Burn, Hollywood, Burn

Adaptions. They’re funny little beasts. Whether it’s from book to movie or vice versa, our reactions are generally negative.

What do you mean there's no giant squid bit?

This was exemplified rather beautifully when my (at the time) new boss at the bookshop took one look at our ‘Read it First’ bay of Hollywood adapted novels and suggested that we re-title it ‘Burn, Hollywood, Burn – The Book is Always Better’.

Fearing a backlash from our Head-Office, the new title suggestion never made it past concept; but it is an accepted fact that for every well-adapted screenplay (Game of Thrones, Dexter etc.) that makes it onto our big or small screens, someone somewhere has earmarked a piece of literature for a jaw-droppingly hamfisted adaptation starring Kiera Knightley or similar.

Mental illness, a la Knightley

Acting lessons, a la Simpson

This is not to suggest a one-way street of poor decisions, however. Picture a motorway: zooming up the fast-lane northbound, hogtied in the back being abducted by the cast and crew involved in that particular travesty is Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Now cast your eyes to the southbound lane. Here we see The Lost Boys (admittedly not a cinematic great, but a fun 80s film nevertheless) being carried off by a ghostwriter in a twirly moustache intent on evil deeds and terrible narration – seriously, the book was awful. Not even amusing, just awful.

I will ruin your childhood memories...

Audiobooks, however, scarcely get a mention. Other than the brilliantly awkward spoof reading of Fifty Shades of Grey by actor and ‘voice of Alladin’s Iago’, Gilbert Gottfried…

…audiobooks haven’t really appeared on my radar since the long, interminable drives to Scotland or trecks across heatwave-ridden France trapped in the backseat along with rapidly maturing and increasingly fragrant gooey cheese that counted as holidays during my childhood. Even then, they were slightly patronising affairs; educational classics read by well-respected people from the BBC who totally failed to adapt their voices based on the age, gender or emotional state of the characters they represented.

Once. Upon. A. Time. There. Was. A. Little. Girl. Hello. The. Little. Girl. Said.

Back to movie adaptations. When Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, dropped into the shop on a signing tour, it wasn’t, therefore, much of a surprise to discover that he didn’t hold out particularly high hopes for the forthcoming World War Z film. In particular, the controversial issue of 3D seemed to be a favourite bugbear of his:

‘I went to see The Great Gatsby in 3D’, he said (declaimed). ‘It was like… HAVE A MARTINI!!!’ (shoving an imaginary cocktail at my colleague’s face).

No, lady in the second row. You can't drink Gatsby's martini...

I’ve since found a piece of footage in which he voices his concerns somewhat more rationally.

Worryingly, whilst searching for this URL, the most popular search was 'Does Max Brooks believe in zombies'.

I’m no puritan. I understand that narratives have to be chopped and changed in order to turn a wonderful book into a wonderful movie. But the trailer, reviews and synopsis of the movie version of World War Z do seem to, as Brooks says, have nothing in common with his work other than title. Rather than an oral history of the zombie uprising, laying bare our emotional and political weaknesses which would in real terms limit our capability as a species to fight as a unified force for survival, the movie version is set in the present day, dispenses with such geopolitical questions and features RUNNING ZOMBIES.

RUNNING ZOMBIES.

Look, it’s fine to tinker with folklore. Many films and books play around with the issues of ‘zombie top speed’ (‘Moves faster than a well-greased tin man’ – Renowned speed-similie expert, Jeremy Clarkson). 

But since Brooks has created not only a fictional narrative but an accompanying guide explaining the parameters of his canon universe, it would be at least polite to stick to the facts as he defined them.

But not so. Zombies run and there’s a romantic sub-plot. Although I won’t judge anyone who does see and enjoy this film, I for one am out. And this despite the presence of Brad ‘probably the longest-serving celebrity crush’ Pitt.

I will forgive this man many things.

That’s not to say that no adaption exists for fans of the shambling, speed-restricted ghoul. Remember the terrible audiobooks I mentioned before? Well, it would seem that the genre has evolved. After hearing two of my colleagues rave about the World War Z audiobook for a good few hours, I decided to get my mitts on a copy and give it a go….

Ladies and Gentlemen, do you need an excuse to run that extra half-hour at the gym? Do you need motivation to stay in and wait for hours for a parcel you suspect never made it onto the delivery truck? Do you like being creeped out by simple narration from an all-star cast? GET THE WORLD WAR Z AUDIOBOOK. If you’ve already read the book, no matter – this will remind you how great the story is. If you haven’t, it’s a brilliant introduction.

  

And, Hollywood, you can keep your Brad Pitt. This adaptation features Mark Hamill!

Mark Hamill!

Also, Max Brooks himself, Henry Rollins and Simon Pegg, but mainly…

MARK FRICKIN HAMILL!

The style is minimalistic. Brooks, appropriately, plays the part of the interviewer; travelling around the world documenting the testimonies of key players, heroes and victims of the zombie uprising. Each character (Thank God) is played by a different voice actor rather than one actor trying to invent enough accents to go around. Each chapter ends with a little spooky music, but, otherwise, bells and whistles are conspicuous by their absence. The effect is exceedingly creepy.

A lesser-written novel would rely on all sorts of trickery-pokery in order to really capture the audience. This, perhaps, is why the audiobook is a bit of a forgotten genre. Hollywood has huge budgets, CGI and well-known faces to beef up any lacklustre storyline.

When all you have is a voice and some music, flaws are much more niggling and obvious. It really takes a book like World War Z to bring the medium into its own.

So go out, get the audiobook and enjoy. First, however, a couple of warnings.

1)      Find the unabridged version, obviously.

2)      Do not use World War Z as something to listen to whilst drifting off. I had some very interesting dreams last night.

Awesome Like A Hotdog

I have long been a fan of Eddie Izzard’s call to action regarding the re-appropriation of the word Awesome. If you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, see below. See below and then, ideally, finish reading this blog post before feverishly getting your mitts and any and all material produced by comedy’s leading executive transvestite.

Watched it? Good. Continue. Now, if I use that adjective throughout this post, you know that I don’t mean awesome like the two-for-one pizza deal at the local supermarket (“Although,” she says with her mouth full, “that is pretty great”). I don’t even mean awesome like a hundred-billion hot-dogs. 

It may seem petty to split semantic hairs in this way, but I feel that the preamble is necessary. I overuse the term in daily life as much as the next person; - "You're paying in exact change and brought your own bag? AWESOME!" - but in order to describe the book around which this post will be based, we need the term and its original jaw-dropping definition.

She's just stared into the eyes of the Lord...

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is not a small book, either in size or scope. Taking Gods and deities from every culture, religion and cult, Gaiman places them as physical entities in the here and now; struggling to remain relevant in a culture which sees them as historical remnants rather than all-powerful rulers to be worshiped and feared. Their enemies are complacency, modernity and technology - represented in the real world as a new 'breed' of God like figures, Technology and Media.

The disparity between human worship of tradition, religion and myth versus our current fetishisation of modern living would make for a pretty interesting academic paper.  It probably has been done, and yet I don’t move in the circles where academic papers land on my doormat day to day. More’s the pity. Or not -  I’ve never been good at reading long pieces of discourse on the human condition without wanting to pick up my Editor’s pen and reduce the word-count by a few thousand. It’s the frustrated teacher in me, I’m sure.

Sometimes, however, Fiction can take the place of traditional Academia. If the aim is to encourage the reader  to consider how our values have shifted across the centuries, this entirely fantastical story holds its own. As previously mentioned, we are invited to consider whether it is our worship of 'new gods' which has pushed traditional religion aside. I certainly think this may have played a part - the small but intensely irritating group of Hare Krishnas that patrol Oxford Street nine times a day are certainly dedicated (Good GOD who gave them microphones?!), but no more so than the regular queues that appear outside the Apple store whenever a tiny upgrade has been introduced to the operating system. 

Et Tu, Matt Lucas?

We are also asked to think about whether increased migration and the multi-cultural societies that this creates has played its part in the decline of traditional religion. On this, I'm not so sure. Emigration to America did very little to reduce the religious fervour of the Pilgrims. The mass-migration of Jews to the Middle-East has not affected the religious beliefs in the area (if anything, heightening religious identity on both sides). On the other hand, perhaps it is true that in the days where most dwellings were slums and the local church would have been by far the most impressive building in the area, the static nature of society would have played some part in religious feeling.

But back to the book. Along with all these questions of faith, Gaiman has introduced a compellingly human narrative in the form of Shadow, a mortal ex-con dragged kicking and screaming into the politics of Gods as well as a very creepy 'whodunit'. The Gods in American Gods are rather more pliable than in real religion. In the novel they can either serve as conduits for questions of faith such as those mentioned above, or else they can be simply characters - as removed from Academia and philosophical pondering as Spot the Dog or any of the characters from Twilight.

DEEP.

Plus he gives them names and makes them have sex with each other. So... there’s that. Far too little sex in 99% of academic papers. Unless they’re about Foucault. (Bloody Foucault – managed to inflict sexual politics on buildings. Unless we’re talking about the Gherkin I ain’t buying it). 

What is that erection in the distance?