The Chilcot Inquiry: if you are so drawn to it...

An increasingly nervy, impulsive, hair-trigger atmosphere surrounds the Chilcot Inquiry and reportage of same, as the media and the ticket-possessing public await Tony Blair’s appearance on Friday. The last few days have offered rich pickings on the legal aspect of the matter. I should say that it used to be one of my (innumerable) gripes against New Labour that there were far too many bloody lawyers sat round its top table. But then I’m not aware that anyone ever claimed these people were any good at being lawyers. (Cherie Blair has her claims in this department, of course, but nobody ever elected her, perhaps to her chagrin.)
What an assured legal performance we have had, though, from Jack Straw! Not just in his testimony to Chilcott but in the documents under discussion, such as his 6-page rejoinder to Lord Goldsmith. The BBC, who nurse a private and wholly personal wound over Iraq, are currently headlining that Straw is ‘defiant over ignored legal advice’ on the illegality of the war, which is, I suppose, one way of saying that Straw considered one piece of advice from the Attorney General to be more salient than another (differing) one from the FO’s man.
Similarly it seems to be headline news to some outlets that Lord Goldsmith ‘changed his mind’ on illegality, or that he had admitted such - something we were aware of, also of Goldsmith’s reasons for same, many moons and Inquiries ago; just as we know the unshakeable anti-war line that he only reviewed his options once the Yanks leaned on him. At any rate Goldsmith put it this way today: the question to his mind was ‘‘Which side of the argument do you want to be on?’ And I took the view I would prefer to be on the side of the argument that a second resolution wasn't necessary.’ That’s politics. As Paul Waugh of the Evening Standard has it, more sceptically than would I:
‘I'm sure many will seize on 'Goldsmith's Law' as proof of his wrong-headed approach to the law: make up your mind first where you want to end up and then design your verdict accordingly. Not exactly what some expect of an Attorney General. But maybe that's unfair, maybe he was simply reflecting the political realities of the consequence of his decision…’
Yesterday the principled Elizabeth Wilmshurst said her piece in cool and calm fashion, and Nick Witchell on the BBC 10 O’Clock News made sure we were told that members of the public in the hearing room applauded the end of her testimony. Not to defame these spectators en masse but I suspect a fair few of them are the sort who have made BBC1’s Question Time such a drizzle of loud nonsense whenever Iraq is discussed.
Ms Wilmshurst also got in her shot at Mr Straw and his ‘ignoring’ of the Foreign Office legal view: ‘He’s not an international lawyer.’ So, by implication, he lacks that rigour, that basis on such an universally esteemed and binding body of case law? Sure, Ms Wilmhurst and Sir Michael Wood may have been more fastidiously following the letter of law in making sure their opinions genuflected toward the legally clear primacy of that peculiar body called the UN Security Council - for all that this was to defer to the polluted world of politics. If only the membership of said Council were as pure and rigorous in their legal assessment of a case as Wilmhurst and Wood! But then maybe the proud French former imperium, the wounded and bristling Russian imperium, and the quietly confident Chinese imperium were all entirely principled and law-abiding in their considered opinion that the tyrant Saddam Hussein would not be overthrown by any imperial warmongering US/UK-led coalition, at least not on their watch. Or as Kafka's thuggish doorkeeper tells the Man from the Country who seeks admission to The Law: 'If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful...'
The illustration above comes from the online petition site Ban Blair Baiting.

Mad Max in Midlife

My dear daughter #1, newly 4 years old, is in a phase where Her Absolute Indispensable Favourite Film has passed seamlessly from Mary Poppins to The Sound of Music. As such, her cinematic tastes have reached 1965, and she has learned why Julie Andrews – nee Julia Wells of Walton-on-Thames – was in her heyday the world’s biggest box-office draw: namely, because she was clean-limbed and fresh-faced, apparently unsullied, she sang well, and could even manage to act a bit while singing. Perhaps one day I will be forced to explain to Cordelia why Julia from Walton-on-Thames then married the increasingly vulgar Blake Edwards, watched her career decline none too gracefully, and felt the strange need to disrobe in a dismal picture called S.O.B. Eh bien, I guess that Cordi and I might yet manage to sit together through a viewing of Julie's one other hit, Thoroughly Modern Millie...
Before Cordi met Julie, i.e. last summer, she had a big thing for Babe The Pig, and this Christmas she seemed to approve of Mumbles the Penguin in Happy Feet. It was with great surprise that I discovered these works to be the brainchildren of Australian director George Miller, the affable and cerebral ex-doctor who did the boys a big favour by packing in medicine, getting some mates together in 1979 and making Mad Max.
Now then, when I was 10 years old my own Absolute Indispensable Favourite Film was Mad Max, and by the time I turned 11 it was Mad Max 2 (or The Road Warrior, as it was known in the US where few people outside of drive-ins had turned out for Mad Max.) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome duly followed in 1985, a let-down that showed Miller was a mite too inclined to the Jungian analysis of mythology popularised by Joseph Campbell.
Now the internet churns daily with reports of progress on Miller’s fourth Max picture, Fury Road, due for our screens in 2011, Tom Hardy taking the wheel from that villainous old soak Mel Gibson. Is Miller too old for this sort of thing now? Am I?

Stewart Lee: Theatre of Hate

Last Saturday my wife and I managed to get out of the house for the night a deux, yes, quite unaccompanied, and initially I was so fazed by the shock of the new that it was only as the lights went up on Stewart Lee at the Leicester Square Theatre that I remembered what had been the ostensible, entertainment-oriented purpose of the evening. (I had already drunk a pint of beer, in a glass - albeit a plastic one - so I was mildly euphoric - albeit clear-eyed about what the morning would bring, not to say what was owed the babysitter, and this after a £4 pint of beer...)
At any rate, I got over my initial stupefaction, because Stewart Lee was very funny, and gradually I remembered that this had been my confident expectation, based on my admiration for last year's BBC2 Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle, an admiration I'd expressed loudly enough for my wife to take a punt on these tickets. On Saturday night Lee made at least one gag about the low audience figures that series attracted, which may have been just an appealing mode of self-deprecation, or maybe a sign that his comedy lies on the cusp of the mainstream as it currently stands. Lee is a sort of anti-comedian: he certainly makes enough disparaging comments about lesser comedians; but more especially he does That Thing of deconstructing his act a little in the course of delivering it, such that the deconstruction almost seems to be the act itself - until, invariably, he exposes what is the actual essence of his comedic schtick, which is a form of moral disgust, a palpable sense that the world is simply not good enough, its faults both disguised and aggravated by certain popular loudmouth charlatans, some of them comedians. Part of this weltschmerz, Lee makes plain, comes from being a 41-year-old man, with 20 years in the job behind him, physically marked (on top of the usual dissipation) by being the father of a 2-year-old boy who, I imagine, gives Lee the runaround but also the impetus to keep protesting the inadequate state of the world...

10 Bad Dates With De Niro: The Softcover is Nigh (US Only)

My brother, currently on loan to Los Angeles, CA, sends the photographic evidence (above) that Overlook Press have indeed unleashed a paperback of Ten Bad Dates With De Niro upon the famously fickle North American book-buying market. If it has already landed in LA's delightful and legendary Book Soup store then we are sitting pretty. Good luck to the little fella. I will rest my case for its merits on the verdict of Richard Schickel in the Los Angeles Times: "A stimulating, necessary volume - and virtually alone amongst cinematic studies in the wit of its arguments and the seductiveness of its style."

Esquire (February 2010) now on stands, noticeably Female

I'm proud to be a contributing editor to a men's-interests magazine that doesn't feel the need to chase circulation through cover shots of ephemeral girly models in their scanties. No sir, when Esquire does feel the urge to put a beauteous woman up on its front, they always do so with plenty class: to wit, the quite stupendous image of actress Rachel Weisz by Greg Williams (left) that adorns the new issue. (Weisz is interviewed within by my mate Nev Pierce. Elsewhere the 'Rachel Cooke Interview', which a few months back was with Tony Blair, is this month with Peter Mandelson. Rachel Cooke gets some lovely gigs. As does Nev.)

I met Rachel Weisz once, in 1995, on the location (just outside Siena) of Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. With the rest of the cast and crew she was hanging out somewhat languidly in the Tuscan villa that was the movie's chief location - waiting for the Muse of the Next Set-up to descend on Bernardo and his DoP. In particular, she was hanging out with Liv Tyler, with whom she seemed to have as nice a rapport as they were meant to have in the movie (where Weisz played the sexually experienced young female to Tyler's over-ripe virgin.) As in that movie, Tyler in the flesh looked marginally more like the Hollywood movie star (at least to my gauche eye), and Weisz slightly more like the smart/gifted product of a Hampstead upbringing and a Cambridge education. Ms Tyler has done very well since, of course, but Weisz has really shot the works, with Hollywood franchise hits and an Academy Award. Now, apparently, she's polled as the woman most Esquire readers would like to marry - which, based on her CV and that cover shot, is setting the bar rather high.

Oh yes, my film column this month is on the film of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, of which I say:

"Post-apocalypse movies tend to excel in the poignantly desecrated landmark, and ever since Planet of the Apes Hollywood has routinely knocked the head off the Statue of Liberty. The beauty of The Road lies in the melancholy of an abandoned freeway bridge, a mighty and improving work of mankind turned to a reproach now that civilisation has receded. Across that bridge Man and Boy trudge, toward a jack-knifed eighteen-wheel truck; and ‘round the decay of that colossal wreck’, as the poet wrote, desolation stretches far away..."

Another round-up...

You'll have noticed I do, for my sins, take seriously any regard that's exhibited for my stuff out there in Blogville; also that I have an amateur interest in the art of top tens anyway... so I'm pleased to see Crusaders on another personal-best-read-of-2009 list, this one from blogger Nick Lacey (scroll down), where I'm in the esteemed company of Misha Glenny, Joe Sacco, Anne Tyler et al. Better yet, since David Peace and The Unthanks (pictured) rank high in Mr Lacey's 'Film' and 'Music' lists too, then I get the additional warm feeling of being part of a certain culture that's rattling around out there somewhere...

The Robinsons: Paint an Inch Thick

Mulling the possible fall-out of the Peter & Iris Robinson Debacle on Newsnight last week, scholar Paul (Lord) Bew warned viewers to be aware first of all that ‘there is no-one to the left of Peter Robinson in the DUP.’ Now, there’s a thought to make you gulp: Bew is right, of course, and it’s been that way for a while, and yet the plain statement of the truth does chill the blood somewhat. (The excellent David McKittrick summarises the state of things well in today’s Independent.)
The abrupt termination of Iris Robinson’s ludicrous political career is, of course, to be warmly welcomed. One always assumed that she was a contemptible hypocrite, but never that she would end up trumpeting the fact to us all with such fanfare. No further attempt on her part to show off the contortions of her Protestant conscience could afford her the slightest pathos – truly this is the sort of woman (cf. Wilde) whose hair would turn quite gold from grief. But she had a good run, absolutely maximised her limited abilities in life, and was able to carry on in the grandest manner. Now, as Hamlet instructs Yorick’s skull, ‘Get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.’
What of ‘Peter’, as McKittrick calls him with, one assumes, some sort of friendly regard? He looks to be on the out, for sure. He appeared red-eyed on television the other day, though his legendarily pinched and sour persona of the 1980s and 1990s makes him another hard fellow to feel sorry for. 'In all of my public life', he insists, 'I have acted in the most professional and ethical way.' That goddamned self-advertising Protestant conscience again. Says who, Peter?

I will always remember him as the would-be DUP autocrat trapped in the mountainous shadow of Ian Paisley: a chap with a decent mind who nonetheless affected a trench coat and tinted glasses, a nerd trying to be a thug, as when, notoriously, in 1986, he led a Loyalist mob to the little Monaghan town of Clontibret, in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement. What idea of Ulster those eejits thought they were upholding by breaking windows and daubing graffiti on schools, the Lord only knows, but Robinson watched over the cudgel wielders and pronounced that this was Good. His subsequent attempts to squirm out of the legal consequences of his actions ought to have been the moment he learned to stop acting the tough guy.
The funniest twist in Robinson’s career was his adoption c. 1990s of a spiked, moussed hair-do, this coiffure perched above a pasty face that has always seemed about as cheerful as a kicked-in fridge door. Clearly Iris was urging him to play his proper part in the power couple they had become. And yet in the big stakes game it seemed Peter could never usurp Big Ian. Rather like Prince Charles, you might say, he aged and wearied and grew stale in the long wait to succeed. And yet, materially he prospered, his well-upholstered little empire in Castlereagh expanding indefatigably, with Iris ordering in the fancy curtains.
Moreover, as the mid-90s ‘peace process’ trained a new international spotlight on Northern Ireland Robinson proved himself to possess a decent set of political smarts, to be able to master a brief, exhibit a forensic mastery of detail. In his entirely auto-didactic way he was more impressive than the condescending ex-law lecturer David Trimble.
As Trimble’s UUP fell apart, Robinson’s utterly strange party gained, and Paisley's authority waned - Robinson himself seemed a bit more sensible, a bit more likeable, and distinctly atypical of that party of his. As he said in 2001, ‘Unless we have a structure that can enjoy the support of unionists and nationalists alike, it is not going to last.’ This observation remains true, and Robinson came round to it quicker than some of the other aspirant stormtroopers on his side. But if he’s now about to exit the field, then Paul Bew’s observation is the ominously correct one.

Jennifer Jones 1919-2009

In case I was sounding too morose below, I should say that one fairly solid-looking item on my professional dance card for 2010 is the filming, in February, for Channel 4, of a 30-minute drama script of mine entitled Jennifer, which is being developed under the channel's invaluable 'Coming Up' strand for writers and directors new to TV. The director is a very gifted young Belfast man called Michael Lennox, and the Jennifer script is a variation on such themes as the enigma of romantic attraction, and the mystery and mutability of female beauty. I named it Jennifer as a sort of hommage to Jennifer Jones, the long-retired Hollywood actress, star of (inter alia) Duel in the Sun, Cluny Brown, Portrait of Jennie, Gone to Earth and Beat the Devil. And I noted Jones' death on December 17 last year with a bit of sadness.

I admired her in many films, more as a presence than as an actress, though she certainly had something there. Above all, though, it was her performance as Jennie Appleton in Portrait of Jennie (1948) that made me such a devotee. In Ten Bad Dates I wrote the following on that score:
The cult of Jennie is founded on two exceptional film-historical factors: it was a pricey super-production from the obsessive mind of David O. Selznick, devised for his wife Jennifer Jones; and it is one of the few Hollywood studio products that had Bunuel in rhapsodies (‘a mysterious, poetical and largely misunderstood work’).

Joseph Cotton plays a penniless, disconsolate painter who encounters a strangely fervent little girl in Central Park. She dresses and talks as though from a bygone era, and sings an odd unsettling song (‘Where I come from, no-one knows / And where I’m going, everyone goes.’) Thereafter he continues to run into Jennie or, rather, she is continually running toward him from out of the gloom (always shot in low angle, a hazy sun or glowing moon behind her.) And she’s a little older each time.

Cotton’s painting, meanwhile, is marked by a new passion. He realizes the strangeness of what he’s doing – some basic detective work confirms to him that he’s in love with a dead girl – yet gives himself up to it, not least because of the powerful nothings she whispers into his ear (‘Of all the people who lived from world’s end to world’s end, there is just one you must love, and you must seek until you find him.’)

David Thomson, Selznick's biographer among his many distinctions, wrote a thoughtful obit of Jones for the Guardian, making reference to the unfortunate Brittany Murphy. The Telegraph obit took a rather dim, mordant view of Jones' Life & Work, and its recounting of some of the grimmer biographical details would make anyone wince. Some Telegraph readers, though, were moved to leap to Jones' defence in the comments section - such is the power of the movies, for they never met her. Even David Thomson never got near, as he ruefully recalls in his own piece. That was Jennifer, something of an enigma...

End of Year Round-Ups...

As an allegedly professional writer of fiction I might look back on 2009 with a certain sense of unease, insofar as one could say I failed to produce any writing of substance - at least, nothing fit for any significant number of people to actually read: a novel in the works, for sure, just as in 2008, but still a fair way away from home; a couple of screenplays, both in development limbo; bits and pieces of a couple of stage plays, still not resolved into wholes... you get the picture.
As such, I look over the literary reviews of 2009 in wonder at the wealth and diversity of published work, and am reminded, in the words of Roland Barthes, that the world is full without me.
So, it's heartening to see a couple of recent and friendly mentions for back-catalogue stuff of mine out there in the blogosphere: over in Maine, Mallory seemed to like 10 Bad Dates, while up in Hampshire Mark D gave a thumbs up to Crusaders. This is why we soldier on, see...