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Who will make my movie now?

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As a writer, I see my stories as movies that play out in my head as I am writing them. And probably like many writers I can be more of a dreamer than a writer. I find myself imagining which Hollywood actors will play the parts. When I’m deep into my contemplation I can even see the closing credits of the movie, the whole audience on their feet applauding, whilst I stand there with tears flooding down my cheeks, and those same actors patting me on the back. That’s usually when I wake up to a blank page staring at me, and the ever-present realization that it’s easier to dream it than to make it a reality.

But for me, it goes even further. My dream is always of a famous director calling me up and asking to turn my book into a movie. In my jumbled head of dreams there was only ever one director making that call. It was always Tony Scott.

So like many others in August of last year, I got up early, switched on my computer and was met with a shock that shook me so emotionally it stayed with me for days and days after. How desperate must someone feel to make that ultimate step? Tony Scott, larger than life Tony Scott, rumoured to have got a speeding ticket for travelling the fastest ever, on Ocean Boulevard on a motor bike. Tony Scott, dream maker, and from everything I have ever read about him, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

But I’m not sitting here to discuss what drove this man to end his fantastically fulfilled life, even though I have pondered it for hours. No, whenever someone I’m close to, or someone who is special in my life, dies, I try to spend a little time celebrating their life and thinking about how they brought a little sunshine into my life.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why Tony Scott could make the thriller genre work on film, when so many failed. I have spent hours watching rubbish renditions of a genre that I love, especially when taking a novel that I have liked and seen it moved to the screen with disastrous consequences. But Tony Scott had that something special.

He made many great movies but my favourites, which are close to the genre I love, are ‘Enemy of the State’ and ‘Spy Game’.

‘Enemy of the State’, is just one of those great movies. I have lost count how many times I have seen it, but every time I watch it, it grabs me, even though I know what is going to happen next, I am still riveted to the story. It’s a great story, but essentially it is about how a man has everything taken from him by the ‘State’, his family, even his identity, and how he fights back.

‘Spy Game’, I don’t think ever made it on the box office stakes but I loved it. I have watched it many times and I still love it every time I see it. It’s a story about the old-fashioned spy game, but it’s about the people, it’s about love, it’s about loyalty, and more important it’s about sacrifice.

But why do they work so well. As a writer I have a number of touch points I try to use when I am writing, to make my stories be what I want them to be. On the top of my list is ‘emotion, emotion, emotion’. If you don’t have emotion in your story, if your readers don’t care about your characters, you have nothing.

Tony Scott had emotion in spades, it came out in his characters, it hit you on the screen, and you cared. That’s why you connected. I have read many tributes to Tony Scott, and the common theme I read from all the actors who worked for him was simple. He cared about them and they cared about him. You saw it on the screen, you felt it on the screen, and that’s what made the difference. That’s why you felt you knew Tony Scott, because he connected with you.

So life moves on. Who will make my movie now? Thankfully Tony Scott influenced many movies makers, whether directly or just by them coming up in a world where he was such a major force. Interestingly I like what Ben Affleck is doing as a director at the moment. So who knows?

God bless you Tony, sleep tight. It was nice knowing you..

I wonder if the George Browne is still there?

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A number of years ago I made the step from working for a major computer company (sadly on its demise) to being an independent contractor. My first job was in the newly independent Estonia at the Estonia Mobile Telephone company in the capital Tallinn. I had to take a flight via Copenhagen, where I switched airlines to Estonia Air, newly separated from Aeroflot. I remember walking out onto the tarmac and looking up at an ancient Tupolev TU-134. It had a glass nose and reminded me of a World War II Lancaster Bomber. I realized this was my flight to Tallinn. Someone told me later that the company motto was ‘Fly – if you feel lucky.’

I arrived in Tallinn in late November and it was cold, I mean brass monkey cold, Tallinn is only 50 miles south of Helsinki and 200 miles west of St Petersburg. After much bargaining and the scenic tour of Tallinn, I finally arrived at my hotel, having paid the taxi driver most of the cash in my wallet. After I settled in, the girl behind the bar in the hotel told me there was an Irish pub across the town square. This was in the days before Irish pubs were more numerous than Catholic churches. I decided it was time to explore and soon found myself moving at a rapid rate across the cobbled square. The reason I was moving so fast was that I was sure if I moved slower I would freeze solid and join the statues scattered around the square, no doubt figures of years gone by who had merely gone out in search of a drink.

The George Browne was a genuine out-of-the-box, Irish pub (well-known to us all now, but a novelty back then). There was a small road sign by the front door that said Dublin 1200 Miles. The place had creaking wooden floors and a long polished bar that served draught Guinness, which wasn’t bad, and the local head banger brew, Saku. The place was well patronised for a Sunday evening and I soon got chatting to a couple of English guys at the bar. One of them, Ernie, was a short rotund guy, who after a couple of drinks gave me a peek at Betsy, his automatic pistol tucked away beneath his coat in a leather shoulder holster. Ernie’s parents were Estonian and had left Tallinn for England as children during the Second World War. Now Ernie was back to claim his birthright. He was working as a minor official in the government. Under the influence of a good few pints of Saku, he would often boast, with a conspiratorial wink, that his position allowed him to use Betsy on one adult or two small children with complete immunity.

Ernie’s friend Bob was another character, as tall as me and twice as round as Ernie. He had the skinniest waif of a girlfriend who he supplied with a constant stream of vodka. She just leaned on the bar and never spoke a word. Bob told me he was in the semi-precious metal business. To hear him describe it, he was a sort of mix between James Bond and Harold Steptoe (sorry, for the non-Anglophiles, Harold Steptoe was a famous comic TV scrap metal dealer (when I was a lad)). Bob was involved in decommissioning a local radar station, only from what I could gather, they were decommissioning it over the back fence.

The George Browne was my first close up view of the Russian Mafiya. There was a bleached blond guy, whose name I forget, who always wore his overcoat around his shoulders like a cloak. He had the meanest looking eyes I’ve ever seen. He had a bodyguard the size of a house, who was on nodding terms with Ernie and Bob and occasionally, while his boss was in the corner chatting up two or three women at the same time, he would wander over for a chat. He spoke broken English, but enough for bar conversation. I remember Ernie egging him on to show me his gun, and him pulling out a make-my-day special as long as my forearm.

So this was the level of intrigue available at the bar of the George Browne, the writer in me was loving it. I could go on writing for pages yet about nights in the George Browne, but this is a blog so I need to get to the point. Suffice to say I was a frequent visitor over the next months. It was often my step off point before venturing into the depths and delights of the old town. I have very happy memories of that little Irish pub and of my stay in Tallinn. Back then it was a frontier town, a frontier in time to the old Soviet Union. There were still few visitors from the other side of the old iron curtain (the west) and the place was frequented by just a few ex-pats and dodgy traders. Now, I believe it has become the stag party (bachelor party) capital of Europe, frequented for long weekends by a string of drunken youths, trashing the bars and nightclubs and, if they are lucky enough to return home on Monday morning, with no memory whatsoever of the place they have visited.

Something prompted me the other day to Google the George Browne. I wanted to see what it had become. No doubt it would have its own website and offer free Wi-Fi to its clientele. I was devastated to find I didn’t get a single hit. Panicking, I looked up various tourist maps, places to drink in Tallinn, but not a single mention of the George Browne. It had simply faded away, except in my own precious memories. But isn’t that the way of the past, the golden memories that you have, are best left there. The fact is, for the most part they don’t exist anymore or worse.

I frantically e-mailed and old friend who I met over there (and has been my best friend ever since) and he sent me a link but warned me not to look. I should have listened to him. The place is now a posh wine bar, but worse, it’s decorated in pink and does not even sell beer. It makes you wish you’d never gone looking in the first place. Trying to go back only leads to disappointment. Memories are made from the now, the place you are in, the people you are with, that are then carefully packaged away for you to reflect on in the future. These are the golden moments, remember them, sure, treasure them, absolutely. But they are for moments of pleasant reflection, to relive with a wistful smile and quiet thanks that you had the opportunity to be there, before moving on and living with the now. In these particularly tough times, it’s easy to hanker for the past, but the future isn’t there, it’s here, where it’s always been, with the people you love, the people you respect, the people you work with and see on the street every day. The future is that way, as my old dad used to say, pointing forward, out into the distance. And he was right.

I guess the thing that had prompted me to look up the George Browne was a theme that had been running through my head when I was writing my new thriller, the Foo Sheng Key. The whole idea that you can never go back, that the mere process of moving forward changes things. It is a theme that follows my hero, Jai, throughout his physical and emotional journey through the book. This theme was so strong in me that after writing the first 50 hand scribbled pages in my notebook, I got up one morning and turned back to the first page and wrote across the top, the opening line from a favourite Paul McCartney’s song from way back:

‘Once there was a way to get back home.’

I let that thought and everything it implies, stay with me throughout the writing of the whole book. And even that is now a memory, that I can look back on and smile, but know I have to move on to the next one.

Check out my books on https://www.amazon.com/author/neilhowarth and remember –
Enjoy the now.

I always wanted to be Alistair Maclean – what happened?

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I guess life happened, and in many ways I have no complaints about that. I‘ve always been a reader. When I was young I used to read ‘Just William’, under the bed covers, using my torch light. Then came ‘The Secret Seven’ and after that ‘The Famous Five’. I was 8 or 9 but already I was hooked.

I discovered Ian Fleming one Saturday morning in the public library. I was about 12. My friend nudged me in the ribs, “Hey, there’s sex in that one.” It was ‘You Only Live Twice’. We giggled together, him egging me on. I reached up, took down the book and self-consciously walked up to the front desk. The library lady, an ancient spinster, squinted down at me over her half moon reading glasses. I handed over the book, its glossy cover sticky with my sweaty paw marks. I could see her studying me, and I realized then with absolute certainty that she knew, and she was about to denounce me to the whole library. I could feel my face starting to flush. I wanted to run but I was rooted to the spot. Suddenly, she picked up her stamp and punched the checkout page. She looked down at me as if I was a moron. I realised I was standing looking up at her with my mouth open. I picked up the book and ran. That was my introduction to James Bond. I’ve been a fan ever since.

When I was 17, I went to naval college. One day the guy in the next bunk to me handed me a book by Alistair Maclean, it was ‘Where Eagles Dare’. To be honest, I’d seen ‘The Guns of Navarone’ movie years before and loved it, but never connected it to the writer. Now I devoured all of his books and that’s really where it started, as a dream, a wish. . . I wish I could write a book like that.

So I started scribbling the odd scene here and there. By the time I left college, and joined the Merchant Navy, I was a dedicated scribbler. But I could never get from being a scene writer to a full story writer. I always dreamed that I could take one of those story fragments and turn it into a full-blown novel.

I remember discovering John Le Carré. He didn’t write the fast-paced action packed thrillers I was used to. But he did write a story with intrigue, depth, deep mystery, and a certain elegance that mesmerized me. Before I knew it, I was in my mid-30s with a heap of disjointed scribblings, and a deep, nagging, fear inside me. Maybe I was never going to be a writer. I remember telling myself, you either start writing this big story of yours now, or give it up and walk away. You’re not a writer, you’re just a dreamer.

So I started, passion in my heart and fear in my gut. I was already a big fan of Robert Ludlum. I loved his big, sweeping stories, set on an international stage, where the action buzzed off the page. So I had the idea, what about a story with the scope and pace of Ludlum, and the intrigue and depth of character of Le Carré. I also had had my setting, Berlin, a city that fascinated me. This was my place, this was my genre, my melting pot for my story. I was nothing if not ambitious.

And that was it. I was on my way. I had a character (maybe a bit clichéd), washed-up, ex-drunk, ex-secret agent, gets the chance to redeem himself. So it began, I wrote it by the seat of my pants, it was all I knew. I’d get up at 6 am and write for a couple of hours before going to work. I used to travel a lot, so I always had a notebook with me, I’d scribble on planes, in restaurants and bars. I just pushed on with it. What came out was raw, but it was me. This was my version of ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’, the good guys, the bad guys and the shady guys. It was steeped in the genre of my heroes but it was my story, all my own work. ‘The Song of the Nightingale’, the Berlin setting, I could hear the music, as the movie started to play (in my head). But what I actually could hear was the sound of the bulldozers, as they ploughed through the Berlin Wall, and the world declaring the Cold War was over. At the time they were saying the spy story was dead, thriller writers would have nothing left to write about, hmmm. . . But it did somewhat consign my big novel to the bin.

For one reason or another I didn’t write again for a number of years. Why, is a long story and perhaps for another forum. But that time did pass. I met a wonderful woman, who is now my wife, and who was also instrumental in getting me to write again. I was still working hard in my day job, but soon I was back to the 6am start. This time instead of a tiny room in a house in Basingstoke, it was an apartment in Singapore. I would drink green tea and let the ideas pour out of my head.

This time I had a new story, and yes you’re right, this was the big one. In the mid 90s I’d worked in Eastern Europe. I used to drink with a bunch of guys who were in the dodgy, semi-precious metal business. Some of the stories they could tell would curl your hair.  The pub we used to hang out in was also frequented by various members of the Russian Mafiya. There was one guy in particular. He always wore his overcoat around his shoulders like a cloak. He had a bodyguard the size of a house. I didn’t dare look at him directly. I used to sneak glances at him from behind my glass. He scared the living shit out of me. But at the same time my writer’s imagination was going wild. We were staying in a very old town, cobbled streets, dim, flickering street lamps. I had a vision of an old man. He comes out of the east with a secret. I just needed to find the rest of the story. It took me a while but I got there in the end. ‘The Doomsday Legacy’ was the result.

One thing I know now – I’m a writer and I always will be. First and foremost I want to write good stories. The kind that you can hunker down with, in your favourite chair, perhaps a glass of something nice to hand, and leave your everyday world behind. The kind of story that reaches out on the first page, grabs you by your shirt front and drags you into a dark and dangerous world, on a race of twists and turns, of threats and dodges. One that leaves you breathless and spent at the end, but thinking – ‘Wow, that was a good story.’ Maybe even the kind that one day a young aspiring writer will read and think – ‘I wish I could write a book like that.’
     
       ‘The Doomsday Legacy’ is published on Amazon. Check out my other books on my website (www.neilhowarth.com), or on Amazon.
     
       The Doomsday Legacy, Amazon Book Link is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KAA78Q