'Offspring' - Disaster Seized from Jaws of Victory

Barrel-Bottom Scraping

Well, congratulations. The writers/producers of Offspring have been working hard to sink it for some time now - and they've finally done it.

OK so far - you think ??

This enormously popular TV show which used to be an eccentric comedy where even the inevitable disasters were a temporary and savable bump on a longer road has succumbed to cheap sentiment, tacky exploitation and worst of all, creative sterility.

In simple terms, they BLEW IT !!!!

It takes a lot to get me to watch commercial TV. (How do they succeed so brilliantly at dumping such an avalanche of mindless, irrelevant, odious crap on the soft-boiled public? - stupid question, I know.)

Anyway, in Offspring they had a show which made it all worthwhile, well, bearable. It was the kind of thing which did better than just entertain: it engaged the viewer with its wonderful quirkiness; the intelligent diversity of characters; the hotbed of inevitably dramatic events caused by unstable people getting in each others way. Riveting, until .....

WHAT GOES THROUGH THE MIND OF A WRITER ?? Faced with having created a first-rate and justifiably successful program what do they say? I'd really like to know. One thing they so rarely say, though, is:

'this is perfect - enough is enough - let's end on a high note.'

and to hell with milking it for more juice than it can possibly hold - the admirable Fawlty Towers phenomenon (I refer to just two short series, consistently well written and acted, which had the distinction of quitting before quality fizzled).

So, Offspring descended into angst, soul-scarring, betrayal, self-interest, offence, intrigue and endless indecision, all in a desperate attempt to make it more relevant, to follow real life, to expand the creators' repertoire, and (most importantly) to make more money.

And all the while it was crashing down this diversionary, frightfully modern, infuriating slope  it forgot what it was supposed to be.

Between a viewer/reader and a writer an understanding builds up, a kind of expectation. It is not an obligation, after all, an author can damn well write whatever she or he likes, and a good thing too. BUT, it doesn't come free - BEWARE the dashing of a viewer's/reader's hopes and trust, especially if the direction is wrong, the events unbelievable, and the outcomes farcical or worse, cheap -

- all these stupid things happened to Offspring.

Where oh where was the light? We were treated to:

Billie's financial implosion;

the triumph of the vile D'Arabont;

the prospect the baby might be dead;

Billie's fling with a nonentity who should, to further the series, make her pregnant;

the threats to Nina and Patrick's relationship;

the breakdown of Billie and Mick's relationship;

the breakdown of Geraldine and Phillip's relationship;

the breakdown of Martin and Cherie's relationship;

the testing of Jimmy and Zara's relationship;

the confusions of the lesbian thing;

and God knows what else.

Thus, to introduce an entertaining and uplifting tone to the wrist-slitting, the writer/s thought it would be a good idea to kill-off Patrick. How inspiring!

But no, just sensation trawling, emotionally corrupt, audience exploiting, and amateur. It was the pathetic best they could manage to come up with to account for actor, Matthew Le Nevez, having a pressing professional engagement elsewhere. And EVEN MORE contemptible, they wrote a death and grieving scene which squeezed every agonised drop of sentimentality from a tragic event deserving of more restraint. Only memorably accomplished acting lent the scene some dignity. Pity such fine talent had to be squandered in such a fruitless exercise.

The writers are deluding themselves - it isn't clever, or ground-breaking - it's egotistical indulgence and finally sensationalist, lazy writing.

Pushing everything along was the disgraceful opportunism of Channel 10, but what else could you expect from this bottom-of-the-barrel station.

I used to look forward to Offspring, a consistently high-quality show that was sure of its purpose, of course  before the current remorseless plunge into doubt, depression, despair and death. But now - 

I've Switched OFF.

Are We There Yet? - Finishing that Tyrannical Novel

Reviewing and Reviewing and Reviewing

- 'creeps (on) this petty pace from day to day'

What you see here, Dear Reader, is a great big, fat excuse - a craven means of doing something, anything, except knuckle down to the LAST REVIEW of the manuscript of my work of genius.

But I have been hard at it, honest Miss (visions of wastrel student justifying indolence to granite-faced spinster teacher). The problem is that my relentless application to the job has manifested itself in video-clip brevity and my periods of thoughtful contemplation of my achievements are characterised by languid eternities. Too little time on and too much off.

The author at his luxury studio, hard at it

The facts are:

• I've written 100,000 words;
• the last word represents a recognisable end;
• there is a goodly collection of characters doing interrelated stuff;
• not all of it is boring - some may even be good;
• there are highs and lows, trials and triumphs, of a sort;
• I have broken many rules of successful fiction and will no doubt pay the price;
• the latest review is no. 7;
• I cannot stand the thought of a review no. 8.

And here's the question - are we there yet?

For what it's worth,

here are a few things I've learned about reviewing:

Step back and give the process time. In other words, allow a period of weeks (in my case months) between writing the original stuff and the hard graft of looking at it again, critically. You will be amazed (well, you may not but I was) at the quantity of amateur, embarrassing and bloody stupid writing you are capable of generating.

Equally, you will be thrilled that you have spotted this chaff and have had the good sense to find a better way to express yourself and thus produce a decent manuscript.

This bad-news / good-news maxim applies generally to all stages of review, although exceptions can occur. You may find, as I did that .......

One review stage may not be as effective as the one before. What, I hear you shout? Isn't it all about making the manuscript better? Well, yes, but a strange thing can happen - which is a powerful argument for doing more than minimal reviewing - and this is that progress is erratic. Getting better at writing is not linear and inevitable. Your review no. 3 may be worse that no.2, but it WON"T BE if you .......

Keep focused on the essential principles of good, successful writing. There are basic rules to keep in mind, especially for novice writers. Stick to them unless you are the new Mozart of creativity or a stunning expressionist of blazing sex.

The great do's and don'ts can be found in an avalanche of advice from published writers, academics, other learned commentators, editors, agents and associated hangers-on, so I won't offer a summary. In each revision just try to make the writing tighter.

I have no hope for myself, of course, having broken too many writing commandments on the way to producing something that, on the whole, is quirky and makes me happy. But note this: quirky is all very well - it's just not the safe-money way to start.

Good - that's much clearer

One revision is not good enough. If you are very happy with what you see at the end of revision no. 2 you are failing at trying to be a good writer. Get used to the truth that improving what you write involves self-criticism and pain. However .......

Reviewing, as with all good things, must come to an end. A good thing? Actually, buried in the tedium will be found the reward. Bit by bit you can see your manuscript getting better.

But it will never be perfect, whatever that is, no matter how many times you inspect and edit. The time comes when you must let go and do that most courageous thing, put your work in front of the public.

I just hope that I, and you, will have the pleasure some day of reading our published and acclaimed writing and saying, 'that word and that, and that paragraph, and ... what was I thinking when I wrote that!' But it's too late, and a good thing too.

Become a little harder on yourself with each revision. That is, strap your writing to a chair and grill it under the interrogation lamp. Ask tough questions. Among the scores of things you could examine are:

• is it verbose;
• why have you left no room for the reader's imagination;
• is the prose sinking under an overload of adjectives and adverbs (yes, less can amount to more, and usually is, although it need not mean fanatical application of the Draino to scour your stream of thought);
• is that sentence or paragraph or (God help you) chapter doing anything to advance the story;
• at what point does my digressive, tangential 'colour' become distracting irrelevance;
• does the sentence sound right - if I changed that word to a synonym would it bring balance and rhythm (music) to the sentence;
• are you committed, even a little, to 'killing your darlings' - that is, weeding out stuff that you think is just fabulous but really isn't (like those bits that are extravagantly, perceptively, zen-fully writerly) - it will hurt, but the reader gets a better chance to know what you're saying; 
• is the dialogue real - read it aloud - or does it come over like a stilted demonstration of how to speak clearly to non-fluent foreigners or deaf octogenarians (but beware of writing dialogue in the accent of regional jargon or patois);
• have I ... ?

STOP. This is becoming like a lecture. I could go on, but you'll find out anyway, one way or another.

Um, just one more thing, a fundamentally important thing -

is what you have on the page what you really want to say?

The last word on the effects of the whole exhausting but vital business of reviewing one's work must go to that icon of thinking, the incomparable Spike Milligan, who wrote and revised his sidesplitting novella Puckoon over several demented years. He said, and no more need be said:

THIS DAMN BOOK NEARLY DROVE ME MAD

The Milligan - in training for greatness

 - and all of us will, hopefully, have the privilege of saying this.



Thank you!

**************************************

When I have the strength and you the patience I might scribble a teeny, tiny polemic on two pillars of standard writing doctrine - 

• write what you know, and
• show not tell

If any aspects of accepted wisdom needed a bomb under them it is these two fakes.

Great F... Scott - Life after Lurid Luhrmann

All that Glitters is not Gold

Your Tireless Correspondent has not seen the latest filmic fantasia from The Great Luhrmann and has no intention of doing so. Body and soul can only take so much and this orgiastic glitter-fest will break me as surely as the rack.

I know this because I was roped to a chair, eyes propped open with some infernal eye-widening apparatus, in order to endure the abominable film Australia, merely to satisfy my loving family that I had a credible basis for criticism.

My terrifying experience inspired the copy-cat Clockwork Orange

I've served my sentence. I've done my porridge. I've suffered.

So, I'm going to fall back on the reliable old method of delivering a balanced and fair assessment, by avoiding nearly all personal knowledge of the subject in my stampede to lay on the assault and battery.

Moulin Rouge -reeled out of the room after 30 minutes with video clip overdose, fighting off  epilepsy;

A Luhrmann work of genius, as perfected

Australia - see above, but note that I am now convinced that the dazzling Baz has privileged access to a secret bag of gimmicks (sorry, unique technologies) to ENSURE that his works of genius are as crude, arrogant and repellent as galactically possible;

The Great Gatsby - my exacting analysis of this ... thing ... (as argued persuasively in my foregoing treatise) leaves only one conclusion - DON'T.

And so, to the real hero - F. Scott Fitzgerald

As a quasi-scholar (the most dangerous and deluded kind), I can say that there are distressingly few writers of whom I can say 'you are a bona fide genius'. We all have our opinions, and yours is clearly inferior to mine, but whenever I take up FSF's slim volumes the truth of this bold statement of writing mastery is confirmed.

It's bloody impressive. This takes some saying, as a professional cynic like myself is constitutionally disinclined to praise anything much. But, putting it another way ...

it's bloody impressive.

At fourteen I didn't think so, I must admit. Some imbecile slapped The Great Gatsby on the required reading list at high school. I cast it aside roughly, discerning correctly that it was deficient in the explosions and mayhem department.

Gatsby, as envisioned by The Great Luhrmann

There was one kid though, Loman, Lehmann, Leibling ... something like that ... who was unfazed. If the stuff lacked punch he'd damned well put it in. What a kid.

Now, a little older than fourteen, I am re-reading The Last Tycoon. It reminds me of Monty Python's assessment of Shakespeare's plays - all the right words AND in the right order.

Re-reading some books assessed as phenomenal in starry-eyed youth leave me convinced of only one thing - what a twat I must have been. FSF's books are not among the condemned. The reason I see more to admire is simple - there IS more to admire.

The learned, the cognoscenti, the faithful will tell you why this is so. All I know is that Baz and his dubious vision will take a back seat to the author of The Great Gatsby, ....

The Great F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

The Great Fitzgerald

English as She is Spoke

The Adventures of a Pedant Dick - you're mangled-English detective

This is a dangerous game.

I relate to you (with spluttering dismay) a litany of crimes against the English language and, for your part, you discover (with smug delight) a shower of indictable offences in my ravings. Naturally, as a crusader of the correction pen, you have already made a start on the above.

Delicious. A pedant hoisted on his own petard.

Soooooo, to reduce exposure to the cold winds of criticism, I'll rein myself in with a brief  attack. Oh yes, I would consider it a favour (or is it 'favor') if you'd note that I live in a far flung convict-stocked land where English is the Queen's and not the President's.

It can be no surprise that I'm like that with Lynne Truss about apostrophe sins. You know her, the revved-up author of the wonderful Eats, Shoots and Leaves, her blitz on ignorant, casual and mystifying punctuation.

People tell me that this or that is a must-read. Well, most of them aren't. But THIS, Truss' ESL, this is a MUST READ. And that's an order.

Where were we? Oh yes, applying the cattle prod to the apostrophe.

I will not bore you with interminable examples. Righteous indignation has only so many friends. How about just a handful from the plural-deficit syndrome bag.

'Beautiful photo's here' - what a relief; that gorgeous girl with the weird name has finally turned up, at the Blandville fast photo emporium of all places.

I suggested grovellingly to the owner of the premises that he may have wanted to indicate the plural and thus modify his sign ever so slightly to 'beautiful photos here'. Dear reader, what a fool I am. This noble merchant took umbrage. I had slurred him. I had offended him. It was a bloody outrage. 'Get out', he screamed politely.

'Blandville-on-Sea Welcomes Senior's' - seniors what? Their elbows, their blue rinses, their wallets? Perhaps their entire person. It was hard to tell from the gigantic banner strung across the main thoroughfare of this friendly metropolis.

I giggled, of course, and tried to engage passers-by in sharing the municipal embarrassment. They were baffled. 'Look out. He's a nutter' they said, as they shepherded their children away from the loony raving at the nice sign. Poor old senior that I am, despair engulfed me.

'Wednesday nite's schnitzell's' - oh God, a quadruple whammy. But staff were on the ball. A week later modifications had been made to the banner gracing the railing of The Ferret's Ruin, a local watering hole - at least the ancient signwriter knew his stuff.

'Wednesday night's shnitzels' - two steps forward, two steps back. It's progress, if viewed generously. They knew something was wrong but what the heck was it?

'Wednesday night's snitzels' - it works, sort of. Someone should be congratulated for trying.

Your Tireless Correspondent knew by now, from episodes short of physical mauling, that if action were to be taken it should be done surreptitiously, by dead of night, balaclava-clad, with hooded torch, wielding squeakless marker in rapid corrective movements.

Today people, NOW people, think that punctuation is, like good manners, optional. (What a magnificent generalisation; so good I can't bear to throw it away.)

Well, it's easier to understand the importance of punctuation if you imagine sentences as a piece of music. Go on, there's the music written out on it's funny little lines with all those squiggles of notation. But wait, let's see what happens when we chuck out that pesky notation. How come Moonlight Sonata now sounds like Born in the USA?

OK, it's a slight exaggeration. The point is, Moonlight Sonata would not sound like Moonlight Sonata without those little squiggles, the musical punctuation. It becomes nonsense without them. Beethoven knew this so he wrote it complete with little squiggles. So did Bruce - he knew it and used them too.

And it's the same for written English (probably Sanskrit too, but I wouldn't know). Without proper punctuation the message becomes something else. 'Eats, shoots and leaves', or is that 'Eats shoots and leaves'? See what I mean.

And now, a final classic:

Caesar entered on his head

A helmet on his foot

A sandal in his hand he had

His trusty sword to boot.

You work it out, if you care.

Grammar Warrior - hot on the trail of split infinitives

 Here endeth the lesson

What Kevin McCloud REALLY Thinks - scoop No. 2 from a Grand Designer's Secret Diary

Sickening Success and Magnificent Miss

There must be times when Kevin McCloud is racked with battling emotions.

I hear him hiss, 'if there's anything called justice in this world, these savages and their execrable house will vanish from the face of the earth ...

... and then, whispering on the wind, comes his despairing plea in response to another project, 'they're mad, they're infants, but please, oh please, let them finish this dream'.

Here's how it comes about in scenario 1:

Take one thrusting, ignorant, self-made legend of commerce (they're always self-made and stunned by their own glory); add one shallow, compliant spouse; season with a pale child or two designer dogs; throw in several shiny German cars, a furnishings train-wreck, a pea-sized imagination and a vat of cash - and, hey presto, there stands a brutal new monument to mediocrity, just begging for a visitation from Bulldozerman.

Sweet revenge - if only!

But no, it won't happen. Sir Kevin weeps inwardly while somehow calling on deep reserves of personal decency to salvage merit from the pointless structure confronting him.

I'm a professional, he'll say. There's got to be something here that isn't stupid or wasteful or gross. They seem to like it. Yes, there, that light works well, that room might get some use, the dogs and the sofa pretty much match, and what about the view! They didn't touch that.

Manfully grasping at straws, Sir Kevin withdraws from wankersville, leaving the noble impression it is a richly deserving creative expression. It must be so for someone, surely.

And on to scenario 2:

Enter the penniless crusaders, the visionaries brimming with ideas and other intangibles. They're determined to have what they want too, but in a hopeless, helpless, low-fat, lovable way.

Home sweet home - as planned

God, if only they could pull it off, they and their five kids and mini zoo, their biscuit barrel of savings (or alternatively, their tenuous treaty with the bank), their earth roof and wind turbine and macrobiotic walls.

Told you so - macrobiotic walls

Things look bad and KMac salts the wound with dire warnings of imminent disaster at the hands of  malevolent forces.

But you can't fool us, Sir Kevin.

Behind your presenter's facade you swell with admiration. Yes, you are anxious for the future of this modest home but we know you'll muck in for them - lime plastering in the fog and tamping mud bricks till the sweat fills your boots. You'll probably throw in a hundred quid if it comes to that.

You desire beyond reason for the project to succeed but, true to form, you must appear the balanced man.

With what result?

Well, this place was tragically a bridge (er, house) too far; this one's on hold - it's a wonderful 'watch-this-space'; but this, well this, I knew it all along - no high street furniture, no glistening limousine, no echoing caverns of space, no grid-sapping panoply of electrical toys, just - how shall I put it - a GRAND DESIGN.

Home sweet home - as finished

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Fear and Loathing in Lost Pages *

Your Tireless Correspondent fell over this limp lead buried in the dead heart of a suburban newspaper:

'A minor dispute over a runaway dog has resulted in the arrest of a Hell's Angel sergeant of arms, the alleged assault of a grandmother and a drug bust.'

As an attention-grabber, it's about as exciting as cold porridge.

But think of the story; envisage the scene. They had, and commenced to bore the pants off their innocent reading public by plodding through a shopping list of downward spiraling dullness, working hard to crush the colour from this local news gem.

And YOU'RE bored !!

Pausing to renew my tirade against this criminal waste of journalistic opportunity (no-one was listening anyway), I found myself confronted by an unsettling thought. Raving's one thing; writing takes a bit more effort. OK blabbermouth (it was safe to chat to myself), you reckon you could do better?

What an embarrassment - I'd challenged myself.

So, of the scores of ways the story might be approached, I foolishly wrote this (ignoring the conventions of news reporting):

A runaway ex-customs sniffer dog ‘missing’ for three months provoked the arrest of his bikie owner, the alleged assault of the bikie’s grandmother and the seizure of her crop of marijuana, in Sydney’s southwest today.

In a successful escape bid from the Casula backyard of Hells Angel sergeant at arms, Nigel Golightly, the dog he affectionately named Mortein hightailed it to the nearby home of Mrs Pearl Pounder, Mr Golightly’s grandmother.

A canine custody dispute ensued.

‘You should have heard the language’ said neighbour Cyril Savage. ‘I’d just parked the tow truck and whammo, Nigel’s fist smashed through the fibro. That stupid mutt Mortein squeezed out the kitchen cat flap and shot into the shed full of weed. I called the cops.’

Police in a patrolling vehicle were quickly on the scene and arrested Mr Golightly, a former state representative rugby prop forward, alleging he assaulted his pensioner grandmother.
 

BEWARE - vicious criminals

Senior Constable Hannibal Stamper clarified the situation.

‘The suspect reportedly of male-type gender who I suggest is the subject of the arrestive process appears to possess a preponderance of weight and height such that a reasonable person might theoretically assume his inclination to indulge his alleged advantages. Besides, the poor woman was in a terrible state.’

‘So was the dog’ added Constable Stamper’s colleague, Probationary Constable Slocum, who had searched the property’s outbuildings. ‘He was getting high in the dope, er, cannabis shed.’

Mr Golightly is reported as saying: ‘I’m innocent. I love that dog. He has such kind eyes. She was going to pinch him. Look at him – high as a kite on the hash she grows.’

As Golightly and his grandmother were invited to accompany the constables to the police station to assist with their enquiries, Mr Savage explained exclusively for our reporter.

‘That bloody geriatric was laying into Nige with a meat tenderizer, in the backyard. Where’s the respect, eh? I’m gutted. The neighbourhood’s gone to pot.'

I could have used THIS

Police praised Mortein for his natural talent and on-going persistence in carrying out his former public sniffer duties, which resulted in a haul of supply-quantity marijuana estimated as sufficient to keep the entire population of Liverpool high for a month.

Mr Goligthly and Mrs Pounder will appear at Parramatta Local Court next Wednesday morning.

Customs officials have welcomed Mortein back to his previous role in airport drugs detection.

We're all doomed I tell you, DOOMED

* Apologies to Hunter S Thompson

 

Liars and Thieves

 Fooling the People

 

Pulped Fiction - destroy to create

I read a book the other day. It was a tour-de-force, a stunning debut from an inspired mind, powerful, resonant, an unforgettable and timeless classic.

I know all these things because the publisher’s marketing department told me so in the breathless plug on the back cover. Their praise was supported by extracts of critical analysis from sources as notable as the Thespian Writers’ Collective and Dare to Write (formerly Write Now, until an unfortunate legal action).

Opinions from these and other highly esteemed directions had me panting to get at it.

Dear reader, they lied.

But wait, maybe it was a printing house error. Maybe they’d just glued the wrong cover to the body text.

No, they lied. They lie often. I suspect there is a whole ghost-writing industry built up around the cover blurb scam ... er, commercial translation ... er, creative interpretation of authorial concept.

So, about this scam.

With the noble intent of marketing success firmly in mind, the massaging committee of Smoke and Mirrors Inc. meets under the chairmanship of the veteran commissioning editor, a nineteen year old business legend whose name bears an uncanny resemblance to the publishing conglomerate’s owner.

Our august committee vibrates with exhilarating debate.

The Brains Trust - commissioning editor in green

‘We’ll make a motza.’ ‘Yair, recycle that crap you ground out for dumb ol’ Dan Brown.’ ‘Punters couldn’t empty their wallets fast enough.’ ‘A lie well told is worth a thousand truths - that’s what your old man used to say, boss’ – and similar profound observations as to the integrity of the literary work at hand and the honourable profession of publishing.

But they’re clever devils, these teenage tycoons.

I’ve met some of these lovers of literature who, God's truth, really think the book had been assembled correctly; that in its pages (cover and all) there really existed the secret to life, the universe and everything; that if indeed one had to be picky, it was at least a bloody fantastic read.

And they’re right.

Revisiting this ‘brilliant’ tome (aren't they all) which had so moved me to harsh judgement, I was blessed with enlightenment. The marketing hype could have been true, of that sentence half-way down page 683. I now saw merit in the claim ‘the best thing XYZ has ever done,’ as clearly his previous outpourings left much development room.

And finally my shame was complete.

Only a crabby old pedant would imagine that the blurb was a statement of balanced fact, the assessment of an incisive and experienced critic. No. it’s a fluid world, dynamic and responsive. Yesterday's thoughts are old hat; it’s what our marketers believed then; it’s merely a critic’s suggestions. And besides, they’re all otherwise employed now.

See what I mean? Fast moving.

The modern need to read – what would I know? But, recollecting the famous quote of American satirist Ambrose Bierce, ‘the covers of this book are too far apart,’ I consigned the work of genius carefully and deliberately to the shredder.

Wonderful stuff - best you've ever written