We drove out to Hanging Rock last weekend which gives me another chance to post this from the early days of the blog:...
A lot of people might know Hanging Rock from Peter Weir's movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock." The film was based on a novel by Joan Lindsay who hailed from my new stomping ground St. Kilda. She wrote the book when she was 70 and claimed that it was based on a true incident about the mysterious disappearance of a group of students from a girl's school in 1900. The disappearance is never explained in the book or the film, although it is strongly hinted that some supernatural force causes the girls to vanish from this world. The incident is a bit like what happens in the Marabar caves in A Passage to India, which is also not really explained.
...
It's certainly an eerie place, surrounded by dense forest which is filled with red parrots and small, wild kangaroos. There's a visitor's centre at Hanging Rock which outlines how the girls went missing, how one turned up a week later with no memory of what had taken place and how the scandal caused the school's collapse and the headmistress to commit suicide from the Hanging Rock itself.
...
The problem, of course, is that none of this true. The novel is pure fiction and the film is too. It didn't happen. No girls school, no disappearance, no suicide. Joan Lindsay made up the story and her non denial denials only increased the speculation and interest in her book. It's brilliant PR claiming truth for a novel, Dan Brown did the same for the Da Vinci Code and James Frey did it for his completely phoney memoir A Million Little Pieces. But I wonder if something is a bit lost in the process. A lot of people have trouble telling truth from fiction in the first place and when the state government actually sets up a museum to sell the lie surely that's crossing some kind of line. In 1987 the suppressed final chapter of Lindsay's book was finally published after her death, in which she explained that the girls, er, turned into inter dimensional crab-like beings and slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum, but they don't tell you that bit in the visitors centre either.
...
It's certainly an eerie place, surrounded by dense forest which is filled with red parrots and small, wild kangaroos. There's a visitor's centre at Hanging Rock which outlines how the girls went missing, how one turned up a week later with no memory of what had taken place and how the scandal caused the school's collapse and the headmistress to commit suicide from the Hanging Rock itself.
...
The problem, of course, is that none of this true. The novel is pure fiction and the film is too. It didn't happen. No girls school, no disappearance, no suicide. Joan Lindsay made up the story and her non denial denials only increased the speculation and interest in her book. It's brilliant PR claiming truth for a novel, Dan Brown did the same for the Da Vinci Code and James Frey did it for his completely phoney memoir A Million Little Pieces. But I wonder if something is a bit lost in the process. A lot of people have trouble telling truth from fiction in the first place and when the state government actually sets up a museum to sell the lie surely that's crossing some kind of line. In 1987 the suppressed final chapter of Lindsay's book was finally published after her death, in which she explained that the girls, er, turned into inter dimensional crab-like beings and slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum, but they don't tell you that bit in the visitors centre either.
30 comments:
Hi- just dropping in to say I'm a huge fan of your work and Dead I Well.. is one of my favorite books.
I always wondered if Bridget ever figured out exaclty what Darkey did to Michael and the rest of the crew, i assume she did but she didnt seem to know at the end of Dead I Well May Be.
Anyways keep up the good work
dylanj
thanks for that. its a good question. i dont want to spoil book 3, but
...after the scene with the hair brush there might be a long and complicated conversation about a lot of things. slainte
Oh I read Bloomsday a year ago it came out. Thats part of the reason I asked here because when they meet in Belfast and later at the station they dont really get into the past very much. Are those characters done for good and if so what are you working on now?
Dylanj
I'm done with them though I was working on a longish short story that took Mike, Bridge and the wee lassie through the rest of the night as Bob's brother came after them. They were going to rehash the past, get it all sorted and try to survive. I was going to call it Scotchy Finn's Wake which I thought was a pretty funny title. If I ever finish the story I'll blog it.
Now I'm working on a crime novel for Holt called Fifty Grand (see below). In a couple of weeks I'm going to post chapter 1 of that on here, just as soon as I get permission from the powers that be.
Thanks
Sounds good- if you ever do finish that I would like to read it. One thing I always really enjoyed in Dead I Well is right after Bridget shoots Michael and he realizes that she loved Darkey as well and maybe wouldnt have just run off with him after all. So seeing them rehash the past and escape Ireland would be cool.
I had heard there might be a movie for that book is that still on?
Dylanj
Alas no. They wrote a terrific script (I dont own that but if I'm ever am allowed I'll post that here) and they even did some preliminary casting (who they had in mind would have been awesome!)but the money wasn't there and it all fell apart. It might happen one day but dont hold your breath.
Know a guy named Charlie Hunnam? Young British actor but can pull off a pretty good Irish accent. He's who I pictured for Michael. And the redhead from Wedding Crashers and Hot Rod as Bridget, Isla Fisher.
I hate that the movie fell though. Was really looking forward to it. But it may end up happening one of these days, yeah? Hidden River would make a great film as well.
Liam
Yeah it sucked in all kinds of ways, especially when at one point it was very very close to happening.
Hidden River might make a fun book. I'd really make the actor swim in the Ganges at the end among all the dead cows and dead dogs and floating corpses. I did it and I'm still alive, although the nightmares never quite go away.
Incidentally, you're moving to Wyoming? The first chapter of my next opus is called: "Nowhere, Wyoming" Coincidence? Er, yes, probably.
I was going to say if there ever was a Dead I Well movie it would be impossible to cast Bridget simply because of the way you describe her looks in the novels.
Shit, now that Tom Cruise's career has gone down the tubes you could hire him cheap, give him an accent and turn him loose. He was the last samurai after all.... (joking of course)
Another not-really-true-but-we'll-say-it-is-for-effect movie is Fargo. If I remember correctly, a Japanese woman went searching for the buried money and died somewhere in the Minnesota wilderness.
Here's hoping they do a George Lucas style spit-and-polish on the Picnic at Hanging Rock movie so they can add that crab-creature scene...
Yes, moving to Wyoming. Insane in the membrane. My mother is a professor at U of W and my wife and I moving out there so I can finish my schooling. She told me it was only a couple of hours from Denver so I thought I'd stay up on McKinty news and head towards the Rockies when Fifty Grand was released, assuming you'd be doing some promotion there. Now you've gone all Aussie on me. But all's well.
The book I am trying to sell now, I'm already hard at work on its sequel, and I plan to set the third and last of the series in Laramie, Wyoming, with sort of a No Country For Old Menb-type feel.
Coincidence on the first title of your chapter? Mos def. But, never count out that you have kindred scibe out there who's on a similar path. (The midwest, not the outback).
dylanj
what about nicole kidman as Bridget back when she was twenty and a redhead?
liam
Wyoming is a very interesting place and yeah only two hours from Denver. Dont know Laramie that well but certainly theres a lot of material in the bleakness. Dick Cheney's from Wyoming and his daughter lives in Denver and so every time he visited they closed down the highway from the airport and all the slip roads. Everybody wsa furious. And of course the Dems are coming in a couple of weeks.
Stuart
Congrats on Ghosts of Belfast btw. I havent read it yet but I worship at the shrine of Ellroy and if he says its good, its good.
I heard that story too about Fargo. Its depressing and also a bit funny.
The really good one was Orson Welles's War of the World. Classic PR move, launched his whole career. Really we've got to think of something like that.
You'd think the government would want to cash in selling cute, stuffed inter dimensional crab-like beings.
John
What are you doing over here? Dont you have a book to launch? Go thou and launcheth.
Adrian,
How is Bob Mecoy in turning down material and then giving the same thing he turned down before another shot? I know to some agents, it's a time thing, not a material of the writer's book thing.
Liam
He'll give it another shot if it looks like you worked hard on it. The opening 10 pages really has to sizzle.
it's a sizzling first chapter. should i send it snail or email?
Liam
Dont email it. Send it surface, you can mention my name in the cover letter, though I'm not one of his star clients.
Adrian...
Adrian,
You're star enough for me, mate. Thanks for letting me name drop. Wish I could ask you to take a peek, but I know it doesn't work like with more agented authors. Except for Marcus Sakey. He took a look at my first chapters and was way too kind in his analysis.
If Mr. Mecoy decides he wants to take another look, I will send it surface. Thanks for the help.
Liam
Liam
Yeah the lawyers stopped all that malarkey.
But really I mean it, good luck with Bob and the book.
The record for rejections I think is 121 for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you probably have aways to go yet.
I once got 23 rejections for a short story and I kept all the letters.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'll need it to carry on. If you'd like to see my first chapter, I have it posted on www.crimespace.ning.com. Liam in the search engine. Declan put up the first 1,000 words to the sequel of the book I'm trying to get out there over crimealwayspays. He has me down as Will instead of Liam for whatever reason.
Anyway, thought I'd throw that out there. You can keep, or you can throw it on back. Emailed the query to Mecoy, heard nothing back yet.
It all sounds very dicey. Made a good movie, though.
Funny to look through these old comments. So what's happened with the oft rumored but never revealed Scotchy Finn's Wake, anyway?
Seana
Ha! yeah as they say in Hollywood, I uh, decided to go a different direction...
So, I don't know who would be Michael Forsythe would be now, but what about Karen Gillan for Bridget. Maybe not ruthless enough, but then again, we don't know her range. Also I suppose it depends on her ability to do an Irish accent. But she seems more likely than some.
Seana: How about Karen Gillen for any role ever?
Am I bit obsessed?
I played the policeman in the play of Hanging Rock last year. I read the book complete with last chapter and found it a bit odd to say the least.
I'd like to know why she never admitted that she made it up. Shame? Marketing?
Rob, I've already recommended her for a part in the movie of McKinty's own work in the newer post above, and you can thank me for it later.
I thought he was making up that weird last chapter. I guess not.
Rob
Probably a combination of both.
That last chapter is very weird aint it?
Seana
If the movie ever gets made I'll suggest her. Although if it ever gets made by that time she'll be too old.
We'll see. I'm getting the sense that there's a lot of people who'd be willing to suspend a bit of disbelief in this case.
The last time I was slapped by a girl was during a long, pointless and drunken argument about whether Picnic was based on fact. She'd believed her whole life that it was and I took that belief from her. Hence the looping right-hand Bugner-like biff. Good brewery pub in Woodend, too.
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