Up in the Air

Yesterday was not feeling very good when I got back from work. I don’t know where all that feeling of sleep deprivation came from. Anyway this morning I woke up and I felt a flu coming on. So I told my boss I’m on leave. He actually asked me what the reason was. That’s the thing – if I get treated like a kid when I’m 25 I grin and bear it, but I’m much older now so I was pretty mad.

Let’s put it this way: it’s Friday. You wake up and feel a flu coming on.

Option 1: you go to work. You boss is happy (actually, more like “happy” because your boss is never happy), you’re not happy, you get sick on Saturday, and spend the weekend feeling miserable.

Option 2: You go to a doctor, and get hard evidence that you shouldn’t go to work. But you feel bad, because you’ve just spent $20+, of which some of it is company’s money. It’s basically like taking a lie detector test. You can only do it so many times before you feel like you’re being treated like a kid.

Option 3: You take leave. At the most your boss will complain about how you took last minute leave. But you’re actually paying this out of your leave entitlement, so why is he going to complain? (And anyway I always have a lot left over by the end of the year, so I’m also doing myself a favour).

Most of the time I would have taken option 2, but today I just hated going to the family doctor, and just paying him money to write me a sicknote. So I just paid with my leave. So technically you have a pretty solid excuse about why you want to take urgent leave. Which makes me wonder why my boss would bother to ask me for a reason to take urgent leave, since I can always tell him that I’m not feeling well.

So at the beginning of my day off, I always thought about the plans that I was going to do. Go to the office and pick up some work and feel less guilty, sit in a café and study, swim. But I was sick and sleep deprived, so in the end I slept until the afternoon, then I went swimming, and after that it was time to meet my friends for a movie.

So I watched “Up in the Air” with Shingo, Nat and Crazy Frog. (OK I know that Crazy Frog is not a nice name but gimme some suggestions and I will rename him.)

This movie in a way reminded me of another movie that I watched, that generated a great amount of acclaim: “About Schmidt”. And I can imagine why: because they lay bare the great amount of loneliness that exists at the heart of American life. Not something that’s universal by any means, but it means quite a lot to an American.

Without giving away too much about the movie, it’s about an executive which clocks up an incredible amount of flyer miles, going from city to city as a consultant. He’s chosen a life up in the air, going from hotel to hotel, clocking up mileage points. He’s good at his job, and it’s a stable career. The meaning of his life is getting as many miles as is possible. He keeps his emotional distance from other people, and goes to a different room all the time.

Well all that suddenly brought back memories of my student life, when I was basically a nomad. Turning up in a different classroom all the time, studying stuff I basically wouldn’t have much to do with. Not really knowing a lot of people. Travelling light. I remember that: the permanent impermanence. Brushing past strangers. I’m wondering where the 4 years went. Actually I know, I had been filling up my head with new ideas and knowledge. Just that – later on you find out that it would have been better if you had built up something more organic - expertise in a few areas, not all – and had some deeper experiences instead of just – like the Chinese saying, qing ting dian shui (skimming the water like a dragonfly).

But what he called this experience is something that I did identify with: self-negation. Like I did want to disappear for 4 years and I did. I even went to a uni that was in the middle of nowhere. (Not my first choice, but I didn’t complain about it being in the middle of nowhere. I thought that being in the middle of nowhere was romantic.) But we’re from Singapore, and that’s like in the middle of everywhere, so it was a great switch for me.

So the movie was good, but not as excellent as the reviews made it out to be. (Agreed with Nat on that one) I’m not a movie fanatic. There was a period of 2-3 years when I went to the movies because I believed that it taught me things about life. In a way they did, but I’ve come to realize that even though you can read a lot of little nuances into situations, even though you can analyse characters in such a way that you get “A”s for your essays, what are you going to do with your life is a different thing. And since then, movies have lost quite a bit of shine for me.

There was this time when Crazy Frog reminded me that the movie did say that the difference between boys and men is that men know what they want in life. Take that sentiment to the extreme, you choose your path in life, and follow it down to the exclusion of everything else, that’s maturity. It’s a viewpoint I have little sympathy with, even though nowadays I would think about it a little, as opposed to when I was younger, I would just very rudely brush it off.

It says a lot of him as a person, I think he’s of the mentality that bearing a great weight on your shoulders makes you a better person. It might be true, although I were to think a great deal about it. Which should explain why, when Nat was going on and on about what he could do with a life with a lot of freedom and no responsibilities, Crazy Frog was pretty quiet.

What I say, though, is that in a way I’m not a person with a lot of commitment. I think my miserliness goes a long way. I tend to do things which give quick gains for not much effort. At the beginning things are great, but as you progress, you do need to do the difficult things too. And I probably have neglected that. Suppose I were to say, I want to build a financial life. I need to do that amount of work and research before it gets done. Suppose I were to say, I want to get a girlfriend, I need to spend time and energy, hunting for food. Whereas some of the time, I would just say, look at all those books. I can just pick them up and learn life’s lessons at not very much expense, all of that time being comfortable and cosy. I suppose that’s how I ended up being a bookworm.

And it does go back to what George Clooney’s character does. When companies don’t see much of a profit, they take the easy way out and fire people. George Clooney himself doesn’t like commitment and being tied down, so he just keeps his distance away from other people. That’s one view. But the other view is that you measure your life in terms of distance. OK, George Clooney takes it to the extreme, and it’s a grotesque parody, he measures his life in miles. But you can measure your life in the number of interesting experiences you have. That is also a valid metric.

When Harry Met Sally

If nothing else, this is a public service announcement: “When Harry Met Sally” is available on youtube.

I watched “When Harry Met Sally” for the third time, tonight. The first and second times were before 1992, and definitely way before I was experienced at this romantic thing yet. (In fact the 3rd time I’m not much more experienced than the first 2 times.)

It is the “Seinfeld” of romantic comedies. It’s less the story of Harry and Sally than it is a repository of wisdom on the mating rituals of human beings. Billy Crystal is the hardened, cynical comic and Meg Ryan is the cutesy little girl.

When I watch the movie, I start to realize that it has some kind of architecture to it that I didn’t appreciate when watching it while younger. Both had just endured sad ends to their previous relationships, and were looking to get hitched. They saw the ugly sides of each other, as friends. There were other misadventures, such as the times when they introduced their best friends to each other and set them up on a double date. Instead of hitting it off with each other’s best friends, the 2 best friends got hitched to each other. That was funny. Eventually though, a sympathy fuck leads to a crisis and a resolution. They get hitched up and their friendship becomes a romantic relationship.

Some of the conversations have been classics. I didn’t know that the term “high maintenance” was popularized by this movie. The concept of the “transitional” relation. Most importantly, given the centrality of the platonic relationship between Harry and Sally, the big question – can a man find a woman attractive and still be platonic friends with her?

Very talky romantic movies have reminded me of Rohmer, who is a favourite of mine, as I have watched more than 10 of his movies. This is different from Rohmer, because in Rohmer films everybody is an unreliable narrator. The people in this movie are extremely canny and intelligent, and always speak the truth. The reason why this film is a classic is because there is so much wisdom in these conversations.

A lot of the earlier reviewers missed out on this aspect, rightly criticizing the relationship between Harry and Sally for being artificial and not convincing. Harry and Sally are at their most compelling when they are friends, telling each other stories about their own misadventures at love. There is almost a lifetime’s worth of good lines about romantic relationships. This is not a great movie about a romantic relationship. It is a great movie about people talking about the interesting things that happen during courtship.

In fact, think about the other movies that have been made about romantic relationships by either Nora Ephron or Rob Reiner. “Sleepless in Seattle”, “You Got Mail”

According to wikipedia, the biggest flaw in the movie is that Sally is merely cute and does not have much of a character, other than her obsessive compulsiveness, and her giving extremely exacting instructions when ordering food. The orgasm scene came about when the scriptwriter realized that Harry had been doing most of the talking, and they needed Sally to tell at least one interesting story.

If you were to ask me, I would say that this is really a movie about friendship, not romance. This movie paints romantic relationships in such a bad light that you wonder why people bother at all. The guy just wants to have sex. He doesn’t want to hold the girl in the morning any more than they have to. A man and a woman cannot have a platonic relationship because in the end he wants to have sex. Harry’s pursuit of Sally early in the movie is somewhat distasteful because he’s so upfront about wanting to have sex with her. Sally, when you take away her cuteness, is quite one-dimensional. Women fake orgasms with men. Considering that this movie was written by a woman it’s surprising that the man is the more fleshed-out character in the movie.

What is more touching is the meaningful relationships that friends have with each other, how they talk through their problems. What was happening in the end, when Harry was going to win back Sally? First and foremost, he was trying to salvage a friendship that was placed in great jeopardy by one night of fucking.

Also, movies like these tend to illustrate one great principle: that the best talky romantic movies come from either France or New York City.

American Beauty - 10 years after

I remember watching “American Beauty” 10 years ago and thinking, “this is a fantastic movie”. I’ve written at length about that movie before so I won’t do that again. But what made me suddenly think about that movie was reading about this: yes, Wes Bentley, that pot dealer who introduced everybody to drugs and invited them to turn on, is being sued by American Express for what he’s owed them in back payments.

I think, time has not been kind to the various people who were involved in the movie. They have never gotten back the same kind of acclaim that they had for “American Beauty”. Either they went downhill, or “American Beauty” was an accidental masterpiece, which fell into place because it just articulated what was on the minds of a lot of people at that time. I’m beginning to suspect it was half and half.

I think that the 90s were a bit like the 60s. It was a time when Americans were prosperous, and could afford to think about crazy ideas. It was a time when the world went collectively nuts and bought into the dot com stock craze. (Imagine how much money was lost in that bubble!). It was a time when there was a great cultural war waged between the conservatives and the liberals. It was a utopian time, when people were wondering if the world had changed forever, that the old cold war, pre-internet rules no longer applied to society. It was a time when counterculture was on the rise – instead of the hippies and Haight-Asbury, we had Kurt Cobain, REM and Radiohead, bands that were much less mainstream than the icons of the 80s – Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince.

But the merits of the film – I think that the ideas articulated were a little confused, just as 60s counterculture was confused. It was a time of great hope, a lot of talk about revolutionary change, but nothing really permanent and really significant materialised. I have not watched it a second time. The first time, it was a magical experience. Actually a lot of films I watched around that time were all magical. But I don’t want to spoil it. And I don’t want to get lost in a dream – there are very few fates that are worse than that.

Kevin Spacey had a few good roles, in “Se7en”, “the Usual Suspects”, “LA Confidential”. His role as Lester Burnham more or less carried the whole film. It was a great performance, and people were marking him for even greater things after that. But it was to be the peak of his career. A few good but not great roles followed: “Shipping News”, “K-PAX”, etc.

Annette Bening, the woman who managed to “tame” Warren Beatty. Remarkably, they are still married. She continued to get raves for movies like “Being Julia” and “Mrs Harris” but the movies themselves did not get a lot of attention.

Thora Birch was the goth daughter of Lester Burnham. They also considered Christina Ricci for the role, and you could see why. Afterwards, she was supposed to be the next Christina Ricci, and she had one good film in “Ghost World”. But after that – not much luck.

Wes Bentley was another person who was tipped for better things, having delivered that monologue about “there’s so much beauty in this world”. But other than a starring role in “Four Feathers”, he’s not starred in anything major. He’s still young and things could still happen. Or not. He’s just like David Bentley, fading after an early promise.

Mena Suvari, who was the hot chick in that bathtub, and the person Lester Burnham thinks about while masturbating, you’d expect her to be as hot as ever. But she’s now firmly slot in that “supporting roles for hot chicks” role.

Make no mistake, all the actors that I mentioned here are good actors, and a few are superb. Many have continued to put in good work, but none of them have achieved the heights of “American Beauty”. None of them can be considered failures – but Wes Bentley is dangerously close.

Sam Mendes is the director, and he’s done a few films afterwards – Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road. Revolutionary Road was a return to form, but hardly the equal of American Beauty, even as it also was similar in that it displayed the petty disappointments of the suburban existence. He also did a lot of stage directing in that time.

The one person who has moved on from “American Beauty” is Alan Ball. Not the England World Cup winning footballer, but the scriptwriter of “American Beauty”, and to my mind, the main hero in it. A lot of the sharpness of that movie came from the script, the strong characterization. A lot of the characters are stereotypes, but none of them are really 2 dimensional. His script does what very few scripts these days do: it has the ability to surprise and inspire.

1999 was a year in which there were 3 movies that promised to herald a better future for cinema: “The Matrix”, “Fight Club” and “American Beauty”. But to my mind this promise was largely unfulfilled in the 2000s.

Up

There is such a dearth of good movies coming to Singapore for the last few years that I can just go to the cinema and watch any movie that’s worth watching. I think that Singapore movie audiences largely deserve to watch the dreck served up by distributors because that’s basically what they want, the same old safe dross that’s been proven to put butts on seats, the blockbuster that was invented in the 1970s.

Recently, there have been a few good movies, but I suppose this is summer season. So it was a surprise that here is a stretch of 4 movies that I want to watch: “Harry Potter”, “Hangover”, “Up” and “Bruno”.

This morning I had taken leave to drive my grandmother’s private ambulance. However since her appointment was rescheduled (and my father taking over tomorrow) I decided to go back to work. But on my way to work, I bumped into a colleague on the bus, and after taking the bus for a little while, suddenly decided that I was going to take leave anyway. Most of the time I’m on leave, it’s a drag to get myself out of the house, and since I’m already in the city, why not use it, right? So after having a long a leisurely breakfast, I was in the cinema, watching “Up” and wearing a pair of 3D glasses.

By some coincidence, Nat had his folks in town this morning, and he had also taken leave in the morning, and had watched “Up” at approximately the same time I was watching it, but in a different mall. Then again, is it really possible to distinguish any 2 given Capitaland malls from each other? Thought not.

What more can I say about the first 5 minutes of the film, except that just about every movie review of “Up” I’ve read (around 10) have said that it was great, high point of the film, blah blah blah. It is the emotional core of the film. You know why Carl Fredrikson wants to make this trip, and it’s very clear.

This film is a lot like “Gran Torino” in a sense. Old white men and young Asian kid. Old white man is a widower, and consequently embittered, in spite of, by most accounts, having lived a long and good life, and had the sort of wonderful, perfect 30/40 year marriage that people just don’t seem to have anymore. There is something tragic in that, no doubt, that you can live the sort of life that many people only dream about having, and at the end of the day, you are still a miserable old sod.

Some people have wondered, why are Asians always the kids in these movies. I don’t know, my guess is that it’s some kind of homage to Miyazaki because his main characters are usually kids. I suppose Westerners don’t really know us Asians very well, not as well as they do Jews or Blacks. The image of Asia is that of a kid, because we know that our time has come, and only come lately. A blank sheet, then, because they don’t know better. Asians because us Asians know how to be kids. The westerners are just too smart alecky, especially in movies, and clever rather than wise. The story was calling for a kid to be a kid. A scout who helps old men cross the road.

Some people have criticized the movie for not having a lot of ideas. I’d admit that if I were the screenwriter the first part of the movie would be much easier than the rest of the movie to write. What can you do with a floating house / caravan anyway? The thing about animated films is that you usually put quite some effort into inventing the funny characters. Then after that, instead of looking for a proper plot, maybe it’s easier to just make it a road movie.

The road movie has been around in literature forever. Three of the most famous works in their respective cultures are road movies: “The Odyssey” (woohoo!), “Wizard of Oz” and “Journey to the West”. As with “Journey to the West”, the basic plot is familiar: put together a bunch of people who are driving each other up the wall: a tricky monkey and an anal retentive monk. Watch the sparks fly.

Quite a few Pixar films are road movies. Finding Nemo, Cars and the Incredibles are road movies. Shrek, the one truly impressive Dreamworks feature, is also a road movie. Hangover, which I watched last week, is a sorda road movie, even though it is also a treasure hunt.

Pixar movies are usually notable for having a lot of nice clever touches, like the dogs with their talking collars. I like how the alpha dog has a squeaky voice. Pixar are largely made up of engineers, and more than a few of them are quite contemptuous of authority: this shows up in their pictures. I liked the scenes that make fun of Carl Fredrikson being an old fart. It was quite funny to see the two old men attempt to fight each other, and throw out their backs in the process.

Some people have commended Pixar for being brave with their plots. Surprisingly, some people feel that having people of different generations together is brave. To me, it is not. The Incredibles is about a family. Finding Nemo is about a father and son. It is unusual, though, to have an old man sitting on a porch. But not that unusual, because Gran Torino did it, probably independently of “Up” – “Gran Torino” was started after “Up” and released before “Up” – Pixar films have very long pipelines. Relationships between people of different generations are a little unusual in animated features, but in Asian cinema – no. Lee Ang’s first 3 films are about dealing with that difficult father. Ozu made many films about dealing with old parents. Old people are constantly in your lives. I suppose this is another reason why the Boy Scout is Asian – it’s a little difficult to believe westerners behaving so respectfully towards their elders. We know that John Hughes died last week, and he specialized in making films about generation gaps.

But “Up” is not really about relationships between generations. It’s about 2 views of the world clashing. The boy scout is really a boy, not a teenager learning how to be an adult. He basically has 3 roles in the show: to make sure that Carl Fredrickson is not alone and to assist him, and to persuade him to rescue the funny bird.

The plot is not so water tight. Carl Fredrickson is not really an old man physically, because he’s surprisingly fit. He is old spiritually. But that can change. The funny thing is this: the journey started out being some kind of a spiritual journey, a dedication to his wife. How did it end up being a conventional good vs evil action movie towards the end? The wife was the emotional centre of those very excellent 5 minutes. Why did she disappear for the rest of the movie? Yes, there is pathos is finding that the hero that you worshipped in your youth turned out to be some kind of a villain. But beyond that, the connection to the life he shared with the wife is lost.

I suppose it is the prerogative of road movie to have a loose plot, that is the whole point, that you tie up disparate threads together with nothing much binding them other than the fact that they all belong to the same journey.

One question that’s constantly being asked is: when is Pixar going to screw up? There have been 10 feature films so far, and they’ve all ranged from the excellent to the merely good. But some day, they will falter. And when? In the early 90s, it seemed as though Disney were on a great roll. They had the “Mermaid”, then “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin” and the “Lion King”. Then came “Mulan”, which was brave for attempting a Chinese story. Then came “Hercules” and “Tarzan” which was downhill for them.

Thing about Pixar is that you can find out what’s in the pipeline, and it looks a little worrying. Next 2 years will see 2 sequels – Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. Then a typical Pixar film where you have 2 Newts who have to mate because they are the last surviving of the species – and they can’t stand each other. And after that, Pixar are going to change direction and go into fairy tales because they’re now part of Disney. I hope they negotiate this change in direction well.

Thus far, many Pixar films have had very interesting setups. A bunch of toys coming to life and having plenty of wacky adventures. Scary monsters working for a large corporation. A middle life superhero making a comeback. A fish looking for his son. A rat making a career as a cook. There is a lesson in storytelling here. Whereas characters can be as weird and wonderful as they come, the stories and situations that people recognise arise because from everyday, mundane experiences. The Pixar formula, if there is one, is to put all these weirdos through stuff that many ordinary human beings have to go through, and see what happens. But you can run out of ideas.

I was reading some film criticism as commenting that Spielberg and Star Wars were massively influential movies that forever changed movies for the worse. Movies used to be about adults going through life experiences, and suddenly they were all about childlike. This change in artistic direction coincided with the invention and popularization of arcade games. Suddenly what used to be a movie is now a collection of set pieces.

I credit Pixar with injecting a dose of adulthood into movies of this genre, even though all its pictures inevitably fall into this category. In a way there is no choice: if you’re going to make movies with such a large expense, you have to make it commercial.

Hangover

Watched “Hangover”. I suppose I remember why it got rated so highly. Some people will see some kind of a stoopid comedy, they will pigeonhole it into some kind of a stoopid comedy genre. In a way that description is accurate, but it misses out on 2 things that for me makes this movie worth watching.

First, is the plot, which goes like this. 4 people throw a stag party at Las Vegas. They wake up the next morning, one of them is missing, and they start to recreate the events that took place the night before. There is not much to say about any individual aspect of the plot. All the stuff is completely preposterous, but it is kinda clever how everything fits together in some kind of jigsaw puzzle. The sheer volume of original ideas in this show alone makes it worth watching.

The second is the whole point of this movie, and how it captures the essential truth of what a stag night is supposed to be. You have one wild night of partying, without your wife, of course. You do all the things you could do as a single before you settle down to married life. What is a party? It is a celebration of life. It is a wild orgy of male bonding, and you get married in the afterglow of that wild partying. You don’t get deprived of all the things you used to enjoy as a swinging single, and you don’t carry that bitterness into your married life. The movie is one of the most happening parties you’ve ever seen, and probably a great exaggeration, but it definitely is a stag party, and what it really means.

It is your license to be licentious. Nobody has to know any of the weird details. For myself, I have never consider any of these things to be wrong in of itself: partying, booze, promiscuity, gambling. It is only wrong when it is carried out to excess. One night definitely does not count as excess. It is education.

One thing about the movie is the lightness of touch. Everything and everybody is redeemed in the end. It would be ridiculous to say that this movie has a moral message, but it does have a moral centre.

One of the key scenes in the movie is when the 3 friends of the groom, who are trying to track down the missing groom, find a doctor who had treated one of them the previous nights. They try to pump him for information, try to get every possible clue out of him, even bribe him, until the doctor, exasperated, tells them to fuck off and do their detective work themselves. Thus, with no small ingenuity, we have 2 great adventures in 1: first is the legendary wild stag party itself. Second is the hilarious attempts at uncovering what happened in the wild stag party. And thus we have some kind of moral closure in the end: you make your mess, and you clean it up.

The other aspect of morality is how everybody turns out to be innocent in the end. Hangovers are always associated with guilt, but obviously the decision was made that guilt would have nothing whatsoever to do with this movie. How? You make all the characters so busy that they don’t have any time to feel guilty at all.

Most of the people turn out to have an innocent side in the end, and even the Chinese gangsters are funny. At the beginning, everybody talks about Las Vegas as some kind of a sin city, but everything turns out well.

(spoilers)
The stripper could have been a gold digger, but turns out to be a nice girl with a heart of gold. The drug dealer who swiped the ecstasy with date rape drug could have been an evil man with ulterior motives, but he turns out to be just a confused person. The brother-in-law could have been a total loser, but he turns out to be a total gambling genius who saves everybody’s skins by returning $80K to the gangsters. The casino security could have been wary of the card counters, but they manage to get away. We could have seen the decrepit state of the police and the health care system but that is whitewashed. The tiger could have mauled all the people, but gets returned to Mike Tyson safe and sound. The groom could have been kidnapped, but turns out to have been left behind on the rooftop. All the characters lead a seemingly charmed life. The wedding could have been called off, but proceeds as planned when the 4 of them get back to LA safe and sound.
(spoilers)

Some of the funniest parts of this movie take place in settings that you would not necessarily associate with Las Vegas. Like a police station, or a hospital. Some touches, like throwing in the baby add some fun to the proceedings. But it is a great idea in the movie to merge 3 worlds that roughly correspond to heaven (the real world that the 4 people live in), hell (the Dionysian excess of the stag party itself) and purgatory (the madcap scramble to uncover the events of the previous evening, and get the groom back to reality so that he can get married). Not surprisingly, the purgatory is where most of the movie is set.

In the end, it is this purgatory which proves to be an even more powerful male bonding experience than the stag party itself. And after everything is said and done, and everything is uncovered, what we have to look back on is that that night has actually provided plenty of great memories to look back upon over a lifetime. The movie is unabashedly optimistic, and suitably so, because it just whitewashes away all the bad parts, as though everything were seen through the lens of nostalgia.

Of course, I wonder what happens to the friendship after the movie ends. I heard that this hit has a sequel, but I cannot imagine this happening, because a stag party is supposed to be a once in a lifetime event. In any case, I was reading the wiki article of this movie, and it turns out that there are only 2 minor criticisms of this movie.

I don't know if people who meet at a party and have a great time should be friends for life. I could see them, and then say, "We had such a wild time. We had so much fun together". But then we live life in a completely different context, and there's nothing there. I sometimes think that it'd be better that way.

The first criticism is that the characterization is flat. This is not a big issue because, over here, plot and action are the main draws. Basically you have 1 suave guy who actually does nothing, because this is a movie where people are doing stupid things, so the clever guy doesn’t have much to do. Then you have a nerd who learns how to loosen up. Then you have an idiot who turns out in the end to have 1 special skill who saves everybody’s ass. The star of the movie, the alpha male, in a wonderful display of subversion of plot, does absolutely nothing in this movie. He is the princess in the castle waiting to get rescued.

The second drawback is the negative portrayal of Asians as gangster thugs. I’m not surprised that the guy playing the Chinese gangster is Korean. I suppose this is how Hollywood works: if you want to play a negative Asian stereotype, get a Chinese to portray a Japanese (many of the main characters in “Memoirs of a Geisha” are played by Chinese, not only because the biggest names are Chinese, but also because any Japanese brave enough to act out the characters in that show will probably never find work in Japan ever again), or a Korean to play a Chinese, or vice versa.

One more thing: Lindsay Lohan was actually offered the role of the stripper. She turned it down because she didn’t like the script. I predict that she will ruin her career, not because of the partying, not because of the irresponsible behaviour, but because she has such bad professional judgement. I suppose Heather Graham was one of the main reasons I watched this movie. I always thought that she was hot, and she was hot in Austin Powers. But she doesn’t have much to do. None of the ladies have much to do in this show: this is a stag party, remember, and all the stars are the guys, rightfully so.

I was reading up the requirements for me to graduate from my uni. It said that for any major at all, there are no courses that are compulsory. Every course is optional, but the requirements are like “you must take x courses of type y”. I felt that this movie was saying that life is a bit like that. You must have a bit of everything.

While most reviews of this movie are positive, there are quite a few people who don't get this movie. These are the people who feel that all lowbrow humour is bad. I had been sold on the idea when I was young that British humour is necessarily better, but later on I realised that this is simply people with an aristocratic mentality at work, whose sense of humour is somehow a little less functional if you don't throw in some snob appeal for good effect. I personally don't discriminate. I think that both lowbrow and highbrow humour work for me.

I also believe that most people's reactions to this movie also depend upon how much they believe that old saying that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom". People with a overly puritanical bent would find it very hard to understand this, and consequently they will miss the whole point.

Yes, there is something religious and spiritual about orgiastic merry making. You can't do it every day, of course, because it loses its effect very quickly. But every now and then, you need to know what it is like. You need to get seriously drunk, seriously wasted, have your brain fucked in at least one way to understand more about yourself, because that is how you get acquainted with some ideas that your brain ordinarily censors itself.

I didn’t regret watching this movie: it was entertaining from beginning to the end. The Mike Tyson cameo, I felt, was a little cynical, because he’s basically using this movie to put a positive slant on his reputation. He forgives everybody in the end, reflecting on his own life as “I did some crazy things in my own time” or something like that. Fine, except that those crazy things included the rape of a girl.

What I did get reminded of is that my life is actually very small. It’s nice to get jolted out of your complacency like that. It’s not all fun and games. I’ve been to stag nights that I didn’t enjoy. I think, almost every single time I got seriously drunk (I can actually count the times on one hand – I’m a good drinker and alcohol in Singapore is expensive so you do the maths) I’ve done at least 1 thing that I’m ashamed of and even regret. I don’t really consider it such a fantastic thing to lead a “happening” life. But sometimes I need to step out of my totally boring salaryman existence. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities and choices before me but have perversely not grabbed hold of them. I’m not a person who gets bored easily but I am leading a boring life. It’s been a long time since I felt like my life was going forward.

I watched this movie on an off day. But somewhat perversely when the lights came back on after the movie was over I was thinking about a few thorny problems that would face me when I get back to work tomorrow morning.

Gran Torino

I watched "Gran Torino" and had a good deal on it. The new cinema is built in a funky new building called Iluma. What I like about that building is the funky exterior which is a permanent light show (and hence the name). It's also got funky big glass doors. The big solid American type that I saw in uh America. Of course American stuff is usually big and impressive and somehow always breaks down in the end. But you never know.

So the good deal - all the tickets were going at $6. There aren't that many good shows these days. I've been watching quite a few Clint Eastwood pictures lately. Somehow there are a few directors out there who work until past 80. Like Akira Kurosawa directing "Ran". Or Antonioni (but maybe they started late.) So Clint Eastwood is enjoying a late career renaissance, that's good. I suppose he has always been making solid films that have somehow escaped the attention of the critics who automatically equated being macho with shallowness during the 70s and 80s. In 1992, he made a picture "The Unforgiven", and it got a very good critical reception. In the last few years, he has a solid record: "Mystic River", "Million Dollar Baby", "Changeling", "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flag of our Fathers".

I feel that his late flowering reflects his self knowledge that he's almost alone in his own genre of making macho but thoughtful films. Manhood isn't really what it used to be, for better or worse. These days, action heroes are more the geeks who are equally good at embracing technology, typified by Ethan Hunt. Brilliant, resourceful, but a user of brainwork as much as muscle work. Even Daniel Craig as James Bond looks like he gets his muscles from the gym rather than from manual labour. Then you have a whole plethora of cartoon characters which take the seriousness out of beating the shit out of another guy.

I feel that old school macho attitudes are more a matter of strength of character. Yes, we can admire the modern action heroes because they are excellent problem solvers, engineers, witty, nimble, graceful. But Clint Eastwood harks back to a more old school form of grit. His characters do not lounge around at stylish bars and sip fancy cocktails. They don't run around with the latest laptops and technology. They don't promote a millennial, consumerist lifestyle, or wear the latest fashion. This is not to denigrate the new generation, because the new generation have a different, equally challenging set of demands placed upon them, but people like Clint Eastwood don't really exist any more.

The Clint Eastwood cities are not the ultra modern, stylish and futuristic cities that you see in James Bond / Vin Diesel movies. You don't have MI 3 in Shanghai or Rome, Casino Royale in Venice and some funky Monte Carlo swanky place. It's not some old communist capital which has been taken over by swanky sleek capitalism designer stuff.

His proper place is the decaying urban metropolitan. His vision of America is still stuck in the 70s and the 80s, where America is questioning and lamenting its declining place in the world, when it was paling next to newly confident places like Germany, Japan and the Asian Tigers. Its the urban ghetto, which has always existed, and gang wars co-exist with entire communities and families bringing up children.

If Gran Torino is a moral tale, it involves the struggle for the soul of a community. Maybe a fight between good and evil, even though it is more true to say that all sides have different degrees of shadiness.

Spoilers from now on.

I was fucking stupid. I bought tickets, and thinking I had 2 hours to burn, walked over to a bar and had a beer. Then I took too long for dinner. By the time I realised it was too late, I missed 10 minutes of the film. I had to rely on movie reviews and youtube to keep me updated on what I had missed. Luckily this film is not "Crimson Gold" where all the excitement takes place in the first 10 minutes.

This has enough action to satisfy Eastwood aficionados. But Eastwood movies are also about character. They are a lot like classic samurai films, where the character knows that there is a duel tomorrow, there's going to be a fight and then they're doing a lot of thinking, weighing up all their moral choices. You could take the whole Gran Torino movie, remake it into a Samurai film, and it would be exactly the same thing.

The difference between the western cowboy films and samurai films is not very great. Maybe people were surprised when Clint Eastwood did 2 Iwo Jima films from both the USA and the Japanese perspectives. They shouldn't be surprised. First, Iwo Jima is one of the last wild west adventures. The West was not truly won when the Americans took California. It was won 100 years later, only when the Americans took Japan. Japan is the final frontier. (Actually the final frontier is space, so Japan is the second last frontier.)

Consider that "Yojimbo" was the inspiration for "A Fistful of Dollars", a Clint Eastwood film. That "The Magnificent Seven" is really Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", and that "Star Wars" is Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".

Anyway, this time, there is a heavy weariness about "Gran Torino". If "The Unforgiven" is really about a cowboy growing old, "Gran Torino" is about the cowboy nearing the end of his life. It is really about continuity, and a dying way of life. Who are the new cowboys? The Gran Torino is the symbol of continuity.

This movie is really about the passing of the torch. I at first thought it was a nice charming tale of a crusty old man, and a hot chick reminding him that life is worth living again. But the movie is not about Sue, but rather about her brother, Thao. OK, maybe the actor playing Thao isn't very compelling, and he's shy and the spotlight doesn't shine on him.

I've heard Asian Americans complain that there are not that many movie roles tailored for them, and that it's some form of discrimination. Let's be fair. Actors are characters. Roles exist only because characters exist. You have to ask yourself: where are the characters? What are your icons? You had your Bruce Lees and Jackie Chans, they were the martial arts experts. So what's going on here? Asians are introverts, self-effacing people who do not draw attention to themselves. Unless you beat the shit out of people, fly through a bamboo forest, chut some funny pattern you spent 10 years in a cave trying to master, it's unlikely that you will get angmohs to notice you. You need to grow monkey hair, walk around with a pig head, or set up a bandit fortress in the mountains in order to get noticed.

So I think the problem of the Asian American actor is not that they are discriminated against. Its because they are up against loud and abrasive cowboys, or loud and abrasive gangstas. Asian cinema makes its mark on Hollywood, to be sure. How? Hollywood screen writers have shit for brains. OK, this is strictly untrue. But there are eras in history where there are plenty of great stories to be told, and eras where there are none. Ever noticed that people of your parent's generation had better stories to tell? My parents can always tell me of the first time they wrung a chicken's neck. They tell me stories where you have stories of 3 adult debt collectors versus my father at a ripe old age of 19 and his merry band of 4 younger siblings. Ever noticed that the 19th century is always a high watermark in the development of the Western novel?

Well I feel that in the 20th century, western countries have lives that are too good and too uneventful. There has always been a little more chaos in Asian countries. Cinema is new in Asian countries, so you always have the pioneers coming in with the great ideas. Hollywood is bereft of ideas because the moneybags and the accountants control everything. Therefore you have to rip off the Kurosawa samurai movies. Rip off the Ring, Dark Water and Ju-On. Then rip off "My Sassy Girl". Next up, horror of all horrors, it's time to rip off "Tampopo". But soon, the US will run out of plot ideas to rip off. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with next.

The other great export is Kung fu. The greatest kung fu film of recent times is actually "The Matrix", if you think about it.

Why are plots and kung fu so important? Because Asians just aren't very interesting people to look at. Asians are interesting from the inside but not the outside.

OK, end of diversion 1.

Diversion 2: why don't Americans have good plot ideas?

First, the idea of community in America is dead. Plot is all about how different members of a community interact with each other. In fact the very definition of a community is that a group of people who interact meaningfully with each other. So when community breaks down in the USA, there are no more plots. In "Gran Torino", there are actually 2 communities. Actually 1 community and 1 person who realises that his old community is dying or dead.

Second, America is a more individualistic society than most other great centres of film making. Individualism is conducive towards cinema because it's always easier to film individuals, it's always easier to centre a narrative around a main character and everybody else's place in the movie takes its reference to him. But in societies which are less individualistic, where people have a more complex relationship with society, there are more interesting stories. Thus, "Tampopo" is interesting because it has a whole ensemble of quirky characters. (How a convincing story of a white girl going around learning how to make ramen can be made is an entirely different matter.) "Shall We Dance" is very Japanese because there's the tension between a person living his life as a proper salaryman and his need for artistic expression. "My Sassy Girl" is interesting because of the tension between a crusty young chick's awakening love for a new boyfriend and her inability to let go of a previous old relationship.

Back to Gran Torino.

The movie is all about the ideas and values that a Hmong immigrant is going to imbibe. He can join a gang, and become a grunt for the rest of his life. Or he can try to assimilate and become an American, the Clint Eastwood sort of American. Instead of a car thief, he can become a construction worker. Instead of being a shy guy who loses the girl, he can learn how to become a man. Very conveniently, Thao doesn't have a father figure, and Clint Eastwood provides it for him.

The Hmongs are still a close knit community even though there aren't that many of them left in America. It seems that the only meaningful communities left in America are either immigrants or minorities. In a lot of Hollywood pictures, you don't see a lot of people who are friends or kin. At the most, they are allies. Like your Mission Impossible action films, all the good guys are colleagues, a team convened for the sole purpose of accomplishing the mission, and then broken up afterwards. Ties are not deep.

Clint Eastwood does not have a deep relationship with his family. Now we as Asians are probably going to be quite quick to condemn Westerners for being heartless to their aging parents. But you only have to spend some time with Clint Eastwood to realise that he's a very unpleasant guy when he's old. It's not that simple to say that his children are the bad guys. In general, parents who are great company and easy to get along with are rarely left on their own.

This movie has been accused of being racist. It is racist like "'allo 'allo", where all races are mocked. Whites are white trash. Latinos are gangstas. Hmongs are gooks. And aspiring gangstas. OK, the attitudes towards Hmongs are rather paternal, as though they were the innocent, pure Rousseau- esque noble savages who need to be educated, but once they are, have the potential to be real Americans.

But that's what happens when you forget that the relationship is quite unequal. Clint Eastwood may be Clint Eastwood, but he's also a helpless old man. He may be strong and wise but that's relative. First, he's a strong and wise asshole, and second, he's only strong and wise relative to a helpless old man. He sees his way of life disappearing, and he knows that he can't pass it along to his children. At the same time there are these fresh off the boat jungle people who are groping blindly in the dark. They represent the most realistic chance of his passing down his values, if you can overcome the racism.

The other thing about Clint Eastwood is this: the Asian Americans who accuse Gran Torino of being racist don't really appreciate this, but he made sure that the main white characters in the movie are Polish and Italian immigrants. Not the WASPs who have been in the US for generations, but they are themselves 2nd or 3rd generation Americans. Unless you appreciate that the Clint Eastwood character himself is an immigrant, a lot of the meaning in this picture will be lost.

So firstly he talks about what racism really means. The end of racism doesn't mean you stop calling people gook or nigger. But it means that you reach out to them and welcome them, even if you do it grudgingly.

Second, it raises the question of what it means to be an American. Is it the frontier spirit of Clint Eastwood and his merry band of Hmongs, or is it his children who drive Toyota land cruisers? That is a difficult question. Definitely Clint Eastwood is more like the Hmongs. But is he really a mainstream American, or is he always an outsider, passing his outsider values on to another bunch of outsiders? Why does he have more in common with the Hmongs? Because he’s a pioneer. He’s had the immigrant experience of forming a large community and trying to fit in. He’s had that choice of deciding between the straight and narrow, or a life of joining a gang.

But somehow I feel that, much as you want to draw parallels between the Poles, Italians and Jews of 100 years ago, to Asian Americans today, I don't think that the parallels are perfect. Yes, Thao has the legacy of that Gran Torino. But what is that gook going to do with your Gran Torino? Poles / Italians are still European. When you go further away from Europe, the whole mindset changes. If Asian Americans were to forge a real identity in the country, what would it be? Yes, this is a continuation of the frontier spirit. But it would be morphed into something quite unrecognisable.

That's the part of the movie that makes me a little uneasy. The parallel is a little bit too slick. It's like you're inseminating a Hmong receptacle with your American virtues and hope that he will survive. Sure it's a good deed, but Hmongs are not merely passive receptacles, even though the movie has a Hmong culture 101 segment in it.

I looked at the wiki entry for the movie. Remember the chicken shit angmoh boyfriend who was dating Sue when they were laid upon by 2 black thugs? The actor playing that chicken shit angmoh is Clint Eastwood’s son. Looks like being a tough guy is not hereditary.

In the end, I think that Clint Eastwood got a fair deal for himself. He died, but that death is no big sacrifice. It was going to be a matter of time anyway. What really matters is he educated and taught a youngster, no matter how superficially. Thao will never be like Clint Eastwood, but at least he will try. He traded in his life, and he defeated the Hmong gangs, and he made sure that something of himself survives. It's not a bad deal.

Naturally when I thought about this movie, I thought about my sister who I'm not sure is Singaporean or Asian American. If this is a torch that is to be passed on to her. And I was practically an Asian American for 4 years of my life so I do have something to think about.

Reader

Hi folks, another fucking GP essay from me again.

Nat suggested that I go watch “The Reader” because you get a lot of Kate Winslet fucking in that movie. Now I have watched a lot of art movies in my time, not as much as some people, but quite a few. For a long time I have watched movies so that I could learn more about art, learn more about life from them. Then I transcended even that and thought, the truest test of a movie is what your personal reactions are towards that movie. It shouldn’t even be about a critic telling you what is art. It is something that you must viscerally experience for yourself.

Now what is the point here? The bottom line is, having watched so many movies for the right reasons, I reserve the right to watch a movie for no other purpose than to watch Kate Winslet fucking.

I suppose I have to blog about it a bit more nowadays because these days I hardly ever watch movies anymore.

Most of the reviews will tell you that this is an above average movie, with one great performance (Winslet’s, and she won a handful of acting prizes for this one) and it was adapted from a great novel.

Movie reviews have to be gingerly written: they must answer the essential question: “is this movie worth watching?” without giving away the plot details. So this is not a review but rather something that talks about what the movie is all about. So for those of you who intend to watch the movie but haven’t done so yet you won’t need to be reading this.

For the rest of you, there’s this German guy, born after the war. He’s 16 and he meets this nice bust conductor – sorry I meant bus conductor, and she takes him home. He’s sick. Then he brings her flowers. They meet and fuck. Then while she’s his lover, she insists that he read to her. They are lovers for a while. One day, she is promoted to have an office job. She is ashamed to admit that she is illiterate, and then she leaves town, ending her affair with the teenager in the process.

Later on, he’s a law student and he attends a seminar. It’s about the war crimes, tribunal, and there, he sees Kate Winslet being charged for being a concentration camp guard. It is torture for him to watch, because he still loves her. She is the only person among the defendants to admit that a book that was written about her was true. There are not a lot of things that you do as a concentration camp guard that counts as murder. But there was one incident, which involves a death march. The concentration camp inmates are locked up in the church for a night. Then one night, during a bombing raid, the church is set on fire. The inmates are burnt to death, except for the mother and daughter who survive to write the book, and press charges against the concentration camp guards.

The rest of the defendants pin all the blame on her, and insist that a report that was written about the incident was written by her. She is identified as the leader of the guards and gets 20 years instead of the 4 given to all the other guards.

In the last part of the movie, while she is in jail, the lawyer (he’s a lawyer now) makes recordings of books, and mails them to her in jail. Through the recordings, and comparing them with the words on a book that she borrows from the library, she

The book was published in 1995, which was the 50th anniversary of VE day. (That’s “victory in Europe”). I think that people are still getting around what happened during that war.

In that war, we discovered 2 horrible new developments in the history of man. From the holocaust, we found out that 20th century technology has enabled us to commit murder on a scale that is simply awe-inspiring. The holocaust in which 11 million people died, was murder committed in a very systematic fashion. The second nasty surprise is nuclear weapons, which can kill on an ever larger scale than the holocaust. Why bother to kill 11 million people over 4 years when you only need 4 seconds nowadays?

So at that time, the Holocaust was presented as an utterly unique event in mankind. In part, this view was put forward by Zionists who saw this as an utterly unique way to establish the state of Israel. One of the stated purposes of a homeland for the Jewish people was that you needed a place to house all the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Many Arabs were not that happy to be chased out of their own homeland, and the establishment of Israel in 1948 has caused a lot of unhappiness in that region ever since.

So much of this movie had been about how the Germans deal with the issue of guilt. You can contrast their attitude with the Japanese – we’re still waiting for them to get back to us and I think they’re smart enough to realize that if they can stall for time long enough for most of the war generation to be dead or dying, they never ever have to apologise because it’s all “overtaken by events”. I suppose that it’s German culture that people are very direct and forthright, so it was probably more possible that they would choose to examine these issues. But I digress.

This movie therefore is not entirely about Kate Winslet fucking, although I have to admit that it is a great selling point. It is about war guilt, and how the survivors deal with it. I read somewhere that a lot of people are outraged at the movie, because Kate Winslet is more concerned about her illiteracy rather than the fact that she killed a lot of people. This is the sort of movie which raises such controversial questions that nobody finds it remarkable that a 15 year old boy is fucking a 30 something woman.

But what of it? Would you be ashamed? We all are ashamed of something. Some deep dark secret. My parents are a little ashamed that they never got as much schooling as I did. I’m ashamed that I suck at Chinese. These are the sort of issues that are on-going rather than about what happened some time in the past. That’s the difference between her illiteracy and her being a concentration camp guard.

It’s true that Hannah is one of the more morally ambivalent people in the movie. On one hand she was a Nazi, although not a very high ranking one, and subsequently, not one who made a lot of decisions. She could just say that she was taking orders. Her testimony was a little more forthright than the rest of the defendants because she was possibly less able to understand the full implications of what the concentration camp was all about. People had to die, because “there were new ones coming in all the time”. So she was a classic taker of orders.

But you have to balance that against – here’s this nice woman who took a boy home because he was sick. If you wanted a black and white version of the concentration camp guard as the ultimate embodiment of evil, that would be extremely inconvenient.

Then in the trial it was mentioned that Kate Winslet would just pick a few of the more sickly people, and ask them to read to her. And then after that they typically ended up getting chosen for extermination. I supposed she really liked being read stories to. I would consider this to be a neutral thing – what does it matter since you’re always going to kill X number of people, whether those are the ones that you interact with on a more human level?

Another thing is that in the movie, the anti-Nazis were all painted in a fairly negative light. A classmate of the law student accused him of being soft and wondered why he was always staring at Kate Winslet. He did bring up a good point: so much of this happened every where, in every stratum of German society, because the Nazis were everywhere. And yet only Kate Winslet and her gang of camp guards were identified, and only then because some of the victims wrote a book.

As for the centerpiece of the charges against the camp guards – the locking the prisoners into a church while they burnt to death inside – the judge actually offers her a reason to say that she was scared of what the prisoners would do to her if she released them. But she just said that there would be chaos everywhere and she couldn’t let that happen. A more honest answer but her priorities look extremely lop-sided now.

It is very difficult to judge what people would have done in the heat of the moment. The person responsible for murder in this case is not Kate Winslet but the allied pilot who dropped the bomb. Clearly this is not a pre-meditated case of murder and it is not first degree murder. So Kate Winslet turns at the judge “What would you have done?” The judge does not answer. He is not there to answer questions. But it is a valid question, one that casts a shadow over the rest of the movie.

I suppose that a lot of Kate Winslet’s dumbness comes from her illiteracy. No doubt she’s great at fucking, but I would attribute a lot of her illogical behaviour to simply her being quite confused. I would guess she likes order, and likes wearing uniforms.

The lawyer was probably appalled that she would rather hide her illiteracy from other people than to reduce her sentence and deny that she was the author of a certain report. So there he almost wanted to come forward and say that he knows that she is illiterate and could not possibly have authored that report. But he steps back in the end and does nothing.

I always felt that this is a metaphor for what the rank and file of the Nazis were like. They were not especially evil people, rather they were just unable or unwilling to stand up to evil. They were moral cowards like him. He had plenty of other reasons not to reveal that she was illiterate. One was that she was ashamed of it. Another was that it was after all her own decision to make and she already made it. A third reasons is that he wanted to keep his affair with her a secret. Or he wasn’t prepared to face her again. Whatever it is, the parallels with the moral failure of being a Nazi is striking. This act of not interfering with her decision to condemn herself to 20 years in prison is one of the most important acts of the film, and influences a lot of things that take place later in the lawyer's life. Why is he a cold person? Why did he feel guilty and send her audio tapes of literature? Why did he feel very awkward about meeting her in person?

The other aspect of the movie was the secrets. The love affair was a secret. I know from first hand experience that when you keep secrets from people it really alienates you from them. There was so much about how, when the lawyer as a young boy got home after having lost his virginity 1 hour ago, he was looking at his family one by one, and he just couldn’t tell them anything. It probably made him very emotionally distant from his family, if he wasn't already that way. Was his family close? They were strict, to say the least. But they stuck together. He just wasn't able to form close relationships, which is why in the end he got divorced, and spends much of his older life going from 1 lover to another.

The scene where he finally meets Hannah is also very interesting. They finally meet in the prison canteen. Remember that the last time they met face to face they were still fucking each other. Now she's 60. The meeting is a little cold, and there is little joy left. He's talking about making arrangements for her.

She's fairly unrepentant about her actions during the war. She said one line which makes the movie quite controversial. “I have learnt that the dead are already dead”. She had also learnt how to read. Well good for her! I think in a way she never really understood what being a Nazi was all about. So many people don't think about it in terms of right and wrong. To her, she was just given instructions, and she was doing a job.

Later on, just before she is to be released, and when we're thinking, "how is she going to adapt to this new world?" She hangs herself. The book makes it clear that after reading about the Holocaust she starts to think more about, and is being tormented about her role in it. But it's more ambiguous in the movie. She says that she knows all about the dead. She has been both a prisoner and a guard. Is she a helpless person who stumbles through her life, and acquiesces to all the forces around her, or is she a moral agent?

There is a case to be made for her being a helpless person. She joined the prison guard because she was just looking for a job. She had an affair with the lawyer because she could tell he had a crush on her. She couldn't read and write, and she's shut away from most human civilisation as a result. (It is very difficult for anybody to understand what it's like to be illiterate. Most people think this is trivial but it's not.) She's not educated enough to make the same moral judgements that other people make when they are condemning her. She was the only prison guard to not understand, like the other prison guards on trial, that she should not have confessed to anything.

As for whether she was the ringleader of the guards, it is possible. She is a capable person, and it's not inconceivable that she was promoted to leader. But would they have made an illiterate person a leader? But I think we are meant to believe that the 200 who died in the church were locked in as the result of a collective decision.

The thing about the war, and the holocaust is to realise that while most people could have resisted evil, it is not easy for anybody at all. It was difficult enough getting by, and it would have taken great strength, courage, resources, wealth - everything - not to be a bad person in that war.

The other thing is that her stint as a guard took up maybe 1 or 2 years of her life. That's 1 or 2 years in an otherwise unremarkable and completely ordinary life. When you put somebody in jail, you are punishing a person. OK, she did evil things and they should be punished. But there are other reasons for putting people in jail that are not justified. You put a person in jail so that society can be safe from them. Hannah was a perfectly normal member of society in peacetime. There's no need to lock her away. OK, she fucks 15 year old boys, but 15 year old is not that young, 16 is legal in this country. The other rationale of prison is rehabilitation. Normal people leading normal lives don't need rehabilitation. There's very little reason for her to be in jail.

She was in jail, in lieu of all the other people who did equally horrible things, and went unpunished, because one of the victims wrote a book. It is OK to demand justice and the war crimes trials were good things. But they still distribute justice inequally, and we can still say that Hannah was unlucky.

Still, before she hangs herself, she bequeaths her life savings to the victim who wrote the book. It's for the lawyer to confront the victim who put her in jail.

The last scene is also very jarring. The lawyer takes the tin, and gives it to the Jewish daughter. And for a while it seems to her that he’s there to ask for absolution, and treats him with disdain. She has done well for herself, is ostentatiously wealthy, and has an apartment on Manhattan’s west side. For those who have never been to New York – it costs a shit load of money to live there. The hall is tastefully decorated with plenty of expensive art pieces. She’s done quite well for herself. Then she takes the attitude of a lot of former survivors of her generation, and refuses to forgive the Nazis. Very self-righteously, she lectures that “there is nothing good that comes out of being in a concentration camp. There is nothing that a concentration camp can teach you. It is not college.”

But later on, when she realizes that she is receiving the entire life savings of somebody who has just spent 20 years in jail, her attitude softens, and she finds that he’s not here to seek forgiveness. And after all, she put Kate Winslet in jail for 20 years. $7000 is just loose change to her, and she sets up a foundation to promote literacy. After all, she said it herself, and this is the moral of the story for “The Reader”: there is nothing that a concentration camp can teach you. It bears no resemblance to life elsewhere. There is no meaning to it. So stop being vindictive about the past and lay it to rest. Kate Winslet legacy to her also included a tin that contained the money, the sort of tin that the Jewish victim used to play with as a child. You could say that Kate Winslet, who took her normal life away from her is giving it back to her in that form of the tin. So the Jewish victim does the right thing and places the tin on the mantelpiece next to a picture of all her relatives who were exterminated in the Holocaust.

I think there are a lot of people who criticized this movie for “not realizing the gravity of Kate Winslet being a concentration camp guard”. They are missing the whole point of the story. The whole point is to chip away at the edifice and the “standard interpretation” of war guilt, and what to do with it when it’s over. The war didn’t last very long. The amount of time I’ve worked at my present job is equivalent to almost 2 Japanese occupations of Singapore. Kate Winslet worked as a concentration camp guard for not very long, and it’s not a large part of her life. We are surprised that she thinks that her lack of literacy is a larger problem but if we bother to put ourselves in her shoes we shouldn’t be.

Let's put it this way. If you threw me into jail, but gave me a pile of books to read - maybe I'm only saying this because I know nothing about jail - I wouldn't mind it at all. A monk's life, a bookworm's life, that was the life I led in America and in Singapore. There is almost no difference, it is normal. To be in there, but not be able to read - that would have been torture.

OK, so the contrast is artificial. One is a Nazi, who because of her role in the rank and file, rots in jail for 20 years. The other is a victim who has suffered greatly in her childhood, but has lived a great and fulfilling life thereafter. Who has lived the better life? Who has suffered more? The victim has done well, ironically from the publishing proceeds from selling her story. What does this tell you about real life, the life that goes on long after the war ends, where all the rules are different?

Some people have complained that the movie does not show any war scenes, and we only know about the war through what we already know elsewhere. This is an attempt to whitewash the past. But I think this is a refreshing point of view. We gain nothing by holding on to the past. In a way the past is inexorably separated from the present. Some people say that the past isn't over, it isn't even past. Fair enough, but on the other hand, why don't you want to get on with life?

My initial impression of the Jewish victim was repulsion, but now I feel that her attitude - I do not accept the money because that would mean absolution - is more or less correct. She allows him to set up a fund to promote literacy, although it is true that all Jews are literate.

The bad news, guys, is that the Holocaust is not a unique event in human history. We haven’t had a war on the scale of WWII since then but plenty of horrible things have taken place. We have had the Vietnam wars. The Congo wars. The Rwanda genocide. Cambodia. East Timor. It’s really ridiculous to call the Holocaust unique. It’s taking place over and over again. It’s a really unhealthy attitude to just call it incomprehensible, and then ban all attempts to analyse or comprehend the scale of what happened. This shut-the-fuck-up attitude is partly an attempt to put forward a standard interpretation of the Holocaust and not ever have it questioned. The Israelis have managed to get away with a disproportionate amount of violence against the Palestinians because many legitimate questions are swept away under the aegis of “do you dare question the sanctity of the Holocaust? Do you dare deny the centuries of Anti-Semitism?”

What I think is this: the real lessons of the Holocaust have not been learnt. The lessons that have been learnt are the wrong ones. We hold on to our stereotypical ideas about it - that it is a unique and unsurpassed event, that it is improper to rationalise and speak about it, improper to try and understand it. That is all wrong. That prevents us from learning the real lessons. It's not a one off that happened to Jewish people in the past. America, who has been most insistent about having the "proper" attitude towards the Holocaust had the power to prevent at least 1 of those mass murders from taking place, but it didn't. It took 50 years for there to be an international justice tribunal. They are - only now - trying the members of the Khmer Rouge for genocide. Now that is not a simple matter and it is a significant achievement, but there is so much more that could have been done.

What did the holocaust teach mankind about handling genocide before it happens? Not very much. What does it teach mankind about handling genocide after it happens? Not very much either. Japan still does not apologise. Turkey still denies that it mass murdered the Armenians. East Timor is still in a shitty state. There are still problems in Kosovo. Saddam Hussein still used chemical weapons on the Kurds.

Anyway I found a quote from the actual novel itself. It is worth reading:

"What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to make the horrors an object of inquiry is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?"

About Kate Winslet, I suppose this is the third movie that I’ve watched that features her fucking. The first was Titanic, the second was “Little Children”. If I watch “Revolutionary Road” then I suppose there will be a fourth. Winslet had a more impressive front during “Titanic”. Maybe I will watch Revolutionary Road.

My Sassy Girl

I usually have some reservations about adapting movies across cultures. Yes, one of the most successful Hollywood movies of all time was an adaptation of a Japanese film. There was a movie about a bunch of rebels attacking a samurai fortress, called “Hidden Fortress”. It later on got remade into “Star Wars”, although George Lucas did add some stuff of his own.

There have been some remakes of “The Ring”. Now The Ring may be a big hit, and the ending (which I can’t reveal) may have been inspired by the internet which is a western invention, but there are a lot of aspects of “The Ring” which are very Asian. Long haired ghosts, the notion of the supernatural being unhappy people with some axes to grind with the living - these are Asian types of ghosts.

The one adaptation which was never going to work is “My Sassy Girl”. Some things about human nature are just not universal. The original premise of “My Sassy Girl” is not going to work in the western context, because all these people are behaving like Asians, not westerners. Yes, emotional masochism is universal. But the Jeon Ji Hyun character using her violent behaviour on her boyfriend as a mask for her grief over the previous boyfriend is something rather particular to Asian culture.

I can imagine an angmoh doing that, but I can’t imagine an angmoh being so selfless as to hide these problems away. When angmohs have psychological problems, they do not make Korean soap opera out of it. Instead they beat somebody up, shoot up on drugs, go to therapy, blog about it, whatever. But they will tell somebody about it. They will discuss it. Angmohs don’t suffer in silence because they are not Asians.

The guy is also clearly not an angmoh. Angmoh guys are macho people. It is more Asian to be the sensitive new age guy. In fact many of them are. So this SNAG is not a real issue. Asians also tend to be more sentimental than angmohs, who see this as a sign of weakness. But angmohs are not more stoic than Asians, rather they are more stoic about different things. If you make an angmoh stay back longer in the office than he has to, he will either quit his job or badmouth his boss to the rest of the world. The asian will be better at tahaning this. We all know this to be true: angmohs are better at fighting for their rights, and Asians are better at eating shit.

Ang moh women do not bully guys and then fall in love with them afterwards. They do not get touched by his unwavering devotion. What his actions communicate to her is that he has a small dick.

Conversely the whole spectacle of the woman loving the self sacrificing guy, and yet being constrained by both her own reservations and by society’s norms to express it, is something intensely moving to Asians. Angmohs are much more likely to say “what a fucking idiot, she has issues, she should go and seek professional help”.

The issue is that while these 2 people are fairly unusual even in Korea, the rest of their psychological makeup is fairly common. She’s the one who masks her suffering. He’s the one who is a mother’s boy. But these two people will be considered freaks in angmoh society. They would be wimps and losers.

Yes, Shakespeare wrote “Taming of a Shrew”, another romance involving a sassy girl. But in that play, the guy manipulates her and eventually dominates her, instead of winning her over by putting up with her shit. When I found out that the remake was directed by Yann Samuell, who also directed “Love Me if you Dare”, a light turned on in my head. That was a good movie, and there are some similarities, like the fire of being extremely attracted to the other is starkly contrasted with the ice of playing a game where you have to act cool. But that was love as competition, and is in some respects quite macho.

Anyway I read somewhere that the director of the Korean version was brought in as a consultant for the Hollywood version, and when he saw the mess, he threw up his hands and quit. I can imagine why.

3 Dead Directors

I used to watch movies a fair bit in college. And as you know, the sort of movies they tend to show in college cinemas tend to be the more arty farty kinds. You could say that my college days were the high watermark of my relationship with cinema. Back home, either it was the dearth of good films (I could always rent films from the Ass-planade but opted not to) or probably that as with music, there is this golden period where you first encounter cinema, and it's all new and fresh and beautiful, and there are so many

Well during my days at the college cinema, I got introduced to 3 great directors, and all of them died last year, all within a month of each other.

I wouldn't have known that Edward Yang was dead. If it was announced in the papers, I would have missed it. I only knew because there was this article on Cai Qin and it announced that her former husband Edward Yang died recently. Goddamn.

My favourite of the 3 is Edward Yang. He is, together with Hou Hsiao Hsien, the 2 great directors at the forefront of the Taiwanese New Wave movement. I've only seen his 2 most famous films, but they are among my favourite movies, ever. One is "A Brighter Summer Day", and the other is "Yi Yi".

One thing that Edward Yang is famous for, and this is also true of HHH: whereas western film tends to put the camera very close to the subjects, and places the viewer right in the heat of action, they put the camera very far away, to capture the surrounding landscape as well. The takes are long, and there are a few cuts. It is very unusual in cinema to focus on the background as much as the action but I suppose there's this theory that Asians have a different way of seeing the world - in terms of relationships, rather than in terms of an actor divorced from its surroundings. So when you can see the background, it is more like theatre, you are reminded that the actors are forever under the influence of the workings of the cosmos, this mysterious thing called fate that rules all of us.

I remember watching "Yi Yi". I went in not expecting anything much more than the run of the mill arthouse film. I was fairly astonished when I came out: I thought it was one of the greatest 2 hour films I had ever watched, until I checked my watch and discovered that the film was 3 hours long. I might put up a review of the film somewhere, but maybe not here. The subject matter is hardly inspiring, it is a portrait of a family, all struggling and going through difficult phases - the father trying to get a project off the ground, and at the same time an old flame appears at the wedding, and tempts him into an affair. The mother is sick and tired of life, and retreats to a monastery for a few weeks. The eldest daughter is going out with a guy she finds interesting, and also racked with guilt at possibly having caused her grandmother's stroke. The cute but curious young son goes around with a camera, just like the director himself, shooting things that other people can't see. Also, in having a crush on a female classmate, he experiences the earliest stirrings of adolescence.

One thing I picked up upon, and this was confirmed when I read an interview with Edward Yang: all the members of the family could the same person, going through different stages of life. By putting these episodes together and attributing them to different members of a family, he condenses the whole experience of a life into a single film, and that's one of the things which makes the film such a stirring experience. In one of my favourite scenes, when the father and his old flame were reminiscing about their younger days, his daughter was acting it out with her boyfriend, and the director juxtaposed both scenes together to underline that his daughter was replaying events that happened in his youth.

One cannot discount a tinge of homesickness at play when I saw this. I live in Singapore not Taiwan of course but you can't deny that Singapore is a hell lot more like Taiwan than the US.

"A Brighter Summer Day" is one of the most ambitious movies I have ever seen, and it succeeds brilliantly. I think one reason why I rated it highly is because when you grow up in Singapore, you are not very conscious of history, that you are carrying a torch that has been passed down to you from generations back. I think there is something in us that yearns for some semblance of a history, and that is why Royston Tan's "881", as well as Jack Neo's "Homerun" have been such hits. So whenever I see a history film about our part of the world, particularly if it concerns the 20th century, I'm interested. I didn't like it at all that our Ministry of Education is so coy about letting Singaporeans learn about their post independence history. There is nothing in the history textbooks. All you see are ang mohs in their colonial outfits and their wigs. I liked "brighter Summer Day" because it showed the real stuff, the gang fights, the strict schools (eerily similar to many of our SAP schools), even the forced confessions obtained through the good ol' air conditioners. (Back then they didn't have air conditioning, so they used ice blocks.) Now you know why that film made me feel so homesick. Good old ISD!

I am frequently surprised that while Hong Kong and Taiwan cinema are very well regarded internationally, Singapore has comparatively little to offer. Tsai Ming-Liang is actually a Malaysian who moved to Taiwan. I think, when watching Edward Yang's films, I got this briefest notion that Singapore does have what it takes to have a great film industry, and probably did so in the 60s, before the motherfuckers shut them down.

Then again, I think a little about how a small cinema scene can suddenly produce a few geniuses, before the scene fades away. How small footballing countries like Holland, Hungary, Austria and Uruguay have produced a short generation of geniuses against the odds.

Oh by the way the other 2 cinema geniuses who died last year were Antonioni and Bergman. I liked the films by them that I have watched ("l'Avventura", "la Notte", "l'Eclisse", "Seventh Seal", "Wild Strawberries") and they are among my favourite films but I have less to say about them.

Merchant of Singapore

A lot of us did this for “O” levels. It’s a story that a lot of school kids in Singapore know. And you know Singapore is a shipping hub with all those merchants everywhere.

And in the same year I did my “O”s, There was a gang in my class of 3 guys. Now you know my school is famous for being a nerd school (even though the most famous alumnus – LKY – is a gangster), which is why when we have people smoking and cursing in Hokkien in my class I give them a lot of respect.

That’s when it hit me the other day, that a beng version of the Merchant of Venice would be a great idea. Consider the possibilities:-

Shylock is a loanshark. When he makes his plea, he’ll say something like, “you guys are only doing this to me because I’m a beng. Does a beng not have feelings?” But if you are really really brave, you can make him Indian who lapses into Tamil when he gets angry, and you can have the rest of the cast call him a “chao bhayee”. But that would mean the film will never be released in Singapore.

Bassanio is a cheongster. Always going to the hottest nightspots, always spending money like a drunken sailor, vain, narcissistic and always living beyond his means. I never really liked that guy and it’s just sad that in Singapore you can reach out and grab him out of any given crowd.

Antonio would be the rich businessman. Now it’s very unlikely these days that he would be a merchant who needs his goods to be delivered and they don’t arrive because of the weather. So maybe either he’s got credit problems now because his capital is tied up in bio research, or he will only get paid when he delivers a software solution but his programmers have hit a snag.

Now we always suspected that Antonio and Bassanio are gay lovers. There will be no need to speculate anything in this movie. It will be out in the open, completely explicit and unexpurgated.

Portia can be the classic Ah Lian. She will always be skimpily dressed and will have a killer figure. It could be unexpected that she will become an attorney but there’s nothing wrong with Ah Lians being very quick thinkers and being very sharp on their feet.

If the movie really revolves around the Singapore shipping industry we can have most of the dialogue in Hokkien. We can also have Portia lapse into Hokkien while the judge always reminds her to “use channel 5”.

Letter to a young playwright

If my house was on fire and I only had time to rescue 1 thing from it, what would it be?

At some point I really wanted to be a playwright. On some level, at least. At least I knew I had it in me, and it was something to be brought out, and after I brought it out I'd see if I wanted to continue. (Unfortunately not.) It's so different these days, I don't watch TV, I don't watch movies, I don't even read fiction.

I got my chance to stage a play when they had a call for plays. Not really a competition but 3 entries would be chosen, and it wasn't that stringent considering that only 8 entries showed up. But that was a chance I had to grab. The judge, who is a fairly prominent playwright in Singapore and who I will not name for good reasons, not only selected my entry but he wrote me a letter. I suppose he was as old as I am now, so maybe he was still at the end of his idealistic phase, or he feels this responsibility to encourage people who can write to write.

Somebody reminded me recently about a teacher who called me a "maths guy", and it was not a compliment because she was complaining about how nobody liked her subject, literature*1. I felt vindicated - you can write great essays for your lit paper but I wouldn't say you understand what it's all about unless you come up with an original work of your own. But it wasn't only about that. I will still remember the joy of creating something of my own, and when it is done, thinking to myself, "limpeh has earned the right to carve 'playwright' on my tombstone".

So to answer my first question, it's the letter that this judge / playwright wrote me that I will save from the fire. Now at the top of the letter he wrote "this is only for you and no one else". And indeed this is the first time I showing it around - it's been 15 years and I'm sure he won't mind and anyway I'm not naming him. The less relevant parts are cut out. The ego trips are cut out. And anyway he's got good advice so who am I to keep it all to myself?

"What do you expect for yourself, as a person and as a playwright? Why do you write? Is it like Peter*2 , for quick publicity? Or is it long term, a need to write and rewrite, a need to improve and be hurt along the way? *3

"The staging of this play is not the end of the play; neither is it the end of your "life" as a playwright. Yes, a production is important but it is a test in the school of life - these productions are tests, but there are no exams, no promotions - the promotion or development depends on you - how much do you want to learn? How much do you want to risk? How much do you want to struggle and fight? I seem to be asking more questions than giving answers, but some fundamental things you really ought to sort out.

(Here he writes some general comments about my play. I start to remember why I like this letter so much because I still get that great great ego trip every time I read it. Unfortunately I'm cutting out the ego trip.)

"Go with your instincts. Yes, the play worked on 1st reading. Yes, also there are many ways of rewriting - everybody's got to put their 2 cents' worth and really who knows which way(s) will work best? ...

"Yes entertainment is important - I totally agree with you. Your style at the moment seems to be a technique (which I like to use too) ie let's all laugh together, let's all have fun - then suddenly I (playwright) make you (audience) feel sick. Great, it works, so go with that.

"It is scary when you say you don't know much about kampong life - I think you really have to know - this play works best if it's believable. It has to be believable - the chracters have to be real and like - their dilemmas must be shown clearly, conflicts heightened. ...

(some discussion of characters which will not make sense to those who do not have the scripts in front of them)

"Death is very sad. Death of a child / teenager is painful - it's a sin. Don't waste too much time after the death - it has already left a very bitter taste in the audience. Finish the play and let the audience leave... that's what I believe.

"The advantage of having a playwright physically present at rehearsals and working with actors is that you can change to suit the actors' language abilities. If they can't handle Singlish - forget it. Thel ast thing you would want is pukey Miss La La exaggerated sickening Singlish just for laughs. You have more integrity than that. Anyway situational humour works better than all the "I donch know"s in the world. *4 ...

"The structure is pretty straightforward. I don't think you should be ashamed or apologetic for that - nor should you put down other types of plays. All plays are good if they are written with honesty and integrity. ...

"When rewriting for the final time - look at all the scenes very very carefully - is there any scene you think does not develop the play? Are there scenes which are too mono- functional? Perhaps some scenes can be combined to say the same things in less time?

"Working with actors / directors etc is not easy as I'm sure you know by now. This is especially so if everyone is more or less "new". There really is no solution or formula to this. As a playwright, you must be as open to suggestions as possible and very often this is painful because you dan't separate the honest "let's improve this production together" suggestion from the "I want a bigger role" or "I'm insecure playing this role" suggestions.

"Stand your ground if you really feel strongly about something. The way I see it - if you can explain why you wrote something and what you expect to achieve, the other party should give in. But if you can't explain and the other party offers sound suggestions and explanations, then maybe you should change.

"I strongly don't believe in actors amending my script - which is why I make it a point to attend rehearsals. If they or anyone has a problem, tell you and you change. One person must have a vision, a thread of what this play is about, and that person is you. The director will interpret that vision / spine in his way.

"Spend time talking to the director without the actors. Actors, in my experience, don't know what they want. They are also strange / paradoxical creatures. They can give the most magical or detrimental suggestions and fight tooth and nail over it.

"By talking to the director alone, both of you build trust and relationship that will unite the production rather than divide it.

"Actors, like kids, must see that the "parents" both agree. If not you'll have the kids going to Daddy Director when Mummy Playwright does not want to give in and vice versa.

"Finally, I don't know you and I hope that you are not offended by some of the things that I say. I am being very frank and I'm not talking down or being condescending (at least I don't think so). I'm not treating you like a 15 or 16 year old. I'm talking to you playwright to playwright.

"I offer my help readily because I feel strongly that people who are seriously interested in theatre should be given good opportunities to learn. I never had a glimmer of support when I was in school - no one bother, no one cared. I don't want to see that happening to other students.


"Also, I have very strong views about theatre and playwriting which I want to share. Not every playwright wants to share and worse still, some playwrights share wrongly.

"I like your self interview, I like your notes. You are honest and I respect that. You are willing to make mistakes and learning. You have strong and important concerns. Please continue writing and writing. Call me if you need more clarification or consultation.

"All the best."

*1 in return I left her out of the loop. She didn't know I had written a play until my entry was selected. I'm a bitch like that.
*2 Peter was a character in my play who was a publicity whore
*3 My motives? I knew I had it in me, so I had to do it. I had a great idea, and it encompassed a lot of what I was thinking about at that time. There could have been vanity involved, but so what?
*4 Yes, I wrote dialog in Singlish but that was how it sounded in my head. It wasn't meant to be gimmicky but it doesn't look so good on the printed page.

After I read this letter again, I remembered that this playwright had been brought in as a consultant for our production. And I was having conflicts with the production cast and crew. They didn't like my play, and kept on wanting to change it, and emphasise the more American aspects of it. In fact I must have asked him for advice on how to mediate. I was 1 year older than the cast and crew and from a different school, so the odds may have been stacked against me, but I fought.



Yes I was more driven in those days. I really wanted the play to go through, and in the way I wanted it to work. I was thinking it could be my first and last stint in drama and I wanted to do this the right way. But it wasn't as though my vision was perfect. There were a lot of things I didn't know how to do: how to research, the difference between stuff on a page and words spoken out. And I had very little or no experience with theatre.



(And also when I went to the U I was quite driven to learn as much, read as widely as I could. I don't know why I can't seem to summon up the same enthusiasm for my day job.)



I'm still marvelling that he took the time to write that letter to me. It was a little sad that I had to stop writing. I know what it's like to write your first play, where, if it works, and if it's good you will start thinking that you could make a career out of it. That play was probably the best I had written, and it must have seemed that at 16 I had it in me to go on to better things. He must have been thinking back to that time he was starting out, what would he have wished he had known then? Because I saw a lot of ruminating about "writing as a career". When he wrote that the letter is only for me, I think he didn't want me to use it as a weapon against the cast and crew I disagreed with. The general comments about being a playwright for the first time should be applicable to anybody about to start out.



Ultimately there was a lack of desire to keep on fighting the battles you have to go through for to set up drama productions. As for being an artist, it does seem a little more frivolous than making a lot of money, or learning a lot of history, or serving industry, or serving the government, or being a relief worker in a god forsaken place. I believe that every artist has his natural idiom, the medium which he feels most comfortable with. While I could write a decent play, my natural medium happens to be music. It is for these reasons I quit writing plays.



That letter is now officially designated as a family heirloom, together with all those medals my sister won in academic competitions.

The play had very rich sources. The idea of bourgeoisie life versus noble savage. Being principled versus expediency. How something good and noble like preserving your own habitat becomes warped and perverted into something darker. Citizen action versus big business interests. The power of the media to shape opinion.

I had various forms of inspiration: God wanting to cast you out of Eden but your putting up a protest. Having to grow up but clinging on to your childhood. The guy in front of the tank in Tiananmen was an inspiration. Fantastic Mr Fox, the Roald Dahl book was an inspiration. Even Chee Soon Juan, who was staging a Gandhi style hunger strike at that point was an inspiration - if it only served to show that if you were to appropriate a greater moral legacy for your own lesser, selfish cause, there is something vaguely ignoble about it.

And the story that I told was a little more universal than I realised at the point. The farmers who were asked to move into HDB flats were not that willing. The Palestinians who were uprooted from the homes in 1948. I would look at the media storm which accompanied the Elian Gonzalez affair and think, "this is somewhat similar to what I wrote". I think, irregardless of the quality of execution, I picked a good plot.



I thought at that time, "when I reach adulthood I will be in a so much better position to rewrite it, and write this better". But maybe I might not do that.