Just a few months prior, I still had the ringing in my ears left from my fellow New Yorkers commuters as they engaged in conversations meant for the whole world. Most of the cast from New York City seemed to have no problem with letting everyone in on their trials and tribulations. “Listen to me … if Tommy doesn’t show his face here by Friday, you can forget the barbecue.” I always felt like I had a half window on a conversation that never seemed to end.

During these so called golden times, the disclosure of public information in Paris seemed to be an anathema to the French. Parisians used to be very gaurded. While if you had ears in most countries, you could figure out what time the softball game was, or how much money was being offered for a starting level position, or how much Brandon paid in child support or whether those tits were real. In France this kind of information seemed to be sacrosanct and no one would think to reveal it to their fellow man through an inconsiderate excess of volume. There seemed to be both a polite attitude toward noise, while simultaneously, a deep seeded need to preserve private information. Don’t talk about money.

While twenty years later, this quiet resolve seems to be more or less in effect compared to other cities, Paris has indeed gotten objectively louder. I am not guiltless. Perhaps my own household alone has contributed to this downward trend. I had assumed Parisian kids were the eternal silent generation. No so. My own boys who seem to have either inherited American volume, or be proving my thesis wrong from the outset. The streets seem louder. There is more traffic echoing off the narrow limestone. There seem to be more people using their klaxons as a means of communication. More open phone calls, (either one sided crazyperson or on speaker phone).

But all does not seem completely abandoned. Some unspoken codes are still in effect. You will never hear a Parisian shouting for someone’s attention from across the street. “Hey Tommy! TOMMY!” will never be shouted from across a park or baseball field. Nor have I have never heard someone yell for their wife to not forget the freaking eggs from across the Walmart parking lot.

But I have noticed a more laxadaisical attitude towards public secrets being revealed. A certain “je m’en foutism” that never used to be acceptable. On the metro line 8, just the other day, I learned all about how a certain woman with a deep tan and flashy manicure felt about her co worker. I learned that “if she wanted to be a slutty bitch, she should just go out and assume it.” The caller would “have respected that bitch a lot more if she wore those colors proudly”. I in turn would have respected the caller more if I had not learned her attitude towards slutty bitches. Maybe the smart phone has changed things.

I don’t want to live in the country. I know that living in the city is a devil’s bargain. If you move in because the neighborhood seems hip and happening and then you phone downstairs to complain that the neighborhood has become hip and happening, you need to check your aspirations. I understand that city’s create noise. And cities contain mutitudes. That is why we love them. But I do miss the general courtesy and the quest for some relative calm that used to be in the Paris in my head.

In an age when we wear our hearts on our sleeves on social media, it seems that the only thing stopping someone from reciting their life story is manners. I realize as I type this that it must be easier than ever to be a spy.

I could blame it on fatherhood and the fact that most of my time is spent at home making sure my kids do not die, but this is also a feeble excuse as I played hooky to watch “One Battle After Another” at the movies. (Worth it by the way).

It is not like I am uncomfortable with subtitles or stories about people in other countries. I have been to Brazil. I love this country. I even dream of doing a bio pic on Vinicius De Moraes and Anton Jobin where they write “Girl From Ipanema” on the beach in ‘63. So you could say I am already primed to go to Brazil.

No, I should have seen this masterpiece in the theaters and I did not. Why? Probably like a child of the twenty first century: I was waiting on marketing magic. It never came. And this says more about me than the film. I should have made me want to leap out of my complacency to meet it half way. I did not and this is my way of making up for it.

“The Secret Agent” is such a rich tapestry of the time and place that its resonance stretches far beyond the entertaining assassination yarn it uses to hold audience’’s in its grip.

It is an endlessly fascinating and effortless dissection of a country wrapped in political and societal corruption. It is my favorite kind of film: an unpretentious thriller that does not lecture but changes an outlook. Like “Chinatown”it satisfies all itches. Entertaining. Check. Informed? Check? Preachy? Not on your life. It washes you in its truth and then let’s you make up your own mind.

The director does that most magic and difficult of tricks: he manages to balance everything in its right place. The wealth of details in this film at no point overwhelm it. It is like a perfect recipe of hundreds of ingredients, each dosed in the right proportion as if by divine hand. To say that each character in this film is perfect would almost be to insult it. The research is evident. The documentary chops are evident, but this is also fiction at its most designed and magnificent.

Each character deserves his own film. From the chain smoking lady hosting a hive of revolutionaries Tania Maria (this performance alone is better than anything at the awards ceremonies this year) to the hero’s father in law, a sweet, noble man running his day to day projectionist errands Carlo Francisco to the politically appointed head of a university who displays one of the most potent displays of evil by way of wounded pride Cleodon Coelho. “The Secret Agent” is a murderer’s row of ordinary people turned legendary.

And the biggest miracle? In no way does any one of these genius portraits threaten to hijack the film from the splendid lead hero played by Wagner Moura. This is what I mean by the right dosage. Yes Wagner Moura is stoic perfection but he is as perfect as any thread in this tapestry and that is the film’s biggest triumph.

The film’s structure of time jumps are tasteful and do not strike one as innovation for innovation’s sake although there is certainly something to be said for championing the bold jumps in time. It feels more like the director has found the perfect means to divulge his story by the campfire.

I feel you need the story of the two female researcher’s in the 2000’s coming across the tapes of these forgotten people. You need the resonance of not actually seeing what happens in real time to the main character because you need to contextualize his fate as we are asked to contextualize so many other victims of this regime. What I have listed are perfect storytelling instincts that cannot be taught. And for that reason, this is not flashy directing, this is just directing at its most seamless and therefore its most flawless.

Take the opening for instance: attention grabbing yet sitting inside the narrative like a glove. A lone man, our hero, drives his Volkswagen into a rural gas station. A man has been murdered feet away from the pumps but not no one has come to investigate. The attendant tries to dismiss it. The police arrive and instead of opening a murder investigation as would be the beginning of every other tv show, seem more intent on shaking our hero down for cigarettes and cash. Moura’s disbelief is our disbelief. His revolutionary impulses and frustrations have instantly become our frustrations.

Like in the best directed movies, we know we are in good hands. We know there is something deeper here. We are going to get it. We know it. We can relax. This faith is rewarded in waves.

I think you can tell now that I loved this film. But I also hope you will give it a watch as it represents the best of what cinema can do now. I am not a big believer in style “waves” such as the ones we found in the sixties where youth seemed to own cinema, but perhaps there is something to be stated about the current Brazilian crop of international films. We all know by now of Walter Salles and his stellar “We’re Still Here”. If not, we should correct this oversight as well. Something is in the water there. They are exploring their recent past and in doing so, drawing a spotlight on what is happening in other countries now. I ain’t naming any names. I do not have to.

For the hate of A.I, Keep it going. my brothers. Keep it going. And I will do my best to get into the cinema to see these overlooked masterpieces. I will make excuses, I will steal this book if I have to, as Abby Hoffman used to say.

The hot sun in Sicily had been heating up the volcanic sand beneath my feet all day.

I skipped across it, not daintily, but effectively. I was making my way from our coveted bivouac to civilization. We had managed to claim our territory next to the shoreline early in the day. We had learned our beach lessons. We had managed to hold off local seeking prime real estate near the shore by planting the flag of our beach towels early in the morning and then holding our ground.

You may not know the un-written code of beaches but here it is: property equals place. Hence if you arrive at seven in the morning and plant your beach towels by the water, you may feel free to go off and do your business knowing your land has been effectively secured from sun up until sun set.

But I digress as bodily urges were calling. I needed a toilet and pronto. I passed the huddled masses on my way to the coveted restaurant up several flights of rock steps. Restaurants during the summer in these resort towns have all the power. And they know it. They have let it go to their heads. No one messes with the owners who have ample access to food, water, shelter and arrogance. They also had a public restroom and I was about to learn the price they would extract for enjoying such private rights.

Walking in under the sun canopy, the owners were preparing for lunch. Some tourists were seated already, about to discover the price of a fresh salad. I went straight up to the bar in my ignorance and cavalierly asked to use the bathroom. I figured asking was being polite. I was sure that most passers by just made a beeline for the privy and apologized later. But I was feeling in a subordinate mood.

I faced a bearded pale man behind the bar, who miraculously looked like he had avoided the sun all of his life.

“You need a key.”

“How do I get a key?”

“You order something.”

The man turned and disappeared for a moment into the kitchen. He did not return with the key. He did however return to complete a task he had already been engaged with when I started talking to him: wiping the counter. He had needed a fresher sponge which I was noticing now.

“Can I have an espresso, please.” I had been learning how to say espresso in Italian and I thought I was doing pretty good but I was not sure if he had even even acknowledged the request, let alone discerned the accent work. He was now talking to another of his staff, a woman with a perpetually distracted look as well who was relaying orders as she set the menus on the tables in anticipation of the afternoon rush.

The bearded man barked at the lady who now dug something out of her deep pockets. She came up to me and seemed like she had been rehearsing this speech all of her life. I was about to be the recipient of their bathroom policy. The key was attached to an oversized hoop. It was impossible to miss or misplace and that was immediately the point.

“Here is the key. I want you to guard this key. This key is very precious to me. You must guard it with you and not take your eyes off of it. I want it back afterwards. You give it back to me. You understand? I want this key from you, no one else! You are responsible. Do you hear me? You are responsible!”

I shook my head in acquiescence but this apparently was not enough. She needed a verbal approval, like customs or the army.

“I understand.”

She pointed to the back of the restaurant where a ray of light was emanating. The bathrooms were out the back and located in a separate smaller beach structure. I got the gist of it and made my way.

I will not go into details about the goal of this mission. This was accomplished with ease and not really the exciting part. In short, I could hold it and the key worked a charm.

When I emerged though, I found several members of the family who had been awaiting their early lunch, standing outside and obviously the three year old girl in her Daddy’s arms clutching her sun dress in the nether region needed to use the facilities tout suite. Key be damned.

I now had two options. I could either explain that I had been entrusted with the key and had to return it and it was up to them to secure key rights as I had done, or I could just hover. As English or French was not their first language, I invited the little girl to use the bog under my watch. It was too much to get into my Frodo like journey and she looked like she would be quick and clean about it.

I waited with the father as he handed off the youngster to the mother and they both went inside with myself opening the door for them. The bathroom locked on its own and it needed the key to open it again. The father gave me a little stink eye when it appeared I would be lingering with the bathroom key as his wife and daughter did their business but he seemed to make peace with this perverted behavior soon enough as he was soon back to checking his phone as was de rigeur.

What did he think? That this was my job? I was only respecting my end of the bargain. Did they not know the key policy? I think I would rather he thought me the perv than the hapless schmuck who had nothing better to do than unlock the bathroom door for every tom dick and harry on this beach. But here I was, keeping my promise. Something that they would never know. I had not asked for this job, but I was going to finish it.

The girl was finally carried out by her mother and seemed to be even more agitated than when she had come in. The parents spoke in German and then the father expressed some kind of frustration that the toilet did not carry enough paper to finish what they had started.

He turned to me in broken English and asked if I had any paper. And I explained that I did not. Meanwhile, as our backs were turned another wayfarer had slipped into the toilet while we were all distracted and before the doors had closed, the cretin.

Now it seemed, what had been just a small delay was turning into an open door policy. This was exactly what I was entrusted to avoid. I now felt the heavy burden of being the key master more than ever. We were all turned and angry at the selfish teen who had usurped the toilet. I did however find it more than a little satisfying that the father could feel some of my pain.

The grinning teen emerged after his piss and played dumb. He had long shaggy dog hair covering his eyes and it was not worth explaining to him again, all of our plights as they had become far too complicated.

I told the father that if he needed more toilet paper for his daughter that he would need to go back to the woman and ask for it himself as I had only borrowed the key. I would have to return the key and afterwards, he could borrow it and enjoy all privilidges including more paper. The owner had insisted on it.

As predicted none of this was fully understood. He argued with his wife a little more as the little girl carried on being upset. Pouting had now turned to crying and the father felt no more obligations. He tried to take the key from me and I resisted a little. I understood that he now needed to relieve himself and I had no choice but to unlock the door one more time so that he could take care of business while I once again waited with unhappy customers. Once again, he should have been asking himself more questions. Why did everyone assume I was just a permanent employee with a bathroom key?

When the father finally emerged, the girl had stopped giving me the evil eye and it seemed that they were happy to return to their table and explain the situation. I had been released. I was free. I shut the door and made sure it was locked. My duties fulfilled.

As I moved to take the key back to the front of the restaurant, I heard a soft supple voice call out to me in my native tongue. I turned around and saw a lady in her mid twenties, young sexy and carefree and obviously confident in her ability to open doors.

“I found it,” she signaled to other beach bikini bunnies.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her try the knob a few times but to no avail. She turned in frustration. She had no idea who I was or the power I wrought or the responsibility I carried. For a moment, I put myself in her place. I thought of all the trouble I could avoid her, and that I held the means to solving her biological need, quickly and effortlessly. If I were so inclined.

But then I thought to myself. No. You know what? Let her learn. Everyone was on their separate journey and she had to learn the things that I had learned over the last fifteen minutes. She would have to struggle, to build up from nothing and to practice infinite patience. If she really wanted a fix to her problem, she too would need to learn to be key master and it would be no good me spoiling her or denying of this vital learning step. It was time to return the key.

I went back the way I came through the slim corridor at the side of the restaurant and found the woman at a table serving customers who were now as plentiful as sand. I gave her the ring key without a word and she accepted it without a word, But I knew what was in her eyes. Gratitude. She knew full well the burden when she had entrusted me with that thing and now she knew I was older and wiser. I drank my cold coffee at the bar.

I returned to my beach claim only to find two Italian men in speedos had staked camp in front of me. Well played. They had set up shop while I was gone and my wife had just let them do so without protest. It turned out they were only interested in standing and blocking my view of the sea.

Here they spent the day tanning and air drying in the standing position. It did not seem to bother my wife. Two Italian men in their mid thirties intent on wiling away the hours just adjusting their speedos, scratching their bottoms while simultaneously engaged in the most fascinating conversation anyone has had ever. No one had to go the bathroom once.

Maybe it is a false impression created by Instagram and Threads to convince me I am not alone. But this seems like way too much of a conspiracy to be conducted for my benefit.

Young people from blue town ships are setting out and looking for the Bohemian dream here in the city of light. Whether they are refugees from the Trump regime or just more souls who have grown comfortable with the idea that there is life outside the United States, people are here now.

And I mean semi permanently.

They seem to have no return ticket.

They are speaking English in Menilmonant. This is absolute madness.

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I am not sure how I feel about lists and rankings and waxing on about movies. All that I have learned about movies is to let the pictures do the talking.

But sometimes writing about films is worth reading.

So, in the hope that I cross over into the more inspiring category: I want to highlight cinematic injustices, (as if that were even a thing). And so, here are a few jewels to consider:

Emily the Criminal

(Directed by John Patton Ford) 2021.

This film has seriously been under loved. And I mean criminally. Every pun intended.

Perhaps the most tightly constructed film and the most complete character portrait I have seen in the last few years.

This should have been everywhere.

It should have been up for best screenplay at the Oscars as few films capture the real spirit of the Millenium job market more effectiveley and transition from a dramatic conundrum for the main character into a finger biting thriller better than this script.

Aubrey Plaza proves her depth in this one, stretching out the blasé prototype of her comic persona on “Parks and Recreation” and turning it on its head. For years she embodied the pastiche of the millenial. Now she embodies its dark side. This film pulls no punches about what its lead character faces. The arc of experience going from drama heading into thriller is most impressive.

Favorite scene: Emily explaining the impossibility of surviving on no money as an intern to a clueless boss played with true deafness by Gena Gershon.

More than the tightness of its plot and the compelling, suspenseful nature of the entertaining part of the story, I believe “Emily the Criminal” to be the ultimate millennial film.

It is a jewell of a script and a great first feature. It would be a time capsule movie for me.

It Follows

(Directed by David Robert Mitchell) 2017

I am not usually a horror fan but “It Follows” is again so effective and relevant that it launches itself single handedly into another class. The opening of the film, with its sequence shot laying out the terror faced by a character learning that she has a monster within her, is a tour de force.

David Robert Mitchell is in full control as a director from the opening frame in a quiet suburban neighbourhood.

I suppose there are plenty of other films that explore the fear of death embodied in the AIDS epidemic and the idea of disease as bogey man but this is the ultimate combination of metaphor and premise. We all feared catching someone from a loved one. Involuntarily giving them something that kills them. Getting killed. This is what ‘“It Follows” exploits.

Favorite Scene: this film culminates in a great pool scene where loved ones are part of the horror and that as objects are thrown in the water to aid the main character, we only feel like loved ones are making it worse.

Just like you suffer most from the most loving of gestures, “It Follows” get you right where you live. And is also a suprisingly effective treatise on a teenage fixation.

The lead performance from Maika Monroe of Long Legs fame seems to be an imprinting one but I have waiting for the follow up in calibre from this star.

The Lost Daughter

(Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal), 2021

I would begin this summary with a rave of Olivia Colman but who needs to do that? She has already won an Oscar and been ominpresent in British cinema and television for the last thirty years.

And yet still…. Is she not Meryl Streep level great? Maybe, just maybe. She is better. More versatile. I know, I know. Fighting words Is there hyberbole left?

The cast of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first feature is one for the books. We get future stars Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Fanning and throw in Ed Harris for good measure and this is an intesnely evocative film that works slightly better in Greece and in the present tense with Olivia Colman than it does with Jessie Buckley (as great as she is) in her flashbacks.

Favorite Scenes: Olivia Colman’s outburst at the shops with Dakota Johnson. Letting all the subtle weight of her past appear fleetingly on her face. In essence, there is no need for flashbacks. We have it in her eyes.

The sense of atmosphere and real location shooting in Greece give concreteness to the project.

I love this film and I am sad to not see it for purchase on DVD or Blu Ray. Can someone please amend this omission ? Why must brilliant movies be stuck in the netflix ether?

Tick tick … Boom

(Directed by Lin Manuel Miranda) 2021

When it comes to musicals I think whether you personally like the music on offer has a lot to do with your liking a movie like this or not. In this case, I am in love with the music.

I also for the fist time understood the elf like quality of Andrew Garfield and why it can work to sometimes have a movie star with child like qualities.

The main character is overwhelmed in this film: by love, by his urges, by his ambition and by his fear of failure and Garfield is perfect for emodying all of this. I missed the Spiderman hoopla. I understand him here.

Lin Manuel Miranda has really found great material here musically, but also, his visual staging is very cinematic considering his stage background.

Favourite Scene: When everyone is comparing the inadequacies of their apartment but Andrew Garfield is celebrating his own squalor. The music and lyrics of these sequences and Miranda’s real sense of soundtrack building are working in perfect harmony.

A modern musical that works is as rare as quartz. Maybe I am nostalgic for nineteies NYC but this project sings to me.

Sing Street

Directed by John Carney 2016

Speaking of singing, this is the most Cameron Crowe movie not directed by Cameron Crowe. It takes place in Ireland in the early eighties. Like all films of John Carney, it has a delicate charm that is in danger of being blown over in a light breeze, but this one holds solidly. Thankfully due to the strength of its stars Ferdia Walsh Peelo, Jack Reynor and Lucy Boynton.

Carney really understands musicians and the dream of creating music. One of the only times as a musician I have seen the feeling of creating a song and listening to it as a demo on your car stereo after an all night mix session (I know I am getting hyper specific here) done right. Their mix on a crappy car stereo in “Once” was ….. magical.

But enough about contemprary music in Dublin in “Once”, I am talking her about “Sing Street” here.

A tale of musicians in the 1980’s wanting to break out of their small town confines and take the speed boat to London. It’s equally pleasurable although perhaps not quite as miraculous as “Once.”

Favorite scene: Jack Reynor giving his brotherly advice on what Duran Duran has that no one else has: hint it has something to do with going around the world and spending money.

Also, honorable mention: the scenes involving rehearsing with the fledgling band and writing their songs.

It does not hurt that all the pop ditties written for this thing are super catchy and Lucy Boynton is absolutely pixie dream girl delicious with her blue mascara.

Under The Skin

(Directed by Jonathan Glazer) 2013

How has this movie not been written about ad nauseum? A film about extra terrestrials, written and directed by an extra terrestrial : the mysterious Jonathan Glazer.

It is also based on the original, out of this world book by Michael Faber.

Scarlett Johannson just happens to be in this film as if by accident. It is like they kidnapped her. She is a slave to the film’s designs just as her victims are slaves to her. She is the human movie star in which Glazer has chosen to embody his “Isserly”, the Scottish hitchhiker that kidnaps boys in order for her own ET species to be properly nourished. If you do not understand. This is okay. It is unbelievable. It is other wordly. That is the point.

The style of taking real documentary footage and experiences and blending them with a sci fi fantasy should not work. It does. Can Scottish blokes believe they are suddenly in a van with Scarlett Johansson? No, they cannot. They are stunned.

So are we.

Yes Scarlett is the bait but what her movie stardom allows us to do is to assume that the whole film itself is a kind of seductive ruse to get us to shakeoff our inhibitions and slide into the toxic ooze in which we can become one with the universe.

I think it is as good as Kubrick’s “2001”. It has the same bravura ambition.

Favorite Scene: We get to the ending …. with that starchild running through the woods, I feel I have slipped into a higher consciousness. It scares me to death, her corporeal form, but I am forever changed as she burns to ash.

For this is the time of year where all middle class families of decent means are expected to do their part and go skiing. This is partly so these vacation spots in the Alps can earn their money for the year and pocket it away for the summer months like squirrels who hoard nuts in reverse. France, the country, organizes its winter breaks meticulously. No nation is as well organized as the French when it comes to vacations and taxes. There is a whole planning department somewhere in a building (probably near Bercy) that plans for national ski vacations. Slopes never get too crowded because different regions hold their school holidays at different times. They also make these half term breaks two whole weeks instead of just one to factor in all the separated parents who wish to spend one full week of quality time each. Also very thoughtful.

This creates an exodus. Figures and suitcases on the move. A pleasure pilgrimage of sorts. Go to Gare du Lyon at five in the morning in late February and you will observe families trying to make trains with kids and gear in tow. You will see shaped in the dark, families on the move with big cases trying to suss out what platform their train is going to depart from. Taxi drivers know the drill. You would think that if you have a ticket for a seat that as long as you were at the station in good time, you would be safe. You would be wrong. The average train holds adequate splace for your body but not for your excess baggage. And thus creates one of the greatest modern struggles of our time: how to place oversized cases in portions of the wagon that do not block vital entrances and exits. The conflict is real.

But hold on. Before we get there, witness the flocks of responsible adults gazing up longingly at electronic panels awaiting the crucial announcement of the platform number. Years of practice have been put in. The starting bell goes off as soon as the world learns the train for Bourg Saint Maurice leaves from Hall 1, platform C. A starting gun of sorts. No time for stragglers. Little Jean Pierre, you come with us now or you will be left behind. The crowd forms at the gates, the modern process of the scanning of codes, the passing of the barriers, the suited members of the SNCF train service that makes sure there is no rioting.

The families get to their appropriate cars and heave. One, two three. Get those bags on the train at all costs. The father has the muscle to get those items on the luggage racks. Mothers block the corridors and claim seats while kids remain oblivious. Essential items are retrieved and hand baggage are stowed. Sandwiches, books and i pads are the essentials of choice once the hard work has been done. A heavy sigh. A vicious hunger ensues. For a reason that I have never been able to figure out, the French people are never so ravenous except when they are seated on trains. On trains everyone is recovering from a hunger strike. They also use the facilities like they are going out of style. There is of course an unsaid firm train etiquette: no opening of crisp packs for more than five seconds. No talking to mistresses on the cell phone. Corridor hopping and exploring is encouraged once every one is in place but no ass must be in anyone’s face for unnecessary item retrieval for too long. These are the rules.

In the end, nothing compares to the relief one feels at a seat well claimed and luggage well stored. Once the train conductor announces his unintelligible message, you know you are set for the long haul. You take a deep breath. You leave it up to the train gods of fate. Apart from a mysterious, prolonged wait on the tracks in the middle of nowhere, you are on your way. No one can stop you except for delays as a result of un planned for circumstances. You close your eyes and dream of a holiday you know that you should relish with all your heart. The silence of the train. The fullness of your heart.

But this is not all a bed of roses. I do remember that noise is always an issue in the city of light. Most pubs and bistros are happy to let you play the radio and pass the hat but never want you to grab too much attention or expect too much compensation. Also most club owners are more than paranoid (maybe for good reason) whenever your music gets above a certain decibel level. No barman wants to admit it, but they are scared of inviting the scorn and malice of their neighbors who always complain when the noise level grows above the decibel level of a fart. Of course, I am the first to understand when old people who were living upstairs since the entire second world war complain but I will never comprehend the young jet set types who think it is a good idea to live in a popular neighborhood with night life only to bitch that they now live in a popular neighborhood with nightlife.

I also recall the times that many bar owners have expected a radio from the acts they book and nothing else. “The customers just want to watch the rugby“ or the “customers just want to talk amongst themselves” is often a sad retort, but if this truly is the case, then the question must be asked, why did they want to book a band in the first place.? Most live venues now are content with a spotify playlist or a human spotify playlist. I have to say now that live music in Paris in 2026 is often an obedient dj sitting in the corner. Paris was the world’s hub for live music during a certain epoch or so I am told but I remember playing one gig in the 18th district where I asked the barman to turn down the radio as I played and he did not. So I dedicated an entire set to singing in English about how everyone there sucked. It went swimmingly as no one paid attention to the musician in the corner anyway.

So back to me playing with my beloved band the Dimestore last Monday night. The Pub in the marais on Rue Caron is a miniature paradise for musicians as the barman there understands the golden rule of Paris live entertainment: “when it is football, it is football and when it is live music, it is live music “and when all the customers there seem to understand this, a good time is had by all. I loved playing two sets which the band had worked hard to perfect. There is nothing like live music when it has the right frame and that night certainly had the right frame.

There were the regular open mic musicians who came for solidarity. There were the local boozers out for a regular. There were the shy tourists wandering in off the street and discovering a rowdy extraganza they had not planned on. And who could play a show without the basement toilets where every drunk must pass a sobriety test getting down the windy narrow staircase. No live venue in Paris is complete without a stage that was not meant to be a stage. Move a few tables out of the way. Temporarily block the entrance. It’s the charm, you see. Paris is the world in miniature. And once you get over yourself a little, you have a blast.

That night, I had the added pleasure of inviting my kids for the first time ever to see me play live which made the circle of life complete. From my salad days being ignored by strangers, to entertaining toddlers who after the first song would rather be somewhere else, they had a lot in common with my previous audiences. I guess Paris is a fete after all and there is a reason that I have done all this. Not for the glory, but for the stories.

By the way, if you want to check out my band and you are not in to paying the devil, go to our bandcamp for the full Dimestore experience;

John McNulty's Music

It was the last days of being a kid. I don’t think I was in some kind of competition to grow up but I didn’t mind it coming. Maturity was a friendly ghost: like Casper. It never felt scary to me. It only seemed like I would soon be able to sample more at the buffet. There was also dessert. That sweet thing you had been promised lingering just around the corner. It was my first real time of abandon and the fact that it was all happening in a British colony that would be abandoning its British and western colonialism made these days seem all the sweeter.

The Chinese called us white devils. Guilos. I was okay with that. I also don’t think I was old enough to be offended. I knew I was different. All of us ex patriates were different. We lived in different neighbourhoods and went to different schools. A white guy in Wan Chai could be spotted a mile off. We glowed. Let’s just say we couldn’t rob any banks. There we were and everybody knew it. I also sensed that among my Chinese friends, we westerners were a bad influence. We were true to our devil natures. Looking back it did all feel like borrowed time. It was the end of the opium war lease and the debt was coming due. As you get older within this environs, your separateness sinks in deeper with every passing year. It’s a background radiation that infiltrates all interactions. You are not like all the others.

« We need to buy birds. Birds are the key » I heard my friend Emir say in his brazen voice. I wished he would address me a little quieter in our plotting as I was afraid his mother could barge in at any moment, but my half Turkish, half American friend was never concerned by this. He lived without fear. If we both had been listening more closely, we could have heard the waves lapping outside his window. Emir and his family lived on Stanley beach. My family called the beach hole too but both of us had no truck with nature. Welcome supermarket bags and barbecue remains littered the beaches every Sunday so it was natural that we didn’t pay attention to its beauty.

No, we were paying attention to the porno mags Emir kept in his underwear drawer. And we were now scheming together, how we could procure more. Emir’s collection was already impressive. Underneath a layer of socks was an assortment of premium soft-core nudie mags from both sides of the cultural spectrum. Emir carried both Chinese Playboy and American Penthouse magazine so we really were broadening our horizons.

It started innocent enough. I had met Emir at a small Anglican church called Saint Stephens. He attended service with his mom and sister and later blasted Metallica’s Master of Puppets in the parking lot so there was some dichotomy there. I was immediately drawn to him. This initial encounter soon broadened into me spending more quality time, like this, at his home. Stanley beach was the site of many historical tragedies. It was a fairly picturesque little enclave mostly known for its market where you could buy a large inflatable toy as you watched a live chicken get slaughtered. My mother’s main concern was not Emir but rather me catching salmonella at the time, so I never got to sample much of the street food.

“That fox is an eleven out of ten,” Emir would say as he rated every woman from the printed page like he was describing angels at a beauty contest.

“….And she clearly shaves her you know what.”

We were noticing more and more that the centrefolds of the Hollywood variety were much more likely to have shaven their nether regions than their Chinese Playboy counterparts. Clearly the Chinese girls didn’t go these extra lengths.

“They don’t have to”, I added sagely. “There’s no hair down there anyway.” The quality of our banter was stellar in those days.

A two story western style house in Hong Kong was so rare, it was like it existed outside time. Emir used its space and its airiness to pound on his drum kit in the middle of the afternoon. The family dog, Lilac, would howl along from the terrace below. Emir had almost learned all of the solo from Whitesnake’s “In The Still Of The Night” which I, of course found jaw dropping-ly impressive even at a great distance. Emir was also obsessed with glam metal and I believe my obsession for this type of music mostly came with catching a glimpse of the band Ratt’s seminal record cover “Invasion of your Privacy”.

The time I spent with Emir at his house was like being alone without being alone. The only hint of parental presence was felt in artefacts I would stop and stare at on the way to the bathroom: I remember a framed black and white photo depicting military men in Ottoman style furry hats warming themselves next to a bivouac fire. Sometimes we would sit in an empty living room and review old VHS comedies. Magically lime cordial would be served when we were not looking. I know that Emir’s mother Doris was the source of the refreshment but I could not be absolutely sure. We rewound jokes and freeze framed key undressing scenes for closer scrutiny. We played gods.

But by far the most treasured activity was the ogling of the porn mags on the top floor bedroom. In that room we would venture to delve into a treasure trove of letters written by the diligent and punctual readers of Penthouse magazine. These were no doubt real people, detailing, with tremendous accuracy and enthusiasm, tales of their mind blowing sexual experiences. In retrospect, these letters more than challenged credulity. Did real estate agents really sell houses to the women they just had sex with? Every Penthouse letter had the eternal ring of male optimism. This was a well of inspiration for our forming teen brains. I had to have a few issues of my own. Emir, being a man of property knew that it would do no good for him to lend me his. I needed my own taste. My own mags. But how to procure them?

“The key is birds. I’ve got to introduce you to Tony,” he said, starting the next chapter of our quest.

Birds would be our way to procure a contraband. And when I say contraband, I mean the 1986 October edition of Penthouse magazine. This was our holy grail, our “Ticket to Paradise” as Eddie Money once sung crooned. Emir explained that he already had a fool proof method to buy Penthouses. After several weekends of successful magazine procurement, we would now use this same methodology to get me my own mags. I learned that the plan involved getting Emir’s driver Tony in on the action.

Most expatriate families in those days had drivers. It was part of the bargain. Yes it signalled Emir was well off but it also was not an uncommon luxury. Middle class in your home country. Upper class in colonial H.K.

“I tell my mom we’re out shopping for budgies and my driver Tony will take us wherever we want to go. It’s the perfect cover.”

“Will we have to buy birds?”

“Of course we’ll have to buy birds. Why do you think I have ten of them downstairs?”

Now that I thought of it, it was true that Emir’s family’s back terrace was always chirping. Hanging from some of the rafters was an assortment of wooden cages filled with budgies. They spent their fearful days hiding from the family dog.

“It’s okay, my mom likes them too so she doesn’t mind me getting a bunch as long as I feed them.“

The driver in question, our smuggler in chief was a wafer thin man we called Tony. He walked with pride and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth at all times. He believed in pocket protectors and biros. They stuck out of his laundered shirts prominently. This was in order to jot things down but I never saw much jotting things down. A prime mover in our world, he was the only representative we had of the local population. I never learned his Chinese name. Most Hong Kong-ers got fed up with us guilos trying to pronounce their Chinese names so soon learned to call themselves ridiculous place holders like Bob, Fanny and Candace. Tony was Tony to us. When he was not playing Mahjong with other drivers in the communal parking lot at the ex patriate villas he was regaling us with stories of his women. He had several. All at the dim sum restaurants he used to frequent. I think he was married but honestly I was not sure. I don’t think he was sure either. He was somewhere between thirty and sixty three.

Tony worked for Emir’s parents and was primarily there to get Emir’s father to work somewhere in Central every morning. But after those pick ups and drop offs, Tony was free to drive us around. I have never met a better version of a man who knew who he was. The confidence oozed from his posture. It turned Tony was the perfect furnisher of alibis and a wingman to go down in the history books. He also allowed Emir and I to listen to the most God awful glam metal in the car at full volume. He didn’t flinch. Did he really enjoy Poison and Kiss played that loud? We shall never know. But he never complained. It was a disjointed experience to be seated in in the air conditioned sanctity of a company car heading along the curving roads of Hong Kong island while a 1980’s Judas Priest bellowed out Painkiller but this is how we rolled.

And so we agreed on a date and a time to execute operation budgie porn. It was to be Sunday after church as this was as good a time as any, and I would already be spending the morning with Emir anyway. I just had to convince my mother to let me extend my afternoon in Emir’s company which we often did anyway. We could propose the journey after the service when all our parents were in the mood and we were blessed by the sanctity of attending an Anglican service at Saint Stephens. We would soon be heading out to Wan Chai in order to engage in enough sin to carry us over for the following week. We would make it seem casual. Like it had just come up in the church parking lot off the cuff. Emir had loaded a bird cage into the trunk in advance.

“Mom, can I go with Emir to get a budgie? Tony can take us.”

I decided that the only one who needed to be convinced was my mother and Emir had recommended Doris being there when I asked permission. It was a carefully planned strategy. Doris who would be the lynchpin. Tony said nothing at these moments. He was taking harbour somewhere under an awning smoking with the other church drivers. He kept only a peripheral, disinterested eye on the proceedings.

Emir’s mother, Doris, a peaceful woman always wearing flowing dresses that went down to her knees could be counted on as a sea of positivity. She took her time and then half whispered her thoughts on the matter.

“Emir does it all the time. They just love those birds.”

Now I got it. Doris’ acquiescence was as good as my own mother saying yes in this circumstance. Parent peer pressure was a real thing and Emir seemed to know intrinsically how to exploit it. Doris’ relaxed demeanour was a direct line to assuring everybody involved that buying the sixteenth budgie to add to Emir’s collection was a totally a normal thing to do on a Sunday afternoon after church. We also should not waste any more time discussing it. Tony had already put out his cigarette.

We dropped off Doris at the homestead a few moments later and then after, when we were sure she was in the house, and that Tony had double checked he didn’t need to to run any other errands, we watched her glide through the front door and slowly it behind her. Adult and kid worlds had now been permanently separated in the space time continuum.

Tony needed no prodding from Emir, who had already moved into the passenger seat and was riding shotgun like Chewbacca. I sat in the backseat like a prince. Emir wasted no time in proving the soundtrack to the moment. He had a new pristine U.S. cassette of the new Motley Crue album “Girls, Girls, Girls”, starting with the opening track: “Girls, Girls, Girls”. For some reason those new cassettes always had the loveliest smell imaginable. I don’t know what they dunked those cassettes in before shipping them in those days but they always smelt like honey freedom when you got the wrapper off. We were off with the familiar motorcycle revs. I could not believe we had escaped. It had been so effortless. We were now speeding along the green verdure turns outside Chung Hom Cok with our eyes on the holy prize of smut.

Wan Chai in those days was the frontier. Its market was a jungle of merchandise and danger. As we got closer to our destination, Tony had to manoeuvre the oversized sedan through more and more crowded areas. Over tram lines and mini bus stations. The local populace was not happy that they had to make way but Tony didn’t see the problem. If we got the evil eye from an elder, he would just lean on his horn, roll down the window and shout his way clear. At this point in their relationship Tony had taught Emir a thousand combinations of Cantonese curse words which Emir would not hesitate to use for effect. But Tony was not always happy about this and had to quiet him down on occasion for this was not going to get us what we wanted.

“Do we get the birds orthe magazines first?” I asked naively.

“We get the smut first,” Emir responded. If we buy the bird, then it’s got to stay in the car longer and they tend to shit in the cages when they get nervous.”

He had done this before and Tony nodded his head in agreement. These were words of wisdom. Hard earned experience. Tony soon was forced to pull over. It was not so much a parking space but a place to abandon the forward journey. There was too much humanity. We could go no further.

“Tony waits here. I know where to go.” Rather confusingly, Tony now got out of the sedan but took a cocky perch near the hood. Here he rested his dress shoe on a tire and lit up a causal smoke. In his element now, he began shouting at a nearby toy vendor. The man seemed to like the jibe and smiled revealing a lack of teeth.

We were now out of the sedan and Emir was able to translate. “He says telling them we’re here to buy porn.”

I suddenly panicked. Great. everybody knows our business. Didn’t that defeat the purpose? Weren’t we incognito?

“Why is he telling them that?”

“Cause they don’t give a rat’s ass. Tony knows what he’s doing. He’s got to watch the car. Come on.”

We were not in Kansas anymore. We proceeded to walk deeper into the narrow streets of Wan Chai. The market shops were small and packed together and everything was on sale, including people. Beneath our feet the cooking oil and grime of a thousand centuries formed a city carpet that stained our pristine white slip on tennis shoes. Before us sprawled layers of products, mountains of mystery produce. All mixed together in a diaspora of dark capitalist chaos.

We soon came upon an alley that ended in dead concrete. Emir knew the way. It was narrow and sinuous and exactly the kind of place that you had to go to buy porn. As we walked along, I took in the bamboo basket dustbins that the whole district had seemed to have placed in our path in order to make our way more cumbersome. When my family had first got to Hong Kong, my brother and I would hear stories of bamboo vipers lying in wait to snap at your pinky finger. I am not going to say that Hong Kong was any more urban legend friendly than any other place in the world, but it certainly didn’t lack for these kind of tales.

I remember my guts churning as we crept down that alley. I recall making out a stall at the end of it. In my memory, there was a lone vendor but I am certain now, that he had plenty of company, and all of this was not as dramatic as it seemed. The shadow figure in front of us was squatting. A cigarette born in his mouth, he rose to make us out. He seemed to be unsure that he was seeing straight. Yes we were two white kids. He had been listening to a small radio that seemed to be giving him some vital information from the Happy Valley track. Once his vision was clear enough to make us out, he began making his feelings known. He began shushing us like flies. We kept coming, Emir leading the Ottoman charge. When we were close enough, we calmed his nerves by focusing our attention on his innocent magazines: the PG portion of his rack. He had a few of old Master Q comics and National Geographic. It did the trick. The man seemed to have returned to his radio for now.

When he was no longer monitoring, we turned our eyes to portion of tthe slanted rack we had come for: there he had proudly displayed Chinese Playboys, American Penthouses, American Hustlers. Our attention lingered on another forbidden zone, we oggled titles we had never heard of. I could think of nothing more satisfying now than to hold any of these magazines in my hot little hands. I was no longer picky. The danger was there but also the promise. If this mission was a success, I could consult these magazines whenever I felt like it. It would be my literature to keep until I died. So much variety. So much flesh. So many girls to choose from.

“Just grab what you want,” Emir said and then turned silent and still all of a sudden. It was my belief that he had come to replenish his supply too but evidently this was not the case. My fingers only started to graze the edges of a Chinese playboy that had caught my eye when I knew I had triggered a bomb. It was if the shadow man had been waiting for this. I did not choose some harmless magazine but went right for the Chinese soft core. The furious vendor suddenly sprang up from his perch and began yelling at the top of his smoke filled lungs: “Naughty, naughty, naughty!”

He rushed us: the whites of his eyes displaying the fury and resentment of a thousand years of Chinese oppression at the hands of the white devils. Of course it may have had something to do with the fact that it was probably illegal to sell porn to those underage but it felt very much more like the former. This was all some misunderstanding, surely. We had meant to buy Popular Mechanics. We were innocent. Who else was listening? Every one on HK island. Our teachers. Our parents. And past, present and future judges. All of them in that alley way with us calling us out for what we were. We were now the centre of attention.

“Naughty, naughty, naughty.” It was the only English words the old vendor knew but it was enough. We turned and ran like banshees. Babes running back to the womb. Sprint, sprint, sprinting all the way to the end of that alley. I imagined a thousand eye balls clocking our descent into sin. I never turned to see Emir but in that moment, he seemed to keep up. In that moment, his cool facade had melted just enough to keep pace with me and share my shame. Faster and faster we darted with the distant words of the old vendor echoing in our consciences: “naughty, naughty, naughty.”

Eventually we reached the crossroads where Tony had parked the car. Our driver had graduated to a tooth pick in his mouth and was still calmly shouting at the vendors who had him surrounded. This time, he was chuckling at something a young woman at the flip flop stand to his left had barked at him. All the while he was pretending to read the same article from the same Chinese newspaper he had been reading for weeks. We approached battle weary and he immediately clocked that we currently had no publications in hand.

“Why you have no magazines?”

Emir knew enough Cantonese to respond in his native tongue while I just stood there meaning on a light pole catching my breath. The last thing I heard Emir shout to Tony as he headed down the alley was Chinese Playboy. He then handed tony all of our cash which tony proceeded to refuse. He ordered us back in the car. Tony’s shoulders told us he understood our demand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chinese Playboy, I got it you pussies.

We both got into the back seat and rolled up the windows. This was us now, children huddled in the back seats as the market masses washed by our windows. We imagined these customers trying to get a good look at us criminals who had caused such a commotion just minutes prior. They tried to i.d. us through the tinted glass. We had been retrograded. We were in our car cocoon. Of course, all of this sensation melted when we caught sight of Tony emerging triumphant from that dark alley again. It had been an eternity.

He was walking with a clear stack of contraband: several magazines cradled in his arms. They had been wrapped in carton coloured sleeves. In retrospect, I don’t know what was worse: seeing a nude woman on the the cover of a magazine or a carton sleeve hiding something infinitely worse. Tony walked them over without any reservations. He seemed more focused on getting the last drags from his fresh cig. Then he got into the driver’s seat and gently handed the stack to Emir, who in turn handed them to me. Tony shut the door and started the engine.

“Let’s get out of here.” he told Emir in Cantonese. I myself could not hear any language. I had never been so grateful to another human being in my short life. I unwrapped those magazines like it was a special kind of Christmas that only arrives once in a young man’s life. I offered to pay Tony back double which he took as an insult and told me so in Cantonese. The return journey was a raucous celebration of rock and roll and centrefolds. I believe that Tony enjoyed the mirth as much as us. There are teenagers and those that still see themselves as teenagers and then there is everyone else. I took in the true splendour of the female body with every ounce of my consciousness. I studied every aspect of those beautiful woman on those pages under the faint light of the passenger seat. I only looked up twice. Once to catch the sedan’s headlights burning a bright trail through every sea side turn at Repulse Bay and a glance up as we made the turn onto Stanley Beach road and into the old market. It was the last turn into Stanley as a child. I was dreaming of my future life that would forever be blessed with the beauty of the opposite sex. It would be a tremendous benediction and a terrible, horrible curse. But is this not life itself?

It was only when we pulled in Emir’s driveway that we realised we had utterly failed to buy us an alibi.

“Shit, no birds.” Emir exclaimed as he retrieved the cage from the trunk. It had totally slipped all of our minds.

“It doesn’t matter. My mom doesn’t remember how many birds I have anyway. Plus those cages are getting crowded. One of them can be on his own.” Emir was wiser and slyer than his years and Tony knew it. They had inducted a new member of the budgie crew and we all agreed that everything that went down would have to be kept secret. The birds would have more room and I would have enough sensory inspiration to last the next six days.

That night, I found a place next to the bamboo trash cans outside our villas and I carefully hid my stash so I could safely retrieve them later. I needed a window of opportunity when I would not be scrutinised. Of course this meant, risking those pesky bamboo vipers, but it would be worth it just to get a look at those girls again.

Buy me a coffee

In this series of podcasts hosted by film instructor John McNulty (EICAR the International School of Film and Television); a film is discussed for its propensity to teach us about the craft of filmmaking and screenwriting and to provide a chance to cinephiles to get out what they’ve been keeping inside. A range of guests will include filmmakers, educators and enthusiasts of all kinds.

“Prepare for A.I. It will change everything.”

I was prepared. Or at least I thought I was. “No sweat”, I told myself. Aside from the inevitable takeover by Skynet of our nuclear bunkers, most of it, I thought did not concern me. I assumed that artificial intelligence would obviously help with the problems that are either outside my area of expertise: quadratic equations, for instance, or how an airline engine is built or A.I. would get to work on my dishes. What I did not anticipate was the desire of most of this generation of “would be artists” to practice in collective suicide. Like the “Hale Bop” comet cult with all those lifeless bodies in their tennis shoes found lifeless in their bunks, today’s generation seem not only willing to replace themselves with A.I. but actively investing in the Kool Aid themselves.

I once saw A.I. as a tool at best to help with complex pursuits but apparently, most people out there in the world were counting on it to take their faux Art and allow them to pass off new works as their own. Not only could I not understand why people wanted this, I also could not understand how it even entered their list or priorities in the first place. Now I do. People are not interested in the means. They are interested in the result.

There is no getting around it. I am not a subscriber to the “work hard enough and you will be good at it”, school of thought when it comes to Art. I feel like talent plays a bigger part than those those you-tube tutorials would have you believe. I believe you have to work at it of course, but there is no getting around the fact that not not everyone is a musician. Not everyone is a painter. Not everyone is a writer. And thank goodness for that. What I did not realise was that most of the world does not believe this. They believe they can get to Picasso level with enough instagram tutorials and AI has made this delusion infinitely worse.

There is a virtual army out there of would be painters, musicians and writers and who are so intent on hopping on the glory bandwagon that they intend to bypass what makes the creative act special in the first place by using A.I. to get them on the pedestal. And this is ridiculous. The creative act demands the blank page. What is even more shocking is that even so called artists who normally should celebrate the act of creation from page 1 are using prompts on Chat GPT to go along to get along. And this is even more unforgiveable. Free range chickens should not be investing in KFC, but they are.

To be clear I am not talking about AI as a tool. I can very much seeing this being helpful in various aspects of the creative medium. Using AI for help with post production workflow for instance or offering up different possibilities for a final music mix, are perfectly within the range of the technical tool box. In many ways Art has always been using technology in this manner.

But what is new is the blank page cheat. In short, if you are stuck, being stuck is part of the thrill and an integral part of originality in my opinion, and why we engage in these endeavours in the first place. Skipping this step is like eating food and evacuating it out simultaneously. It takes all the fun out of it. It ruins any semblance of accomplishment and originality and makes the “Artist” the executor of the estate rather than the true entrepreneur who built his wealth from scratch. In short: If everyone wants to cheat on their book report, then maybe you weren’t interested in doing the book report in the first place.

I see so many would be artists on social media championing their cheating. So called filmmakers, writers and image makers chuffed with themselves when they display some half passed soulless exercise on the internet as proof of their artistic ingenuity. All I see is a mush of perfectly presentable, polished gobbly gook. Please do not mis-understand my open ness to appreciate polished graphics or imagery, I like a polished image as much as the next guy, but my enthusiasm for the latest tech guy on Linkedin, touting his soulless spec Tesla commercial he did entirely with A.I., seems precisely what it appears to be: a soulless spec Tesla commercial that someone did with A.I.

Now here’s the sticky part. Perhaps what could explain this acceptance across the board is that a lot of those excited about these prospects have been raised on chocolate sauce and never had a four square dinner? How can you appreciate good screenwriting when all you have seen is Michael Bay films and John Wick action scenes? How can you know how good love stories or dramas can be when you have only seen the contents of a Netflix library? Of course you are impressed with an A.I. storyboard. Your bar has been lowered. When you have never gone deeper than a couple explosions and ambience you get tickled by explosions and ambience. In short, people’s bar for what they consider good levels of storytelling and emotional engagement are rock bottom so how would they not be dazzled like kittens by surface level A.I. output?

I know the accusation will be that I am pretentious or an overly intellectual artist who has lost touch with my peers. I am willing to entertain this argument and point the finger at myself. I welcome a page one example of a brilliant A.I. screenplay written from scratch because HAL felt like it. But alas I have not seen evidence of this yet. I see a lot of “novelists” and “screenwriters” talking about a good result from their prompts, but aren’t the quality of the prompts themselves evidence of someone getting beyond the blank page without A.I.’s help?

Even Paul Schrader recently has come out in favour of chat GPT. In a claim designed for the internet era, he boasted rather bizarrely that he results were beyond his expectations. But perhaps Paul Schrader would also admit that the current script landscape is not exactly calling out for Taxi Driver anymore.

Paul Scharder loses the plot

I suppose I feel the same as this eloquent piece read by Stephen Fry expressing Nick Cave’s sentiment on the subject of A.I.. Although I am no fan of Nick Cave. I do belong to his tribe.

Stephen Fry reading Nick Cave's letter on AI

A.I. will change films. It will revolutionise the way we make music. It will eventually write the great American novel.

And it will all be garbage and no one will know it.

Buy me a coffee

In this series of podcasts hosted by film instructor John McNulty (EICAR the International School of Film and Television); a film is discussed for its propensity to teach us about the craft of filmmaking and screenwriting and to provide a chance to cinephiles to get out what they’ve been keeping inside. A range of guests will include filmmakers, educators and enthusiasts of all kinds.

The Dishonest Pilgrim Part 1

And if you’re still hungry for more religious awakening, please visit here:

The Dishonest Pilgrim Part 2

We got up early and headed out after a few mis dosed instant coffees residing at the bottom of our bellies. It was semi military in the way each group had their councillor, and we were equally spaced out on the trail as to not crowd each other out. It seemed that they had all done this before. Our councillor kept at the front, a sprightly middle-aged man who unfortunately shared some facial traits with the comic book character of “Shaggy” from Scooby Doo. This was in facial appearance only. Marcel was not dressed like a hippy stoner. This man was dressed to impress God.

Along the way we would meet other Christians paused in similar rest stops, taking a sip of water or listening to words of scripture. These were middle class white people. Boomer products of a France I did not come into contact during my Parisian life thus far. We were the youngest on this trail. Most of these pilgrims were retirees. They had names like Claude and Martine and Bérenice. They all looked like they made their beds in the suburbs somewhere and that they dusted their mantel pieces. The grey-haired men wore collared shirts tucked in and shoes designed for hiking but showing no real signs of wear and tear. They all looked like they were in relatively good shape. Amandine and I joked that we could be meeting our future selves. I thought that Amandine should speak for herself. I had no idea prior to this that she was a secret Catholic but I was learning more and more about her everyday. All of these elder people had children that had flown the nest. They all seemed to prefer the films of Pierre Richard to Jean Luc Goddard. They didn’t live in Paris. They heralded from suburban enclaves like Saint Germain en Laye and Gif sur Yvette. They were breaking my idea of the cliché turtle neck existentialist. I had met my first French upper middle-class Catholics and my world had reconfigured now to see things differently. They had second homes and problems we had not experienced yet, They seemed to doubt our youth. They kept to themselves. Up until a point.

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Roaming the neighbourhoods on his bicycle, Nick often used this trick to define his presence. It was not enough that one could see Nick making his rounds, but he often enjoyed knowing that people could hear him too. He knew it would not last, this temporary solution, this means of being a nuisance. He remained relatively confident that in a few years, he would not need a cheap piece of cardboard placed between his spokes to make him a man. He would have the real thing: a Kawasaki motorbike, the same as his older brother Travis. With this piece of machinery, he could terrorise the neighbourhood for real. Until then he was biding time. Kids like Nick knew that childhood was nothing but a compromise and the faster you could get it over with, the better. 

There were two things Nick hated about his lot in life at nine years old. First and foremost was the vein that stuck out prominently from his forehead that he could do nothing about. The vein signalled to people that he was not to be messed with but it also functioned as a deformity and a weakness. His brother Travis mocked it constantly. One time Travis had even tried to hold Nick’s face to a grill in an effort to make it bleed. He swayed away the pain by concentrating on the song that was playing on the radio at the time: “Electric Avenue” by Eddie Grant.

Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant

This did not work but he had been forced to go to the emergency room with wretched burns. Months later the burns had healed nicely but he still had the vein. Later Nick realised that on the playground some people felt sorry for Frankenstein. But most feared him and his vein. Respect the vein. Respect the monster. That was what he could hope for.

The second thing that consumed his eight year old brain was that weirdo of a show-off named Johnny Kasinsky on the playground. Lately he was going up to all the girls and offering to marry them. To be clear, Johnny was not proposing to these girls. Nick could have at least understood this gesture. The problem according to Nick was that this guy was officiating. There was a litany of things wrong with this. From what little Nick understood about religion, he had never seen a kid marry anybody. And from what life had taught him: you had to be an adult and a little bit miserable to make it official. No kids could marry other kids. But there Johnny was, in the middle of the playground next to the sand box acting like he was some kind of big shot marrying any old boy and girl that happened to want to be hitched that day. Johnny even had the girls make some temporary arch way with construction paper flowers to make the whole thing fancy. This was unacceptable. Recess was his, not Johnny’s.

Johnny’s look was Duran Duran pins on a white jean jacket. He wore hair gel.

Nick’s was pure Member’s only jacket, “Quiet Riot” t shirts and ripped jeans. There was a lot of difference here.

Johnny’s hair cut was a straight down the line “Supercuts” type deal. Johnny’s mom had obviously coughed up some cash for his stylings but all Nick received was a DIY cut from his Ma. His family was too poor for Supercuts. His mother Sandy insisted that she cut his hair while he sat backwards on a chair in the middle of the kitchen. Nick would always end up with a mullet and a straight fringe across his forehead. He would complain but it did no good. His Ma had enough problems without him going on about his hair. Travis would insist that his hair was the least of his problems.

“When you get older, you’ll see, you’ll get it from all sides and then you won’t even be thinking about your hair anymore.” Nick was pretty sure he knew what this meant but he wasn’t sure. “What are you worried about your hair for? You got a nasty green vein dividing your forehead in two.”

And so it would go. He would suck it up and go to school. It was at school that he could over react to all the things at home that didn’t make sense or provided cold comfort. He’d pick fights about any subject under the sun on the playground. Outwardly it was someone who had laid a hand on his precious Member’s only jacket. But really, all he was thinking of was his brother’s fat face, or the time his father had hauled him out of the car on the shoulder of a busy freeway to spank him in front of all the other cars going by.

Then he started seeing pretty boy Johnny marrying off all the girls in fourth grade and it got personal. This time when he imagined what a skull would sound like when he cracked with his fist, it was John’s smug face he was thinking about.

Many girls liked Johnny boy’s look. It put them at ease. This was probably one reason most young ladies were willing to let him marry them. It was the way he applied that glop of pink gel to his scalp in the mornings that made the difference. He may have a piggy face but blonde girls like Tanya Hastings said it made him look like a member of an English new wave band. Nick was mad that girls took Johnny seriously like this. He was also furious he had not got there first. First you’re officiating marriages and then you’re the guy all the girls want to talk to. It gave this little piggy all his power.

Nick liked “Quiet Riot” and used to sing their anthem “Come On Feel The Noise”: their reworking of the Slade song on the swing set at playtime.

Quiet Riot "Come on feel the Noise"

He also watched the show “The A Team” and there was not an hour in the day that didn’t go by when he did not think about Mister T and his gold chains. Nick wanted some of these gold chains. These were real things to think about. These were adult things. Righteous things. These were the pre-occupations of a leader, not some overgrown sissy boy who insisted on marrying girls on the playground.

The last straw was that weekend seeing Johnny at the roller rink skating in circles to the strains of his “Quiet Riot” song. Nick had been taken there on Saturday afternoon after AYSO soccer. Nick was still in his uniform. His mother had dropped him off and split. He was lef tto fend for himself for a few hours with five dollars and a prayer.

Look at that Johnny. Skating around in circles without a care in the world. His soccer team had not even won but there they all were, his team mates, ordering pitchers of punch and skating in circles like dufuses.

Nick skated past Suzy Summers. Nothing. No love. He skated past Sandra and Courtney. Nothing. He even skated past Tanya Hastings. Not even a look up in his direction as he passed her in the strobed light. The rink owners had the big screen playing the music video for Denise Wiliam's’ “Let’s Hear It For the Boys” and then they played “Men without Hats” and the place exploded. Everyone liked the Safety Dance and it filled him with mixed emotions. It wasn’t stupid with European running around in middle earth costumes with dwarves, it was cool and manly.

Safety Dance by Men without Hatts

Nick wore his Quiet Riot pins on the straps of his soccer uniform in anticipation that they might play quiet Riot and then they did. And then he caught a glance of Johnny boy skating around playing air guitar like he was in the band himself. And then, like a school of fish, the girls accepted Johnny into their rolling cluster. He had their attention. Tanya Hastings included. Meanwhile Nick could only think about his vein: an ugly symbol he would have to troll around the rest of his life. And then Johnny began to air drum to the chorus. This was the part in the song when everything broke down and all you could hear were the strains of an angry man shouting out the song’s title. But this was his move. His signature. How dare Johnny Kasinksy? This was what he did to rock out. His brother Travis had taught him that jamming along with your favourite song in this way was absolutely an acceptable way of showing your emotion and of proving that you knew what was righteous in the world. And now here was that jerk Johnny doing it with his perfect hair and his Duran Duran pins? A traitor from another tribe? This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Nick rolledup to Johnny in a roller fury and brought his knuckles to his face like the t.v. had taught him. It felt good to connect with flesh. Nick rolled on and did not look back. He made a full rotation of the rink before he was stopped by a concerned band.

Nick felt the violent tug of someone grabbing the back of his sweatshirt and dragging him on to the carpet. Here, among the arcade and soda machines, Johnny’s mother, Rhonda Kasinsky now had his son’s torturer right where she wanted him. She had seen the whole thing and now wanted answers, justifications, apublic apology. At this point, Tanya Hastings had now rolled up court side with some of her friends to watch the trial from the safety of the rink.

Nick looked Rhonda Kasinsky in the face and answered her accusations.

Why did you punch my son? It was hard to hear her with the sound of the video game Pole Position in the background announcing for cars to head to the starting line.

Pole Position

And then there was enough of a break for Nick to get in a word edgewise: “You’ve got t stop marrying people,” he said to both mother and son in his defence. Suddenly the berating stopped. John’s mother who, had just a few moments prior, felt so confident before suddenly turned her jet stream of doubt and venom towards her own son.

“What’s this about marrying people?” Johnny had no good answer for her.

“I am going to say it again Johnny Kasinsky. What is this about marrying people?”  

Tanya now gave her testimony from the rink.

“He married Sheila and Tom the other day. I was there. He stands there with a bible and pretends to marry people.

“With who’s bible?”

“I don’t know. Then we throw confetti which is actually just cut up construction paper and the janitor’s been complaining about how he needs to clean it up.”

“I think that’s our bible,” Johnny’s mother added, retracing things that now made sense.

“Why would you do that? Why would you think you would need to do that? That’s a holy act!”

She turned to her son in the dark and pulled him up to take his place in the light. Here she could finally get a good clean look at his lying eyes. Nick felt good. Nick felt worthy and justified. He was glad an adult had finally put some perspective on this whole marrying kids in the playground thing. They all heard a voice from the rink, some adolescent boy had heard enough about the conversation on his rotations round the rink to call us them all “gay” and keep rolling on.    

“You.” Johnny’s mom meant Nick. I want you to apologise to my son. “I don”t care what he has been doing, you do not hit my son, you hear me? Or else you gonna’ get your own dose of whooping. We clear?”

This was language Nick understood. Finally someone was addressing his core.

“Also Johnny: you got to promise to knock this marrying stuff off. It’s creepy and it’s weird and it stops now. We clear?” Rhonda’s son quickly acquiesced.

Nick and Johnny both nodded their head in unison and immediately resented each other for doing so. Rhonda now retrieved a make up swab from her bag and began wiping away the blood on her son’s face.

“Now why don’t you all eat some pizza. I didn’t go and get all those pies for nothing. Rhonda now went off to find some sort of adult supervision. She couldn’t help wondering where the coach was in all of this. Probably round the back smoking with the other teen employees.

Nick felt more than relieved. He felt heard. Finally someone had bore witness to the weirdness of playtime marriages. It was his first sense of real justice. Of someone listening to his plight and it had been from the mother of his worst enemy. It was good for thought. He slowly got up and headed to the wooden tables that now were laden with steaming hot pizza boxes. He took a slice of cheese and found himself wishing they would play Quiet Riot’s “Come On Feel The Noise” again as he sulked in the corner. He took off his skates and sat Indian style on the carpet. He looked to see if he could see Rhonda Kasinsky again and he was relieved to see her now joining the kid crowd again. She had a kind face, slender and attractive but brimming with common sense. Now this was someone he could spend more time with. “If only Johnny weren’t part of the package,” he muttered to himself.

One of these directors, just happens to also be French. So let’s write about her. Her name is Claire Denis and she has been part of both the New York and Paris cinema scene since the 1980’s. I have seen recently revisited two of her works recently: NO FEAR, NO DIE and NENETTE ET BONI. The aspect I am drawn to most in the works of Claire Denis’s is her economy of storytelling. I mean this as the ultimate compliment. I think that part and parcel of a filmmaker’s greatness is how they choose to tell a tale with the slightest of gestures with the most economy. I can’t think of a more haiku poem like storyteller than Claire Denis. Denis’ true talent is in boiling down complex ideas and notions into scenes that do more with less.

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The Dishonest Pilgrim Part 1

We were not walking but sprinting. Amandine had miscalculated the departure times of the coach that was supposed to take us out of the city. Pilgrims need coaches now to get to their point of departure: big coaches with toilets. It had been parked in a cumbersome enclave right off of the Avenue Motte Piquet. The driver knew that his claim to the spot was tenuous at best and there was more than a good dose of honking by the annoyed drivers who did not appreciate their roads being blocked by such a monstrosity. We rushed to get our sacks into the side ports as our big and hairy driver was making the kind of sweeping gestures reserved for cattle. I took no offence as we boarded. We lowered our chins. Our fellow passengers looked retired and angry. I would not have been offended if we were shunned right then and there. A few children were scatted amongst the adults. At first glance, the bus seemed to have no more seats but we eventually squeezed in.

When we got out of Paris, the ride got more cheerful. We were given bright florescent vests. This cheer being successfully conjured out of nowhere by a burst of impromptu religious song. No one had produced an acoustic guitar but a tune recognisable in the feel good genre of religious camp songs was now filtering through the whole coach. I never thought the French capable of this. Singing, clapping, good will toward man. It shattered all my assumptions. I had previously assumed that the French as a nation are terrible at doing anything in large groups except demonstrating. I didn’t know Catholics had laid back camp fire Jesus songs. I didn’t know they knee slapped. Spring helped. When we got off the bus and filtered into the chapel I had been given my first taste of religious solidarity and it was a mini revelation.

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It was now too late for me to turn back. Past the point of reconsidering. I was carrying a wooden statue of Jesus with three other of my fellow pilgrims through the sloped streets of Chartres with the words of the Talking Heads song ringing out in my brain, Once in a Lifetime: '“How did I get here?” I was not a religious person yet here I was in the most religious of predicaments. Carrying Christ is not something you do lightly. How had I allowed myself to drift this far? Was I un-redeemable? Was it too late to admit to my fellow pilgrims that I was a fake and not worthy of the rest of the trip. I couldn’t just pass off the weight to someone else. I was now in it for the long haul.

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THE INSIDER breaks this streak. In this episode of Cineschooled I talk with Vanja Cernjul ASC (cinematographer CRAZY RICH ASIANS, THE DEUCE,THIRTY ROCK)) about the nuances of good camera operating, maximising points of view….amongst other subjects in this look inside Michael Mann’s overlooked masterpiece. It features a peak collaboration between the director and world class DP Dante Spinotti.

Buy me a coffee

In this series of podcasts hosted by film instructor John McNulty (EICAR the International School of Film and Television); a film is discussed for its propensity to teach us about the craft of filmmaking and screenwriting and to provide a chance to cinephiles to get out what they’ve been keeping inside. A range of guests will include filmmakers, educators and enthusiasts of all kinds.

The first episode of Cineschooled 2025 promises to be an emotional one! To Keep these podcasts coming: please consider getting a paid subscription to Cineschooled. Or donating here:

Buy me a coffee

In this series of podcasts hosted by film instructor John McNulty (EICAR the International School of Film and Television); a film is discussed for its propensity to teach us about the craft of filmmaking and screenwriting and to provide a chance to cinephiles to get out what they’ve been keeping inside. A range of guests will include filmmakers, educators and enthusiasts of all kinds.

If you have been living in a box (or perhaps only watch John Cena movies), Marion Cotillard is the academy award winning French actress who has, for the last decade or so, forged a career on both sides of the Atlantic and on all levels of the cinematic spectrum: from illustrious Cannes baiting fare like Michel Audiard’s RUST AND BONE and the Dardennes Brothers’ DEUX JOURS ET UNE NUIT to big Hollywood spectacles like Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES and INCEPTION. Here she is teaching Brad Pitt how to shoot a gun in Robert Zemeckis’ film ALLIES …

Actually she is wearing sun glasses here, so perhaps this is not the best representation…Ah here we go…

She is, perhaps to the surprise to my American readers… a lightning rod. Like all actresses she attracts her fair share of supporters and haters. But in Marion’s case, the fans and loathers are also primarily separated by an ocean. To be blunt, in the Unites States, they love her. I have yet to meet an American who is not a Marion Cotillard supporter. In France, and more specifically, amongst the French intelligentsia: they can’t stand her. And I want to know why. What are the reasons? Why this divide?

For America: she is the latest incarnation of the perfect French woman, demure, classy, beautiful and sophisticated. She is an Ioan farm boy’s idea of what a French woman looks and sounds like. Indeed she does not hide her accent when she speaks English and is often cast because of it. It certainly has not seem to bother esteemed filmmakers like Christopher Nolan who just went with it by casting her as Leo’s French wife in INCEPTION. Michael Mann also was not that daring when he offered her the role of “Frenchy” in PUBLIC ENEMIES that he perhaps thought she would be perfect for.

But Marion is not the first French actress who has had a Hollywood go round. She is perhaps the most successful of them, but did you know Catherine Deneuve was in a movie with Burt Reynolds?

Well now you do.

1979’s HUSTLE provides proof that in the seventies, people were willing to try anything.

It also illustrates that this is not the first time Hollywood has fallen in love with a French screen siren. Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert and to a certain extent Juliette Binoche have had this privilege although I would argue in a much more limited sense.

There is also the curious example of Eva Green who has gone the other way. She is a French / Swedish actress, the daughter of one of the most beloved children’s authors and actresses of the seventies in France, Marlene Jobert who decided to do English speaking movies only. Not even try to break into the French market. Everyone in the U.S. knows her from Tim Burton’s fare but she has not once been in any French speaking films. Eva has tread a rare path.

But now back to Marion Cotillard….

The controversy is this: Cotillard is an Academy award winning actress that America took under their wing ten years ago with her turn in “La Mome”, the bio pic of Edith Piaff. Ever since then she has criss crossed between countries, giving performances in very visible movies. Perhaps exhibit A in French people’s frustration with her comes with a very internet visible demonstration of her acting skills in the form of dying in BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. Few have lived down dying badly on screen. She is not the first and she is not the last. Perhaps Marion Cotillard was frustrated that day but her choices here remain a meme classic for years now. Without further ado, here is her dying in Batman.

The mystical art of onscreen dying

Now for the record I am not again Marion Cotillard but now that I’m a French citizen, I have noticed that a lot of my fellow countryman are. I think their argument seems mainly to be: “why the hell did you go and pick that one?” Their point being that there are many other actresses of her generation that seem infinitely worthy of exaltation. But the point is that those actresses perhaps didn’t have any interest in being an international star. Nor did they have the gumption to wrestle with the English language.

The problem in France is she is very few people’s idea of the ultimate French woman. For a clue unto this, take Emmanuelle Beart, Laure Calamy Emmanuele Devos, Sandrine Kimberlain or even the Belgian actress Virginie Effira who fit much more into the Parisian view of what makes a refined woman worthy of exaltation. Parisians seem much more excited to see these women on screen. Americans: have you heard of them? No you have not.

It’s just all very interesting psychologically. To see what gets people psyched up and psyched out. To contemplate people’s senses of cinematic injustice. Who a country holds up on a pedestal, especially for other people to consider is a very interesting proposition. Perhaps one could compare it a little to the country’s pick for Academy Award consideration: which like Marion Cotillard often flies in the face of local estimation. Every year, most of the French cultural class are somewhat baffled by the choice for what film the powers that be have deemed worthy of putting on a pedestal. You can almost hear the back row speaking “they picked that?” Really?

In conclusion, Marion Cotillard does not need my defending. Do you think that all these international filmmakers all over the world would keep casting her if she didn’t have the chops? I think she has more than proved herself as an actress and there are Palme D'Or winners out there who join in my approval.

But I also think she is a movie star. She carries herself like one and has managed to hold up her end of the ambassador to high end French fashion houses like Dior like nobody’s business. There is a reason that the world wants her to be French.

Also, and this is my last point, my girl Marion is also not without a sense of humour. I am sure she is seated right now reading this article thinking: does he not know I see the weirdness in all of this? Well take exhibit A to be this Funny or Die sketch she made early in her American career:

Marion is fully aware that to make it these days, you need to know how the public sees you and roll with it. And this my readers is perhaps the secret to Marion’s happiness and perhaps her success as well. She is willing able and able to not give a f/@#.

Whether you are at Saint Lazare train station in Paris or King’s Cross Saint Pancras in London, at your local airport lounge or in any crowded space anywhere in the world, a twenty first century phenomenon has taken hold. It also refuses to relinquish its stranglehold on public attention. I am talking of course about the public piano.

It is difficult for me to imagine the genius in the last century who took it upon himself to consider what was missing in the acoustics of public spaces and add to it the chaos and unpredictability of a dominant, immovable upright instrument. But the decision was made and here we are. Listening to pianos. Distant and up close, night and day. Also add to this an abundance of echo and reverb that already exist in these public places and you have the recipe for madness. An acoustic soup of muddiness. On a good day I can barely hear any important announcements in a train station but with someone pounding out Coldplay’s CLOCKS I now have given up all hope of discerning anything meaningful from anyone.

Needless to say the decision was taken without my consultation. That is why I have decided to devote the rest of the my life to tracking down this individual, hiring a gypsy ensemble, and commanding them to relentlessly pursue him. I of course take this directive from Billy Wilder who punished Gary Cooper’s character in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON in much the same way:

Now: long held station etiquette states that only the talented can have a go. But some souls, looking for attention, just ignore this unspoken code and just go for it. And much like Arthur Janov’s scream therapy, many seem like they are taking out their childhood trauma on the keys for every passer by. Have you ever thought to yourself that what this drunk homeless man needs is a megaphone? Well now he has a piano.

There is also of course the other kind of public piano player: ego driven, public attention whores. I feel like I dislike this species more as they are hungry for some attention they are unable to attain from normal venues and have decided to take us all hostage in their dream. Do you think Alexander Malofeev feels the need to play Rachmaninov at three in the morning in Amsterdam Schipol? Maybe he does. Maybe he does not. But he restrains himself. As we all must do for the cause of silence and tranquility. Who on earth was clammering for more din?

While most of you will probably think me cynical, I take your argument in advance and I give you back two cents. For every dose of good cheer and joyful sing along that is encouraged by such piano placement, I believe there are far more tales of tragedy and woe. Some might think that an instrument like this will encourage all the Mozarts of the world to come out of their shells. As a musician, I assure you that this is not the problem. For in my young life I have never wandered around train stations thinking that the problem was all that God damn silence. So take your chromatic scale exercises and your two bit version of « chopsticks » and save it for later. You can hold it in. Just as I have to sometimes hold it in when I want to go to the bathroom and there is only a condemned port a potty available. Sometimes just because someone put temptation on your path, does not mean that you should succumb. For you never know who is listening.