Book versus film has always been an interesting debate. My thoughts are that the book always wins. You need to work at it, consider, understand and then evaluate. The same could be said about a film, but sometimes, something right in front of you isn’t considered fairly. If it was, Michael Jackson would only ever have had one nose.
I do like to watch a film after I have read the book, but that is mainly so I can moan. Although one film springs to mind that was very close to the book. It was ‘Sleepers’. The weird thing was I expected the film to pad the story out as it was a relatively short book. But the film was true to the written word which just made me realise how good the story was. Lorenzo Carcaterra got an awful lot of mileage out of such a small word count.
Films or books, books or films, I actually have a love of both. However TV is a different matter!
When I look back and remember a time when I did enjoy the whole concept of TV programmes, I can always recall being told to read a book by my elders. That was ironic as I did read. Every night before I lay in the dark trying to sleep, I read. But what is crazy now is that the folks who are the age of my parents, these folks who told us all to read a book, are addicted to the TV. Be it soap operas, (Jesus…A realistic soap opera would be about millions of families doing nothing more exciting than watching soap operas.) Jeremy Kyle type shows, (I blame Jerreee…Jerreee…Jerreee Springer) reality TV or whatever guff is on, they are addicted. A conversation with a soap fan is as coherent and entertaining as listening to a toddler use words for their genitalia and bodily evacuations.
We meet every morning in the coffee shop next door to the hotel. There’s Zia, with his three shots of espresso and who knows how many packets of sugar. Ali takes his coffee with plenty of cream. Aqmed orders one of those fancy drinks with an Italian name I wouldn’t dare try to pronounce. Every day something different. “What is it today?” Zia always asks Aqmed, as if there’s something a bit too girlish about Aqmed, a man who doesn’t drink his coffee black and strong. Then, of course, there is me. Omar. I am a tea man.
Leaning against the grimy brick Mel scuffed her feet on the flags. She flicked a fag end into a puddle of scummy rain water. Her fingers quivered and shook, fiddling and picking at the little gold clasp on her shoulder bag. She sniffed, wiped the back of her hand across her nose. She needed a fix but couldn’t have one yet, she needed to keep her wits about her. She hated being out on the street, well of course she did but it was Saturday and so there was no choice.
She sat in the chair waiting. Let it come, she thought. I am prepared for every eventuality, and when it comes I will not be surprised. Nonetheless, she was tense, apprehensive, alert, and when the doorbell rang her blood froze. Now, she would say. Here it comes. She tried to hide, inside the room, inside herself, but still she heard the sound of the doorbell like someone screaming in her ear. She tried to make herself smaller and smaller and sometimes even fled to the farthest corner of the room. The farther away she was the less she felt the threat. Sometimes she turned her face to the wall and began to count, ring by ring, and if the ringing did not stop began to mumble words of entreaty or supplication.
He was a tall sheepish gentleman in his late fifties. His eyes were gentle, his chin was weak, his shoulders were starting to stoop. His legs were thin and wobbly, his hair was thinning and gray. And he walked with the hesitant stride of a crane, his head bobbing forward with every step. Watching him amble along the street, one would never guess him to be an artist. A servant, perhaps, a beggar more likely, but not an artist: a soul unencumbered by earthly snares and committed to only the Muse. But an artist he was, and no mere artist at that. He was an artist in the most gallant of mediums: the daring realm of street performance.
literally stories 