INDELIBLE FRECKLES

After twenty seasons, Law & Order has been canned.

I readily confess to not having watched the last eight seasons as fanatically religiously as the preceding twelve, local broadcaster scheduling notwithstanding. It has been comforting to know that it continued to chug along as I took up with the likes of Miss Marple, Wallander, Orange Roughies, Dexter, The Closer, The Shield, and The Wire. A nice warm glow was almost always guaranteed when chancing on a L&O episode whilst channel-surfing.

Alas – until we start rerunning the show down here – no more.

Its been an institution. Its time has come.

Time for more of the same – but different.

Saw an ad in the local online arts community for a writer:

It was spellchecked – a rarity for ads calling for writers.

Then I saw another ad for the same project:

I did a double-take – and lo:

… Meh.

I finished James Ellroy‘s The Big Nowhere a while back. I’ve read it a few times now. Don’t know if it’s my favourite of his “L.A. Quartet” but I do relish its quicksand plot, bastard cops, and Ellroy’s unremitting style. The end is so black that when I reach it, I immediately want to start over as maybe things will work out better for my favoured characters the next time around.

The same goes for whenever I rewatch films like The Constant Gardener or television shows like The Shield where the endings are not happy.

Why do I subject myself to this torture?

It’s the execution. It’s the characters. It’s being taken by the hand for a half-hour or hour or ninety-plus minutes or days and returning to the real world short of breath, my heart thundering in my chest and a lump in my throat.

This is not a new discovery. Romeo and Juliet will never grow old. Rick will always have Paris. Rachel and Deckard will never have certainty.

And I think to myself:

  Someone wrote that shit.

  I lapped that shit up and begged for more.

  I want to write like that.

I was reading 100 Bullets – Hang Up on the Hang Low recently when, a dozen or so pages in, I realised that the sense of familiarity I was experiencing was not just from the ‘old friends getting together and torturing each other’ noir vibe but that I’d actually read it all before. Twice, according to my reading diary.

I can understand The Goddess getting halfway into a book before realising she’d read it before – she devours hundreds of books a year (and not one of them will have a speech- or thought-balloon). My reading diary has me averaging 115 comics, scripts and books a year for the period 2006-2009.

What’s my excuse?

Roger Ebert posted recently about his experience of writing a script for the Sex Pistols – or was it for the late Malcolm McLaren? Or Russ Meyer? Gold, it is.

Last weekend, Mr Ebert very generously posted the script from that moment in time. Oh, what coulda bin.

That word has been bouncing ’round my head lately. Part of it has been Steve Hickey‘s posts about sticky ideas. Another part has been discussions I’ve had recently about film, television and theatre that have left enduring memories regardless of the passage of time. And there’s been a smidgen of shop talk about making the familiar fresh.

There are doubtless innumerable posts in the ether about what makes a piece of art resonate.

For me, it’s a singular interpretation, execution and vision that transports the viewer.

I have no idea where David Simon and Eric Overmyer are going with Treme but I am so there, man, because I’m hooked. Same goes for the recently concluded 100 Bullets from Messieurs Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso – each trade paperback left me floundering as a reader but I’d still make enough connections between the many, many plotlines and goddamn if it wasn’t a hot little page-turner. And then there’s The West Wing and The Walking Dead. And The Good Wife and Ex Machina. And Mad Men. … I could go on.

With the exception of Treme, all of the above are easily categorized genre pieces.

Each title resonates not just because they’re so different from everything else out there that they’re essential reading/watching – they’re the creators talking directly to us the audience at an individual level. They’re connecting.

That’s resonating.

Rom-coms are watched very infrequently at Fortress Mamea. They’re not my cuppa, really.

I don’t know how but The Goddess and I watched one earlier in the year – I can’t remember what – and even though it was a pleasant enough experience as the two leads got into a clinch, the music rose and credits rolled (and I coughed to cover my swallowing my tears and blinked rapidly so as not to give Her the impression I enjoy this genre) my Beloved turned to me –

Burble.

• Screenwriter J D Shapiro apologises for Battlefield Earth.

  (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

• This. Is. SHATNER!

  (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

• Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire scribe and producer, David Mills died suddenly last week. I didn’t know – I should’ve, really, but I didn’t know – that he was the one who penned the Homicide “Bop Gun” ep (the one with Robin Williams and a teenage Jake Gyllenhaal). This forty-plus minutes of free-to-air television truly opened my eyes to just how much more you could put into a police procedural.

  His and David Simon‘s latest television series Treme opens in a few days. I can’t wait to introduce The Goddess to teevee a la Simon et al.

Peace out.

This five-ep series about Brit plods trying to deal with space-time-continuum anomalies, fate v destiny, the possible existence of wormholes, and… oh god I can’t fake any more objectivity: it’s shows like this where cliches come to… make more cliches.

It’s largely negative critical reception in the UK may sum up the show best but will never explain why I persisted with these five hours of ‘entertainment’.

The Unit creator David Mamet apparently wrote a memo to the writers of the show of things to keep in mind, including things like:

Nothing a self-respecting screenwriter won’t already know but nonetheless a recommended and refreshing Mametian reminder.

(Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)