The Wire finished it’s series out in the states but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of it over here yet. Don’t know if or when we will. But, of course, I’ve seen the whole thing anyway. And in admitting that, I’ve just confessed to an illegal act but what can I do? For my mind The Wire is, by far and away, the best televion drama ever produced and it has greatly informed the way I think about story structure. But because of the way television stations/networks currently operate, where one station apparently refused the show out of fear of insulting it’s audience’s stupidity, I might never get the chance to see it. Or at the very least, I’d have to wait for it to show up on DVD. The Sunday Times recently discussed the success of Heroes in Britain, even though it had never actually been shown on British tv. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone told Reason magazine that they were happy that there shows were being downloaded. There’s some noise about change and alot of talk about not making the same mistakes as the music industry but how much fair warning did they need? How much time did they need to readjust to this new way? The thing is a show, like The Wire, would have been ideal for some sort of pay-per-view web delivery model. It’s niche enough to make television channels hesitate but so good it is bound to find an audience. I hope series 4 does come to television screens over here soon. I will watch it again and when, or if, they ever release a complete The Wire DVD boxset, I’ll buy that too. It’s just I don’t see why I couldn’t do that already. Anyone who gets a chance to watch it, should. No matter what it takes.

I don’t read many magazines, watch much tv, listen to much radio or visit many sane websites, so I tend to be out of touch. The rest of you probably already know then about Steven Soderbergh’s project ‘Guerrilla’, starring Benicio Del Toro as Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara de la Serna.

The film will tell how in 1964, Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara travelled to New York City to address the United Nations.

It had to happen, I mean the physical similarities are so striking somebody had to cast him as Che.

Pity it won’t be completed till 2008.

Update: it seems this film has a rather odd history… not sure exactly but it seems Terrence Malick was supposed to make a film about Che Guevara starring Del Toro, but he pulled out. Then Soderbergh got involved and seemingly split the film into two projects… this one and one called ‘The Argentine‘. Which also stars Javier Bardem. Two films about Guevara for the price of one with excellent actors.

Bif’s previous post where David Lynch sits on a street corner with a cow led me to look up his forthcoming film: Inland Empire.

It stars Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons and Harry Dean Stanton. Oh and ‘Laura Palmers Mum‘ seems to be in it too. There’s some other great actors in the film too… William H Macy is in it, as is Naomi Watts (or at least her voice),

The plot summary from IMDB goes as follows:

Married actress Nikki (Dern) is offered a role in a motion picture which is to be directed by Kingsley (Irons), Nikki’s co-star is called Devon (Theroux). Nikki’s role is Sue, Devon’s is Billy, but they end up winding into bed with each other. They’re calling each other the names of their characters in the movie. From here on, it is impossible to tell if Nikki is actually Nikki or Sue…

I’m a HUGE Lynch fan, and this plot summary sounds like classic Lynch – and if you’re not sure what classic Lynch is… well just watch the trailer:

No idea what the Irish release date is. I’ll be holding my breath. In the meantime I can enjoy Dumbland.

What happens when you smoke a joint and drive a car? A TV show decided to find out.

Great documentary on William Burroughs available on Google video. About an hour and a half long.

I haven’t watched it all yet, but I watched some really interesting snippets – in one of them Burroughs discussed the time, in Mexico, when he shot his wife Joan dead after she suggested they ‘do their William Tell act’. You couldn’t make this stuff up. More than a little disturbing. Between the craziness of his real life and the insanity of his fiction his own life becomes merged with his writings and if events like this weren’t well documented publicly you’d think he must be making it up.

When I was in school there was a push on to try and interest people in the Library as a resource. The librarian came around and explained that we could request a book be bought for the library if we could present a good reason for buying it. I knew of one of Burroughs books of essays, which was among his tamer works, which contained an essay on the Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby was on our course, so I went and presented my case to the librarian, who was a lovely woman.

I forget the name of the book of essays now, but if I remember correctly, in Burroughs analysis of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby was a literature junkie and had to shoot up pure prose on a regular basis to survive…

Anyway, shortly after I was called to the library and the librarian kindly explained that when she rang up to order the book it was out of stock, but that she asked if there were any other books by the same author available and she had been sent The Naked Lunch. Not one of Burroughs tamer books. By a long shot.

I thanked her and left the library as quickly as possible and related to my friends how I was now responsible for the most depraved book in the school library. It would only take one young first year to innocently pull the book down from the shelf and flick through it before they’d run screaming form the library scarred forever and I’d be hunted down for perverting and disgracing my school.

That never happened because having related my sordid tale one of my friends nicked what he perceived to be the only book of value in the school library.