Charles Purcell's Blog, page 18

Words To Watch This Season

ONE for the writers/journos/word lovers … my column for the Walkley mag about style guides and “Words to watch”. 

My military thriller, The Spartan, is out now through Amazon.

My fellow gamers, when did we become the bad guys?

My fellow gamers, when did we become the bad guys?.

My fellow gamers, when did we become the bad guys?

I had a sudden thought the other day as I was wandering through dungeons in cult video game Dark Souls. As I stabbed families of rats with my +5 lightning spear to harvest their Humanity, I thought: “Wait a minute. What am I doing here? These rats have done nothing to me. Have I actually become the bad guy?”
It’s something gamers rarely think about as we wander through forests, castles, keeps, mountains and dungeons, slaying any of the inhabitants that happen to cross our paths (and who look like they might be packing gold/loot/experience points). What right do we have to lay waste to entire communities of non-humans who are just minding their own business?
As we strap on plate armour, power up our rail guns and rock up into foreign terrain looking for things to kill, we call it  “adventure” – and yet, for the creatures we’re about to slay, they might call it “invasion”.
No, I’m not making some political point about human behaviour here. I’m just sparing a thought for the beings that end up on the wrong end of my vorpal sword/plasma lance/wand of fireballs.
We’re taking out entire communities of sentient beings here, people, societies that have existed long enough to presumably build their own café cultures and local music scenes.
Sure, those Orcs look mean and ugly (and are sure to be packing gold pieces), but does that give me the right to waste their entire clan? Maybe one of their Orc offspring might have grown up to be Orc president. Now we’ll never know.
And what about those most retro of foes – dragons? We don’t really know how he or she amassed all its gold and jewels from. Maybe he inherited it from a long-lost archdragon uncle. Maybe it’s profit-sharing from an enterprise with the local elves, providing much-needed jobs throughout the region. Maybe he runs a successful chain of Fair Trade coffee outlets. Just because the dragon is giant, scaly and mean-looking, that doesn’t mean we’re justified in killing it so we can buy precious upgrades for our weapons and armour.
The game designers will make it easy for you to kill Smaug and his ilk by depicting dragons as hideous, misshapen monsters: you may not feel so comfortable if they had the face of one of those cute little puppies all tangled up in toilet rolls like in those TV ads.
I can hear the voice of my fellow gamers interjecting here. “What are you, some kind of pinko?” they’ll say. “You sound like that commie ‘bug lover’ from the movie Starship Troopers, who claimed the arachnids only started attacking Earth after we invaded their territory. They just blew up Buenos Aires, bug lover! Whose side are you on?”
I applaud the rise of video games such as Dishonoured that reward you for not killing everything in sight. It takes genuine skill to slink through the shadows to complete your mission, rather than stand in the middle of the street, sword in hand, flaming torch in the other, and scream “who wants a piece of me”?
Even killing guards and henchmen – the traditional sport of gamers – has consequences. Kill them and you’re leaving a family somewhere without a father and a breadwinner. Like the movie Austen Powers says: “Nobody thinks about the henchmen’s family.”
And games like Spec Ops: The Line twist the narrative by making you look at the consequences of your actions, asking you in game questions like: “Do you feel like a hero yet?”
I’ll feel like more of a hero if I can avoid gratuitously killing indigenous wildlife on the way to killing the really evil big bosses. If only I didn’t need that gold/Humanity/shiny new set of armour as well.
Let’s just hope the game designers don’t have me kicking Ewoks in the nuts for experience points next.

My military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

Happy 47th birthday, Will Ferrell!

Originally posted on charlespurcellblog:

IT’S the American funnyman and actor’s birthday today, which brings to mind the time I got to interview him and his co-star John C. Reilly for Talladega Nights.

You can read the interview here.

Happy birthday, Will!

View original

Happy 47th birthday, Will Ferrell!

IT’S the American funnyman and actor’s birthday today, which brings to mind the time I got to interview him and his co-star John C. Reilly for Talladega Nights.

You can read the interview here.

Happy birthday, Will!

Why everyone thinks they have a musical in them … and why maybe they should leave it in there

I READ with interest today’s news that Rocky the Musical will close on Broadway next month after only 28 previews and 188 regular performances at the Winter Garden Theatre.
The news brings me some amusement because, from my time in entertainment journalism, particularly at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Metro lift-out, I know there is no greater folly that trying to start up a musical from scratch.
The story of the maverick prepared to sacrifice everything to chase their dream – in this case, the poignant story of a mumbling boxer who achieves redemption through the pugilistic arts – is an old one.
The musical theatrical genre is full of  people who’ve bankrupted themselves to pursue their vision. You need a great songbook, truly original concept or guaranteed crowd puller (like Cate Blanchett is with Sydney Theatre Company plays) to make a fist of it in musicals, where profit margins are already slender. And musicals can be hugely expensive to put on, so you need to get that concept idea right in the first place.
While working on Metro I can recall a cavalcade of new and sometimes intriguing musicals coming across the pages. But one has to wonder why Menopause the Musical was a success whereas one man’s self-funded puppet opera failed to inspire the box office. Or why Mamma Mia! was huge while other musicals based on movies (cough, cough) underwhelmed.
It would be cruel to name some of the failures here, particularly if their creators are still in the industry. But with such a high rate of failure for new projects, I can understand why theatre and musical types like to stick with tried and true plays and musicals rather than take the financial and critical risk of anything new.
But there does seem to be a belief that just about anything can become a musical. It’s just like the idea that if you put anything “on ice” it’s automatically better. Just add the right ingredient and, wham, you’ve got the next Tommy.
The improbability of the ideas behind some of the most famous musicals encourage adventurous (even foolhardy) thinking. On the face of it, the idea of a musical about caterwauling cats sounds mad. Surely, you think, if you wanted to listen to howling alley cats, you only had to open your window at midnight and hear the nightly a cappella chorus. But sure enough, despite some catty criticism, Cats was hugged to the collective bosom.
I have no idea what Starlight Express is about. Rollerskating? Trains? Some nightmarish Dr Frankenstein-style experiment where half-men, half-train hybrids sang loudly that they “shouldn’t be”? But it seemed to be big when I was a kid.
Chess? You’re going to make a musical about a board game? Are you mad? Bafflingly, folks seemed to love it (and I do love Murray Head’s song One Night In Bangkok).
Plus when everyone got their kit out in Hair, it meant that anything went on stage.
After that, it almost became a dinner party game to see what could be turned into a musical by simply adding “the Musical” after its title. (“Grouting the Musical?” “Enemas the Musical?” Hours of fun for the whole family.)
Mind you, I’m not complete averse to musicals. One musical I’m really hanging out for is Tim Minchin’s upcoming Groundhog Day the Musical. I would also like to see Spinal Tap’s Jack the Ripper-themed musical, Saucy Jack, if the full-length version is ever made.
It’s not really a musical, but Ben-Hur the Stage Spectacular seems to me to epitomise the kind of high-concept nonsense that should have been nipped in the bud right from the beginning. Then again, maybe I’m bitter because I auditioned for a part all with hundreds of others at a cattle call at ANZ Stadium only to be rejected.
The show went on to attract some of the most scathing reviews I’d ever seen for a big-scale theatrical production in Sydney.
Although I like to believe it flopped because they didn’t cast me. 

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is out now on Amazon.

“Bread, I am your toaster.”

A DARTH Vader Star Wars toaster. What’s not to like?

I want one, please.

My military thriller, The Spartan, has no mentions of Darth Vader toasters, but perhaps the sequel I’m working on will. In the meantime, the non-toaster version can be purchased on Amazon.

 

“What drives an ‘ordinary man’ to violence?”

As I was returning a video at the video store yesterday, I noticed a trailer for a new action movie called The Outsider.
Basically, our “outsider” falls into “the ‘ordinary’ man driven to violence after his daughter is threatened” Hollywood trope. I can just imagine the voice-over: [in deep growly voice] “They messed with his family. They messed with THE WRONG MAN!”
It seems that Hollywood imagines that every man has an inner psychopath/gunman/axe murderer/shamwow strangler lurking within, just waiting for the right inciting incident to unlock and justify his murderous mayhem.
Fortunately for Hollywood, a lot of these “ordinary” men seem to be ex Green Berets/CIA assassins/WWF wrestlers/betrayed undercover cops/vampires, so when they go on their rampages, it’s really exciting.
Incidentally, I was in the video store to return 3 Days To Kill. Kevin Costner plays a retired and dying CIA hitman who goes on a killing spree so he can get an experimental drug to let him live longer … so he can spend more time with his estranged daughter.
See the link? Hollywood says it’s OK to launch a Rambo-esque rampage as long as someone dares to threaten your family, particularly your daughter. It’s the same set-up in the ultra-high body count Commando, where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter is kidnapped by criminals, morally permitting the retired elite Black Ops Commando to launch a rampage of biblical proportions. (Look at the picture above – Arnie just want to retire in the woods with his kid and feed deer. Deer! Why can’t those bastard drug lords leave him alone?)
And again, with Taken, where retired CIA agent Liam Neeson is forced to unlock a can of whup-arse and his “particular set of skills” when his daughter is kidnapped.
If only these dudes spent more time protecting their daughters, they wouldn’t have to go on bloody rampages in the first place.
Even future “godfather” Michael Corleone cites the threat to his family as his justification for heading a mafia empire. That way we can cheer him on – even forgive him – when he orders his own brother to be executed (poor Fredo!).
The inciting incident is just a moral figleaf so we can cheer on our favourite psycho as he mows down “bad guys” in the type of massacre that would have him locked up forever if he did it in the real world.
It also allows us to indulge in our own Death Wish fantasies of turning vigilante. How far would WE have to be “pushed” to take the law into our own hands? Sure, as accountants/journalists/record store owners/supermarket grocery clerks we wouldn’t have any “particular set of skills” to fall back on, but our moral righteousness would allow us to “get the job done”, right?
What I’d like to see is a variation in the moral justification for the killing spree. Maybe “they served him the wrong cappuccino … now they’ll serve coffee in HELL”. Or “the phone call said ‘your call is important to us’ … but they just TELEMARKETED the wrong man”. Or maybe even “they said they’ll deliver the pizza in 30 minutes or less … now he’s stark naked, walking the streets with a loaded crossbow, hunting down tardy pizza delivery boys everywhere”.
Of course, when a truly ordinary man without military skills/mafia connections/supernatural werewolf powers seeks vengeance, the results aren’t quite as pretty. When Dustin Hoffman goes Peckinpah on the arses of English hoods in Straw Dogs, we’re not sure how we feel about it and him.
And it’s hard to cheer on Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down, even though the things that force him to crack – unemployment, rising prices, urban decay and decline – are the type of dangers “ordinary people” face every day, rather than international drug cartels threatening to kidnap our children.
For my money, I’ve always liked the premise of Loaded Weapon 1, where Emilio Estevez plays a Mel Gibson-type burnt-out cop, whose violence excesses can be explained by the loss of his beloved dog, Claire.
More of that, please.  

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is out now on Amazon.

My ode to Dolph Lundgren … the last straight-to-video action hero

I’VE always had a soft spot for Dolph Lundgren. He now has official “tenure” as an ageing action star in The Expendables series, but there was a time where he did hard time in all the straight-to-video action movies at the local video store.
Whenever I’d enter I’d always see his forlorn face on the covers of some incomprehensible shoot-’em-up, adopting a grim look of determination as he girded himself to see through 90 minutes of pure pap.
He was like the Rambo of the rental market – no matter how many flops he made, he just got back up on his feet for another drubbing. He was like Rocky, only Swedish. And blond. He was busy conquering Hollywood in reverse.
Until, of course, he hit the big time with The Expendables.
If I ever interviewed him, I always imagined it would go something like this …
“Welcome Dolph. Glad you could make it.”
Dolph (wearing a black tux): “Huurr … urgh.” (He always talks like he has a ball gag in his mouth. Is that because I think he talks like Sylvester Stallone in real life – or I just don’t want to hear what he has to say in case it shatters my opinion of him?)
“So what’s the piece of guff I see in the video store shelves today, Dolph? Ambushed? Imdb.com gave it 3.8 stars out of 10. Ouch.
“Nnnn.”
“And Loaded mag says ‘it stars the dream team of action stars’. But Vinnie Jones and Randy Couture aren’t exactly the dream team of action stars, are they?”
“Hunnhh.”
“Hope you don’t mind me saying that. I know you can snap me in half like a chicken wing.”
“Rrrrrr.”
“I remember the days when you were a leading man in such classics as Rocky V. Your Ivan Drago was great. [Adopts Russian accent] ‘I must break you.” Awesome.”
“Gunf.”
“And you played He-Man in Masters of the Universe. I must say, you were great as that scantily clad sword-wielding blond maniac. (Shouts) ‘I have the powerrrr!’”
(Lundgren looks visibly uncomfortable at the screaming.) “Hunnh!”
“And Skeletor … he was a dick.”
“Mmmm.”
“Still, I’m starting to see a trend in your movies: brainless beefcake who saves the day. Do you think you’re being typecast?”
“Huhh … huhhhh!”
“You’re not really getting the challenging roles, are you? No one is casting you in Shakespeare. If you were in any high-art film they’d have to dub your voice like they did Andie MacDowell in Greystoke.”
“Arrgghh!”
“Was that ‘rrrr’ or ‘argghh’?”
“Arrgghh!”
“Thought so. Just didn’t want to transcribe it wrong. I think people have cruelly underestimated you, Dolph. May I call you Dolph?”
“Gnnn!”
“Dolph it is. But yes, you are capable of so much more. For example, how many people realise that you have a master’s in chemical engineering from Sydney Uni?”
“Huhh! Huhhh!”
“Or that you were awarded a Fullbright Scholarship. People would look at you in a different way. Not many folks have been punched in the face by a Fullbright Scholar.”
“Gnnn! Gnnnn!”
“There must be days when you wish that you stayed in chemical engineering. Then perhaps people would respect you more.”
(Bows head forlornly) “Brrrggg.”
“Instead you’re the poster boy of straight-to-video guff. Sorry to point that out. You know I’m a big fan. (Pause) Hmmm … I’m just thinking, I’ve asked you some very personal questions here. I don’t think it would be remiss of you to punch me in the nose for my impertinence.”
“Nnnnnnn.”
“I thank you for your restraint. Just for the record – I loved you in The Punisher. I think your treatment of vigilante Frank Castle will remain the seminal Punisher.”
“Huuy … gargh!”
“Funny how the Yanks always want to cast you as Russian, though, even though you’re Swedish. Not that the Americans would know much different. Half of them confuse Australia with Austria.”
“Mmm, mmm! Mmmm, mmm!”
“Are you talking back to me, Dolph? Because I will slap you! I will slap you silly!”
“Bmmmm.”
“Good. Good. Just don’t give up, Dolph. We’re all relying on you to keep making those movies. If you stop, then that will mean some essential part of Western masculinity has died. The day you can’t walk into a video store and see your mug or Steven Seagal’s on the cover of a B-grade action flick … well, I never want to see that day.”
“Thank you.”

My military thriller, The Spartan, is out now on Amazon.

“How long can all this superhero business last?”

SUCH was the question asked by a friend while we were discussing whether to see the latest X-Men movie, X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
It’s an interesting question. There is probably no magic ball for Hollywood to consult to figure out when to stop exploiting a trend, be it ninjas or dinosaurs or disaster movies or hobbits, elves and dwarves.
But there is one key indicator that acts as a good guide – whether they’re still making money.
And making money they are. The Avengers movie broke the billion-dollar mark. The Captain America, Iron Man and Spider-Man movies are all making hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even the Tolkien franchise – which you could argue falls under the “superhero” banner, or at least features beings with powers far beyond those of ordinary men – is still going strong. Marvel’s film studio offshoot is valued more than the original comic-book arm and the comics it makes films about. (People might not being buying comics featuring Batman and Superman in large numbers any more … or, sadly, even The Phantom … but their non-comic-book-reading brethren are going to the cinemas in droves.)
And the superhero craze currently shows little sign of waning.
Kick-Ass’s graphic novelist and creator, Mark Millar, told me in 2010 that he saw a bright future in comic-book adaptations.
“The second [Christopher Nolan] Batman movie broke the billion mark. The three X-Men movies have grossed $US1.5 billion. These movies are making a fortune and they attract the A-list of writers, directors and actors. There’s no other genre in cinema that has the batting average of superhero movies. Whatever it is about these things, they’re still riding high.
“And if Kick-Ass – which only cost $US35 million to make – comes out like them, that’ll just take things to a whole new level again.”
And that was back in 2010. Now there are dozens of superhero movies in the pipeline.
Kick-Ass didn’t blow away the box-office quite like Batman, but it did do well enough to spawn a sequel, with a third on the way.
So why superheroes, you ask? And why now?
One of the reasons is that technology has caught up to the point where you can realistically depict the adventures of a superhero on screen. Somehow they made Superman work with green screen magic, but the Spiderman and Hulk movies of the ’70s just looked ridiculous (even though seeing Lou Ferrigno rip his shirt when he “Hulked out” looked cool. PS I got to hug Lou once. I felt so safe and warm.).
And the first Captain America movie? Plain embarrassing.
But current tech allows Hollywood to finally do justice to these tales, to craft realistic rockets, lasers, flying webs, flying shields and flying gods. (Even Jim Cameron had to wait for technology to catch up to his vision of filming Avatar, wisely deciding that making people wear blue paint on their faces just wouldn’t work.)
”The current technology lends itself perfectly to the superhero movies and now they can be taken seriously,” said Peter Bagge, creator of the cult comic book series Hate, when I interviewed him in 2012. “All of a sudden you can really feel like you’re in a comic book and the creator’s imagination and things are happening the way the creators tried to express in the comic book.”
So I’m afraid that for the time being those sick of capes on screen will have to put up with them. Maybe the next big thing will be sci-fi or space stuff. Or more YA vampire stuff.
But until then, get used to seeing the interwebs clogged up with debates over whether Ben Affleck will make a good Batman.

My ebook The Spartan is out now through on Amazon www.amazon.com/Spartan-Charles-Purcell-ebook/dp/B00JGEBTKG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1404127987&sr=8-3&keywords=The+Spartan