monoceros blogsCons - long and short - are always entertaining. When noob got me the first two seasons of BBC show, Hustle, I didn't know at first how good they'd be, and took nearly a year to watch them. This summer, I finished all three seasons. The show, which features the art of the long con, is very good. After all, you, the viewer, gets conned as well, and it's always fun to find out how. Each episode is a solid hour, and it was sublime to watch these back to back, stopping only to eat, use the restroom, or get the laundry. (My brother will vouch for this.)
I did take some time off to also watch a couple of movies at the theater, and during one afternoon, I caught the trailer for The Night Listener. If you know nothing of the book or the controversy behind Anthony Godby Johnson, you'd think the film is a thriller about a mentally imbalanced woman (Toni Collette), who terrorizes a radio host (Robin Williams). I didn't, and was curious about the film because it's based on true events and a book, also titled "The Night Listener."
The controversy deals with a literary hoax or con in which someone creates a persona - often a pitiful and tragic one to elicit sympathy - and has that persona "write" a book about his or her traumatic past. The persona becomes famous, beloved, and the real person behind the hoax collects the dough and enjoys part of the fame as well. You can read about it here.
This bears a great resemblance to the JT Leroy controversy, which I did read about. Some folks even say the Godby Johnson case inspired the woman behind JT Leroy. The facade collapsed earlier this year, right around the time of the James Frey story. Here is the article that eventually led to the crumbling of the JT Leroy enterprise. More here and here.
Cons are fun when they're fiction, as in Ocean's Eleven, The Sting, and Hustle. Who doesn't enjoy watching someone else get bamboozled? Of course, it's the movies or TV, and you know no one is really at the losing end. But when it happens in real life, a lot of people get upset, especially if you were one of many who got the wool-over-the-eyes treatment. Oprah teared on her show because of Frey, columnists and readers began questioning the literary merit of Leroy's work after having embraced it when it first emerged, and movies get made about the true stories behind the hoaxes. And shocked as they may be, folks are likely to lap it up precisely because they are true stories. Perhaps the real-life events are the more alluring ones - even if we aren't laughing the way we did when Clooney pulled off his casino heist - because we never thought it'd really happen to any of us, and we're desperate to know how it happened. Call it a case of morbid curiosity or unbridled anger.
Magicians are in vogue this fall. Two films about magic and magicians are scheduled for release later this year and I have a tingly feeling they're going to be good. The Prestige is likely to gain huge attention because of its director, Christopher Nolan, of Memento and Batman Begins fame. It's adapted from a novel written by Christopher Priest, who, according to Publishers Weekly, was one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 1983. The novel itself garnered Priest another accolade; it was Winner of the 1996 World Fantasy Award.
Based on a short story by Steven Millhauser, the other film is an independent titled The Illusionist. Both movies have impressive casts though; Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman star in The Prestige, and Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti headline The Illusionist. Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti - I love the idea of them being in a film together! Of course, you can't deny the equally intriguing (and rather droolworthy) combination of Bale and Jackman, who are a little more mainstream but nevertheless talented and charismatic. And even if those two can't whet your appetite, maybe the supporting cast might. Here's the lineup - Michael Caine, Andy Serkis (you might know him as Gollum), David Bowie, and Scarlett Johansson.
Now if the folks behind the movie adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell would hurry it up, then we'd have a perfect series of magician movies. This is probably the magician film I'm waiting for. Then again, I hope the scriptwriter doesn't rush and mangle the adaptation. It's Christopher Hampton, who recently adapted Ian McEwan's Atonement, another good novel. Looking over his earlier work, it's hard to say if he's a sure-fire bet. Although he wrote the screenplay for Dangerous Liaisons, he also wrote Mary Reilly.
This hasn't anything to do with stage magicians but it's equally appealing. Here is the trailer for The Fountain, which stars Hugh Jackman (okay, there's a little link: the lead actor from The Prestige) and Rachel Weisz. Look also for the attractive and supposedly good graphic novel created by director Darren Aronofsky (who did Requiem for a Dream and who married Rachel Weisz) when film plans initially fell through. Lucky for us, the film got revived and the graphic novel got to stay too.
In these past two months, I've made a small number of incomplete drafts for this blog - movie and book reviews, a summary of my recent travels, a short highlight on Sufjan Stevens' two US state albums (something I thought I could write about now that I've spent time in both Michigan and Illinois), a list of fall films I'm anticipating, a list of things I've purchased, notes on writing and book purchases, a few poems I read recently.
All unpublished, obviously, which may very well be the fate of most of my short fiction and my also-incomplete novel that's just about ready to be delieverd to the resting place for failed creative works. I didn't feel like finishing any of those blog drafts, but today, I read something that moved me enough to write and finish something. Of all things, it was a wedding announcement in the New York Times, dated July 23. Mr Jack Anderson and Mr George Dorris, 71 and 75, married the day before on the campus of York University in Toronto. They attended the same university but met again years later on a subway platform after a ballet performance, and their relationship has lasted 41 years. We should all be so blessed. Another couple - Eleanor, 67, and Frazer, 84 - married eleven years after their first meeting.
I'd forgotten the courage that people can possess. It doesn't matter if you're 60 or 70, you can still marry the one you love. And in the case of Jack and George, companions for 41 years, love came and stayed long enough that they wished to celebreate it with a wedding. I have friends who cannot seem to find a good person to share their lives with (this brings to mind the title of a Flannery O'Connor short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"), and I wish things were different for them. My mother says it's possible that one's stars are dim, or in Chinese, it would be "no fate." Love may take a while to arrive or if it's around, it takes you to several places and it's hard to figure out if you're in the transit lounge or at the final destination. Everyone's deal with love is a little different. You just have to hope that you'll be brave and tireless when it does come, no matter how long you've waited for it.