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Monday, 19 March 2007
DANNY 101 - A Depressive's Guide to Recreational Sex Therapy
Just came by to show my face.
Just finished the third edit of DANNY V2. Enjoyed it more this time, apart from the fact that it sunk me into a depression so low I could barely climb out it.
I seem to have some notion that on a recent blog I said that I had never found it a depressing book. What the hell was I thinking of? Not DANNY V2 anyway, I can tell you. Obviously I haven't been paying enough attention.
This book is black. Actually those italics don't put enough emphasis on how dark this book is. Like pitch. If you thought the first one was relentless wait till you see this baby.
Of course it's a different kind of relentless. Volume 1 is more about relentless violence, with that Jacobean pall of impending disaster hanging over it. Volume 1 is rather like a Shakespearean dark castle with the plotting and scheming going on behind closed doors till someone is fatally run though behind the arras.
Volume 2 is different. You start out with what looks like a reformed Danny who's managed to pick his life up and turn it around, then you watch him make decision after decision that takes him down new roads to the same old place with the inevitable disastrous results.
What makes it worse though, is it doesn't look as if he is doing something wrong. If you're one of those people who likes to go back, visit old friends and places, keep in touch, you will be even more unperturbed by what he does, and the pernicious way he does it. Subsequently you might be left wondering quite how it takes such a wrong turn.
If you're like me, of course, and are phobic about never going back to people or places, you might be a little more wary of Danny 'returning to the fold'.
It has such a dark (I keep using that word, but I can't think of any other), gloomy pall over it. It doesn't take you long to realise that Danny is not as 'well' as you might first think. After that, Danny being Danny, you wonder if he actually knows what he's doing. Is he up to something and, if so, what?
Understand, it's not depressing in a Nil By Mouth or Monster's Ball kind of way. Although you might expect it to be nihilistic, it isn't. It's depressing as in a decayed, mildewed, blackened, overpowering sense of grief and loss kind of way. And, at the risk of firing up my ever-watchful critics, it is done so subtly by such tiny increments, that you don't even notice it till you're in the middle of this screwed-up mess wondering how the fuck you got there.
I'm a case in point, boldly asserting to all and sundry on here that it isn't depressing, and I wrote the bloody thing.
Maybe it's because up until this last edit I had been concerned about the 'lack' of plot.
Because it doesn't have the same level of dramatic events as V1, and because Danny is kind of free-falling in it (with a vengeance), I was always very focussed on its imaginary shortcomings.
I think I was also nervous about its reception because it's my weakling, my vulnerable one. But, as I think I said before, I am more convinced than ever that some people will love this one. If tales of grief-stricken loss and sad souls trying to fuck themselves into happiness are your cup of tea you will love it. Guaranteed.
Another plus point – although maybe only to me who's sick of hearing this drivel – is it's even further removed from being "porno". Not because it has less sex (it doesn't) but because it is so joyless and peculiar, and kind of desperate and sad, that you would need to be an even more tragic fuckwit than my past collection of tragic fuckwits to imagine it could pass itself off as pornography.
If porn generally makes you want to top yourself Volume 2 will do it for you.
My moment of satori about the true nature of 2 came when I was watching an 'art' film called Eros.
I was about half way through the third edit at the time and this film had come from my on-line library. It was a collection of three short movies on the theme of eroticism. I put it on, grumbling that if it was crap we weren't watching it through.
At the moment I don't really like anything heavy while I'm editing, preferring comedies and actioners and standard horror fare. Mainstream all the way. I don't want to think or be made to experience any emotions.
For some reason I hadn't noticed this as a phenomenon (I didn't experience it working on Volume 1). If I had I might have been alerted to the fact that Volume 2 was having quite a different effect on me.
I was driving Himself mad hiring TV (although he forgave me Lost), watching my way through all the O.C., The Reading Group, Black Books, kids movies, even animated features which you usually have to bribe me to watch. I was taking out Disney films.
I just apologised, said, "Don't want to watch anything heavy, edit's taking up all my brain" and thought no more about it.
So Eros comes on and the first film up is The Hand by Kar Wai Wong.
I, very strangely because I watch a lot of Asian cinema, didn't know his work. What's more, both of us had forgotten why we wanted to see this film in the first place so we had no idea what to expect.
The Hand was an absolutely stunning exploration of love/erotic obsession. So good, in fact, that I'd go so far as to say that if I could make a film as good as this I'd die happy.
It's intense, despairing, tortured and breathtakingly beautiful.
The premise is a tailor in love with a courtesan he can't have. He takes clothes to her flat and that's all he sees of her.
She gives him a hand-job in the opening scene, which is a wonderfully understated piece of erotic domination/humiliation far more poetic than the delightful phrase 'hand-job' would lead you to expect. What's more it manages to be understated while it's quite explicit, and that's all the 'sex' in the entire film.
Nevertheless, that one ugly little 'hand-job' seals his fate and he becomes addicted to loving her from afar – all see and no touch.
It reeks of forbidden love and repressed sex. It's Danny and John/ Heathcliff and Cathy in spades. It is forbidden love, par excellence.
But, to cut a long story short, my moment of satori came at the end when the wellspring of their frustrated 'love affair', which never really is, comes out in this one scene of frantic, almost fetishistic, touching wherein they cannot kiss. And I howled. And howled. And howled.
As someone who only cries when the dog dies I was both deeply disturbed and completely thrown by this (not to mention profoundly embarrassed).
I couldn't fathom it. What the fuck was wrong with me? I mean, it is a superb piece of film-making but it did seem to be over-the-top. And it was then the satori light-bulb went off.
The film had just plugged right into the huge backlog of feeling Volume 2 was generating in me. It was like a backwash of grief and overwhelming loss that almost floored me. These two poor sods: one beautiful, worshipped, callous in a work-hardened way; the other devoted, silent, suffering and then this loss as, at the last moment, the thing that he loves is taken away from him and he can't even really touch her, hang onto her.
And there was Volume 2 – staring me in the face.
My emotional deluge aside, The Hand segment of Eros is worth the price of the film forty times over.
Don't expect anything other than smooth entertainment from the Soderbergh segment and nothing but brick-throwing confusion at the last segment by 1960's Italian film maker Michelangelo Antonioni. But, if you like lush Asian film-making (it's not opulent, it's green and gloomy, but has the stunningly beautiful Li Gong and a wonderfully strained, highly-strung male lead) and tales of doomed love with a subtext forty foot thick you will not better this. It's something you could watch over and over and never get sick of it. And I can only think of a handful of films I'd say that about.
By the by, if any of you do watch it let me know if it makes you cry too, then I've got a sliding scale of just how deeply depressing Volume 2 actually is.
So that's it. My life in art.
Other news.
Took a mad turn a week or two ago, when Google turned up someone referring to anti-fans, to put the word on the Urban Dictionary. Decided if people were going to nick my creation I could at least define it. Forgot all about it and discovered they had not only accepted it but posted it on-site in all its glory.
So anti-fan is now an official word. Check it out at Urban Dictionary and cast your vote.
I don't think I've ever mentioned that Mr Scratchmann can be heard "readin' some of 'is pomes" as podcasts on our film site. You'll see the link down below.
And if you enjoy watching people take the piss out of (Americans?) people who can't understand sarcasm or watching people take the piss out of the growing phenomenon of internet haters (aka anti-fans, see the Urban Dictionary) then can I recommend the two gems from Paperlillies which you'll find on my Youtube favourites (link below).
Watch the Video About Sarcasm first then the follow-up on haters. I'm thinking of recommending fandom adopts her as their patron saint. Unpopular Idea 809. Watch her – if you hate haters you'll enjoy her.
Lastly, Mr Scratchmann has finished a new book.
Entitled Downshafted, it is a non-fiction account of our time on Orkney, taken from the point of view of how downshifting is sold to us nowdays as an 'Alternative Lifestyle' and just how sadly wrong that can be.
I have, today, been give a copy of the manuscript which I will be reading before I go into Edit 4, known as The Green Scene edit. I'll explain that one to you in due course.
As at right now Poison Pixie is not being given an option on Downshafted. He doesn't want to take on yet another marketing campaign, and who can blame him?
He's trawling through potential agents and publishers looking for someone who might go for his bitter, black, cynical view of a rural idyll.
This could be fun. Already he's been dirty-mouthing publishers in a quite spectacular way and he hasn't even approached any yet. I'm quite looking forward to this.
Illustration 101 continues to sell at a truly awesome level. It managed to get up to 9,034 on Amazon a week back and we supply them in bundles of ten with barely a week going by without an order, and sometimes two from them. All this, I might add, with absolutely zero publicity. He doesn't even have reviews on Amazon – God damn him to hell.
Not that I'm jealous. Oh no, I am above such lowly behaviour.
Unfortunately he has nothing to offer that I can steal other than maybe putting How to into DANNY's title. How To Achieve Orgasm Without Really Trying, perhaps. Or How to Have a Successful Incestuous Relationship. Or maybe 101 Ways To Top Your Relatives.
Ah, hyperbole, is there nothing it can't do?
To subscribe to this blog without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts. Don't say we don't spoil you.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their heart's content.
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Comments
I am now convinced that this book is going to kill me, the first book rips your heart out, I'm guessing this one stamps on it, sets in on fire, then shoves it in a mincer. Can't wait. Roll on Danny 2. Yey
Posted by: Jodie | Tuesday, 20 March 2007
I cant imagine reading anything worse than when Danny just screams and screams and screams-but cant wait to find out!!!!!
Posted by: Jill | Tuesday, 20 March 2007