bozo's return

The Musketeers, seriously?

So, Bozo has always avoided reviewing things.

When you write - and when your work (rubbish though it might be) is criticised - it feels like you are witnessing your children being slaughtered by marauding savages.

 

So - slaughtering the offspring of hard-working writers seems kinda wrong.

And when you write (and Bozo has started writing screenplays as well as novels) and fail to be recognized - when you criticise the work of someone who has been published or produced - it can sound like awful sour grapes.

But - in this instance - I need to ask a question more than criticise.

 

My question is this.

Is it really only possible to tell a story set 400 years ago on modern television by sacrificing all of the language and cultural mores of the time in question to language and cultural mores of the 21st Century?

Seriously?

If the answer is "yes" and The Musketeers  (Sundays BBC1 9pm) seems to suggest it is - I for one am a bit sad.

A few episodes ago someone said "I have been set up!"

Of course we all knew what he meant.

But not a single soul in 1630s paris would have had a clue.

Of course I grew up with Dumas (well not physically - he died 100 years before I was born - even Bozo isnt that old!) - I must have read the Three Musketeers a dozen times. As well as Twenty Years On and the rest of the adventures.. So I love it as it was.

And then in 1973/74 - probably before the Writers of The Musketeers were born Richard Lester directed a masterful screenplay by George Macdonald Fraser to produce the two classic movies which I still enjoy watching.

In those - the Musketeers manage to convince me they are in the 1630s, but remain perfectly understandable.

So, the question remains - can you not persuade anyone to make a period drama in which people act and speak in at least a reasonable facsimile of a period way?

And don't get me started on Mr Darcy leaping in the lake. Sheesh.

Of course you are the TV experts - so if you tell me you cannot have an audience for a period piece unless you use modern street-talk and modern issues (noble though they might be - like women's rights) as cornerstones of story and dialogue - then I have to believe you.

But when I was young -  and I was 15 when Richard Lester's Three Musketeers came out (oops, gave away my ancient-ness) - I found that I learned a lot of history  - and certainly a lot of my interest in history - from the way Lester and Macdonald Fraser told the story.

I hope no one takes the Paris of the Musketeers, or the social life portrayed as anything like a picture of actual 1630s France.

And if you say to me - of course they won't, people aren't that stupid!

Then I will say to you.... Excellent, then stop pandering to them with 21st century dialogue that doesnt stretch their ears.

This is not meant to be an unmitigated slagging off of the series.

I like it actually - it just disappoints me.

The stories are fun (if often historically implausible) and reasonably well told. - Of course it is streets behind dramas such as Justified or The Americans as far as plot, story, character and suspense go - but it's a creditable effort.

But my question still remains - does this actually mean that if my period novel is to be published everyone needs to speak as if they are in 2014 Hoxton?

If my period spy screenplay is to get produced does it really need to sound like Spooks?

Because if it does I may actually prefer to remain unpublished and unproduced.

 

Storytelling

So today I am back to looking at two books I have plugged shamelessly this past couple of weeks.

But, (some of you will be pleased to know) today's epistle has nothing to do with banker bashing!

The books in questiona are Michael Lewis' 'The Big Short' and John Lanchester's 'Whoops'. Both available from all good bookstores (and doubtless some rubbish ones as well).

So - I am declaring they are BOTH great books and well worth a read.
BUT I want to tell you my own story of how I read them. I opened Lanchester's book first and read the first dozen or so pages. It was good. It would be wrong to say it had a weak start because it didn't. But nevertheless when it came next time to have a read I picked up the Lewis book. Within a dozen pages I was hooked. So much so that I informed the very smart Mrs Bozo that I would finish it in 48 hours, and I did, despite being away on a retreat with friends and actually having to make a presentation myself.

I went back to the Lanchester book, which is actually much shorter than the Lewis book and 11 days later I have just finished it. It's a very good book, I do not hesitate to recommend it. Even if only because it taught me about the Hedonic Treadmill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

So what's my point? Both books are good but I read one faster? Big deal.

Well yes. As you know Bozo's day job is about communication and the lesson here is exactly about communication. I work, as you all know, with senior management teams about to go to IPO. Or senior managewment teams about to present at major conferences. If we take the book's performance as analagous one represents failure and one success. At a conference, or on an IPO presentation you do not have 11 days to make your point. The audience does not give you eleven days to grab their attention. At the end you may have listed all the relevant facts in a well ordered neat structure. You may have thrown in a lot of jokes, one-liners and funny asides. But in the sort of meetings, presentations and conferences you do in YOUR business you have to get the job done in 30 minutes AND you have to get them hooked in the first five.

So did Lewis' book have a better start technically? Was it funnier? Faster? Snappier? Better written?

No...

It was a story about people. real, ordinary people. Of course it becomes about their un-ordinariness. But it's that journey we take with these people from ordinary to un-ordinary that grips us.
The Big Short establishes itself in the first 20 pages as a STORY about people doing stuff.
Whoops establishes itself about something that happened, generically, to society.

Anyone interested in what happened to the global financial system should read both.
Anyone interested in how to grip an audience and make them pay attention to every word and nuance of your speech should learn (perhaps once and for all) that the audience don't want your facts and figures. Or your graphs. Or your theories. They want to be told a story.

Of course this is just Bozo's personal point of view. And maybe "he would say that" because people pay him to teach them to do it this way. But i suspect that the best-seller lists will validate my opinion. (Perhaps a bad yardstick given Dan Brown's success - but maybe even Mr Brown proves my point. He writes arrant nonsense very badly, but he does tell stories...)

Go see for yourselves. The pair will set you back £45 full price. I paid £36 at Waterstones (i like physical bookshops - so I guess I have to pay £12 to preserve the joy of wandering around them sniffing the books because you can get both for £24 on Amazon.) Or the library will get you them free of course.

Have both with you, read 20 pages of each... see which one you want to finish first.

If you are about to make the most important presentation of your life the question you have to ask is not: "do i have the courage to make this a story" it's: "can i take the risk of NOT making it a story"

See you next week, maybe for some final week political fun.

Some Plugs

Before the meat of today's blog (or the froth of today's blog, let's not pre-judge it!), let me give some well deserved plugs.

Firstly a blog about the dodgy dealings at Lehman Bros.

Just read it and be gob-smacked.

Before any of you say... "this is all old news"
Pause and consider. It cost the global economy BILLIONS. Millions of people lost their jobs. Thousands lost their life savings. It cannot be just ignored because some new news has come out.

So go have a read.

Second... I have always been a fan of Michael Lewis. He left banking before I did, and I firts read Liar's Poker while still a banker. It was a great read. Since then I have enjoyed Moneyball (anyone who likes sport and business will love it) and The Blind Side.

Well his new opus The Big Short is the most readable account of the crash you are going to come across. Buy it and make Mr Lewis rich... he deserves it more than Chuck Prince.

PS Munro readers will see updates today