Archive for the ‘film’ Category
B.S. Johnson
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels that would now be considered visual writing. In his early years he collaborated on several projects with a close friend and fellow writer, Zulfikar Ghose, with whom he produced a joint collection of stories, Statement Against Corpses. Like Johnson’s early stories (at least superficially) his first two novels, Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964), at first appear relatively conventional in plot terms. However, the first novel uses several innovative devices and includes a section set out as a filmscript. The second includes famously cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward. His work became progressively even more experimental. The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked, apart from the chapters marked ‘First’ and ‘Last’ which did indicate preferred terminal points) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters’ thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence.
Fra UbuWeb: | B.S. Johnson – Poem (1971) |
FRANKLYN
Split between the parallel realities of contemporary London and the otherworldly metropolis of Meanwhile City, Franklyn follows the tales of four characters. Jonathan Preest (Ryan Phillippe) is a masked vigilante who will not rest until he finds his individual. Emilia (Eva Green) is a troubled young art student whose rebellion may turn out to be deadly. Milo (Sam Riley) is a heartbroken twenty something yearning for the purity of first love. Peter (Bernard Hill) is a man steeped in religion, searching desperately for his missing son amongst London’s homeless.
Beginning in Meanwhile City, the film moves into contemporary London as the characters’ storylines intertwine for a fateful finale.
