With two major series, Ashes to Ashes and Lost, finishing this week, and leaving many viewers underwhelmed by their big twist finales, I'd like to save you from future disappointment by pointing out that there are really only 3 twists. (Spoilers ahead, obviously.) There are incidental twists that arise out of the characters and are genuinely surprising (The Crying Game; Star Wars), but if an ending has to explain everything, don't get your hopes up: it's almost bound to be one of these.

1) The narrator done it. The unreliable narrator has been around since Wuthering Heights and before, but still most people's heads explode when they come across the idea that HE'S MAKING IT ALL UP. He is Tyler Durden/Keyser Soze/the murderer! Etc. Did provide the only satisfactory Agatha Christie plot there is.

2) It was all a dream. Strictly speaking banned from all stories by people over the age of seven but it still sneaks in. Only David Lynch should be allowed to do this.

3) They're all dead. Hard to believe this could still be considered a surprise when it's been used in everything from No Exit to The Third Policeman but since every TV series ending recently seems to unveil this as their Big Explanation, obviously it is to someone. I expect the last episode of Mad Men to reveal that Don Draper was actually killed at the Battle of Gettysburg and was sent into Sixties advertising as Purgatory.

Posted in Field Notes at May 24, 2010 | Permalink

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Writers, no need to sweat over Robert McKee - this poster from 1900 for the play Blue Jeans explains all you need in the way of structure:

No. 1: The big political barbecue.
No. 2: Thrilling saw mill scene.
No. 3: The great lynching scene.
No. 4: Rising sun roarers.

Job done.

Posted in Field Notes at June 20, 2009 | Permalink

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Sweet Thunder has a collection of home recording tapes found in charity shops, which are fascinating for the glimpses they give into private and work lives, some of them decades ago. There are stalacpipe organ recordings and astrology readings, but strangely the most interesting are the more mundane moments: a legal secretary practising her pronunciation of legal terms ("Pun-i-tive damages. Quaa-ash"), some drunk men talking about spreadsheets, and a surgical needle sales meeting.

Best of all is the conversation between an elderly couple, where he ruefully admits to falling for her April Fools Day joke yet again:
"In 51 years I've never missed an April Fool. I can get you ten times in a day!"
"The thing is I think you're so sincere about everything. Trick after trick after trick!"
"April Fools Day I lie all day long."

Posted in Radio at November 11, 2007 | Permalink

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Small boy on a bus:
"What's worse than finding a maggot in your apple?"
Smaller brother: "The world exploding!"

American teenager:
"Have you ever smelled a snake? It smells like this."
- waves chewed piece of gum under his friend's nose.

Indian man stuck in tube door:
"I nearly died then! I love your shoes! I'm a fashion
designer. People say I look like a minister, I take that on board."

Shayne Ward on Simon Cowell:
"To a lot of people he's Mr Nasty. But to me he's Mr Important."

Posted in Field Notes at July 09, 2007 | Permalink

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I'd forgotten about this comic until I came across a site dedicated to it – it was a truly terrifying horror comic for small girls that ran for a couple of years at the end of the Seventies. The best thing about it, apart from the evil glamour of Misty herself, were the merciless moral lessons it imparted. Yes, you love your pony but is it at the price of your soul?:

And, most importantly:

Never mock a monkey.

Posted in Field Notes at November 03, 2006 | Permalink

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This shop window was created by my grandfather, Gilbert Payne, for George Mason's grocer's shop in Stroud, where he worked as an assistant, in about 1935. He won a well-deserved prize for this tribute to Norwegian brisling.

Posted in Field Notes at November 02, 2006 | Permalink

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Apparently the dapper man with the moustache in this family portrait from 1900 is Robert Payne, my great-great uncle, a tailor with a Stroud company called the Holloway Brothers. Whatever else happened, he obviously made sure his family was well-turned out. My Dad tells me of the mixed fortunes awaiting the children in the picture:

"Oldest daughter was Florence ("Florrie"– the only one of these I knew) – she married a chap called Townsend who was a Metropolitan Policeman for some years and then a publican, and such a pleasant husband that Florrie divorced him on grounds of persistent cruelty and violence – and an attempt to set fire to her while she was sitting on her sofa. Next daughter was Beatrice – nothing known. Then came Alfred who married happily and lived in Gloucester. Then little Gertrude, engaged to be married when she died of consumption, aged 21."

Posted in Field Notes at October 16, 2006 | Permalink

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