Magic Lantern Tomes

I took a jaunt along High Street recently with Shantoozy and Hissy Kitty and I lay-byed some film related books at a bookshop there. I’m getting back into compiling my film reference book library. I am a collector. I face that fact. I embrace it. I personally like collecting things that have a practical purpose, like books and DVDs. There are collectors who go too far and one mustn’t go too far, of course. What is ‘too far’? I suppose buying a book on the overrated Tom Hanks or the rubbishy films of Michael Bay would, for examples, be going too far.

I appreciate and can personally relate to what Martin Scorsese said about his own film reference book library - he finds them inspiring. Of course, his medium is solely film, whereas mine is writing of various kinds – stage-plays, screenplays, novels, poetry, reviews, short stories – I ain’t choosy – but the inspirational effect is similar. In fact, my writing has generally always possessed a cinematic quality. Apparently, James Joyce concocted his novel “Ulysses” in the form of a movie.

My first novel was originally conceived as a film but if you want total creative control over your work then film is probably the last medium I’d recommend – unless you are extremely fortunate, you are going to have to compromise and bow down to the demands of many other people who also have fingers in the pot of what is at best a collective art form and at worst a collective industry – or else you’ll be forced to make poorly funded garage-style movies which generally can’t but help look cheaply made and whose budgetary constraints also dictate much compromise. I’m certainly not against working in these ways; indeed, I plan to make a couple of short, poorly funded films in the near future (there are benefits to be gained from such work) and have plans for co-writing with Shantoozy what we hope may be a commercially viable feature film, but my most serious work shall still be of the printed-on-paper variety, I think. At least, at this juncture.

I also have eventual plans for a novel about a bullying film critic.

I realize that I was feeling somewhat displaced having turned away from my interest in cinema history. A great benefit of my continually growing knowledge in this area, through personal as well as tertiary study, means that I will be able to teach about it when I attain the appropriate degree/s. Of course, it’s early days yet and so who knows? I may end up becoming an hobo instead.