midwestern gothic: wisconsin death trip (2002)

"Writer/Director James Marsh's first feature, Wisconsin Death Trip, is an intimate, shocking and sometimes hilarious account of the disasters that befell one small town in Wisconsin during the final decade of the 19th century. The film is inspired by Michael Lesy’s book of the same name which was first published in 1973. Lesy discovered a striking archive of black and white photographs in the town of Black River Falls dating from the 1890’s and married a selection of these images to extracts from the town’s newspaper from the same decade. The effect was surprising and disturbing. The town of Black River Falls seems gripped by some peculiar malaise and the weekly news is dominated by tales of madness, eccentricity and violence amongst the local population. Suicide and murder are commonplace. People in the town are haunted by ghosts, possessed by devils and terrorized by teenage outlaws and arsonists.

Like the book, the film is constructed entirely from authentic news reports from the Black River Falls’ newspaper with occasional excerpts from the records of the nearby Mendota Asylum for the Insane. The film also makes use of the haunting black and white photographs taken by the resident portrait photographer of Black River Falls at the end of the 19th century. The film unfolds over four seasons and certain characters feature throughout the film as their criminal behaviour lands them in the newspaper again and again. Mary Sweeney, a cocaine snorting school mistress with a compulsion to smash windows -- The Wisconsin Window Smasher -- who frequently runs amok in the area. Another eccentric is Pauline L'Allemand, a mildly famous opera singer who gets washed up in the town with no means of support and becomes increasingly demented. (I have visited western Wisconsin and  this state of affairs could be termed a 'default setting'.) A 13 year old boy who murders an old man for no apparent motive and then engages in sporadic gun battles with a pursuing posse. All the while, buildings are being torched by an hyper-bored teenage girl, a diptheria epidemic devastates the town’s infant population and all manner of strange suicides are reported in great detail.

Presiding over the chaos of the newspaper stories and providing a linking device for the intricate screenplay is the character of the newspaper editor. The stories from the newspaper are narrated by award-winning actor Ian Holm. Director James Marsh notes “the newspaper was run at the time by an Englishman called Frank Cooper, so Ian was a perfect choice for us - his voice conveys an incredible range of moods - incredulity, moral indignation, sly humour - while remaining both authoritative and soothing."

Wisconsin Death Trip was made over the course of two years by a small documentary crew working with a very tight budget. The film was shot on location in Wisconsin, in each of the four seasons, using existing historical sites across the state. All the actors in the film were recruited from open casting sessions in Wisconsin - most are non-professional and many had never acted at all before their appearance in the film. A great many scenes in the film were improvised, often in sub-zero temperatures, thus the discomfort and bewilderment shown by the actors is usually genuine - and shared by those behind the camera."

pharmaceuticals, shopping malls

This Christmas Eve I departed from my usual wan indifference towards the season's festivities and wrote a completely over-the-top status marquee on Facebook wishing everyone a "groundbreakingly positive", "marvellously superb", "unbelievably incredible" 2010 -- only just stopping short of "so uproariously funny that you'll spend most of the year on the toilet, urinating with mirth". Payback. That evening I came down with a particularly virulent flu and spent the following days bed-bound with a high fever. The fever has passed but now I have an Industrial Era cough. I mention this because it occurred to me while taking various medication how much I like the design of pharmaceutical packaging. I suppose that, generally, people are too ill to notice, but I like the minimalist layout together with the unusual names -- Cinfatós, Bisolgrip, Fumil Forte -- and the pantone colours of mustard, forest green and cerise that evoke the 1960s and 1970s. The design of pharmaceutical packaging has not really changed very much through the decades.


It was 23C here yesterday so I was determined to get out of the bedroom -- which at this point was interchangeable with that of Thora Hird's -- and get some fresh air. The partner and I drove through the Albaida valley whose tourism moto is "Disfrútala con los cinco sentidos" (Enjoy it with your five senses). A bit of a tall order as I have no sense of taste or smell at the moment. We reached the coast at Gandía and drove south to the comparatively new, and enormous, shopping mall at Ondara. This centro commercial has British high street outlets and even an English bookshop stocked with vastly over-priced, TV tie-in pictorials and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Jamie Oliver next to an hillock of themed recipe books. But that is what publishing has come to mean nowadays -- very few people are interested in a finely crafted novel with impeccable character development. Also, there aren't any pictures, so there's nothing to emulate.

I forget what it's like to see British people in groups. What struck me was the vague look of annoyance of certain women as they glided past me on the down elevator, and the expression of resignation -- if not ennui -- in their partner's face. But then some of us are designed to annoy and others designed to be annoyed. There were a few sightings of the long-term expat female: fifty-something, deep perma-tan, vigorously bottle-blonde, kohl-lidded eyes, could get quite nasty in an argument.
It really could have been Milton Keynes. I was glad to get out of there.

I'm going to the barbers, on the principle that a haircut makes one instantly feel better.

quentin crisp: an englishman in new york

John Hurt reprises his role as Quentin Crisp in the soon-to-be released and somewhat unimaginatively titled An Englishman in New York. Following his portrayal of Crisp in the British television's outstanding biopic of 1975, The Naked Civil Servant, this second slice of Crisperanto charts the Sultana of Sodom's subsequent relocation to the New York of his dreams, the intial fêteing by early 80s Manhattan celebrities both uptown and downtown -- two distinctly different scenes at that time -- and his fall from grace as a potential LGBT mascot after making the notorious "AIDS is just a fad" declaration. While (unintentionally) cruel and unfortunate, it surely ranks with "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" which is commonly misattributed to Queen Marie-Antoinette. Soon after, he finds his natural -- and even employable -- station in life: reviewer and cineaste.

I have not seen this film yet but have spoken with someone who has seen the preview. Crisp is the buckle-slippered, effete historian (well, he was in his 70s) disseminating his immediate surroundings like an anthropologist from a bygone epoch: floor-bending HI-NRG, amyl-nitrate and the emergence of gay 'clones' -- The Gingham Borg -- in yellow construction hats, raunching it up in a fiesta of technicolour hankie-flailing before the curtain began to fall. There was no Great Dark Man. But there was a Great Dark Disease. And Hurt should know -- he played one to startling effect in Alien (1979).

However, what irks and rings untrue in this depiction of a deflated Crisp in his later years is the 'revelation' that he habitually sent cheques to Elizabeth Taylor in contribution to her AIDS foundation. Whilst charity is always commendable, this has to be a constructed Hollywood fiction to redeem Crisp to an alienated LGBT audience -- with whom he had very little in common in any case -- eliciting a sympathetic re-appraisal of an eccentric and  inconvenient Bohemian who was not 'Winfrey-friendly'. Box office. But, America loves redemption. A revolting habit, in my opinion. Thus he is 're-made'. Crisp was always candid even to the point of self-ruin and his stoicism and his truth -- if not survival -- lay in a complete rejection of sentimentality. I believe that takes immense strength. Essentially it is this, not the maquillage and the ballet pumps that transformed an itinerant, penniless and un-pensionable Chelsea queen into an international cause-cèlébre.

felíz navidad / bon nadal

Last week, Siberian winds swept over the Pyrenees and down into Iberia, plunging us into sub degree temperatures -- minus 20C in the Sierra Guadarrama north of Madrid -- wind chill factor advisories and carnage on the roads as testosterone wrestled with black ice. The palm trees and the mountains were very photogenic, but town was a disaster: broken pipes, cracked marble, vehicles swerving into each other and the occasional urban avalanche as snow slid off pitched roofs, burying valiant pedestrians. This was an annual event until thirty to forty years ago, so there is quite possibly an argument for climate change. The señora who works in the estanco, the cigarette kiosk, is convinced it's the French.

"¡ Un viento siberiano !"

[Scowling] "¡ No ! Es un viento francés."

I know virtually nothing about climatology but you need only cross the sierra from southern Valencia into northern Alicante to see the evidence that something is indeed happening. Here we have green mountains -- some forested -- rice paddies, orange and lemon groves and the ability to produce almonds, apricots, apples and green vegetables. Over there they may only cultivate olives, and in small number. The land is parched and sandy: the only flora you are likely to see is aloe vera growing by the roadside together with the odd, ejected garment. Why anyone should decide to divest themselves of  their underwear on the A-31 southbound is a provincial mystery, unless there are darker connotations.

It's the desertification of Spain, gradually reaching northward from Almería and Murcia which, in large part, is a North African landscape. In the townhouse urbanisations thrown up to accommodate the discounted Spanish dream of northern European settlers the idyll is rather spoiled in summer by the directive of water conservation. In some areas the water supply is turned off at eight o'clock in the morning and is not reconnected until early evening. Thus, the image of sauntering onto one's terrace in turquoise pedal pushers to a breakfast of fresh bread and conserves is replaced by the post-dawn bickering  -- either side of a bathroom door -- that is the battle of essential toiletry.

"Will you come out of there ?"
"In a minute."
"I haven't got a minute, it's 7:59."

Christmas is almost upon us. In Spain it is a one day event after which, sensibly, we can all go back to our lives. It is not the month-long tyranny of uninterrupted retailing that the British have to endure. To my British compatriots: I sincerely hope that you depose your Prime Minister next year. That someone so unsuited to the international stage, and with the charisma of a butter-fingered, junior book-ledger clerk at a small savings bank should be at the helm of a G8 country is an undiscussable embarrassment. Gordon, I ask you.
I don't really do New Year's. A few drinks with friends. For me it is now a time more of reflection than the whooping Lambeth Walk -- mouth agape, party hat cocked at a rakish angle -- that segues into the infinitely depressing Auld Lang Syne.

If I don't post here before, I wish you all a prosperous and interesting 2010. If, for any of you, life has become a little humdrum I'd like to suggest a simple yet sometimes effective daily variance. Where you might habitually turn left -- turn right. That's how I met Fenella Fielding.