AVATAR 2 and The All-American Love Affair with Guns [20 Dec 2022]

There is an old axiom in storytelling known as ‘Chekhov’s Gun.’ The name comes, of course, from Anton Chekhov who wrote, ‘if you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.’   Well, times have moved on since Chekhov, and I should like to identify a new principle. Let’s call it ‘Hollywood’s Gun.’ It goes like this: ‘If a (generally male) North American film-maker tells a story, he absolutely must include a gun.’ 

It is strange, isn’t it? Most of us will go through life from cradle to crematorium without a gun ever becoming a central feature of our storyline. But this isn’t true at all in American cinema; and the curious thing is, this visceral American love affair with guns is so ingrained, and so profound, and so much a part of cinema-DNA that I don’t believe film-makers are even aware of it anymore. Guns have simply become an essential and inescapable part of the story, just as much as the character arc, or the love interest, or the final epiphany. Often more so. There must be a driving itch in the screenwriter’s brain that keeps him awake at night until he has written in a gun. And from that point onwards, Chekhov’s rule kicks in and the whole narrative becomes subservient to the gun.

Am I exaggerating this? I don’t think I am. I offer you Exhibit A - Avatar: The Way of Water. (Oh, and by the way I know James Cameron is Canadian, but the gun-mind-virus has clearly infected him too.) Now if ever there was a landscape with a richer potential for stories than Cameron’s fictional planet Pandora, I don’t know what it would be. The artists and designers have created an utterly sumptuous world full of beauty and narrative potential; yet into this cinematic Eden, James Cameron has dropped a lazy western-inspired revenge tale where a mad army colonel armed with unlimited stocks of assault rifles, ammunition, and other assorted weaponry chases down an innocent family armed with bows and arrows. Really? Is that the best Hollywood could do?  Sadly, it seems it is. And I suspect that every dire review the film gets is on some level due to the disappointment every reviewer has felt on being served up with another gun-driven narrative.  

Guns in films give birth to four lazy memes that crop up so frequently you will readily recognise every one. The first is the ‘deus ex machina,’ hook where Good-Character A is about to be shot by Bad-Character B but is saved by a shot from Unexpected-Offscreen-Character C. It is quite depressing to see this meme show up in Avatar.  (The second meme - which Avatar thankfully avoids - is ‘gun-on-the-floor’ where a gun is kicked around, and two fighting protagonists have to wrestle to reach it first. Yawn.) The third meme is especially heinous. This is the ‘good-guys-never-get-hit’ rule, where the hero and his family can duck and weave through streams of machine gun fire, picking off random bad guys, but never catching a bullet themselves. (Man but those automatic weapons in Avatar must be so inaccurate!) Finally however, and most egregious of all, is ‘the Bonanza injury.’ Cinema would have us believe that gun shots don’t do that much damage. Bad guys topple over and die quietly. Good guys take one to the shoulder but carry on bravely. A fatal gunshot on a good guy is an ‘oh dear, I appear to be bleeding,’ situation. (Avatar is guilty of this too.) In reality of course, assault weapons tear moon-sized chunks out of people and leave gore and body parts everywhere.

Can I appeal to Hollywood to find a new generation of directors and screenwriters who aren’t obsessed by guns. Even Titanic has a ‘gun chase’ sequence where (in surely the least believable scene of the film) Billy Zane’s Cal steals a gun and tries to shoot Jack and Rose, firing reckless several times in a chase down the stairway and through the lounge. Thankfully the ‘good-guys-never-get-hit’ rule applies. But was it really necessary in the first place?

In the meantime, Avatar 2 is not an awful film. It should be shorter, but it is perfectly watchable. And beautiful. And I wanted it to be better than it is. But with the biggest budget in cinema history it is a missed opportunity for some real science fiction storytelling, and yet another platform for dull NRA clichés.    

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com 

My Book Shelves (8): The Jack Reacher Books by Lee Child [15 Dec 2022]

I came late to Jack Reacher. I’ve always been suspicious of the books. Maybe it’s because I bought a James Patterson book once when I was in an airport departure lounge where it was the only English language book for sale and I was desperate. I will never be that desperate again. Next time I’ll simply chew my knuckles down to the bone. It would be preferable to another James Patterson. Anyway. I don’t know why - but I ended up putting Lee Child and James Patterson into the same mental category; maybe it’s because bookshops tend to display them close to one another. Fast forward ten years. In 2019 I found myself in a National Trust second-hand bookshop and in a fit of madness I plucked a Lee Child book from the shelf, and found myself promising to ‘give it a try.’  And now, in the past three years I have read seventeen of them and I still have a few to go. It is like an addiction. I have to pace myself. I can’t let myself finish one book and then scoop up the next. But there they are, delicious and unread on the shelf, and the only sad thing is that I’ll soon have read them all.

So what is it about Lee Child and the Jack Reacher books? They are not great literature (sorry Mr Child). They don’t explore the great themes of the human condition. But they are bloody well written. I feel as if I have to say this twice, because the received wisdom is that this genre of books is a kind of semi-literary canon fodder for people who don’t really read. Bollocks. These are brilliantly written novels. They are technically well constructed and they’re smart. Child has a way of breaking every rule of writing and making it look ok.   And they’re page turners. Once you start one, you have to keep going. That is rare in novels these days. At least it is for me.

There is, of course, a certain recipe for a Jack Reacher book – and some ingredients show up almost every time. Reacher rocks up somewhere at random, encounters some bad guys, manages to waste two, three, four – maybe even five guys at once in a brawl, gets the girl, solves the mystery, kills the kingpin, disappears into the sunset. But Lee Child messes with us. There is always an intrigue that takes a while to play out. He gives us some novels in the first person, others in the third. He hops around in time. He fleshes out Reacher’s back story in glimpses here and there. We globetrot. Maybe he doesn’t get the girl. If Lee Child has a formula then he breaks those rules as often as he breaks the rules of writing.

Which is a lot.

There is a sense that everything is finely researched in a Lee Child book  – from the workings of obscure guns to the machinations of the CIA. The only certainty is, if you put Reacher in a room with a posse of bad guys, the only person walking out with all limbs and brain intact will be Jack Reacher.

I have heard Lee Child say, in an interview, that he doesn’t plot the stories out. He starts chapter one without any real idea where the story will take us. ‘If it isn’t a surprise for me, how can I expect it to be a surprise for the reader?’ he said. I love that. It is painfully close to my own writing method. My son Jon tells me I write into the dark. I like that expression because that is how it always feels.

Anyway. If ever you find yourself at the airport in Kuwait City forced to choose between James Patterson and Lee Child, do yourself a favour. Pick Jack. Every time. 

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com 

Hotels: How to get five star ratings from English guests: (A Guide for Hoteliers) [2 Dec 2022]

We English are a stoic lot. We’re not supposed to complain. The stiff upper lip and all that. ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ is a saying we all learned at our mothers’ knees; and so, on the whole, we put up with stuff. But here are some tips for hotel bosses who might be wondering why their English guests never award them five stars on TripAdvisor. It is a short but simple list, and it all relates to breakfast. The English, you see, can overlook noisy bedrooms, cool showers, and lumpy pillows; but breakfast is sacrosanct to us; and so, when you next muse over your unhelpful run of three-star reviews, give some thought to ways you might at least improve your ratings from the Anglo-Saxon customers.

Number 1: Tea

I’ve stayed in a good many hotels around the world – and barely any have a clue how to serve tea (there was a very good hotel in New Delhi that did it excellently – but that was about it.) So here goes:

                           I.          The Pot: Tea is brewed in a teapot. A china teapot. Not a metal pot. Not a mug or a cup. Not a fat earthenware vessel. A glass pot will do if it’s all you have. But fine bone-china is preferred. One pot will do for one person. It should accommodate enough tea for two full cups. For two people travelling as a couple, a large pot that holds four cups is fine for afternoon tea, but at breakfast give them a pot each.

                          II.          Water: Soft water is better if you have it. And the water must be boiling when you add it to the tea. Actually bubbly steamily scarily boiling. Not simply hot. (American hotels invariably bring a mug of warm water and a teabag. I would immediately and without remorse deduct two stars from any review for this. Possibly three. It is unforgivable.)  

                        III.          Additional water: an additional pot of boiling water should also be provided. So yes, you need two pots for your solitary English guest. Don’t scowl. This is how it’s done. The guest will add water to the pot (see item I above) to adjust the strength of the tea and to allow for a third cup, if needed (which it usually is).

                        IV.          The tea: tea bags are ok. Pyramid tea bags are better than flat ones. Leaf tea is better still, but even we English know we have to make some concessions. But horrible Lipton’s yellow-label tea bags won’t do. Nor will Tetley’s US brands. They’re probably designed to make iced tea. They make vile tea at breakfast. So do most cheap teas. Dig into your budgets and get some decent tea. You wouldn’t offer your guests cheap instant coffee so don’t offer them yellow packets of sawdust masquerading as tea.  Tea Pigs is a good place to start. Or Whittards. Other good quality brands are available. Two tea bags in the pot please. You will need the following teas: English Breakfast (or Yorkshire) tea, Assam, Earl Grey, Darjeeling. You might also want to offer Ceylon tea, and Lapsang Souchon. Don’t run out. And by all means have decaf and herbal infusions too. Some people like them.

                         V.          Milk: should always be available in a small jug.

                        VI.          Cups: at home we all drink tea in mugs. In hotels we want cups and saucers. Sorry

We’ll accept self-service tea so long as the water is boiling and teapots etc are provided as above. But tea delivered to the table is better.

Number 2: Toast

Nobody in the world likes those dreadful conveyor-belt toasters that blaze away for three hours during hotel breakfasts, using as much power as a medium sized nuclear plant. This opinion isn’t limited to your English guests. The machines simply don’t work. Feed your slices in once and you end up with warm bread. Send them around a second time and you get cinders. Consign these devices to the skip and replace them with two or three sensible double pop-up toasters.  Then:

                           I.          Butter: abandon those nasty little pats of butter that you have to unwrap. They don’t have enough butter for a single slice. Provide pots of butter for each table. I’ll bet it’s cheaper. It will certainly be more popular.

                          II.          Marmalade: It may only be the English that like marmalade; but boy, do we like it. You will earn so much respect and admiration from your English guests if you provide a decent marmalade – I can’t begin to tell you. Not apricot jam. Not lemon marmalade. Or lime. True orange marmalade is an invention of the gods and essential at breakfast. Best served in a pot with a teaspoon for big gloopy servings  – but even it if comes in a tiny annoying jar that’s ok. So long as you let me have three.

                        III.          Marmite: Famously we don’t all like it. But those of us who do will love you for providing it. And you’ll win over Australians too. That’s a bonus.

Number 3: Orange juice

American hotels already do this perfectly. Cold, freshly squeezed orange, served from a jug into a tall glass. Provide other fruits if you insist – but we won’t bother with them.

And there you have it. We’ll put up with pretty much everything else. We generally enjoy your fruit salads, and your cold meats, or your pastries, or your attempts at an English breakfast. We can cope with all of them. Just get the tea and the toast and the orange juice right and you’ll send us off with a smile. And maybe we’ll give you a better review. I will.  

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com