'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

Couple of BBC radio shows of possible interest: a documentary on Banshees and Magazine guitarist John McGeogh, with contributors including Howard Devoto and, as of tomorrow, one about the mighty HBO, with Stroud Green Road habitue Aidan Gillen taking part. I should also have mentioned the Paul Morley programme about celebrity culture, but forgot after the first part, and the second wasn't nearly as interesting.

It's worth seeing Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow simply because it's a script that gives two great character actors a lot of opportunities to have a whale of a time shouting good lines at each other. But that's not necessarily to say it's a good play. Mamet is much better at writing men with men than women, so in the second act, when it's Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly, everything sags rather. I don't know her - apparently she's mostly done musicals - and I wouldn't say she's a bad actress, but she doesn't grab the attention like Spacey and Goldblum do - though with the material Mamet gives her, can she really be held to blame? If you want to consider this play as a story, not a vehicle, I think it's fundamentally flawed.
Summary of plot:
Spacey wants Goldblum to make a prison blockbuster starring a hot property actor. But should Goldblum instead make a film of apocalyptic Great American Novel The Bridge?
Flaws in plot:
- The Bridge is rubbish. We hear plenty of excerpts, and I'm not sure whether Mamet has deliberately written it as a parody of the sort of impenetrable toss which a certain type of critic loves, but that's what it is.
- Apparently the problem with filming The Bridge is that it's about the end of the world, and Hollywood doesn't like films about the end of the world. Is this play set in some bizarre parallel universe, or just incredibly dated? If the latter, what period would that be? Because I am hard pressed to think of any long period without a big doomsday film. If anything, The Bridge sounds like a rubbish version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the big-budget film of which is already in development.
- Goldblum has just been promoted - he's about to make his first film as co-producer. At no stage does anyone suggest hey, let's do the prison blockbuster and *then* make The Bridge! Even though the blockbuster already has a script, while The Bridge would need rights bought, an adaptation commissioned...a delay, in other words, during which Goldblum can easily cement his position with the more commercial film.
Nonsense, in other words, but entertaining nonsense. Much like the power ballads night I attended afterwards at the new Monarch, which used to be the Misty Moon and before that the Chalk Farm Road Wetherspoon's, and as such shouldn't work at all as a venue, but sort of does.

I can't imagine why Woolworths could ever find its market position threatened when it's selling such well-conceived items as the Lolita bed for young girls. Which reminds me rather of Alan Moore's comment re: Lost Girls that "It's a stick and a carrot combined, that for the purposes of commerce it can flood your mind with the most licentious ideas and imagery but woe betide anybody who actually finds themselves in this inflamed state and responds. Because then they are a dirty, filthy person who responds to p0rnography", and makes me want to write something about Lost Girls, which I started reading during its abortive serialisation 13 years ago and eventually got to finish a couple of weeks back, on what happened to be the night before the More4 broadcast of Chris Langham's apologia. The problem is, I'd still feel fundamentally uneasy because I would be blogging about p0rn, an unease only emphasised by how many words I'd have to deliberately mis-spell to avoid blocking the friendslist of those people who read LJ in monitored workplaces. We're none of us quite free, are we?