In A Lonely Place
It's been a bit of a Factory week for me with the sad death of Tony Wilson and the screening of the new film about Joy Division's Ian Curtis, 'Control', at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Joy Division were always about a lot more than just Curtis. As well as the band members we had the management of Rob Gretton, the incredible production of Martin Hannett and the sleeve design of Peter Saville which was so central to the Factory mythos. There was the photography of Kevin Cummings and Anton Corbijn, both of whom created grainy black and white imagery of the band against the backdrop of decaying industrial Manchester which played a large part in creating the image of Factory and Joy Division. There were journalists like Paul Morley busy printing the legend often at the behest of Tony Wilson himself.
Tony Wilson was a co-producer on Control and this film festival showing opened with a tribute to him. The film itself is based on the book 'Touching From A Distance' by Curtis' widow Deborah. It's a tough film and doesn't pull any punches when it comes to Curtis' illness and spiral into depression and despair. The film strongly implies that the cause of this was the side effects of the medication that Curtis took for his epilepsy.
The film is directed by Anton Corbijn and like his photography is in grainy black and white. The acting is superb, particularly Samantha Morton as Deborah Curtis. The musical performances were all done by the actors themselves and as well as sounding good closely resemble the way Joy Division moved on stage as portrayed in video compilations like 'Here are the Young Men'.
As the film moves to its grim conclusion the viewer is drawn in to the mess that Ian's life has become. Powerful, bleak and highly recommended.
Unofficial 'Control' site.
τLabels: edinburghfestival, music
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:: Sunday, August 19, 2007 ::
Pulped
Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Alan Grant
Edinburgh Book Festival. Friday 17th August 2007.
‘Graphic Novels, literature or pulp fiction.
Both Denise Mina and Ian Rankin are of course well known and highly successful novelists writing in the crime genre. Recently both have been tempted to take on a writing gig with DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. Mina has already had a 13 issue run on ‘John Constantine – Hellblazer’ and Rankin is to start writing the title. Both also have creator owned projects due to come out. Ian Rankin is certainly not scared to stray into unfamiliar cultural areas, his comics project comes after a recent stab at writing lyrics in the Ballad of the Book project. Veteran comics writer and editor Alan Grant who has written for everything from the Courier to 2000 AD joined them for this book panel. He was writer on Batman when it was selling a million copies an issue although it was his tales of writing the horoscopes for the Courier that probably took the audience prize for best anecdote. Grant is from Midlothian, making it an all-Scottish panel.
In contrast to Grant’s forty years in the business, Ian Rankin’s experience in comics amounts to a recent appearance in Oor Wullie. Although he has been a life-long reader and managed to slip a reference to Watchmen into early stories. He admitted that writing comics is a different discipline. Crime fiction is taken relatively seriously in the UK at least, but comics are not. There is nothing in Britain yet to approach France’s Angouleme festival or the massive sales of the Japanese market.
So why are comic publishers looking to writers like Rankin and Mina? Alan Grant reckoned it was down to plummeting sales in the comics market. He referenced the boom of the early 90’s when sales were in the millions. That boom was unsustainable, being based on speculation that would never pay off.
Among the differences noted between comics and novel-writing were the way writers were treated in the comics world. Comics publishers keep the copyright on all their writers creations, something unheard of in the world of the novel and Alan Grant had a few tales of his attempts to challenge this through the NUJ.
So, literature or pulp fiction? Well, both. Dickens was a pulp writer after all.Labels: comics, edinburghfestival
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:: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 ::
Rankin Full Stop
I picked up a few tickets for the book festival and among them are tickets to see Denise Mina and Ian Rankin talking about their experiences writing comics and graphic novels. Both of them had a shot at writing DC's Hellblazer, although we are yet to see Rankin's. Rankin has also written about his early days as a punk in Fife, watching the Skids in Kirkcaldy.
So I was pleased to see the following endorsement of the Edinburgh People's Festival from Ian.
"The Edinburgh People’s Festival makes for a refreshing change. Its local,varied and goes to places the other festivals would never dream of going (though I can think of a few actors who should be in Saughton prison). Edinburgh isn’t just Princes Street and the castle and most Edinburghers don’t live in the very centre of the city. So I congratulate the Peoples Festival and hey, its an absolute bargain to boot!"
The EPF is gearing up for another year so check out the link above.
τLabels: edinburgh, edinburghfestival
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