Okay, you may have noticed if you’ve been reading my blog or seeing my facebook status updates of late, that I’m having a slight obsession with Ryan Gosling. In my last post I talked about how my life is changing and I needed to get out of my own headspace for awhile – Ryan and his films seemed like a great distraction
And this slight obsession with Ryan led me to discover his band ‘Dead Man’s Bones’that he formed with Zach Shields in 2009. After further investigation it appears this album originally began with a concept, a horror musical, to take on the road. Ryan worked with Zach on this project for two years in between making movies (my god – how much talent can one person have). They even taught themselves how to play – it makes my attempt at learning piano even more pathetic.
Here’s a great article/interviewwhere Zach and Ryan talk about the project and their experience with the music industry and what they set out to achieve with this idea.
And if you’d like to watch a little doco with the St Peter’s Choir – it’s really fun. I can’t believe it’s taken me three years to even learn about this. (Well I have heard the song ‘Pa Pa Power’ off the above album several times on Triple J over the last three years – but never realised who or how good they were)
Did you know about this fabulous collaboration?
Will we see more from these guyz?
All I can find out is in 2011 Ryan had intentions of making a follow up album for the Dead Man’s Bones without a choir this time – so let’s hope he does, because I can’t get enough of this sound: it’s dark, sensual, inspiring and uplifting.
And wouldn’t it be so cool if they toured and came to OZ? Can you imagine? I won’t even go there in my head right now – it might explode
Please drop me a note and let me know what you thought of the doco/project...
Midnight rambler listening to the album again and again and again…
♥ ‘WEREWOLF HEART’ is a particular favourite of mine (it’s dark, beautiful and sensual) the haunting sound of the piano has me head over heels in love with this piece.♥
As a writer, do you like your reader to feel discomfort? That squirming, ‘icky’ kind of discomfort that makes the reader want to close their eyes as if to squeeze the image they have just read out of their brain.
As a reader do you like to feel this uncomfortable when a character or characters are behaving in a way that makes you squirm?
From a writing perspective I must admit I like my reader to feel some level of discomfort. I lean towards the dark and hidden sides of our personalities that are often in conflict with how the character may first appear. I like to push the boundaries and look for the horror or the dark side where ordinary people are faced with extra-ordinary situations. But just how uncomfortable do I want my reader to feel? Do I want them to throw the book at the wall and feel so uncomfortable they feel physically sick and may even cry in a heart breaking way. The answer to that is YES and NO.
If it’s in the tragedy – absolutely! If I’ve broken the reader’s heart, I have done my job as a writer, but if they hurl my story across the room and feel so sickened they will never read another story of mine – then the answer is a resounding NO!
I recently saw two movies that made me question just how much I want to push the boundaries. The first movie was a true crime that happened in Adelaide, Australia called ‘Snowtown’ (I only watched thirty minutes) and I knew in the first five that this was not a movie I could watch til the end. This is a true story about characters, not just one, but many, doing despicable things and each scene worse than the last, pushing me further and further away from the story. I consider myself a horror writer and certainly one who loves the genre, but perhaps ‘true crime stories’ is just simply too horrific for me. I persevered with ‘Snowtown’ until I reached a scene that completely broke me, snapped me in two, where I felt totally gutted and lying bleeding on the floor. I HAD to turn it off! Watch the trailer here – trust me it’s watchable
Second movie ‘Wrecked’ with Adrian Brody. I made it to the end. This film, a work of fiction, great fiction, pushed the boundaries, made me feel uncomfortable, and extremely tense but unlike Snowtown (and no doubt because it was fiction) it did what all good fiction does and moved the story along testing the character every single step of the way upping the ante as the story unfolded. The situation for the character was an extremely difficult one and the writer did not make it easy. But it was satisfying because it kept me engaged. I felt the pain and discomfort of the character and I wanted him to overcome this terrible situation. View the trailer here.
So both movies pushed the boundaries in terms of comfort level. Both films made me uncomfortable and tense, but one I could not finish. and never intend to attempt to look at it again. The ugly images still play in my mind sometimes on a continuous loop and make me physically ill. I’ve tried to analyse my reactions to both films which were both disturbing, but in different ways, and clearly my reaction to them was quite different. Perhaps the difference is fiction vs non-fiction. I actually am not a fan of crime fiction and certainly not true crime. I have read it, and certainly seen the movies but in this instance ‘Snowtown’ is something (despite the accolades it received) a film I never want to set eyes on again.
City of the Dead ~ Cairo
What Snowtown did achieve though was make me think about some of the elements in my dark fantasy series ‘Realms of the Dead’ which definitely have the ‘ick’ factor. The scenes in question, especially in the second novel ‘City of the Dead’ I will definitely revisit and revise. I want to make my reader feel uncomfortable. I want the reader to say out loud: ‘Ewww’. I want the reader to ask questions, recommend it to their friends, be even slightly or greatly disturbed, but most of all I want them to be engaged and compelled to finish reading my book.
Pushing the boundaries is great but I guess it’s finding the happy medium, and perhaps it’s unfair to compare fiction with non-fiction but it raised the question for me: How uncomfortable do I want to make my reader feel?
How about you? Have you seen Snowtown, and if so what are your thoughts? Do you like to read stories that repulse you or entertain you?
I’m curious to know what evokes this kind of reaction for you and welcome your comments
Okay, you may have noticed if you’ve been reading my blog or seeing my facebook status updates of late, that I’m having a slight obsession with Ryan Gosling. In my last post I talked about how my life is changing and I needed to get out of my own headspace for awhile – Ryan and his films seemed like a great distraction 
