making the assumption that many of you work at agencies).

In my current side project, I am being a designer and a ‘community manager’ and content curator, and writer. I’m not brilliant at all these things, but you learn a lot trying. And you end up respecting the real experts more too.

I took this photograph at Da Nang Airport, in Vietnam. The girl’s parents were both on their phones about 20 yards away.

Although it shouldn’t surprise me, I was struck by the number of iPads and laptops I saw on our recent travels. Especially the former. Even in remote places, being ferried by minibus to other remote places, the iPads were out; our need for entertainment is not to be suppressed by the risk of loss or theft, or even the view out of the window.

I think this photograph captures things perfectly: the little girl’s YouTube trance; the opportune use of an airport power socket; the role of laptop as temporary guardian; the prioritisation of stimulus over comfort – and the illusory sense of privacy created by hiding behind a metal post.

Seems the whole world is destined to become a ‘second screen’.

I took these in Saigon, Vietnam. That’s all. Happy new year!

–

‘What’s this, baby?’ Mark swilled the milky liquid in his cocktail glass. ‘A lychee martini?’
‘No,’ Kelly giggled.
‘Smells… funny,’ Mark said, his broad smile shrinking. ‘Must be pretty special to invite me over just to taste it.’
‘Well,’ Kelly began, ‘remember that poem you wrote me – last week?’
‘I remember.’ Mark grinned and sank into the armchair. It transformed into a throne as he recalled Kelly’s reaction to the poem – how just a few sentences had melted her. It was actually a verse from a Stone Temple Pilots song. He nabbed it from the Internet to try to get things moving a bit faster. Kelly was a romantic. Mark was mind-bendingly horny.
‘Well—’ Kelly said abruptly, as though this one word somehow completed her point.
Mark smiled a toothy smile.
‘Well?’ he repeated, chuckling the way men do when they don’t understand what’s going on but think they’re definitely going to have sex anyway.
‘Ugh,’ Kelly sighed, glancing at the ceiling shyly. ‘In the poem, what did you say you wanted to drink?’
Mark’s smile dropped. ‘Huh?’
Kelly held a hand to her chest and closed her eyes. ‘Take a bath,’ she said, ‘I’ll drink the water that you leave.’ She opened her eyes again and sighed, a smile sliding across her pink cheeks.
Mark again looked at the cloudy liquid. Dark sediment was collecting at the bottom and its scent finally connected with the right neurons in his brain.
‘You,’ Kelly said, ‘are so romantic! I wanted to do something to, I don’t know, make that poem more than a poem! So… I saved it for you. My bath water.’
A false laugh stuttered from Mark’s mouth. But he could see in her eyes that she wasn’t joking. He thought of the opening line on her Match.com profile: Love is a unicorn that runs through our hearts. Yep, she was definitely mental.
‘Look baby,’ Mark put the glass down, ‘it was just a poem!’ His eyes smiled, but hers were welling up.
‘Then why did you write it?’ she squeaked.
A lump formed in Mark’s throat. He thought about blurting it out: I wrote it to get you in bed! It’s just a song – a bloody song. At least then he could leave, albeit to the soundtrack of wailing or shouting. But he had an idea.
‘It’s not fresh, baby,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I want the water straight after you’ve been in it.’ Mark sniffed the glass. ‘There’s hardly any you left in here!’ The grin stretched across his face in an attempt to mask the nonsense. Kelly’s sobs quietened and she looked into his eyes.
Silence.
‘Awwww, you’re so sweet,’ she finally said.
‘I know, baby,’ Mark said, ‘why don’t you go run a new bath right now. I’ll get a fresh glass – and a straw!’
Kelly leapt forward and hugged him tightly. ‘I knew you were special,’ she whispered.

–

It’s a good exercise writing very short pieces like this. I’ve found it stops me trying to be as clever with language. When I’m writing something longer, I think the scale of the story encourages me to over-think things.

My wife is studying Nutritional Therapy so I’m learning a lot more about this kind of thing, albeit in passive fragments from her. It’s startling how little we know or think about how our diet can address illnesses.

US version here. UK here.

I know it’s a bit grubby asking like this. Apologies. Next post will be plea-free, I promise.