Ein literarisches Roadmovie

In October I will travel to Berlin and Frankfurt where New Zealand is the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012. There I will be taking part at several events to talk about, among other things, the new German edition of my 1993 novel Lügenspiele (Pack of Lies). The first event will be a reception welcoming New Zealand writers to Germany. More dates TBC.

My German publishers Mana Verlag have subtitled the new edition of Lügenspiele "Ein literarisches Roadmovie" -- I like the sound of that. I like the cover photograph, too, which is by Edinburgh-based artist Jeannie Laub.

HEAVEN (1994) out now on Kindle

My second novel Heaven is out now on Kindle, in a new and revised edition and with a brand new cover by Jonathan King.

First published in 1994, Heaven was later made into a feature film by Miramax, produced by Sue Rogers and directed by Scott Reynolds. The movie starred Martin Donovan (Trust, Boss), Richard Schiff (The West Wing), Joanna Going and a pre-Star Trek, pre-Judge Dredd Karl Urban. I wonder if you could assemble a cast like that for an independent New Zealand movie now.

You can pick up a used copy of Heaven for US$52: the ebook edition is priced at US$2.99 at Amazon.com.

I'd lived with the characters, and I cared about them

Tony Scott discovered Quentin Tarantino in 1991:

Tony Scott: When I was directing The Last Boy Scout, my assistant was hanging out with this quirky guy named Quentin Tarantino, and he'd be around the set. She said, "You gotta read his script."

Quentin Tarantino: When you're a nobody, it's murder to get anyone to read your scripts. The original True Romance script started with a long discussion about cunnilingus. Most people said the script was racist and that the grotesque violence would make people sick. I told Tony, "Read the first three pages. If you don't like it, throw it away."

Scott made True Romance, but changed the ending:

I took True Romance and I took Reservoir Dogs. I'm a very slow reader but I read them straight through. I said, 'I'll do both.' He said, 'No. I'd like you to do True Romance.' He's a brilliant writer, he fully conceives every character, no matter how small they are. Actors came to the set not wanting to change a word, which is unusual. The only thing that I did change was the ending. The original was very different. It ended with Alabama. She puts a gun in her mouth. She doesn't shoot herself, and then she just says, 'Oh fuck it, he isn't worth it.' She throws the gun out of the car window and drives off. Quentin thought it was truer to the character. I was trying to make a commercial film, I wanted a happier ending. I'd lived with the characters really, and I cared about them.

Who knows what people will say about Tony Scott now. But I remember reading (would it have been Premiere magazine?) that when the director hired Tarantino to do a script polish for Crimson Tide (1995) for a lot of money and very little work, it was as a thank you for True Romance.

Oxygen

There's a way in which a writer can do too much, over-whelming the reader with so many details that he no longer has any air to breathe. Think of a typical passage in a novel. A character walks into a room. As a writer, how much of that room do you want to talk about? The possibilities are infinite. You can give the color of the curtains, the wallpaper pattern, the objects on the coffee table, the reflection of the light in the mirror. But how much of this is really necessary? Is the novelist's job simply to reproduce physical sensations for their own sake? When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it.

-- Paul Auster, The Art of Hunger (Sun & Moon Press, 1992)

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?

-- David Mamet, Memo to writers of The Unit, 19 October 2005

Bedside reading

Seriously

The Assange standoff is a fitting coda to Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremony: emotional, crowd-pleasing and illogical. Prosecutors have an ulterior motive. UK diplomats have scored an own goal. Ecuador probably can't get Assange out of the embassy. Ecuador loves freedom of speech. And if there's one thing Britain won't tolerate, it's people sharing other people's private information...

In Russia a punk trio have been jailed for two years for flash-mobbing. How is that different from the two young men who have been jailed for four years in the UK for posting on Facebook?

The Man Who Wasn't Feeling Himself: new on Kindle

A new edition of my original 1995 short story collection The Man Who Wasn't Feeling Himself is out now on Amazon Kindle.

The collection features twelve short stories: 'Running Hot and Cold' (deeply offended the publisher. "Breaking her hip? Perhaps if you made it all a dream"), 'Calling Doctor Dollywell' ("A casually menacing story that has something to do with health problems and lesbians" – Steve Braunias),  'The Man Who Wasn't Feeling Himself', 'Fire in the Hole', 'Archie and Veronica' (S&M on the west coast, and the most popular story, to judge by the many emails I've received over the years), 'No Sun No Rain' (the first appearance of detective Ellerslie Penrose, who went on to helm Shirker), 'Somewhere in the 21st Century' (SF), 'Oilskin' (upset people no end, but some of the students at the Auckland University writing course liked it, and a Waikato student went on to make it as a student film. Kids!), 'John', 'Me and Misspelt' (currently under option as a film),  'From Soup to Nuts' ("Unnecessarily violent" – Graeme Lay, Metro) and 'Another White Gown'.

All here, now, just for you, in the new digital™ format, with brand spanking new cover art by Christchurch artist Ian Dalziel. A snip at US$2.99.