The Girl in the Windo

Narrative journalism might be a dying breed. At least, narrative journalism of the detailed and lengthy variety that immerses you entirely in another life. Various opinions have been offered as to why this might be happening, with the most obvious suggestion being the effect of skim-reading on the internet just becomes too entrenched of a habit.

I'd like to be optimistic and believe that as long as a truly compelling, genuine story comes by, narrative journalism will remain alive.

Poynter Online pointed me, online (ugh, i hate myself) to this article that takes us into the life of Danielle;

A 7-year-old girl, unable to speak or feed herself, discovered in a filthy, roach-infested room, her diaper overflowing and her body covered with bites. How do you tell a story like this? Poynter's St. Petersburg Times responded by clearing its Sunday features section and devoting six ad-free pages to a 6,500-word narrative and haunting photographs of the girl and her adoptive family.

The project was the result of months of reporting and photographing by two gifted journalists, as well as a behind-the-scenes team. The story is worth a reader's time. And for journalists, it's worth analyzing for lessons learned, including this: A few months into the project, reporter Lane DeGregory and photographer Melissa Lyttle found themselves without compelling content for the Web and had to retrace their steps in reporting this story. (Here's the multimedia presentation.)

Go ahead, click this link, or if you're more of a image & sound kind of person, click this one.

They're both examples of the best sort of journalism, and a careful merging of the two might just be a useful platform based on which narrative journalism can thrive.

As Roy Peter Clark writes, talking about the story,

Here's one argument about the future of newspapers. They should contain more of the elements that make the online experience compelling: shorter bites of information, greater interactivity, links to other resources. But, in spite of its enlightened online presence, "The Girl in the Window" represents the opposite of that experience. It is decidedly Old School in the time required to investigate and write it, in its scope and length, and in its vision of what a reader is willing to enter into. The story says to the reader: "You say you don't have TIME to read this, but we bet you can find the time to read THIS."

If you're interested in journalism and the way it's developing, definitely click that link, and wash it all down with one more analytic response, including an interview of the two journalists who worked on the project.

And finally, if you're still reading this, revel in the fact that you have just contributed to the Fourth Estate, and are part of proof, if you're into those things, that we can still find humanity in ordinary (in this case, compassionately ordinary) lives.

Excelsior.

It's the pictures that got small

At a time when the Classical period of American film was coming to an end, and the foreign concepts of film noir and the 'auteurship' of movies had begun their invasion of Hollywood, Billy Wilder was already making post-modern studies of how the industry affected people. Right out of the box-office, Sunset Boulevard, was considered an instant classic as well as a fetching look at the lives of a culture that was just embracing it's second phase; the post-war, post-studio time when the big stars who had been treated like American Royalty from the very beginning were realising that their time had come and gone.

We don't need any more self-reflexive movies about fallen stars dripping with narcissism, middle-aged angst and a misplaced sense of time. Not when we have the brilliant Gloria Swanson, who was playing herself, under the name of Norma Desmond; a 53 year old former queen of the silent era, unimaginably rich yet unemployed for at least 2 decades. Desmond lives in a massive mansion, filled with photos, portraits and trinkets dedicated to herself, with an utterly, loyal butler, and nothing else.

Nothing, that is, until Joe Gillis, a 'burning-out' cynical screenwriter unable to sell his stories, accidentally walks into Norma's house. It's easy to imagine what happens next, and Wilder, who had already perfected his noir style with the standard-setting Double Indemnity, a few years earlier, quickly takes us down the path were Joe thinks he's got himself an easy job rewriting a script for Norma's 'return to fame'. Instead, he gets entrapped by the convenience of rich living while also acting as a plaything for Norma.

Things seem to be going on in this way, but it's never okay, never normal, this awkward relationship is always on edge, teetering on the edge of Norma's obsessiveness. And soon enough, Norma's claw like hands grab Joe's hair as she responds to his claim that he hadn't done anything, with a trite, "I know. I wouldn't let you." By the time Norma arranges an entire New Years party just for the two of them, Joe tries to make his first escape, back into the life with people of the same age, but is brought back by the news of Norma's attempted suicide.

Wilder directs in that early realist noir style, when excessive stylization hadn't become the norm yet and the film focused on erasing the form and simply telling the story, except for Joe's voice over narration. Several periods of melodrama in the film almost seem 'cute', in the same way that teenagers can talk about their grandparents as being sweet, and some of the supporting actors hail back to that representational time when one actually raised one's hand to the brow in anguish.

At the same time, we're also given a nice little look at 50's Hollywood, with plenty of name dropping and a significant cameo from Cecil B Demille (and smaller ones from silent stars Buster Keaton, Anna Nilsson and old Mr. H.B. Warner). The supporting cast, primarily Norma's butler Max, played by Eric von Stroheim, and Betty Schafer, a wannabe screenwriter who falls in love with Joe, put in very interesting performances, and fill out fascinating characters. Max alone, with a twist of a back story (I don't want to ruin it for you), as far as I'm concerned, seems to be the sort of person I would make a film about rather than yet another look at a self-obsessed, limelight seeking actor, but of course that belies a weariness of the sub-genre that might not have been present in 1950.

Hailed by many critics, including Roger Ebert, as 'the best film about films', Sunset Boulevard definitely deserves one viewing, and if you're as geeky about film as me, that first viewing would follow a quick google regarding the real stories behind the characters who are said to be combination of various early era film personalities, followed by, of course, another viewing. If you have the opportunity to watch it, especially on the big screen, please do.

My favorite lines from the movie, and naturally the ones most quoted (although there are plenty of gems in this classic), are from the following conversation;

Joe: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma: I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small.
Joe: I knew there was something wrong with them.

(Oh, Drew Casper would be proud)

(Obviously, there's plenty more to be said about this movie. The pacing is great, the acting if i didn't make it clear is spot on, there's a lot of comfort to be had in friendly narration, and the references to the early Hollywood era goes past just the characters and extends to various shots and montages, and that brilliantly surrealistic ending, but I'll leave that to better and more knowledgeable writers. Here's Ebert's review)

On Writing (and what's already been written)

How do you read a satire from the 18th century?
With footnotes, of course!

I've been reading Voltaire's Candide, or Optimisim the past few days; This is the English edition, I've a lot of learning to do before my French is up to reading Voltaire, and I've been continuously flicking between the pages of the story and the footnotes at the back. It's quite a task, trying to gauge the socio-political-religious atmosphere of an era that I know practically nothing about in the kind of particular detail that's required to understand a satire. I mean, we all know something or the other about the 18th century, but when Voltaire writes something like,

Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologico-cosmo-nigology.

I get the initial humor aimed at Pangloss' overzealous teaching absurdity, but I couldn't go past that basic level without a footnote that reads,

Voltaire's assault on cosmic optimism is a compound-caricature of Leibniz, Pope and Wolff, the latter a rigidly systematic thinker who introduced the word 'cosmology' to a wider world; 'nigology' comes from nigaud ('booby').

Which means 'simpleton', in case you thought Voltaire was that audacious (He was).

It can be quite frustrating when even after reading the footnotes et al. you still know for certain that you're not getting all the humour that Voltaire had intended to impart to his audience. It does make you think, while the funniest jokes today are the most topical, the ones that relate to current affairs, they're also the ones that will least stand the test of time, at least in their original form. How funny will a Bush joke be a 100 years from now when you don't really know how he was percieved by the rest of the world?

Of course, all they have to do is read 'The Complete Bushisms' and they can get the picture. Here's a recent one;

"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."— Speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007.

Yeah, understanding the political atmosphere around Bush won't be quite as hard as doing the same for anyone a few centuries ago. I haven't dipped into the internet as a resource for understanding Candide, but I'm sure there's plenty out there. In fact, I haven't even read the introduction, and all the other stuff which is there, because I don't like to do that until I've read the book. Makes an introduction useless, but hey, I don't want any spoilers. But it does say something about the necessary background you need to understand a book when only 60% of the book is the actual story.

Speaking of the internet, Penguin Books is trying something quite novel this year. It's called A Million Penguins, you'll understand why in a sec. Basically, they've attempted to apply the very recent Wiki concept to the good 'ole novel. A WikiNovel, if you may (and they do). To spell that out for you, they are allowing anyone and everyone to flex their writing or editing skills and set out to put together what will hopefully be the next big thing, wikified. So far, seven chapters in, the thing isn't winning any Booker awards, but it has got to be either a very interesting read to see all the different possible styles put together, and whether or not this will actually work/sell instead of just turning into one huge long never-to-end thing, or it could blow so badly, because, although there is moderation, just imagine what a similar project, a wiki-painting might turn out like?

Whether or not the actual product is a good read, the process is definitely interesting, and I think, if I like where the story's going I'll try my hand at writing some of it. It's a larger version of something else that I read about in the paper, although I'm not able to find it online (yet), about a publishing house in the States that's planning to make novels like they do movies. A group of people will sit together and thrash out a general outline for a novel, based on what has worked and what they think will please readers, and they'll give this outline to a writer who will then write the story. Again, a very interesting concept, and certainly we'll have to see how it turns out, as it has much more potential than the wiki-novel, of chaning the way things work in the writing world today.

One of the things I get from reading Voltaire is the amount of referencing he does to other writers and philosophers of his own time, and how there was actually communication between them, then. It's a cool concept, like the idea of how things actually went at the Hemingway, James Joyce modernist hang-outs and picnics. I suppose they do it today, when Veronica Mars continues to speak about cylons and people 'fracking'. Zadie Smith sorta does it in her excellent essay on literature in The Guardian, Fail Better, which seems as much targeted at her contemporaries as it is at us readers.

All said and done, this will be another interesting year in terms of writing, certainly the year where I try my hand at doing it some more. I joined Caferati recently, and am considering setting something up at Epic India.

So let's finish off with a statistic that will probably delight all those bourgeois uneducated-American haters out there; 80 percent of US families did not buy or read a book last year. 80 percent!

Quick Thoughts

6 Nods for Guillermo, that's great,

But, nothing for Cuaron? C'mon!

And this time Scorsese score-seses. Fa'sho.

Borat, globe, yes, adapted screenplay statue, nope.

No Fountain, no Aarononfky. Teh suck.

...

Veronica Mars, Studio 60, Heroes, 24, (Gilmore Girls, for the characters)......(a few weeks later) Lost, are back!

Blog For Choice

On January 22nd - the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade - we are asking pro-choice bloggers to join us in a day of activism for choice. Blog for Choice Day is a chance to raise the profile of reproductive rights issues in the blogosphere and the media, and to let everyone know that a woman's right to choose is nonnegotiable.

This year's topic is a simple one: tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice.

Click the Link to Sign up and Join in.

I realise it's an American movement with American legislators in mind, but chipping in isn't going to hurt anyone, and blog brotherly/sisterly love is always a good thing, innit?

Review: Little Children

Little Children

Once more, we're placed right in the midst of that seemingly uneventful zone known as modern suburbia; Lives aren't quite as simple as they are made out to be, because the people that lead them aren't simple either. Here are a bunch of young, recently married couples trying to lead normal lives, but it's not that easy. Especially when one of the couples has the young handsome husband staying at home taking care of the kids, while all the other caregivers are the mums. And of course, having a sex offender, convicted for exposing himself in front of children, living in the neighbourhood doesn't help at all.

Kate Winslet is one of those brilliant actors who can just about portray anyone she wants to. Sure, she got her really big break on James Cameron's Titanic, but a quick look through all she's done, and how well she's done it, and you can see how versatile a performer she is. I recently watched Holy Smoke, a movie where she plays an aussie girl who went to India and was 'brainwashed' by a Sadhu there, or at least that's what her family thinks. And so they send in an American 'intervener' who attempts to undo the brainwashing. It's an amazing movie that focuses on the intense relationship with these two in the span of four days, all alone out in the middle of nowhere, an intense analysis of two characters; While I wasn't too happy about the occasionally bizarre turns of the plot, Winslet delivers a performance that blows you away. One that makes you wonder why big name actors are winning Oscars when there are movies like this out there.

And, here, in Little Children, this quiet little movie (even though it's 130 minutes long) about suburban lives that, while it might not start off with the most interesting of premises, it soon develops into an extremely involving movie. Housewives, desperate or otherwise, and their seemingly mundane lives are old news, but a stay-at-home dad (Patrick Wilson, Hard Candy's Jeff), who, for some reason, isn't motivated enough to succeed as a lawyer (he's failed the bar exam twice), and please his gorgeous wife (played by Jennifer Connelly) and 'little child', and is, in fact, still a child, meets up with a not-so-perfect woman (Winslet), who's equally bored with life, having recently realised that her husband is no longer interested in her, and they begin to have an affair.

The slow development of this relationship through the movie, mostly from Winslet's point of view, is enjoyable just because it's good storytelling. I'm not the biggest fan of romance movies, so I tend not to enjoy plot lines that focus on developing a romance, but the way director Todd Field portrays it here, keeps you watching. The lives of the two start to get closer, starting with just meeting while their little children play at the neighbourhood park, going on to meet at every possible moment, is the main focus of the first part of the movie, while one other plotline is being developed.

And that's the story of the sex offender. It's something we might've wondered about, or would think to wonder about after having seen this movie. What do the parents of sex offenders think about their children? How do you deal with that situation in the family? Here we have the other performance that stands out, Jackie Earle Haley, as the sex offender. Here's the guy who can make you sympathise with a sex offender one minute, hate him the next, and pity him at the end of it all. And I don't mean just sympathise, I mean he really gets you feeling bad for him, and, while the plot helps, Haley does most of the work in making sure that happens.

The writing then brings the slowly moving film to a stunning conclusion, putting together almost all the plotlines that were developing, and presenting an interesting view on morality, and how we act towards people we don't really know. Naturally, as corny as it sounds, all the adults are the titular 'Little Children' not really knowing what they're doing, while we are also reminded how having children, especially young ones, completely changes the lives of the adults involved with them.

It's a great independent movie, with extremely engaging writing, and two absolutely outstanding performances, amid a number of other good pieces of work. If you enjoy indie flicks, flawed, unsettling, but large-hearted characters, and want something good and made-in-2006 to gnaw on, this is the film for you.