jürgen fauth’s muckworld

We’re proud to present the April issue of the Mississippi Review Web, dedicated to fiction inspired by the movies. Check it out at MississippiReview.com or go straight to the pdf download. Featuring:

• Brandon Scott Gorrell: Godzilla
• Colin Bassett: Dance Party, U.S.A.
• Emma Garman: Talking with Françoise Sagan
• John Minichillo: Nearly Here
• Katherine A. Gleason: Fred Astaire Refuses
• Lori Romero: Rockfall
• Meghan Austin: Requiem for an Almost Lady
• Myfanwy Collins: Verbatim

Marcy and I will be editing the Spring issue of the Mississippi Review Web. Here’s the call for submissions. Please feel free to forward this to any and all interested parties, and to post wherever appropriate.

24 Words Per Second: The Movies Issue
We are writers who watch a lot of movies. Maybe it’s no surprise that the films we see have a way of seeping back into our fiction: plots that echo silent film, narrative gimmicks borrowed from the French New Wave, characters who spend too much time at the multiplex or model their lives after movie stars. For the MRW Spring issue, we are looking for short stories with a cinematic bend. What that means, exactly, is up to you. Perhaps your story references Aki Kaurismäki, moves like a screwball comedy, or features cinemaniacs trying to kick the habit. Maybe it’s narrated from the perspective of Natalie Wood’s ghost. As long as it’s inspired by the movies, we’re interested.

The deadline is March 15. Send submissions (3000 words max) to mississippireview.movieissue@gmail.com.

A booby-trapped tale of wartime love and guilt, adapted from the great Ian McEwan, who has been mining the darker recesses of desire since First Love, Last Rites (1975). Joe Wright directs an excellent cast — Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, and newcomer Saoirse Ronan — in what begins like a standard period piece but ends up transcending the format with a sharp-eyed inquiry into the power of fiction to destroy and redeem; I haven’t been able to get this movie out of my head. Atonement opens on December 7; if you haven’t read the novel, I highly recommend staying spoiler-free.

Atonement. Joe Wright, 2007. ****

Instead of the spoilerish trailer for Atonement, here’s a clip from Andrew Birkin’s 1993 movie based on McEwan’s The Cement Garden, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg:

Speaking of true friends and good writers: this week marks the release of Next Stop Hollywood: Short Stories Bound for the Screen, an anthology of cinematic shorts that features a story by my friend and fellow Center for Writers graduate John Minichillo. John’s story, inspired by Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” is called “Blind Man in the Halls of Justice.” Editor Steve Cohen pitches it as A Civil Action meets Scent of a Woman, but I see it as 12 Angry Men crossed with Half-Baked. Alexander Payne could do a fine job directing it.

The official site for Next Stop Hollywood hosts excerpts, information for writers who want to be in the next edition, and a list of great movies based on short stories, including Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Killers, Freaks, and Animal House. (They should add Away from Her ASAP.) My copy’s on its way.

Frears, Mirren, Morgan. Photo: Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE

I’ve watched and written about this movie more than once, but a DVD commentary with Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan was reason enough to give it another whirl. On the audio track, the film’s director and screenwriter are every bit as entertaining as they were at the NYFF press conference, but I was disappointed to find them somewhat reluctant to share tricks of the trade. Instead, they delight in pointing out jokes and sharing their favorite lines. (Peter Morgan’s is a single word: “Mummy?”)

There is, however, a short discussion of the meaning of the stag, and right before the end, they make a few incisive comments about the nature of truth. Apparently, The Queen gets all sorts of details completely wrong, most notably the sets. (They say in reality the inside of Buckingham Palace resembles a “dilapidated hotel.”) Yet nobody criticized the film for this, which leads Stephen Frears to observe that “plausability is more complex than just getting things right.” They end on an affirmation of the power of fiction: “You can only tell the truth by lying.” Amen.

The Queen. Stephen Frears, 2006. *****

This skilled BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel is a lesson in structure: the intricate plotting of the Victorian crime story has been simplified by screenwriter Peter Ransley, but the carefully layered revelations still affect and surprise. Casting is excellent, with Elaine Cassidy and Sally Hawkins as the tender lovers embroiled in Dickensian intrigue and Imelda Staunton as baby-trading Mrs. Sucksby. The academic in me is itching to write a treatise called “‘You Pearl:’ Voice, Identity, and Female Desire in Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith and Marcy Dermansky’s Twins.”

Fingersmith. Aisling Walsh, 2005. ****

• YouTube is full of fan-made Fingersmith music videos, but they’re bound to spoil it.

Marcy’s been raving about this Victorian crime/love story for months, and after finishing Against the Day, I finally got around to it. Fingersmith is a period mystery that begins with a tip of the hat to Oliver Twist but quickly finds its own ground: Susan Trinder, an orphaned London thief, is sent to a remote country house as a maid to cheat a young lady out of her inheritance — and leave her in the madhouse. But the two fall in love… and then the plot goes through such carefully arranged reconfigurations that I can’t say another word for fear of ruining it inadvertently. Waters (Tipping the Velvet) has constructed a magic puzzle box of a novel that reveals layers upon layers of gothic surprises and 180 degree reversals, executed with deftness and astounding precision. The Guardian has the first chapter and a reasonably spoiler-free review.

Fingersmith. Sarah Waters, 2002. ****