An Event In Autumn

1

As most of you will have read by now, I'm working on a slate of audio drama podcast serials that I'm creating, writing and co-producing.  These are things with proper actors, sound design and production, and all the related complications.  We're into casting and production details, we're about a week away from a logo, and as you read this I've either locked the second serial or I've given up on that damned outline and dragged myself to the edge of the property for the foxes to eat me.

So it's heavy invention time combined with admin, all of which drains the brain.  Therefore, this week is just a list of ten things.

There were a record number of unsubscribes last week, which I'm putting down to either the rambles about old television or the photo of the cucumber.

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta.

2

As I write this bit today (Wednesday), the job on deck is writing the casting sheet.

It goes like this.  You can just hand over the scripts to your casting director and say "cast from that."  But that's putting work on your casting director that you can do yourself in an hour by writing a paragraph or two on each character that can be handed over with the scripts.  That gives the casting director a clear handle on each character, and that can also be shared with the actors pre-audition.  And if you're not auditioning but directly casting, it's one more thing the actors have access to as they come in to record.

Not every actor will use them.  Some actors will.  Some actors will read the paragraph but not the script, so they'll come to the words cold and invent on the spot.  I remember Titus Welliver came to the script cold and just asked, how do you want me to go at it?  I said, "Serbian war criminal."  He said "got it" and constructed the whole character on his feet. This is one reason why I want to be in the room at recording time.  I work with brilliant people but sometimes there's going to be a question only I can answer and changes only I can make on the fly.

Also?  if you want to know if your characters are full and defined enough?  Start a new document and write a paragraph or two about each of your characters.  See how far you get before one of those characters gets just a single line.  That's how you know you have work still to do.

So now we're casting the show, I'm producing clean versions of the scripts for broadcast, and we're off to the races.

3

Writer/director Julian Simpson has found new super scheduling software which he describes here in detail and makes me feel, with my five whiteboards and my paper calendar hanging off the wall in front of me, even more like a clueless Neanderthal.  But I suspect some of you will find that link useful, so there it is.

4

Grammy-nominated artist/designer Lordess Foudre doesn't have time to do The News here much any more, because she's busy with her online graphic novel THE PHANTOM PLEASURE and art direction and design jobs because, as I say, Grammy-nominated now.  But!  She does have new work up at lordess.io for purchase as prints.  As one of the first people to buy one of her early prints, which I still have stuck to my office wall because the lunatic did them as adhesive prints, may I suggest a treat for yourself or for others this Xmas?

You may not be surprised to learn that Lordess is in fact one of the nicest people on the planet, and I'm grateful that we still talk and scheme on the regular. It's not everyone I can talk to about ALPHAVILLE.

BOOKS

5.  AN EVENT IN AUTUMN

AN EVENT IN AUTUMN was a Wallander novella that Henning Mankell wrote for the Dutch book market.  They did a thing one year where if you bought a book, you got one free, apparently, and Mankell wrote this as the free giveaway book.  It comes just before the final novel in the Wallander sequence, I think, but works just fine as a standalone intro to the Wallander experience, despite what reads like a less-than-smooth translation in places.

It's a dank and miserable little story, very much in the Sjowall/Wahloo Nordic noir tradition.  (Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were Swedish Marxist journalists who invented modern Nordic crime fiction as basically a side gig.)  Signatures of the style include the story taking up a large stretch of time, because it takes forever to get forensics and do the field work and police detectives have more than one case to deal with at any given moment.  Also, there will almost always be a sociopolitical angle - some failure of the state or society. I found that particular note slightly muted here, or perhaps scattered.  This is Mankell at his least pungent and most melancholy.

AN EVENT IN AUTUMN was adapted by the generally fine WALLANDER tv series made by the BBC and starring Kenneth Branagh as Wallander.  However, if you've seen it, the book has surprises.  The adaptation folded it into the arc of the show, and that's not where the book happens.

If this slim book appeals to you, then it will open up the entire Wallander sequence for you, and I envy you getting to discover it and hope it is as joyful for you as it was for me when I first laid eyes on that spare, bleak prose.

AN EVENT IN AUTUMN, Henning Mankell (UK) (US)

CURRENTLY LISTENING

6. SPEKTRMODULE

Extremely fucked off that I missed the CD-R release of FOREVER PEOPLE by Urthona because the second track is a goddamn joy.

However, the middle section of THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by Ecovillage is a miracle and I got in before the limited-run CD sold out.

My listening queue on Bandcamp is now 226 records deep.  How does this keep happening?  (I know they call it a "wishlist," but I use to to save things to later, when I have time to listen through them.)

GOT MORE TIME?

7. KEEP READING

NOTES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPH, Robert Bresson: I still say this is essential reading for anyone working in the visual arts.

Myth Is The Carrier Wave: STAR SHIPS, Gordon White

Do Self-Reproducing Probes Dream Of Electric Cats

8

It's getting chilly at night now, and the rain is coming back.  I need to get loganberry seeds sown in pots, so they have six months in miserable cold damp weather to germinate. I'm designing next year's growing now, which is good mindfulness and also using freelance-writer muscle memory.  Always looking ahead to the next thing and planning in advance. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and I have always winged it more than I've stuck to a plan.  But the plan is the speculative path, and you have to grow the instinct to know when to diverge from it and hack into the tall weeds.

Be alive to the moment and what it brings.  But keep a little map in your pocket just in case.

9. SOME THINGS I AM CURRENTLY INTO

Re-reading HELLBOY.  It is the great mythic-cycle graphic novel sequence of the last twenty years.  And you also get the transition from Mignola's evolving, intelligent minimalist to Duncan Fegredo's delicate baroque art and back again.  And once you've completed HELLBOY IN HELL, you can skip ahead to issue 15 of B.P.R.D.: THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, where Mignola comes back full force to wrap up the whole thing.  (Although I have to add that parts of that series are drawn wonderfully by Laurence Campbell.)

The sumo tournament that just finished - I have about eight days of it recorded and ready to catch up on.

The recent, elegiac MAIGRET film with Gerard Depardieu.  A useful nugget from this brief piece surrounds Patrice Leconte's well-judged take on the character and book by Georges Simenon:

"Director Leconte, who read the books as a kid, was told by his university philosophy professor: “We’re going to spend time with Descartes, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Kant, but know that for me the greatest philosopher is Georges Simenon.”"

10.

Bloody hell, this one was supposed to be short.  It's Saturday night and I've spent all day sawing down and digging up large amounts of woody things in the garden.  Looking forward to the week, which will bring logo discussion and casting discussion and all the things I love about working with a team of friends.  Here we go.  I hope you find some joy in the week to come, and five minutes to sit and look at the sky.  Take care of yourself, see you next week.

W