Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 482

Bryant & May – The Graphic Novel!

I may have mentioned (but probably not – you know me) that I've long been planning to write a Bryant & May graphic novel.

The problem was that I couldn't find the right artist. Most don't manage to capture the right style. I wanted someone English purely because of geography – the books have real locations [...]

No Tourist London No.5 – St Pancras Hotel

Rising from the traffic of the Euston Rd like some mad fairytale castle is St Pancras Hotel. There are no tourists here for two main reasons.

1. It hasn't reopened yet – but they're laying the cobbles on the front drive as we speak, and taking the scaffolding down. Some very dramatic lighting is also being [...]

Celebrity 8 – Real Life

My play 'Celebrity' is a comedy based on the life of a real press agent, who'll be attending certain performances of the show. I was thinking we might ask her to do a Q&A one night as an added bonus. The film press agents in the UK all know each other (and have lunch together). [...]

More London Art Deco

Especially for Helen, the McCann Erikson building, Bloomsbury.

No-Tourist London No.4 – Pollocks Toy Museum

What an odd place this is. A combined shop and toy museum in Whitfield Street, just behind Charlotte Street, it started life as a Victorian toy theatre shop (and still sells them, but only Ali Baba and Cinderella), but moved to its present position from Covent Garden in 1969. This morning it opened randomly around [...]

Great Adaptations

Watching the BBC's critically lauded modern-day version of 'Sherlock' last night set me thinking about adaptations.

The general lack of new UK drama on TV (Bryant & May are currently languishing in Development Hell) does remind me of the past's biggest adaptations, from 'Brideshead Revisited' to a not bad (but clearly cash-strapped) version of Patrick [...]

Celebrity's Big (Last) Night

Well, the first night sold out but there are plenty of seats left for now, and we're thinking of making our Last Night a kind of Christmas party with lots of old friends and the real-life press agent in attendance – so if you want to be a part of that mess on your own [...]

Holmes Sweet Holmes

The BBC 'Sherlock' reboot opening episode was just about perfect in the way it transposed past and present, adding layers of meaning to both – it managed not to offend purists, and brought much that was new (and entirely logical) to the party. The addition of modern graphics and gadgetry felt oddly Victorian. Like most [...]

Invisible Amending

This seems to be a new trend in Hollywood – find a film so obscure that nobody remembers seeing it, remake it and quietly pretend it's original, while simultaneously removing the very thing that made it special in the first place. As the Hollywood remake of the Euro-hit 'Anything For Her' heads for the screen [...]

A Thoroughly Wet Read

Actually I went out to get some eggs and fell into a second-hand bookshop (quelle surprise), and ended up buying this nifty collection of stories about swimming pools, with stories from Joyce Carol Oates, AM Homes, Fay Weldon, Graham Swift and many others.

But what makes the collection unique is that – although the book looks [...]