Bookman Update

The first scenes with Bookman and his sidekick Page Boy (who is actually a girl) have been filmed. They were pretty complicated in places and I suck at directing action, so I may do some reshoots, but as a proof-of-concept they kick comedy ass.

We filmed outside the student union and one scene involved helpless female cliché Sasha McPetal having her bag stolen by nefarious two-bit hood Rob Burr. The first take went fine, but I wanted a second to be safe. This time round, one member of the public thought they were witnessing an actual theft. We found their reaction hilarious because they were comedy shocked and surprised, but looking back on it I am kinda sad because they didn't do anything like chase after the criminal, or even call the police. Where is community spirit?

It seems the world needs heroes.



He spies INJUSTICE!

This is quite easily the most fun shoot I have ever been on. I think it has something to do with wearing a cape. It makes everything seem easy-to-deal-with. Someone has a problem? I'll handle it! Stride forward, cape billows. Ooooh!

However, I fear I will never be allowed to film in the library again since I collapsed in hysterics when they told me I was "intimidating" other patrons.



In other Booman news, one of my crew drew a pretty lol sketch of Bookman. I showed it to Jeremy and he responded. Oh em gee, Jeremy. Oh em gee.

INCREDIBLE UPDATE: Amanda has since entered the fray with her own smashing take on the character. It is expression perfection!

So I'm busy...

No, really. Lots of projects going on at the moment. I shall explain two of them.

Mala Calidad

It is a parody of Spanish soap operas (literally meaning Poor Quality) with an emphasis on shocking accents and dubious facial hair.

I play Manuel Diablo. I emerge at the end of the first episode to find my beloved wife Maria about to kiss the sexy barman Diego. She thought I had died in the shipwreck. She was wrong. I drop to my knees and, staring in confusion at the sky, scream "Por que? POR QUE?!"

Fade to black.

"Hay un fuego en mis pantalones."- MANUEL DIABLO

Absolutely Not About Reading (ANAR)

This is my first attempt at making a series. I am aiming to make 6 episodes before I die, which doesn't seem too unreasonable. Then again, based on my track record of following through with things I start, it seems probable that I will in fact end up further away than where I started.

Nevertheless! I crack on.

Basically this is a show based around promoting literacy. It has a strong "Books are cool!" theme throughout and this is what links a series of skits. We have an old man who is harassing some random kid who only wants to play computer games. We have three deranged individuals who abduct book haters and force them to read from famous novels under threats of extreme physical violence. We have a group of publishers who meet and discuss how to make books more relevant to young people. That last one is funnier than it sounds. Honest. Finally, we have Bookman.

Who is Bookman?

Bookman is the real star of ANAR (yes I know it sounds like anal, hur hur hur).

He is a superhero lacking any kind of superpower. Unless you count self-delusion as a superpower. With his sidekick Page Boy (who is actually a girl) he fights selflessly against the evil forces of Dr Ill Iteracy, Miss Mass Media and Short Attention Span Man!

Just look at his super-emblem!

Doesn't that stir something deep within you? OH HELL YEAH IT DOES!

After a couple of months of pre-production filming finally started yesterday. All of the scenes for the first three episodes that involve Dr Ill Iteracy are done, which is ridiculously good going. Looking at the rough cut they are rather hilarious indeed.

Dr Ill Iteracy! Now with 66% more Diabolical!


He has kidnapped the famous author, Michael S. Adams. But why?


"You will write me a book, one so terrible that all who read from it will hate not just it, but the entire concept of writing!"

Michael S. Adams is resolute! He won't help this monster!


"I won't help you, monster!"


LATER ON....




Miss Mass Media explains to Dr Ill Iteracy why she failed to kill Bookman.

Short Attention Span Man wears the ugliest cardigan ever to exist.


So yes. I am pleased with how it is going so far.

Tomorrow we film the first Bookman and Pageboy scenes. I am a bit worried because this show is a massive ego trip for me and as such it falls to me to take the titular part. Oh well, if Orson Welles can write, produce, direct and star in his own films then I sure as hell can hilariously fail trying.

At the very least I'll come out of this whole experience with a really neat cape.


STYLIN!

Never again

Today is Yom Ha-Shoa, the Jewish day of rememberance for the Holocaust. Whenever the subject is raised the six million who died during the Holocaust is mentioned. The only resonance 6 million has to me is that it is a really big number. My head is screaming at me to make it mean more than the other really big numbers I used to calculate in maths lessons but in my heart all I can see is the result of 3,000,000 x 2.

"One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic." - Stalin

Six million? What's six million? I cannot grasp the magnitude, the reality. Who can empathise with abstraction?

Show me skeletal families lined up in neat rows behind barbed wire. Show me a child's abandoned bear silently seeing off an overflowing train bound to Auschwitz. Show me a large room filled with row upon row of clinical showers. Show me a cart piled high with starved corpses, limp and squeezed together. It's OK, they're not people, they're not like us. They're cargo. They're nothing. Chuck them on, pile them high. We need to get from A to B. It's been a long day and the sooner we get them in the ground, the sooner we can go home to our wives and our families. Tomorrow's another day. 178 down, 5,999,822 to go.

And show me this repeated. Over and over and over and over again because they were not going to stop until every single person they deemed unworthy was dead.

I stare at that picture of a cart and force myself to count. At least 25 bodies piled one on top of the other. Every single one was a person with a life, with friends, hopes and a future. The sheer amount of waste was staggering. And it was OTHER PEOPLE with their own friends, their own hopes and futures who did this awful thing. The thought makes me sick. Six million.

Never again.

It worries me that in a recent poll of 4000 youths, over 60% knew nothing about Auschwitz.

It worries me that I see a generation growing up who don't know, who don't care and who don't even know enough to know they don't know.

It worries me that in the not-too-distant future there will be no more survivers of World War 2, no-one who was there.

It especially worries me that even now, with grandparents and great-grandparents who WERE there, who DID witness the horror, genocide continues.

Never again?

Tell that to Uganda, Turkey, Bosnia, Cambodia, Tibet, Russia, and more.

6 million people died and we light a candle and say 'never again'. For once, I don't have a joke or a one-liner. I am trying to put myself in their place, to see what it was like, to see behaviour so far outside my experience it doesn't seem real. But the grainy black and white picture of Nazi guards hurling yet another broken body onto a cart reminds me that it is real. It did happen. Suddenly, I'm very aware that without the commitment of my grandfather's generation my parents wouldn't be alive. I wouldn't be alive. Suddenly, it's very, very personal.

6 million people died and we light a candle and say 'never again'. A powerful gesture. A symbolic gesture. I'll do all I can to make damn sure it isn't a hollow one.