Missing Out - Not Watching The Wire, Watching A Film Day and The Inevitable Mortality of Authors and Readers

At Christmas I was kindly given the complete box set of The Wire which I am slowly working through and enjoying. The Wire is a television programme that many cite as being the best thing ever on television beating even such gems as The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, but despite it's huge critical success I had never actually watched it. The Wire is a drama based in Baltimore about crime that featured the police, journalists, lawyers, criminals and more. Each season took on a different aspect, some being from mainly the perspective of police or journalists, even looking at schools and how they impacted on crime, the important thing being that it was examining crime and the causes of crime. It is odd that such a programme passed me by as it is exactly the sort of thing I would like (including the pretentious kudos of watching an imported high quality drama hailed as the best thing ever that most people haven't watched) and it was even picked out on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and higher nerd praise does not exist. Actually as Spooky Reading Girl pointed out Charlie Brooker didn't just mention it on Screenwipe, when we bumped into him in Edinburgh he told us specifically to watch it.

The best tv show ever?

I was perhaps too young when The Wire started and many people say it is hard to get into with complex dialogue that took no prisoners. There is also definitely a state of mind people enter where they actively resist something that is being watched by everyone else. A lot of people got so annoyed about people asking them if they had watched Breaking Bad, they swore never to watch it. For a long time I did not believe television was capable of making something that was genuinely brilliant. This was a huge hole in my pop culture knowledge and something that I was going to have to address. I held film in high regard and saw television as very much the inferior medium, where even the good stuff was drowned in an ocean of gameshows and reality television. Eventually I changed my opinion and it wasn't just the relatively recent prestige television but realising just how good something like Buffy The Vampire Slayer was. 

Spooky Reading Girl for a long time had a similar problem but with films. When we started going out and we talked about our favourite films, tv shows etc. I felt that she hadn't seen a lot of classic films. Importantly, this doesn't necessarily mean good films, but films that most people have watched, films that are perhaps cultural touchstones. I think everyone  has some gaps in their knowledge, to this day I have not seen Raging Bull despite being a huge Marin Scorese fan. Some of the films that SRG hadn't seen included Rocky (and to this day we argue when SRG refers to The Rocky Horror Picture Show simply as "Rocky", that name is already taken by another very famous film), Back to the Future, any James Bond film, any of the Star Wars films and eventually she became tired of the exasperated cries of "How have you never seen Back to the Future!" and for a year watched a film a day, crossing off many of these films. Spooky Reading Girl found it a very interesting experience and watched, and loved, many films that she wouldn't have normally watched. It also got her, and by extension me, into listening to Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film radio show.

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode do the best film
show in all of radio, tv and podcast land - hello to Jason Isaacs

There have been many other things that I got into late, or in the wrong order. I loved The Foo Fighters before I even knew about Nirvana. I didn't buy any LCD Soundsystem albums until after they had broken up. Being born in 1983 I missed the 1960s, the decade I consider to be the best in music history so what chance did I have? There will be numerous bands lost in the mists of time that I would love and will remain forever hidden. I only watched Firefly when it was being repeated for the fiftieth time on the Sci-Fi channel and that is one of my all time favourites.

Usually when people talk about things they have missed or haven't got round to watching yet are cultural behemoths, Star Wars, Bond films, The Simpsons, things that even if you don't like them you should still watch them as they will help you understand culture better (I have heard this argument used for both Shakespeare and the Bible). Some things though are missed because they were never that successful or always just maintained a cult following. Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is one of the funniest programmes ever on television and there is a grand total of six episodes, just the one series on Channel 4, but to merely mention the name Thornton Reed is enough to reduce some people to laughter. Arrested Development, perhaps the best sitcom in the history of American television struggled for three seasons to find an audience but was eventually cancelled (Netflix did give the show a reprieve). Films like Vertigo or television shows like Twin Peaks are going to be glaring omissions but with really cult things you might never even be aware of what you're missing out on.

Arrested Development - Arguably the best sitcom that hardly anyone has seen

Marcus Brigstock hosted a very interesting radio, and later television, show called I've Never Seen Star Wars on which the guests would check through a list of things that most people have done, with having seen Star Wars being used as the classic example. The show would then pick some of these things to - the guest would watch Scarface, or eat sushi, or listen to The Archers. Most of the time the guest would not really enjoy whatever new thing they had done, as after all, people will probably know whether they will like something like The Archers but occassionally they would really enjoy the experience and it is certainly true that that has happened to me, where my conception of what something was like was completely inaccurate. When Harry Met Sally is a good example as I had expected a very boring, very straight forward romantic comedy (the second worse genre of film after musicals) but was in fact something very different and far more interesting and funny than I had anticipated.

I have heard some people say they won't start reading a series of books until the series has been completed, so they know it has been finished (poor George R. R, Martin, creator of the Games of Thrones series of books has to endure constant speculation about his own health). There is a similar thing with tv shows with people not wanting to invest time in a show that gets cancelled after one season. This is all well and good but what about if it's not the cancellation of a show or death of an author that is worrying, what if it's your own mortality? Dying is a pretty bad thing to happen but knowing that almost certainly I will die in the middle of a book is incredibly frustrating. I will die in the middle of excellent tv programmes or eagerly awaiting a sequel or I've bought tickets to see a comedian but will never make it. This would all be okay if I believed in an afterlife but as an unapologetic atheist I know I will miss out.

The Game Of Thrones series of books -
 more correctly known as A Song Of Ice and Fire

But does it really matter? Even if I accept that my own mortality and the vastness of culture available means it is impossible to see, read and listen to everything worthwhile...is that such a bad thing? It might not be objectively bad but it seems an awful shame to miss out on the good stuff especially when so much bad stuff is inflicted on me without even asking for it. I am rather proud of the cultural island I have managed to construct where I can keep most of the bad stuff out but even so I have heard songs by Justin Bieber, I have seen clips of Mrs Brown's Boys and even suffered the mindnumbing banality of The One Show and there is something wrong with a world where I haven't found the time to watch Raging Bull but have seen Batman And Robin.

"Revenge Is Sweet and Not Fattening" Alfred Hitchcock - Revenge in films, comedy and even a musical

Minor spoilers for The Revenant, Rushmore, The Machinist and Munich


Often when watching a film based on a true story the viewer will often think, "I couldn't have done that. I wouldn't have been able to take it." Well in Leonardo Di Caprio's latest role in The Revenant that is certainly true, I couldn't have endured what his character did. I also don't think I could have endured what Leonardo Di Caprio endured just doing the acting. It looked really hard. The Revenant is a story of revenge and what a person will go through to fulfill their desire for vengeance. Di Caprio's character is brutally savaged by a bear and left for dead, his revenge sustaining him and certainly at numerous points I thought, "I would give up, I would die". After all what does the character have to look forward to? It's the 1820s so medical science is not going to do much for him. Still, perhaps revenge will be enough. Revenge is a well trodden topic in pop culture and rarely does it turn out well for everyone.

My favourite example of revenge in film is quite possibly the wonderful feud Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman's characters find themselves in in Wes Anderson's brilliant Rushmore. After Murray stole the woman of his dreams Jason Schwartzman's Max Fischer started a mad revenge against his former friend. A brief montage of their quickly escalating war is perfectly soundtracked by A Quick One While He's Away by The Who.

The greatest revenge fantasy (I'm hoping it is a fantasy) I have heard was from the comedian Paul Foot. I first saw Paul Foot at the 100 Club in London, Adam Buxton was headlining the gig and there were five or six acts on. One of them was Paul Foot. I did recognise Paul Foot from television, and if you have even glimpsed him once you will remember what Paul Foot looks like, but I didn't really know much about him. He did twenty minutes of material all on the subject of getting revenge on the landladies of Bed & Breakfasts and it is probably the funniest twenty minutes of standup I have ever seen. I love it when comedians have a short amount of time and instead of doing lots of short jokes put all their comedic eggs in one weird basket and Paul Foot did that. Paul Foot's revenge on the landlady was to put them through a complex themed nightmare which resulted in him smashing their collection of porcelain dollies including the precious "Super Dolly" with a tomahawk.

Rushmore is essentially a comedy and Paul Foot is definitely a comedian, and so the revenge can only go so far. It takes something more serious to get really into the depths of revenge. The Machinist is essentially a man taking revenge on himself. It stars Christian Bale as the eponymous machinist who is on some odd quest to destroy himself by losing as much weight as possible. Bale got a lot of attention as he actually did drop a lot of weight to play the role and Bale is almost skeletal in the film. He then put all of the weight he had lost back on and more to star in Christopher Nolan's Batman films then lost it all to be in The Fighter and then put on a lot of weight, and not in the attractive Batman way, for American Hustle where the first shot was of a balding Bale with a fat stomach.

The many different physiques of Christian Bale, I'll let
you work out for yourself which one was for Batman

I can only hope that Bale is never cast as someone with only one eye or hand as he may decide not to trouble the makeup and special effects teams and sort it out on his own. Whether or not such drastic weight loss and gain is a prerequisite for doing these roles I don't know and I would think it would be entirely reasonable for such drastic changes in appearance to be handled by makeup and special effects. I do think Bale is one of the best actors currently working. Anyway back to the film, why Bale's character is punishing himself is slowly revealed in the film and a shot of a healthy and normal weight Bale at the end of the film showed just how much had gone into his transformation.

Steven Spielberg's Munich is I think an often overlooked film and I am a big fan of it. Philosophically revenge is given pretty short shrift in most films, books etc, that ultimately you're harming yourself as much as those who've wronged you. and "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" is often hailed as the most wise advice. Munich is largely based on the true story of the murder at the 1972 Munich Olympics of eleven Israeli athletes by a Palestinian terrorist organisation. The film details Israel's response to this attack. Eric Bana is the Mossad agent (Israeli intelligence) who is tasked with hunting down those responsible.

Working in very secretive conditions the team set out across the Middle East and Europe killing their targets. Showing the slippery slope of vengeance more names keep getting added to the list, perhaps people who had nothing to do with the specific Munich attack but are enemies of Israel. The Israeli team, but particularly Bana, feel increasingly uneasy with the ever expanding list of targets and the each succumbs to the paranoia this life leads to - for example early in the film they put a bomb under someone's bed and one tells a story of a spy colleague who never slept in his bed and slept in the closet instead, for fear of a bomb being under his bed, something which Bana started to do towards the end of the film. The revenge Israel sought inevitably only escalated the violence and made the situation worse. All of the characters that made up Bana's team lost something in following the revenge mission.

Finally, something from a genre I don't usually like; musicals. Perhaps my favourite musical ever is Gutted: A Revengers Musical. The show was written by Danielle Ward and Martin White and is an over the top musical about a woman, Sorrow, whose parents were killed when she was a child and the terrible revenge she planned against the culprit - she will grow up, marry him and then kill all of  his family. Not only are the songs great it is funny throughout and a fun feature is that every character is named after a David Bowie song or lyric (Sorrow, Kook, Jean). The cast featured some of the best standup comedians going - Thom Tuck, Humphrey Ker and David Reed of The Penny Dreadfuls, Sara Pascoe, Michael Legge and more. Tuck, Ker and Reed played two sets of characters, the first set are three spirits that are there to help Sorrow carry out her revenge and then in the second half a trio of police officers sent to investigate the murders; they have the best song in the whole show, In We You Can Trust, in which they encouraged Sorrow.

The revenge obsessed Sorrow

The whole thing is free to download via Sound Cloud (Gutted Musical) as well as other work by Danielle Ward and Martin White (such as Psister Psycho - a musical about an insane arms dealing robot nun obviously). The best recommendation I can give it is that as someone who loves music but typically hates musicals I loved it.