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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
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An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Curtis Goes Hollywood
Love Actually was my latest Netflix rental, and I'm astounded at how truly awful a movie it is. I mean diabolical. The script hops around between ten exceedingly thin storylines like an anorexic with ADD. That so many great actors could have been sucked into this project is a testament to the power of the Emperor's New Clothes mentality, as if we needed another one in an era when approximately 100 million Americans still hold the belief that their President is a great war leader. But enough about Bush. The naked charlatan I want to talk about now is Richard Curtis.
I've watched Curtis' career with an uneasy mixture of admiration and embarrassment. He did some stellar work straight out of Oxford writing for Rowan Atkinson's stand-up shows. But the too-clever-by-half historical gags in his first series of Blackadder fell so flat that Ben Elton had to be drafted in to co-write the much more polished second through fourth series. The Tall Guy was adorable; Four Weddings and a Funeral a Frankenstein's monster of tired Brit sitcom tropes; Notting Hill the ideal romantic comedy he'd seemingly been striving for all along. And now this tripe.
A lot has been written about the rampant repetitive cliches in every Curtis film (the token disabled character, the English-American romance, the overuse of pop standards). None of these faze me. What I'm concerned about is the way he represents Britain through an American lens, or rather (to obfuscate further) the way he represents Britain through an American lens refracted through a British view of Hollywood. It's as if, noting that much of the world's dominant movie industry produces emotionally manipulative schlock, he set out to prove that Brits can be schlockier-than-thou. Slavish tribute is paid to the titans of the genre: "Right, we need Kate and Leo and we need them now," says Liam Neeson's character, plopping his lovelorn eleven-year-old son in front of Titanic as if he were rushing him to the emergency room. With this scene, as with countless others, you envision Curtis pausing for imagined murmurs of American approval. Hugh Grant's cardboard Prime Minister publicly slams the US President in a fit of unrealistic romantic pique, but he proceeds to celebrate with that ragged old Hollywood comedy cliche, dancing around his house like no one's watching. When it comes to the special entertainment relationship, Curtis is only too ready to lick the other guy's boots.
The irony is, most Americans look to Britain for respite from this kind of crap. It is the land of Shakespeare, Grant's PM notes, and Shakespeare is spinning in his grave (or quite possibly in Francis Bacon's). Curtis seems intent on creating characters that are emotionally wide open, game for even the most abhorrent kind of laugh, and engage in strange combinations of curses at the drop of an arse-pissing hat. But like any attempt to prove one's coolness, it skims blandly across the surface and never reaches the soul. God help us if British life starts to imitate art in this case.
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