The Word Cloud

At this point, when I've done an awful lot of these blog,s I have to check back every now and then to make sure I haven't already talked about someone, especially when it's someone whom it seems like I should have already covered. How To Marry a Millionaire (showing on film4 this Wednesday at 12.55pm) was written by Nunnally Johnson, about whom I have considered writing on several occasions but have always gone with someone else simply because I knew that there would be another chance to write about Johnson. He's one of a handful of writers who seem to have written almost everything during the golden age of cinema. So where to begin? Well a full career overview is out of the question, IMDB lists 72 writing credits and although that includes films based on his earlier scripts that's still a lot to cover. Plus, unlike many writers of his generation, Johnson's career did not seem to peter out as he grew older, his last film credit at the age of 70 was for The Dirty Dozen. He didn't exactly get off to a slow start either, writing the story for the silent film Rough House Rosie in 1927, a Clara Bow vehicle. Despite this start he apparently was not looking for a screenwriting career as he continued as a journalist and short story writer for another 6 years before relocating to Hollywood in 1933. Like most writers of that era Johnson's screenplay is a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly, there are westerns, war films, dramas and comedies, and, of course, there's a lot of uncredited work because that's how it was then. The stand out is The Grapes of Wrath, and when a writer has one script that stands head and shoulders above 70 odd other films it's quite tempting to give credit to the director, especially when that director is John Ford. That's probably fair but does also raise the question; would more of Johnson's films be better known if they had been directed by men of Ford's calibre? Who knows? but I think it's interesting that another of his best films The Three Faces of Eve was one of the rare ones he directed himself. We always remember how directors enhance the screenwriters work and are quick to give credit (quite rightly) to men like John Ford, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock et al, but we sometimes forget how many great scripts were ruined by incompetent direction. And there's a lot more incompetents than there are John Fords. I think it's fair to call Johnson one of the backbone writers of classic US cinema but, given the paucity of 'classics' (by which I mean films we remember today) he wrote, it might surprise people to learn that he was the highest paid screenwriter of the 1950s. This certainly reflects his reliability and versatility but I think also reflects how few films make the posterity cut. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was one of my favourite films of last year but will it be remembered in 50 years time? If reading about Nunnally Johnson has taught me anything then it's that there are more great films out there than the list of approved 'classics' would have us believe.

You know how that need for a sandwich suddenly sneaks up on you? It’s not like it’s a gradual thing; there’s no ‘I may be in need of a sandwich shortly’, it’s just a sudden, violent need to be cramming bread, meat, cheese and whatever else you can find into your gob like a meth-head smoking his first hit of the day. That’s not to say that you cannot enjoy the sandwich making process. Some of my finest moments have been during a particularly good period of sandwich artistry. I even named one of my incredible creations ‘The Jeremy Clarkson’ as it was the best sandwich in the world…

   I felt that this may be one of those moments that I would look back on fondly as an epic sarnie of our time. During that ever so long and arduous trek from the sofa to the kitchen, I was already mentally digging through the fridge and grabbing any and all ingredients that could assist in creating this beautiful monstrosity. With shaking hands, I grasped the cold, hard handle of the great white beast, the keeper of all things nom and good, and yanked its jaws wide open with wild abandon. The holy light clicked on, revealing the beast’s succulent innards that I had eagerly procured from Tesco not so long ago. My dilated pupils scanned the heaving shelves with the eagerness of a horny boy at a strip club and landed on the first essential ingredient; a virginal packet of mouth-watering cheese, wrapped tenderly in its plastic clothing. I extracted it and place it on the gleaming breadboard that rested upon my kitchen counter.

   The next part is the meat, the juicy guts of any worthy sandwich. I was no neophyte when it came to meat selection, no naïve purchaser of inferior products. There would be no mottled wafer thin ham or stringy reformed chicken in Valhalla and neither would there be in my art. Only the thickest, most tender cuts of supple flesh would do. I selected some oak smoked ham and roast chicken breast and placed them gently beside the cool, firm cheddar. I knew instinctively that this was not a time for greasy mayonnaise, though I had used this white glaze before, no, only locally sourced organic butter would do to softly moisten my creation. I positioned the butter dish besides its worthy comrades.

   For the final layer, I delved into the hard, crisp world of the vegetable drawer and extracted the necessary fruits and greens. Juicy, firm tomatoes, a beautiful shade of blushing red, velvety soft to touch, their outsides giving no hint of the saturated world that hid within. Perfect, lush green leaves of fresh gem lettuce, rustled together as though whispering secrets as I placed them on the counter.

   My bread, no ordinary chemical filled sliced nonsense but whole, crunchy baker’s goods with a light brown crisp shell that protected the yielding white cushion within.

The girl sat on the bed, sighed and closed her eyes. ‘Two words: dismal and shit,’ she said.

The boy followed her inside the room and put down the case. His arms had gone numb and his throat was dry. ‘We’ll make it like home,’ he said. ‘We’ve bought your posters.’ He opened a case, pulled out a pink feather boa and draped it on the back of the chair.  Then he took out a crumpled poster that had been rolled into a tube.  He took off the rubber band and opened it up.  It was Edward Hopper’s Girl at Sewing Machine.

  ‘Stop it, please,’ the girl said.

The boy held the poster against the wall above the desk. ‘Do you have any bluetac?’ he asked. ‘Did you bring any?’

  ‘I said stop it. You’re making me sad.’

The boy put the poster on the desk and looked at her. ‘I’m just trying to make you feel at home. It will be nice, when we’re done.’

The girl twiddled a strand of blonde hair between thumb and finger. Eventually, she said, ‘I don’t want to be here baby. I can’t speak French, I hate Lyon and I hate this room.’ She lifted her head from her hands. ‘Look, there’s no carpet. And this bed is as hard as a rock.’

The boy opened the thick beige curtains and let in the sunshine. It was a warm August evening and the sky was blue.  Outside, a few students sunbathed on the grass. They were drinking beer and listening to hip-hop. ‘It’s only a year,’ he said. ‘It’ll go quickly.’

  ‘You said the same about Exeter.’

 ‘And I was right.’

They went outside, holding hands. It was the ultimate week of the holidays and the corridors were empty. 

  ‘It’s soulless,’ she said.

  ‘It won’t be.  When the other students get here.’

The girl looked like she was about to cry. ‘Let’s get drunk,’ she said.

They walked to the main road that led back into town.  The girl clutched his hand. ‘I’m afraid I’ll lose you,’ she said. ‘You’ll go back to your boys and forget about me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. We’re a team, remember.’

She smiled. ‘Dan and Jane.’

They found a bar on the outskirts of town.  In one corner, four men played table football.  They were shouting and swearing.  A barman sat on a stall, his pencil poised over a crossword.

Jane said, ‘Est-ce que je peut avoir deux bieres si’il vous plait?’

The man grinned. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Plus de Anglais?’

  ‘Oui, je viens d’arriver. I’m studying French, over at the university,’ Jane said.

  ‘Well you’re very welcome,’ the man said. ‘Lots of English boys and girls come here.  You’ll like it here.’  

They sat at a table by the window and lit cigarettes. Dan took a sip of beer and looked through the window at the passing traffic.  It was starting to get dark.

Jane said, ‘You don’t have to live here. You’ll forget all about it. In fact, I bet you wish you were on the train home.’

Dan said, ‘It’s exciting to live abroad.  Just think how good your French will be when you come back.’

  ‘I don’t want an adventure,’ she said. ‘What you mean is an adventure without you. What you mean…’

  ‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t tell me what I mean.’

  ‘What did you mean?’

Dan said, ‘I’m just jealous, that’s all. You have a new place to explore and new people to meet. I’m going back to Durham. The same old faces, the same old pubs. It’s boring really, doing the same thing every week.’

  ‘Will you visit me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No you won’t. You can’t afford it and you can’t be bothered.’

Dan sighed. ‘I’ll use my student loan. I’ll come at Christmas.’

  ‘I’m coming home at Christmas you wally.’  She grabbed a strand of her fringe and twiddled it between her fingers. ‘Can I ask you something Dan? I know you’re not going to get upset and I don’t want you to.  But do you remember last week when I was at yours and you were acting funny and the phone went.’

Dan nodded. He lit a cigarette and looked out the window.

  I picked up the phone downstairs. You know this, don’t you? I wasn’t spying but I picked it up just as you picked it up.’

Dan took a drag on his cigarette and said, ‘It was a girl from my course.  We’re doing a group presentation next month and we need to plan.’

Jane’s fingers trembled a little and she took her hands off the table and put them on her lap.  She said,     ‘She sounded foreign, Dan. What’s her name?’

  ‘Rebecca.’

  ‘Rebecca?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dan finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

Jane took a sip of beer. ‘Why did she sound foreign?’

  ‘Because she’s Dutch.’

  ‘Dutch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s called Rebecca and she’s Dutch.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she’s on your course, this Rebecca.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned her.’

  ‘There are hundreds of people on my course.’ He looked at his fingers and began to count. ‘Have I told you about Jess? She’s in my language class. Then there’s Rob. He’s a nice guy. He’s in my modernism class. Did I tell you we went for a beer the other week? It was after a lecture. We got quite smashed actually.  I could go on.’

Jane waited for him to finish. ‘Don’t be clever.’

  ‘Don’t be paranoid.’

  ‘That’s not fair, Dan. You know it’s not.’ She met his eyes and he looked away. ‘I put the phone down straight away. I wasn’t spying on you. But Rebecca sounded really excited. And the reason I don’t know her name is because…’ Her voice caught a little and she stopped.

Dan said, ‘I don’t think we should spend the evening like this. Do you want another drink?’

Jane took a deep breath, downed the rest of her beer and lit another cigarette. ‘No, you’re right. Let’s stop. I know I’m being paranoid. I know you don’t like me when I’m like this. I can’t help it really, not when you’re so far away.’ She blew smoke in his direction and smiled. ‘Your course is such bullshit. So much waffle.’

The sky had darkened with  black clouds and it had started to rain.  On the pavement, an old lady lifted an upturned palm to the sky. Dan said, ‘You’re not being paranoid. I should have explained last week. I knew you’d picked up the phone and I should have explained.’

  ‘Forget about it.’

  ‘It’s going to be fine,’

  ‘We have been good together, haven’t we?’ she went on. ‘And I want it to be good again.’

  ‘We’ll be fine. We always are.’

  ‘I’m terrible, I know. I’m horribly jealous.’ She laughed despite herself and tears filled her eyes.

  ‘Let’s go. We always fight when we’re drunk.’

They went outside. The rain bounced off the cobbled streets and into their shoes. It dripped from their hair and into their eyes. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Jane said. She twirled about in front of him, her face lifted to the sky.  Dan took hold of her waist and pulled her towards him.  Her hair smelt of peaches and cigarettes.  A fork of lightning, then a low peal of thunder. The rain came heavier. They could barely see where they were going. ‘We’re going to drown,’ squealed Jane. She pulled herself free from his arm and ran towards the centre of the small square.  Dan watched her dance and twirl. She looked very young and small.

When they got back to the room, they were tired and hungry and their clothes were soaked through. The two suitcases stood in the middle of the room.  The crumpled poster lay on the desk, the feather boa was draped over the chair.  There was the bed, the basin, a cupboard and a chest of drawers.    

Jane opened the largest case. ‘I’ve of a bottle of Pimms in here,’ she said. ‘Grandma gave it to me as a leaving present. Can you believe it? I’ve never drunk Pimms in my life.’

They stripped out of their clothes and sat in their underwear on the bed.  Jane made a makeshift ashtray out of a toothbrush holder they found by the sink.  The rain had stopped and the dormitory was silent.  They passed the bottle of Pimms between them until they felt sick.

Jane said, ‘It feels bloody lonely here, doesn’t it? Like we’re the only people on the planet.’  Dan nodded. He was circling his fingers over her cold feet.  ‘It’s like the setting of a serial killer film. There’s probably some nutter stalking the hallway.’

  ‘Stop it.’

She flexed her foot and poked his bare stomach. ‘You’re getting fat.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are, just a little. How are your arms? You were whinging about them all the way here.’

  ‘Those suitcases killed me. When you stood at the top of the stairs, shouting at me, my forearms unfurled like plasticine.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She laughed, put a hand to her mouth. ‘I can be so horrid, can’t I? But I thought we’d miss the train.’

He leaned forward and kissed her. She opened her mouth, then pulled away. ‘Do you want to finish this?’ She picked up the bottle. Some of the pink liquid spilled onto the mattress. ‘It’s gross, isn’t it?’

He took the bottle off her and took a swig. It made him gag. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said.

  ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘We’ve done too much talking.’

  ‘There’s one more thing, Dan. I’m only saying this because I’m drunk. Don’t think I’m being paranoid, but there’s one more thing.’

Dan put his fingers to her lips, kissed her again and rolled on top of her.  She fell backwards with a squeal.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There is one more thing.  When I picked up the phone…’

He was pushing down on her and trying to undo the clasp of her bra. ‘We’ll talk ourselves mad,’ he said. ‘No more tonight.’ Her bra came loose and he tossed it to the floor. She was very pale and cold.

  ‘It’s just what she said.  When you picked up the phone and said hello, she said, ‘It’s me.’ Why would she say that Dan?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He was looking at her sad eyes. ‘I don’t know why she’d say that.’

  ‘She’s just on your course right. You’re just doing a project together.  So why should she announce herself as ‘me’.’

They slipped under the sheets. It had got so cold they shook in each other’s arms for a while.  After a little while, Dan said, ‘I don’t know why she’d say that, Jane,’ but she had begun to snore. He stared at the peeling ceiling until he fell asleep.

When they woke, it was almost midday. Dan’s arm had gone numb under her weight. He pulled himself free and got out of bed. He splashed his face with water from the basin and pulled on a pair of jeans and a  T shirt.

Jane sat up and twiddled her fringe between her fingers. She was naked and bleary-eyed. ‘Come back to bed,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got a train to catch. I have to be there in an hour.’

  ‘Oh Dan, you’re so sensible. I’ll get dressed. God knows where the showers are in this prison.’ 

They caught the bus to the centre of town and walked to the station.  It was a Monday and the streets were busy, the cafes were full. It was sunny but pools of water remained from the night’s downpour. They passed the little bar and the square where Jane had danced. Inside, they could see the barman, doing his crossword.

Near the station, they stopped for a coffee. Jane looked around her. The café was full of students, gossiping and eating and drinking. A man in one corner turned the pages of an enormous hardback novel. ‘I think I’ll be alright here,’ she said. ‘It’s not so bad in the day.’

‘You’ll be fine. You’ll make lots of friends.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think I will.’

At the station, Dan stood by the train carriage, his rucksack by his side.  Jane smoked a cigarette and looked up at the station clock. ‘Tick, tock,’ she said. ‘I can really feel it this time.’

  ‘Feel what?’

  ‘That we’re done.’

Dan looked at her feet and said nothing.  She gripped his arm, pushed her head into his chest and closed her eyes. He held her but they did not speak. ‘We were 14,’ she eventually said.

  ‘Six years ago.’

  ‘Six years seems an awfully long time, doesn’t it?’ She pushed herself closer, clasped him with both hands.

  ‘In some ways.’

She pulled free from his chest and kissed him briefly on the lips. She said, ‘When I came to Durham last Easter, it was so strange. I hardly recognized you. You were so different. Not in a bad way, not at all in a bad way. But I left feeling very lonely.’

  ‘I haven’t changed,’ Dan said. He looked at his watch. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘There was nothing we could have done about it really, is there?’

  ‘We’re working at it Jane.’

  ‘I’m not sure there was anything we could have done.  It just happens all the bloody time. It’s quite mundane really.’

Dan picked up his rucksack. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like this.’

Jane planted a kiss on his cheek and stepped back. ‘Get on the train, Dan, before I start blubbing.’

They embraced on the platform until the whistle blew.

  ‘Don’t forget, Dan,’ she said, as he opened the automatic door and stepped into the carriage. She touched his hand just before the doors closed. ‘Not even when you’re old and impotent.’

Dan waved as the train pulled away. He watched the small figure in a pink leather jacket recede into the distance, waving back.

He saw her throw her cigarette to the floor and immediately scrabble for another. He saw her struggling to light it in the wind.

 

 

 

 

Add the next piece to to story. The only rule is that each section is 60 words or fewer.

Birds don't chirp. Who thought of such a thing? Warbling, cooing, even arguing with squawks, if they're herring gulls. But not chirping. New model cars when you lock them with one of those electronic keys. Some mobile phones. But not birds. Roy was a chirper. Right from when he was a baby. But then again, most crocodiles are.

Not my usual screenwriting blog this week because I spent last week at the silent comedy festival in Bristol, Slapstick 2012. I managed to see five events including the Friday night Gala at the Colston Hall featuring Buster Keaton's The General supported by shorts from Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin.
I've got nothing but good things to say about the festival (with the possible exception of Griff Rhy Jones' unbelievably self-serving introductions to other people's films), but the high spots for me were the two events hosted by Oscar winning film historian Kevin Brownlow. There is simply no one who has done more for silent film and Brownlow's films and books on the subject are definitive and, annoyingly, as commerically unavailable as the films he's talking about.
Which leads me to my topic; there is a vast body of silent film that remains unavailable despite already having had money spent on them for restoration purposes. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was one of the most successful films of all time, it features Rudolph Valentino's first starring role and was a personal favourite of David Lean who always referenced its director Rex Ingram as an influence, and yet you cannot go into a shop and buy a decent copy (there's probably a few ropey and illegal ones knocking about). Even currently popular stars like Buster Keaton suffer; The Camerman and Spite Marriage are so seldom seen that they have been at best glossed over by film history and at worst considered sub-par (which they are certainly not).
Can I do anything about this? I don't know but I think I'd like to try. At least I can raise awareness, so watch this space.
Oh, and so this is still technically about screenwriting, let's have a round of applause for the teams of gag-writers who helped make the great silent comedians so great!

Recently I have spent a bit more time than normal at my father’s house as he managed to have another being ill experience. He is approaching 87 and these things are to be expected. In any event, he turns out to be OK and is recovering nicely.

But in the way of things with old folk he once more insisted on taking me through the various papers and stuff that I will have to take care of “if ……” I have no particular interest in his money and usually find something else to do. On this occasion though I humoured him as I didn’t want him having another heart attack. In the same cupboard there was an OXO tin (remember those?) in which there were some old photographs dating generally from the 1930s and the Second World War of him, my mother and various family members, many of which I recognise, some of which he’s forgotten all about. Also there are some great pictures of the Mosquito Squadron he was part of in the Fleet Air Arm. Lovely planes and some great pics.

On the bottom there were two pictures that could barely be made out, image almost faded to nothing. Yesterday I spent an age scanning, filtering, adjusting until rather like magic I got them to the state you see below.

The wedding group one is recognisably my grandmother in the middle and so it must be her wedding to my grandfather, which I can date. He’s the rather nervous looking chump with the watch chain - also recognisable. He had reason to be nervous, naughty boy! My grandmother had a quite distinctive face and despite the quality I am absolutely sure it’s her. Also the old fellow with the walrus moustache on the left is my great grandfather, I know because I have a good picture of him from the first world war period, standing in front of his pub. This is definitely a find, no other known copy exists.

The other, and this was equally challenging in different ways, must be my great grandmother because I can see my grandmother in her, although I’ve no idea when it was taken. She looks younger than in the wedding group.

I have no reason for writing this other than I had a crap weekend, apart from this. I’m rather pleased to find them, and also with myself for managing to rescue the images, so I thought I’d brag about it.

 

The wild grass beneath us was only a little damp now after the scorching hot day we’d had. A couple of days ago there had been a huge super cell storm and apparently there’d been some tornadoes out by Castor. Near as I could tell, the storms had passed on but it was tornado season and you could never be too careful. We weren’t technically in tornado alley but twisters were fickle things and could appear anywhere. Eris said that tornados and hurricanes were nature’s way of showing us that she (Eris called nature ‘she’ because of it being called Mother Nature, I guessed) was still the most powerful force on this planet. With all the wars and folks chopping down rainforests and global warming, Eris says that nature is fighting back. It sure made sense to me, especially after I saw how Katrina had destroyed so much of New Orleans.

   We were lying in the clearing between the woods and the Gum Pond bayou in Bienville Parish. Hundreds, probably thousands, of insects hovered and swooped across the water, their wings buzzing and whining as they flew, occasionally getting eaten by frogs and other reptiles that leapt like slimy green missiles out of the water. The air smelled rich and cloying, a mixture of the moist earth, rotting vegetation and animals that made up these thick swamps. The sky was clear above us and the moon was big, low in the sky and golden coloured, like syrup. It was the day after the full moon, when the moon began its waning phase. That was something else Eris taught me. I never realised until she came along how ignorant I’d been all my life. She opened my mind up something crazy. Nowadays I was looking at the world in a whole new light because she’d made me see and understand everything that much better. Eris was a miracle, a true gift from God.

    I never said that to her though; she was kinda anti religion. ‘Because of how it warps people’s minds,’ she said. I’d been brought up to be a good Christian boy by my parents and I still was, I just didn’t need to go to church no more. My God was everywhere. He showed me His existence by bringing Eris into my world. I truly believed that. Some would say I was blinded by love but if I was, well then, that was just fine by me.

   I’d brought a cooler full of beer for the celebration later and we were sipping from a bottle each. We sat in companionable silence and I thought over a conversation Eris and I had in bed that morning, about how and why people do such goddamn nasty things to each other.

   ‘You know, the thing I’ve realised, that most people don’t understand, can’t even comprehend, is that we’re all the same. We’re all capable of doing great stuff and shit stuff and all the other colours in between black and white. But people are scared and they let other scared people get to them and warp their thinking, change their path, until they could be thrown into a pit of rattlesnakes and be as clueless as you can be, become one even. You have to look out for the rattlesnakes. That’s all I’m sayin’. Eris looked at me, dubiously, out of the corner of her eye and said ‘Ok, I get what you’re saying, Marcus, except the rattlesnake part. That was straight out of the left field.’

   She lifted her head so she could sip her beer and winked at me. I laughed and coughed as I sat up, grass stuck to my bare back and all messed up in my hair. Her hair, which was darkest brown and long enough for her to sit on, was splayed out around her head, looking like dark water with its dips and waves. Her skin was pale and completely without marks and her eyes, a deeper, more complex green than even the Louisiana swamps held. Sometimes I thought they flickered, danced, the way the shine on a dragonfly ripples as it flies past.

    Off somewhere in the woods, crickets chirruped at each other while foxes slunk around, their small paws barely ruffling the leaf littered floor. Bats fluttered through the leaves and wolves howled in the distance. They never came here though, into the clearing. I wasn’t sure why; maybe they were scared of the ‘gators that sometimes sunned themselves here.

   ‘You know, I think you‘ve turned me into some sort of hippie.’ She looked at me with that raised eyebrows face she got when she thought I was full of shit. ’I mean it! You got me thinking about Mother Nature and how to change humanity and all types of stuff I ain’t never thought about before.’ I smiled my huge, dumb ass grin at her and she rolled her eyes back at me, flicking a bug off her long dress and wiggling her bare toes in the grass.

    ‘As for what we were saying earlier, I don’t believe none of this end-of-the-world fear mongering they keep going on about on the news and in the papers, though I get why they’re doing it. If scaring the shit out of all the idiots and rednecks means these assholes clean up after themselves, I’m good with that. Aren’t you?’ I grabbed another beer out of the cooler and twisted it open. I offered her one but she held hers up to show me she had some left.

   ‘But if we’re all capable of good then surely we should be given a chance to prove that by being told the truth about what’s going on in the world, not the governments spin on it. At least that way, there’ll be more well informed assholes.’

   ‘Erm…’ She had me there. My debating skills weren’t up to much and she was way too smart for me. ‘Well, uhm, maybe I'm just full of shit.’

   She laughed and said, ‘I think that’s most likely, don’t you?’ then turned her face towards the woods. We could hear the others approaching.

   There were shouts and rustling as our friends stormed their way through the trees to find us. I called out to them and soon torch beams were cutting through the darkness around us. There were six of them, just like we planned, eight of us in total, four men and four women. The sacred number, it represented infinity; the never ending cycle of life.

   ‘What took y’all so long? We’ve been waiting for your slow asses for nearly two damn hours.’ I got to my feet and gave Eris my hand so she could stand up. ‘Well, we didn’t wanna interrupt your little love session now did we? Though I can hardly account for the other hour and fifty five minutes,’ my friend Ben called out to me; a big shit-eating grin on his face.

   ‘Better than your three minutes, you drunk redneck.’ I threw him a beer which he caught, gleefully.

   ‘That’s enough boys, we don’t have much time.’ Eris said, her tone ringing with authority. Her being the only one of us without a Louisiana accent immediately made her sound the most intelligent, something that maybe should bother me, born and raised here like I was, but it didn’t. I’d do anything for her, even if that meant walking into the gates of Hell.

   ‘Do we have everything?’ She looked around at all of us and we held up our hallowed objects. Mine was a vial of snake venom on a black leather strap. I’d squeezed the venom out of the snakes myself, just like she asked, and she’d been real pleased about it.

   Ben held up his silver athame, a knife used in rituals, with the black onyx decorated handle and different runes carved into the sharp, tarnished blade. I recognised some of them as ones that Eris had taught me but not all of them.

   Jacob rattled his dirty cloth bag of bones, seven from different animals and one human rib he stole from the coroner’s office where his daddy worked.

   Adam held a bottle of red wine that we had all added drops of our own blood to. I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to drink it later or not. Eris just said she’d tell us when the time was right.

   Jessica had a bundle of long reeds tucked under one arm and a large zip lock bag filled with smaller bags of different herbs and flowers in her hand. I didn’t know what was in there but Eris helped Jessica pick them herself which made Jessica as pleased as punch.

   Ava had a vial, very similar to mine, filled with her own menstrual blood. That kinda grossed me out if I was honest, though I’d never be so rude as to say anything about it. Eris explained to me that it symbolised the fertility cycle, one of the most important functions of life and was therefore a necessity.

   Mary clutched a bag of sea salt, a grimy looking compass and five black candles, infused with the scent of jasmine. Because it was night blooming which Eris said was very important.

   Eris and I brought the most crucial element, the piece that pulled the whole thing together. He was a known paedophile. The cops had been trying to lock him up for years but he was a devious son of a bitch and kept managing to get away with his nasty shit. We were gonna put a stop to that tonight. Of course none of us wanted to pick someone good, we weren’t evil or nothing, so this guy, Horace, had been the logical choice. Eris and I knocked him out with chloroform, stripped him of his clothes and brought him here.

      ‘Prepare the pentacle,’ she told Mary who got to work straight away. Eris told us we needed a pentacle for this instead of a pentagram (a pentacle has a circle around the five pointed star, a pentagram doesn’t) because the circle made out of sea salt would protect us in case anything went wrong. I didn’t really like the sound of that but I trusted her. She wouldn’t let anything happen to us, especially not to me. Eris loved me, I knew she did. I mean, she didn’t say it back when I said it to her, which kinda hurt, but maybe it was just the wrong time. She’d say it to me eventually, I knew that she would.

   Mary began placing the candles using the compass until they formed the points of the star then linked them up with the reeds Jessica handed her so that the centre of the pentacle was visible. After that, she surrounded the formation with the sea salt circle. Eris smiled at her and nodded, acknowledging a job well done. Mary blushed, a deep pink colour, and fluttered her eyelashes at Eris. I was pretty sure she wasn’t a lesbian (I’d heard rumours of her fooling around with Jason Redditch in high school), Eris just dazzled everyone that way.

   ‘Jessica, it’s your turn. Do you remember what I told you to do?’ Jessica nodded vigorously and began to organise the herbs. She started to burn a different one at each candle, filling the air with oddly colourful and fragrant smoke that made my nose tickle and my eyes water.

   Eris shut her eyes and said quietly, ‘Move the sacrifice to the middle of the pentacle.’ I looked at the other men and nodded towards Horace. We each grabbed a limb and carefully laid him out in the centre of the star, his legs apart and arms spread wide out, palms up. Now it was my turn. Eris had instructed me to dribble the venom on his forehead, over his heart, on his upturned palms and the tops of his feet. Jessica scattered flowers over his body and Jacob placed the bones around him, evenly spaced with the human rib bone above his head.

   Ben was just handing Eris the athame when Horace started to stir. His eyelids fluttered as he fought to open his eyes but soon they were wide open, taking in the scene around him.

    ‘Hey… Hey, what’s going on here?! What the Hell are you kids doing to me? Where the fuck are my clothes and what’s this shit on me?’ He tried to get up but we moved in to hold him down while Eris approached with the athame. Horace struggled beneath our hands, terror in his eyes, clear as day. I looked away and tried to ignore him. I knew there was no turning back now, even though his pleads for release twanged at my heart strings. Misgivings or not, we had to finish. For her, we had to complete the ritual.

   Eris started the chant she’d taught us and we joined in, our low voices uninterrupted by Horace’s shouts for help.

    ‘Abaddon, nos dico in vos. Baphomet, nos es vestri vernula. Belial, nos cultus vestri atrum vox. Asael, nos dedi vos is vitualamen. Lucifer, capimus vos in nos.’

   Our chanting voices slowly got louder as wind began to churn up the woods around us. The air was hot, even for a Louisiana night in spring and we were all sweating profusely. Even Eris looked warm as she stepped inside the pentacle, athame raised high above her head. Horace took one look at it and started screaming, struggling so fiercely that it was getting close to impossible to hold him in place. The air started to smell, like electric and rotting meat, sulphur maybe. I gagged as I chanted. The wind was howling now, whipping us with leaves, branches slapping against each other, animals crying out in fright. Everything around us was moving violently; all except the flames of the candles which remained perfectly still, as did the flowers and bones within the pentacle.

    Quick as a snake, Eris plunged the athame right into Horace’s heart. He howled with pain and blood poured out of the wound as she pulled the knife back out. He died with his eyes wide open, staring pitifully up at the sky, a silent prayer on his lips. ‘Ava, pour the blood into the wound. Adam, pour all the wine around him. Don’t stop the chant. He’s almost here.’ They quickly did as they were told while Eris began to dance inside the pentacle, the soles of her feet picking up grass as she danced through the wine and the blood. As she picked up the pace, so did our chanting, faster and louder until we were screaming it at her, at each other, at the world around us. Her whole body was shaking, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open in what looked like purest ecstasy.

   Suddenly she stopped, and then everything stopped. The wind died down, our chant was hushed, like something had come along and snatched the words from right out of our mouths. It was eerily quiet now and the air thrummed with power. Eris’ eyes fluttered open and we all took a scared step back. Her beautiful green eyes had been transformed. They were coal black, the whites were gone, and reflected no light, not even from the candles. Dark voids that held us transfixed. Chuckling menacingly, she turned from us and reached her arms up towards the stars.

    ‘He’s here.’

In all of the Patrick McGilligan interviews with screenwriters I have read, George Axelrod's is the only one to begin with the subject critiquing the Backstory books. I'm not sure what that says about him but I'm sure it says something. As you may have guessed Axelrod wrote the screenplay for Breakfast at Tiffany's, adapted from Truman Capote's novella. It was in fact on TV last week but I'd never seen it before, taped it, and just got round to watching it today, plus I'd recently read the Axelrod interview. I really enjoyed Tiffany's and I think part of the reason it's aged as well as it has is because of the vagueness forced upon it by the production code. In Capote's book Holly Golightly is a call girl and even as late in the day as 1961, a major studio would not have that. Worse still the man in the book is likely homosexual, a subject about which major studios still get jittery. Axelrod made sweeping changes, the largest being that the man (played by George Peppard in his pre-A Team days) becomes a gigolo, so he and Holly are basically in the same line. It's still impossible to mention either character's profession but Axelrod uses that to his advantage, our uncertainty about what they are mirrors the character's uncertain relationship, the undefined nature of which is the crux of the piece. From a remove of 50 years it also makes the film less dated; if they had talked about their occupations then the film would have showed its age, by not doing so Axelrod has inadvertently allowed it to stand the test of time. The film is not to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed it and I think there's room for an essentially sweet, offbeat romance amongst the more formulaic ones. The only thing I dislike is the same thing that Axelrod did; the bizarre casting of Mickey Rooney as the comedy Japanese neighbour. I've nothing but respect for Mr. Rooney and for Blake Edwards who directed, but the result is just not funny. Axelrod was a favourite target of the Production Code, Legion of Decency, and various other killjoys, as his films (some adapted from his own plays where rules were less stringent) frequently dealt with sex (The Seven Year Itch, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter). But that did not stop him from writing some very successful films, despite his belief that most of them were mangled to some extent, leading him to direct 2 himself (unsuccessfully). Arguably Axelrod's greatest film was banned, but not because of any sexual content. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was banned after the assasination of President Kennedy and was not re-released until 1988. It is a phenomenal film, and one with a dark sense of humour that often goes unrecognised. It's a film that has not dated and so had no need of a remake which made me very cautious of the 2004 version, but you know what? it's actually a very good film too. How often does that happen? An alcohol problem blighted the second half of Axelrod's career and he never really recovered, but his work in the 50s and 60s is remarkable, capturing Hollywood as it evolves to keep up with the new era. If he had only written Manchurian Candidate he would be remembered as one of the greats, but Breakfast at Tiffany's confirms that position and shows a range that most writers would kill for.

Properly it should say 'screenwriters of the week' as Hud was written by one of the few genuine screenwriting partnerships to be found in the latter half of the twentieth century; Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank jr. The pair met, fell in love and married while junior writers at MGM but it was a several years before they considered writing together.
Before I come to the point I really wanted to make in this blog I should say, I have not seen Hud (I plan to watch it Monday 11.05am BBC4), nor have I seen any of the films written by Frank and Ravetch, together or separately. Through the whole of The Story of Film last year I felt that Mark Cousins was berating me for not watching enough films from around the world, writing this blog I often feel like I'm berating myself for not having even watched enough from America!
Back to the point; working apart for ten years both Frank and Ravetch amassed a decent CV of Western credits, outside of film Ravetch tried his hand at playwriting while Frank was a very successful short story writer. But when they begin to work together, starting with The Long, Hot Summer (a loose adaptation of Faulkner's The Hamlet) the whole tone of their work changes. Though it is still very American, most often southern in setting and can occasionally be called Western, their collaborations tend to have a strong social conscience, dealing with big issues like race (Hombre) or exploitation of workers (Norma Rae). Most of these collaborartions were directed by Martin Ritter who directed 8 of their films and with whom they enjoyed a more congenial working relationship than many of their contemporaries did with directors.
My interest in this is, how much do we change as writers when we take on a partner? In some partnerships there is decidedly a junior and senior partner, Billy Wilder's partners sometimes seem like interpreters of his ideas (I'm not demeaning them, Wilder's co-writers were a hugely talented bunch). In the case of Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, the general tone of what they wrote seems similar whether they wrote together or apart, and both wrote successfully apart (though Gordon more for the stage than film). Ravetch and Frank seemed to become a distinct new writer when they worked together. Is that common? I don't know, but it's almost interesting enough to make me want to work with a partner again.
Frank and Ravetch are an interesting couple, they were interviewed by Patrick McGilligan for Backstory after a lifetime of refusing interviews (and more recently by William Baer which I haven't read as it mainly concerns Hud and I don't want to ruin a film I plan to watch tomorrow), part way through they broke off to argue whether film can be seen as art (Frank for, Ravetch against), it's a fascinating exchange. Their explanation for the difference collaboration made to their styles was simple '...whatever faculties we had, we combined into a fresh view'.  Ravetch died in 2010, Frank, now 94, is still alive; They come across as an extremely likeable pair and I look forward to seeing Hud.

A tribute this week to one of the last of the silent era. Federica Sagor Maas died on January 5^th at the age of 111, she was a silent film writer who worked on such prominent films as The Goose Woman with Louise Dresser, Flesh and the Devil with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo (and Barbara Kent who died last October aged 103), as well as several Clara Bow films including ’It’ and The Plastic Age. Despite having seen a couple of her films I had never heard of Frederica Sagor Maas (partly because much of her work seems to have been uncredited) and from what I can gather from the various obituaries (which are by no means 100% consistent) she had a pretty frustrating career; she got little credit for what she did, saw ideas taken away from her and suffered during the McCarthy era. All of which left her with an understandably jaundiced view of Hollywood. Reading some of the more oddly forthright obituaries I find myself wanting to know more about Miss Sagor Maas so I can judge for myself, and the good news is that, at the age of 99, she was talked into writing an autobiography by film historian Kevin Brownlow. Once I’ve tracked down a copy (by which I mean; once my parents have tracked down a copy and given it to me for my birthday), I shall report back.

Until then, whatever her attitude towards Hollywood, whatever axe she might have legitimately had to grind in later life, the fact is that she contributed to some of the most notable films of the silent era. As well as those I’ve already mentioned she wrote the story for The Way of All Flesh for which German actor Emil Jannings won Best Actor at the first ever Academy Awards Ceremony. Although Flesh and the Devil is not a film I particularly like, it is the film that made Greta Garbo a star. The real gem here though is ‘It’, which is a delight, it’s fun, funny and features Bow’s best performance. On top of that, though it may seem dated now, at the time it’s portrayal of an unwed mother was extremely brave.

So there’s a happy thought to end on; perhaps Frederica Sagor Maas’s film career did not pan out as she would have wanted (she’s not alone in that), but the films she did work on are an impressive legacy.