Author's Notes Pt. 5 - Location, location, location; Denny and Rosencrantz are Dead

This is part of a companion piece for Neurons Like Brandy, you don't have to have read all of the novel to read this but the discussion will have inevitable spoilers for stuff that happens in early chapters as well as possible reprecussions later on in the book (circa chapter 12). They are all pretty minor but I would say it might be worth hitting the index if you are at all worried.

This chapter is mainly about some of the characters but also about some of my favourite films as well as some location shots of Brighton.

Hope you enjoy.


Denny and Rosencrantz are Dead

I’ve always been obsessed with secondary characters. I think it started after watching ‘Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead’ by Tom Stoppard when I was about 18 but it might have dated back as far as Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’, which I think I first watched when I was 6 or 7.

‘Rosencrantz and Guiderstern…’ is about giving two minor characters in Hamlet the centre stage as they are dragged inexorably towards their own demise without really having any choice.

In the original play I don’t remember them having any lines and instead they stand around in the background until they are sent to their death.Stoppard, who would later become famous for Shakespeare in love but who also penned one of my favourite plays 'Arcadia' has this brilliant ability to tell the story of minor characters, as well as turn stories around each other (a skill I wish I could immitate with the same kind of aplomb).

In Seven Samurai, a three and half hour Samurai epic, there are no incidental characters, every person introduced has clearly defined motivations, and even the cartoonish villains are given humanity. Every scene oscilates between humour and pathos without ever seeming ridiculous and Kurosawa expertly toys with the audience. The pathetic American remake 'Magnificent Seven' fails to acomplish this at any point in the film.

For example, Kurosawa bothers to show a drawn out torture scene in which you feel sorry for one captured bandit as he is left at the whims of the local peasants then flips it by showing the perspective of an aging grandmother exacting revenge for her dead family. Later in the film he even has a tiny scene in the final climatic battle where one bandit loses his nerves and runs off into the rain, never to be seen again. To me these moments were striking in their casualness, that a 'bad' guy could be shown in such light and it was in stark contrast to all the Spielberg/Lucas food I had been fed where the heroes always trounced every villain and every antagonist was mostly consumed by evil with scant regard for their own survival if that impeded them from attempting wrongful, immoral acts.

It was a weird thing to do but these films primarily informed a lot of what I feel about all narratives.  In my opinion a carefully written non-character shows an author’s ability to tell a story better than any overblown main character. Non-characters are able to give you a sense that the entire world does not revolve around the one nucleus of a thread. Another good example is the first Die Hard film. Sure everyone remembers Alan Rickman but subconsciously you had to take things in, like Al Leong’s eating of the chocolate bar, just before he murders a group of SWAT.

That, or the fact that Bonnie Bedelia is utterly badass throughout, making you think that if Bruce Willis wasn’t there she might just save the Nakatomi Plaza herself, and the fact that Hart Bochner regularly makes top ten lists for being the biggest arsehole in films, ever. Despite only having about 15 minutes screen time.

I don't want to write too much about Die Hard as I already went into an extended piece about that over at Arcadian Rhythms, but I will defend it as the greatest action film ever made.

These fillms are the reason that Neurons Like Brandy is the way it is. The first person perspective gives each, seemingly secondary, character the chance to say their piece. No matter how misguided it might be.

I am going to be using Jocelyn’s chapter as the main point of reference, so if you haven’t read it, you probably should.

In Jocelyn's flashback where she talks about her first crush, Rick, the reason that Rick's brother - her friend - loses his temper and stops talking to her. She mentions it almost casually but in my head it is because he is in love with her and he can't stand that she is constantly talking about Rick; driving him to the point that he hates both her and his own brother. She never even notices or questions this.

In my head everyone gets their moment, even if it is a character that only exists for two seconds and sometimes understanding them or their reactions to the main characters is more important than what the main character is saying. This leads to Denny.

Denny exists as a permanent non-character.  He will never be able to articulate anything, nor will he be able to change his trajectory.  Going back to the Shakespeare influence, I deliberately abstained from giving Denny a single piece of dialogue. I wanted  see how much could be implied/inferred by his existence. The intent was that Denny would be a massively passive character. He does not push the plot forward (apart from when he dies) and instead he is always on the periphery.

Even in Jocelyn’s chapter she reduces him to action and input rather than give him a personality, which is meant to indicate how Jocelyn is distancing herself from the loss. As a reader I imagine that you will be indifferent to him as well and that in itself makes him utterly tragic. He exists as a person doomed to die and no one properly mourns his death, a point that is hammered home in the second chapter when Dan brings it up only for everyone to tell him, in not so many words, to shut up. The point was that Denny really was as important as everyone else in the final story, he was there with Dan and Phillip but he gets sidelined by people's perspectives. It is sad that Denny dies alone even though the main character, Dan, really wants him to not disappear.

Here is Jack Black in Demolition Man. Adds a weird spin to think he is in there as such a minor doesn't it?

Another film I watched recently that had a particularly large impact on me, although not on the writing over Neurons Like Brandy, was a small indie piece called 'Sorry, Thanks'.

This is not just because it brings back the rarely seen Wiley Wiggins but because the two writers nail the satelite characters perfectly. There is a certain Richard Linklater feel and not just because of the Dazed and Confused link with the main actor but because of how well the characters sense of aimlessness is captured. In other films the two given the centre stage would be bit parts but because they have a one night stand and one of them is in a long term relationship they are given lead roles. Each of their friends is well conveyed and Wiley Wiggins is is extremely effective as a useless arsehole wastrel. He is utterly unlikeable and all the better for it.

Most impactful, however, is newcomer Ia Hernandez. She plays Wiggins's girlfriend, for most of the film she plays sweet and demure while he comes across as borderline psychotic in his obliviousness to her feelings. In many ways she steals the film in the final few scenes. I don't want to spoil it but her turn is beautifully subtle and captivating during the denoument. If I could hope to get that right in any of the characters in Neurons Like Brandy I would be a happy man.

Location, location, location

It is so weird to go back through Brighton and see all the things I wrote about in flesh. This rings particularly true of parts 6.1 and 6.2 where Phillip hoofs it through Brighton to the house that eventually becomes the central focus of the story.

So, this is a picture.

This first one is where Phillip’s off-license was situated. Back in 2005, this used to be called Bottoms Up, a subsidiary of Thresher (at the time owned by Japanese Bank called Nomura). I used to work for them and spent a lot of my formative years fighting drunks and chasing shoplifters (technically they were thieves as they had left the shop premises), the manager of the first shop I worked at taught me almost all I know about working in retail and, to this day, I am not sure if that is a good thing or not.
 Thresher went out of business about 6 years ago so Bottom’s Up is no longer. It was situated in prime property so it is unsurprising that it was transformed into something else. Not all branches were so lucky.

Neurons Like Brandy is fictional but the encounter Phillip had with the old lady is real. It did not happen in the Bottoms Up, it happened in a Thresher store on St. James’s street. This place remains untouched. I imagine bottles of White lightening sitting undrunk in its basement waiting for the real zombie apocalypse to happen.

I spent around 2-3 years working there and for all the bitching and whining I may have done I loved it. Certainly I resented almost every person that ever gravitated to my place of work but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t hilarious to be there.  I could probably write a novel just about working in that off-license and the crazy people who worked in and around it.

This shot is the house, the place where the majority of Neurons Like Brandy takes place. When we visited it, the building seemed so small from the outside (it is actually ridiculously massive) and in reality it took up so little of my life. Although some of the stories while residing there are going to stay with me forever, some of which will be prominent in later episodes needless to say I hated most of the people who lived there and that is why some of them meet grisly or pathetic deaths. I look back now and I realise that there was a very good reason why I was not made welcome but as they say 'there was no need to be so damn rude about it'.