If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Occasionally a side project comes along that touches my heart so deeply that I just have to tell you all about it:

Project Bush is seeking to destigmatise the porncentric expectations of femaile pubic hair.

How?

Glad you asked.

By getting as many of you as possible to go to Mother on the 3rd of October to have your own topiary (or lack thereof) photographed anonymously for an exhibition.

As the organisers put it:

A project designed to encourage debate and discussion about choice in pubic hair, and to show there’s more to vaginas than their current representation in porn.

It’s not about exhibitionism. It’s not about pornography. It’s about choice.

We are going to photograph bushes in all their glory, totally anonymously and very beautifully, in our Bush Booth next Thursday 3rd October here at Mother.

Be there.

You have nothing to lose but the opportunity of having someone anonymously photograph your muff.

If you were on the blog late last night you might have seen a link to, and a cut-and-paste from, this site.

It’s a huge amount of brilliant screenwriting advice from Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, the guys behind Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean and Aladdin (as well as this year’s less successful Lone Ranger).

Anyway, apparently my cut-and-paste fucked their site up, so now there’s just the link.

Click on it to find out about how ideas (not just screenwriting ones) live and die, the Raiders Of The Lost Ark method of cramming more words onto a page, and why letting your first excellent screenplay go unmade is a really smart thing to do.

In the ever-expanding world of car analogy ads I found this one to be refreshingly fun.

http://vimeo.com/66487005

Back in 1991 Extreme made clear the importance of using ‘more than words’.

It was a magical, beautiful song, but also unwittingly prescient.

We now operate in a world of visual-verbal communication that is vastly different even to ten years ago. We now write so many texts, IMs, status updates, Tweets and emails that they are now our primary form of communication. Whether we write ‘to you’ or ‘2U’,’I’m happy’ or :-), there is a need to make the written word work harder so that it carries the delicate nuances we use to shape our spoken words.

As a fan of the evolution of the English language, I rather like neologisms such as ‘pwned’ and ‘teh’, but I realise they have to be pointed in the right direction and I’m aware that occasionally putting those words in the communications of someone who is pushing 40 has a kind of self-conscious irony (that might only be in my head). I sometimes add ‘z’ to ‘skill’ for that very reason, and whether I refer to the internet as ‘t’internet’ or the interwebs or whatever the ‘amusing’ nom du jour might be, it’s all gravy (there I go again).

So a word is not just a word. If I say chair there is little meaning beyond that thing we all sit on, but whether or not I sign off an email with ‘cheers’, ‘best’, ‘Bx’ or any one of several other options depends on who I’m talking to, how well I know them, how they sign off their emails and the mood I’m trying to convey. I usually go for ‘cheers’ because it’s noncommittally affable as well as versatile, but there are plenty of people who would think something was wrong with me if I didn’t add a little ‘x’ to the end.

Emoticons also fascinate me. I think they’ve changed from being irredeemably twee to being essential additions to many communications. Because we live in a world so steeped in irony it’s difficult not to have, say, a sarcasm font that allows us to make a joke a little clearer. For me this is where the 😉 (I always use the nose, BTW) comes in. I’m joking, but not 🙂 happy. Actually, I think that’s the only emoticon I use, but I use it daily.

Then we have grammar. I sense a new role for the much-maligned exclamation mark: like the emoticon it started off as a sledgehammer that ought to be used sparingly, but I now find myself adding it my emails to kind of suggest I’m in a good mood about what I’ve written. Consider how ‘thanks’ looks compared to ‘thanks!’. I feels the latter denotes a brighter, cheerier form of gratitude, while the former can seem grumpy or reluctant. Of course, both of these depend on the context, but it’s just another example of how we are (or at least I am) having to adapt written style to more accurately convey meaning or mood.

I think it’s a very interesting time for English: old prejudices must be reexamined and new ways forward explored. There is much trial and error to come, but I think that a written English that can work as hard a the spoken version is both welcome and overdue!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: I didn’t know WordPress would turn my emoticons into yellow faces. That was not, and never has been, my intention 🙁

Sublime… Sartre Wars (thanks, T):

Behind the scenes of Rosemary’s Baby (thanks, T).

Photos of New York, 1970-1989 (thanks, G).

And vintage crime scenes superimposed on modern photos of New York (also thanks, G).

Octopi make chameleons look like dogs’ nuts.

More accidental penises (thanks, J).

Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling (thanks, G).

Difficult-to-strip-to hits (thanks, R).

The writer of Out Of Sight and Get Shorty on writing movies:

The habits of happy people (thanks, G).

I’ve posted clips before, but here is all of ‘Talking Funny’:

Have an acid trip without taking acid (thanks, R).

Terrible estate agent photos (thanks, G).

Stairway To Heaven brilliantly reworked by Heart. Yes, Heart. (Thanks, R.):

Ah, South African students… (Thanks, G):

Looking for a technique to steal for your ad? (Thanks, N.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzlh18EvVDs

Directed by Gondry (he’s back too!).

(Thanks, G: for the title and the link.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbRVMua0HUc

Shame about the enormous tornado of shite at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3U9-2HKyZU

(Somewhat NSFW later.)

Is here.

For those of you not familiar with this venerable institution:

‘Straight 8 invites anyone anywhere to make a short film on one cartridge of super 8 — without editing. The first time filmmakers see their film is at one of our awesome worldwide premieres, like at our infamous Cannes Film Festival screening…watch some of our best films, check out our guest editor’s picks, come to one of our events, or join our mailing list.‘

Visit the site, download the app, make a film…