For the first time in a long time, I’ve had the luxury of enjoying a novel.  It’s one I’ve been intrigued about since I first came across it, Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts.  Oh, the fun I had reading it…Hall’s mind fizzes with playful concepts and allies them to a coherent and emotionally involving narrative.  Exactly the kind of blend I aspire to as a screenwriter in fact.

The story concerns one Eric Sanderson, for whom normal life is anything but.  He’s suffering from amnesia, and comes across clues to what he’s been up to that he’s created for himself.  So far, nothing exceptional: there’s something about amnesia that writers glom onto, and audiences can enjoy too, as the success of Jason Bourne’s adventures demonstrates.

Come to think, Eric Sanderson does have something in common with Jason Bourne, following a madcap trail to discover the truth about his identity while at the same time being pursued by…this is where things depart from the world of Mr Bourne.  Eric Sanderson is being pursued by a conceptual shark, the Ludovician, an entity that exists within language and ideas.  A rather different sort of antagonist than the more straighforward asshats that Jason Bourne gets to take on, it has to be said.

The notion of the Ludovician is fascinating, and the whole has a feel like a new take on Lovecraft by someone who’s read their semiotics.  Which could come across as appallingly pretentious, but works really well since Hall remembers to make the story an exciting one where there’s lots at stake, and the characters are easy to empathise with.  And, guess what, Film Four have optioned the film rights, which Hall and fans are discussing over here, though what follows comes without me having read the forum.

The key to catching and killing a conceptual shark is to trap it with information.  Sanderson sits in the midst of four Dictaphones where strangers recount random tales, in a room made of copies of Yellow Pages: the sheer volume of data is enough for the Ludovician to lose Sanderson’s trail.  Which leads me to think that if I was adapting the story for screen, I’d push that notion of data-play: since the story alludes to Jaws and is reminiscent of an inventive computer game, why not portray some of it in the form of a game?  Morphing between flesh and blood and digital representations would suit the story well, and I’d like to play with what happens onscreen in the same fashion that Crank did.

The heart of the story is a romantic adventure: Eric is on the run accompanied by the story’s very own Lara Croft stand-in, a daring young woman called Scout who more and more comes to resemble his departed love Clio.  Along the way they encounter an ally in the form of Dr Trey Fidorus, an authority on conceptual entities, and the three of them take on the Ludovician and triumph.  Straightforward enough, which with the addition of some fizzing ideas makes a great yarn that I’d love to see served in the same kind of witty and touching fashion as the conceptually intriguing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Now, I’m no Charlie Kaufman (who as well as Sunshine has written other mindbending and heartwrenching tales such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), but that’s the sort of energy I’d love to bring to an adapatation of a book that’s excited me more than anything I’ve read for a good while.  And even if I don’t get to adapt The Raw Shark Texts — I must after all accept the possibility that my audacity will be unwelcome — the story will influence the way I’d like to tell some of my own yarns.

I caught a bit of Come Dine With Me early in the evening.  It’s allegedly a reality show, in the form of a competition between five people to see who can entertain the others with their culinary skills the bestest.  This particular episode, there was a woman who was set on winning, determined to dazzle the others with her fabulous cooking and organic ingredients.

So, the guests arrived, and even before they got to eat were nonplussed by the sight and sound of their host’s fiance playing a flute to her dog.  Like you do.  And then, the first course arrived, an eggcup sized portion of what was described as Celebration Cous Cous with Quinoa.  For some reason, I don’t associate micrograins of pasta with any particular form of celebration, so that name, along with the tootling boyfriend, struck me as somewhat redundant and fanciful.

And, sad to say, that’s the feeling I get having seen Coraline too.  But, only on reflection and in considering other stories that author Neil Gaiman has come up with.  Considered purely on its own merits, Coraline is a treasure trove of amazing imagery, stopframe animation conjured into life by director and screenplay adaptor Henry Selick.  There’s a theatre full of Highland terriers, a Russian acrobat and his performing mice, a magical tunnel between this world and another, and a phantasmagoria of astonishing images kaleidoscoping across the screen, and indeed out of it if like me you see the 3D version.

The protagonist is a young girl called Coraline, who moves with her parents to a big old house in the middle of nowhere.  Coraline is pretty much left to her own devices as her parents are busy putting together a gardening catalogue — so busy that they never get any time for actual gardening themselves.  Her dad encourages Coraline to explore the house, which is how she comes across a hidden door that’s been wallpapered over, and turns out to connect their place to a nicer version the other side, where a button-eyed woman declares herself Coraline’s Other Mother.

Everything on the Other Mother’s side seems better than it does with Coraline’s actual parents, and that suggests there’s a catch somewhere.  Which there is.  Other Mother wants Coraline to stay with her and be loved.  There’s just the small matter of taking her eyes out and replacing them with buttons…

Anyone looking to do a PhD on film symbolism could have a field day with Coraline.  The film is saturated with fantastic imagery from start to finish, and it’s realised to perfection by a whole bunch of animators and artists.  What that imagery symbolises is another matter…not that every image needs ‘mean’ anything in particular.  But I get the sense that underneath that rich canopy of visual data, there’s — whisper it — not a whole lot going on.

Making such a claim risks infuriating Gaiman’s legion of fans.  But so be it.  And hear me out.  I very much enjoy some of Gaiman’s work, but Coraline is another example of something the author did more than a few times in the Sandman comic series that established his reputation.  That something is stories which involve characters collecting plot tokens, ie random but significant items which advance the narrative.  In this case the tokens are items which contain the souls of the Other Mother’s victims.  It’s a functional enough way of moving a story forward, but boils down to Pacman in another form.  And that’s a shame, because I’d love to see Gaiman develop his storytelling and structural muscles as much as he has his raw imagination.

Make no mistake: Coraline is well worth seeing.  It’s a visually beautiful film with real heart, and a superb score fusing harps, horns, and a choir to gorgeous effect.  Guaranteed, you won’t have come across anything like it before.  It’s just a shame that, having got all the balls up in the air so magnificently, that the magic ends in such a matter of fact way that’s more than familiar to fans of Gaiman’s work.

Every now and then, Michael Caine turns in a performance that makes you realise he can be a fine actor when he puts his mind to it.  Get Carter, The Ipcress File, Hannah And Her Sisters, Educating Rita — a diverse bunch, united by the fact that Caine respected that he’d been given a well-written part, and applied himself to the business of acting.  To that list can be added a new title, the altogether delightful Is Anybody There?

The problem is, describe the film at all and you’ll pretty much guess how it plays out.  This is bittersweet stuff, wherein Clarence, a retired magician played by Caine, turns up at the door of an old peoples’ home run by Anne-Marie Duff, and strikes up a friendship with her son Edward, more than capably played by Bill Milner.  So, I tell you that and you can pretty much delineate much of what happens, as the two start off at odds and become close, each learning from the other.

The fact that the story is predictable doesn’t mean it can’t surprise.  And the beauty of the film is in the way it unfolds, in the choices made by writer Peter Harness and director John Crowley.  In practice, that means a nimble script which paints things with the lightest of touches, always subtle in the way it depicts relations between the characters.  It’s very much Edward’s mother’s dream to run the home, husband David Morrissey basically along for the ride.  And young Edward is left to his own devices, specifically the tape recorder that he uses to document the passing of the home’s residents.

Edward is determined to find out what happens after death, Clarence angry about his own wasted life.  In particular, he’s grieving the way he and his wife split up as a result of his infidelities: since the divorce his life has been hollow at best. Years of tenderness thrown away for a few quick fumbles with women overly impressed by Clarence’s way with a deck of cards.

Naturally, it’s through those cards that Clarence bonds with Edward.  But at the same time as the two become friends, Clarence is showing signs of dementia.  It all comes together when the entertainer puts on a show for Edward’s birthday, and a trick with a guillotine gets out of hand.  It’s actually a home resident’s finger that gets out of hand, severed by the blade in a funny and twisted scene that also signals the precise moment that Clarence’s arc goes down.

The whole business could be as grating as an ad for Werther’s Toffee, the candy preference of war criminals everywhere.  Only, the script continually pulls back from cheap sentiment and allows the viewer to fill in some blanks.  Whether that’s through good writing or what happened in the edit suite I couldn’t say: it amounts to the same thing.

Altogether, Is Anybody There? is an unexpected delight.  And let’s hope it bodes well for the continued existence of BBC Films: even the global success of Slumdog Millionaire counts as too little too late for the future of fimmaking at C4, and it’d be tragic if the BBC were to come to a similar conclusion.

Why it’s set in the eighties I couldn’t say.   Perhaps it’s to do with the way that support for the elderly has developed since then.  Now, homes tend to be bigger affairs, and regulations would make some of what happens on screen impossible today.  A shame: the idiosyncratic warmth with which Anne-Marie treats her clients is a tonic.

Pretty much everything about the film works a treat.  Thought has gone into every aspect of what you see, from casting to set dressing to the magic tricks that Caine performs and his young friend seeks to master.  Yes, it’s slight, and predictable, but it’s also more than capably accomplished and genuinely touching on a few occasions.  A few more turns like this from the British film industry, and a few less Lesbian Vampire Killers, and we’d have a film sector to be proud of.  Hey, a man can dream can’t he?

It didn’t take long to realise that I was in a safe pair of hands when watching Otto Preminger’s Anatomy Of A Murder.  The 1959 film stars James Stewart, and introduces him brilliantly.  We’re shown a man returning by car from a day of fishing, and then learn that the same man has an extensive library of similarly-bound hardbacks: the notion that he’s maybe a lawyer feels right.

Stewart comes in to find a note on a board.  This clever contrivance does two things: confirms that he’s not living totally on his own, and introduces a story element that kickstarts what follows, when he takes the note and phones the number that’s written on it.  Add a moody and punchy Duke Ellington score over a terrific Saul Bass title sequence, and you’ve got a cracking opening.

All of which causes me to reflect on the importance of the opening minutes of a script.  A journalist friend who also writes fiction for children, and is herself a mother, commented of the pilot script of an animated series I’m developing that having the opening in a classroom might be a turn-off for kids.  Hmm.

I can see what she means, but feel differently about it: the setting is in the future for one thing, and  I’m pretty confident that kids bored with the reality of their own schooling may nonetheless be fascinated by the details of a science fiction classroom.  Besides, Preminger had more than 150 minutes to get things right: we have just 22.  And, again, there are the other factors: Andy Tudor’s concept art is a delight, and by the time there’s music and a title sequence as part of the experience I’m hoping that it will be like catnip for 8-12 year olds.

Also, there are a few establishing details that need to be made clear early on for the audience to be at home with the show, and the best way I could think of laying those out was in the context of a school lesson, which also establishes some fun characterisation in the process.  We shall see.  And pretty soon at that: the show gets pitched in just over a week: mood boards and script tweaks are being done right now.

After that?  It’s possible that if we develop a relationship with a production partner that they will suggest changes.  Or that a broadcaster does.  All of which I’m open to: this is going to be a new and interesting experience for Andy and myself, and though we’re both confident we’ve come up with something uniquely engaging, who knows what kind of demographic research etc will be necessary before the concept becomes a show that sees the light of day?

It’s been a delight working together with Andy.  We’ve done it plenty of times on commercial jobs such as brochures and websites, and this is the first fruit of our partnership on a project intended for television.  It’s been a breeze: some people who saw us at work in a cafe commented that we were like two kids playing, and that’s about the size of it.  And we’ve already got another project lined up, which could work as an illustrated book for children and an animated feature: I can see us playing in this fashion for some time, especially if we start to attract backers to turn our fantasies into yer actual entertainment.

One step at a time though, progress is only ever achieved by increments, and all that.  Thinking ahead to the animation pitch, I now can’t help thinking what if the show had a Saul Bass-inflected title sequence…and Duke Ellington may be dead, but there are big band jazzers like Cinematic Orchestra and Django Bates it’d be a delight to work with…