Alex de Campi: Gojira!

***

WHO

FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

22.7.06 Satan's Little Sister Explains It All For You!

Hello there, vermin. On the invitation of a spectacularly misguided rock and roll singer, I've come up to London to visit you on a little holiday. After all, this heatwave makes it feel just like home! Hit topside a couple weeks ago (6/6/6, natch) and found a likely host in the previous owner of this blog. Pretty big mileage on the carcass, but the facade has held up surprisingly well and all systems seem to be in good working order. Plus, it had nice clothes, and a fascinating reputation. I mean, if this carcass started being really devilish all of a sudden, none of you would bat an eyelid, would you? I'm still congratulating myself on finding such perfect cover.

Of course there were a few things I had to sort out. The carcass had a part time job! Hilarity! Once the novelty wore off, I got rid of that. I mean really, I haven't done a day's work since I got kicked out of Upstairs back while you lot were still invertebrates, and I didn't intend to start now. To be truthful with you, vermin, I planned to just run the carcass into the ground by partying, but I've become quite entranced with this filmmaking and writing thing it is involved in, especially as it keeps getting written about (sometimes not even in English) and the bands she works with are getting increasing notoriety. Its first music promo is even going to be played at the Reading and Leeds music festivals.

It's a common misperception that my family is responsible for all the woes on this shoddy little planet of yours. 'Oh, the Devil made me do it'. Blame, blame, blame. Rubbish! None of us have done a damn thing in the past five thousand years except sit around, slurp cocktails, and occasionally invent a new disease. Shit, we haven't even redecorated since the Albigensian Heresy. But still, you sit there and think: 'Aha! Mephistopheles' kid sis is going to take this carcass and use it to lead all of us into further evil'. Vermin, please. In the sinfulness stakes, your species has already hit bottom, and some of you are starting to dig. Additional help from me would be de trop.

No, I have a bigger game. You see, Upstairs is already getting a little snippy about my extended holiday here (strictly entre nous, last time I blew through town I started a little fire, and they haven't really trusted me since. But hey, the years were my lucky numbers. Even I'm not completely immune to temptation.) So I figured, what would really get up their angelic fine noses? Me being bad? Yawn. They expect that. No, listen, vermin: I'm going to be good*. I am going to make irreproachably magnificent books and films and music promos (the next one is for this amazing band), that make you forget the tedium of your desperately pointless little lives for a brief space in time. (Besides, you'll be spending your afterlife with me and my brother anyway, and eternal torment is so much more fun if you've had some happiness to compare it with.) And now that the carcass is - thanks to me - full-time unemployed, I can devote all its efforts to my little project.

Can you imagine the rumpus this will cause Upstairs? I'm shivering with delight as I type this. I don't know how many of you vermin are well acquainted with any holier-than-thou types, but let me tell you, the one thing that drives Upstairs absolutely bonkers is not having anything to criticise. How can they raise themselves up above us, or prove to themselves they were right to boot us out, unless they are shoving us down? Why, just yesterday, when I passed up the opportunity to shoplift some cigarettes, I saw two little cherubim burst into flames from sheer frustration. (Another reason I quite adore this carcass is that it was once badly married into a High Catholic family, and - well, it didn't Fall, so much as it Jumped - but the experience has left it very understanding of my, ah, complicated situation.)

I'm off now to see if there are any old ladies who need helping across the street. There's a Dominion on my tail, and when they combust, they do it in such lovely sparkly colours.

Be seeing you. - SLS.

*Well, I'm going to be good within the accepted parameters of your society. Luckily, that leaves plenty of scope for, shall we say... leisure activities?

[Concept lifted egregiously wholesale from Glenn Duncan's infinitely superior I, Lucifer. Here's hoping Mr Duncan has a good sense of humour, and doesn't take me to court.]

( 11:44 AM ) (0) comments

10.7.06 Mis-tah (pause) Pin-tah

Been shooting for the past two days. Brain completely gone. If you see it wandering about, please attempt to capture it (it's partial to chocolate hobnobs and Jean Cocteau films) and post it back to me. 2nd class mail will do.

But we got some amazing footage (I'll post pictures in a week or two once we start the edit), so I pronounce the exhaustion-induced lobotomy: Worthwhile.

In other matters, been reading Pinter in the Theatre, a series of interviews with the man himself plus actors and directors who have worked with him, on the process of staging his plays. It's worth it just for Peter Hall's interview alone. However I also have a lot of time for the actor Douglas Hodge:

"I suppose what you try to do as an actor is to make it soo that the only words you can possibly utter within a certain situation are the ones you are given. If you've done enough homework and enough thought and you're in the right place emotionally and physically, when somebody asks you that question onstage it's impossible to answer with any words but the ones you have in the script.

[...]

"One of the big problems I have playing roles I'm given as an actor is that when in real life someone gives you bad information, does something that makes you angry or upsets you, I personally don't react there and then. I tend to react about a week later or in the car on the way home - then I have a massive argument with the person. And I think that's what most people do.

"And I also think that five years later, faultlines can occur just through her doing something one day that you cannot forgive, though it only really becomes a faultline five years later. Sometimes relationships can be irreperably damaged by things that only cause them to break much, much later.

"And the one thing that's always thwarted me as an actor is that onstage you immediately respond to the situations that you're in. Because all dramatists have to make you get angry or upset at the news that you receive there and then. And that has forever felt false to me."

Lastly: been re-reading this? It's wonderful! ...and very sick. I can't believe I haven't looked at it in so long. You people: must acquire it.