On things you hear from convention reports, and an old letter

[selenak]

You know, now and then I've always thought it was a pity that in my convention going days I never was at one with a Once More With Feeling (from BTVS) singalong. Now I'm glad I never was if this experience is typical, which I hope it's not, but then going by the number of comments who missed the point the blogger made by delving into declaring their Dawn hate and why the real life teenage girl bullied at the event just had to toughen up are anything to go by. (Make sure to also read the excellent follow up post.) Now I loved Dawn on BTVS (still do, in fact), but I hope I'd be as disgusted if the bullied teenage girl had been defending a character I don't like (say, Bill Adama). You just don't treat other people this way.

On a happier note and also from a convention report, a transcript from Jane Espenson's and Doris Egan's panel about writing for Torchwood. Both ladies had lots of interesting things to say. And, not surprisingly given who they are, funny things. Highlights about the occasional British/American culture clash of the writers:

JANE:
In the story we will be playing with miscommunication and culture shock, Welsh characters in America and vice versa. [To Doris.] Remember the vest discussion between us and Russell? [To us.] Russell said the character was wearing his vest and I said I thought they didn’t have that word. “What do you think we say?” I thought they said waistcoat. Russell said a waistcoat is part of a three-piece suit. I asked him what a vest is, and he described it, and I said, “Oh that’s a wifebeater.”* And Russell said, “That can’t be right!” It took ten minutes, and we had to draw pictures!

DORIS:
We thought one of our cowriters was Scottish.

JANE:
Turns out the Liverpudlian accent has changed since the Beatles.

(You know I had to include that reference. BTW, when Paul's younger brother Michael heard them on tv for the first time, he teased Paul by asking "Why do you all suddenly sound like George on a bad day?" They did exaggarate the accent in the early days a tad.)

Also:

MODERATOR:
Was CoE the high mark you were aiming for?

JANE:
Yeah, we were told to do that, plus more arc.

DORIS:
I was happy and relieved. But it’s a challenge. Can you even get as intense as CoE?

JANE:
Hard act to follow. Some people care about children. [Laughter] How do you top it? But Russell had been rolling this idea around for some time before connecting it with TW, so he had developed some ideas.

And:

AUDIENCE QUESTION:
Do writers get typecast?

JANE:
Yeah. Comedy versus drama is the biggest.

DORIS:
People forget what else you can do. When I started I’d only done SF novels. My agent wanted to get me on an SF show, but I felt ghetto-ized. I liked that my first job was not SF, because I didn’t want to be typecast. But after House, it was kind of the opposite. They assumed I wouldn’t do genre. “Can you do a show about lawyers?” “How about lawyers who are aliens?”

Also they mention RTD's "hooray!" habit which if you've ever heard him do an audio commentary with one of the other writers or producers you're familiar with. In short, now that does sound like the kind of convention event I'd have loved to attend!

*I never stop being disturbed Americans call a certain type of t-shirt "wifebeater".


***

Ever since hearing about her crowning moment of awesome, when she knocked out the crazy fan who tried to stab George with a knife, I was impressed with Olivia Harrison, his second wife. Now I've got an additional reason to which also made me smile. Backstory: as Janet Malcolm observes in her book on the Plath/Hughes biographical industry, The Silent Woman, in every feud there is one party which seems to get loathed from all sides. Not necessarily an important player, but someone. As far as Beatles biographies are concerned, that person is, no, not Albert Goldman, but Geoffrey Guiliano. I've got no idea why him more than anyone else because there are certainly plenty of other candidates around, but Guiliano gets the ire from John, Paul, George and Ringo camps alike. Not only that, but after he published his George biography, Dark Horse, he inspired the following furious letter by Olivia to the Guardian, printed on October 8, 1992, taking massive offense in particular about Guiliano's description of, wait for it.... Paul:

"The sight of Geoffrey Giuliano's face is enough to make anyone a recluse. My husband once made the remark: "That guy knows more about my life than I do." Mr. Giuliano missed the joke and used it to endorse his book. To rate himself as the world's greatest rock 'n' roll biographer (a laughable title in the first place) is nothing but delusion. He has only ever been in the vicinity of my husband for about ten minutes and considers himself an expert. He parades as a spiritual person while condemning the famous, yet without them his achievements in this life wouldn't rate one line in any newspaper. To judge Paul McCartney as "vacuous and shallow" after all Paul has written and offered to the world is surely the judgement of an arrogant mind, especially as Giuliano's own recognition is not because he is creative, but because like a starving dog, he scavenges from his heroes, picking up bits of gristle and sinew along the way, repackaging them for consumption by a gullible public. I'm sick of this guy.
Olivia Harrison (Mrs. George)
Henley-on-Thames

Go, Olivia. (Also, since that letter was written a decade before George's death, I'm assuming he agreed with the general content.)

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

I just saw this being promoted on my local comic shop's website - graphic novel about the Beatles in Hamburg. I can't tell from the linked page if it's only being published in English or in German as well - the author/artist is German.

[selenak]

I've read it (in the bookstore, psst). It's both in German and in English, i.e. the German characters speak German except when they're trying to converse with the Beatles, the Beatles plus assorted other English rock artists in Hamburg speak English. Also, thankfully no attempt at phonetic Scouse. (Instead you've got Klaus Voorman observing they don't sound much like how he learned it pronounced in school at all.*g*)

All in all, it's well done for what it is - the Stuart and Astrid story - though oddly I think that Klaus and the other Exis get far more character profile (and come across as more interesting) than Stu, but then that's the problem with Stuart Sutcliffe in nearly any rendition of the tale - because of his early death, which colours everyone's recollections, he's basically the male equivalent of a Poe heroine. Otoh the dialogue is okay and it captures Germany at that time well, including the university climate (I think it must be based on Klaus Voorman's memoirs), plus as opposed to many an English or American Beatle biographer, the writer doesn't take for granted that everyone in the audience was always amused by John calling them Nazis.

The art style is okay, though I can tell the artist didn't always get around the problem of many people having the same hairstyle and how to make them immediately distinguishable from each other anyway in that format. (Art Hirschfeld managed, but not everyone is Art Hirschfeld.) He didn't help his case by giving John and George the same eyebrow size, because really, if there are two George Harrison attributes that are God's gift for a cartoonist to make him distinguishable from the rest, these are the unibrow and the ears. But since the main emphasis is on Astrid, Stu and Klaus, that's a minor complaint.

[jesuswasbatman]

Ah, I think the store promotion means that they've now put out a 100%-English version (which probably says something about UK monolingualism).

[selenak]

Well, to be fair, when you write a Beatles-related comic book for a German audience you can expect them to be fluent enough in English to understand some passages of English dialogue, not only because to learn the language is obligatory in school but because the presumed audience knews a song or two by heart. Whereas in the UK you can choose between French or German, as far as I know, and at any rate you're not constantly surrounded by English songs in the radio, either.:)