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Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com Films, with backing from the UK’s European Co-production Fund and the giant Spanish publishing corporation Prisa’s entertainment division, Sogetel. Cowan makes a telling analogy to this complex process: “The film business is something like the futures market – all you’re doing is selling names and bits of paper That’s the bottom line, which is pretty shocking when you’ve spent so much time trying to create something!” Spice Factory are themselves part of a bigger company, Brighton’s Epic Multimedia Group, itself the largest independent multimedia company within Europe. This gives Spice Factory an added edge as Jason Piette points out: “We’re the only production company in the world that makes both computer games and films.” This is demonstrated by The Killer Tongue game tie-in, Point and Lick, due out later in the year, and Spice Factory’s development of the game to accompany the $25 million film Space Truckers, featuring Dennis Hopper. From their dealings over Space Truckers, Spice Factory have managed to persuade Goldcrest to finance their next film Crush Hour to the tune of $14 million. Cowan, a graduate of the National Film School, indicates the great strength of Spice Factory is precisely this diversity: “We’re not just film producers: we actually originate product – we’re creative writers and we work with other creators. And we also understand the business side.” Far from spreading themselves too thinly, BUY Alberto Sciamma films online from and Spice Factory reckon they’ve hit a unique formula to fund production of future films without having to continually compromise over financing. Spice Factory are already commanding respect within the British film industry: “In the beginning we spent a lot of time travelling up to London to meet a lot of people – now the likes of Channel 4 and British Screen are coming down to Brighton and see us. We’re not trying to be cocky, like we’re going to be a great success, it’s a business like anything else.” “But what we like about the film business is that it’s unpredictable, it doesn’t matter how great a script or how much money you have, it’s whether people are going to go and watch it. I think last year especially proved that. A lot of the major studios have produced big name movies which haven’t performed in any way whereas a lot of the smaller movies like Clerks, Clueless and The Usual Suspects have worked. I don’t think people go to a movie anymore just because there’s a big star in it. I think it’s all to do with what the story is and what they want. And I think they’re looking for something different, because over the last 4 years it’s been so repetitive with sequels etc. Which is where The Killer Tongue comes in – it’s wild, wacky and it’s inyer-face.” And, indeed, in yer mouth. Scheduled for a September / October release in the UK, Spice Factory are hoping for a 15 certificate once The Killer Tongue gets licked by the BBFC. � 430 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com Feature [published November 2004] W.G. Sebald: Looking And Looking Away Stephen Mitchelmore on the novels of W.G. Sebald Why are W.G. Sebald’s novels so flat? Why – when the books refer to events of utmost horror and disaster, sometimes dwelling on pain and death with a fascination and regularity verging on Schadenfreude – are the events themselves always placed at a distance, always prior to the narrator’s present, as if only ever to be experienced second-hand, as stories? The first part of The Emigrants, the first of Sebald’s novels to be published in English, is exemplary. It begins with a photograph of a graveyard. Below it is a date and, below that, a description of a journey to a large house situated in a village in East Anglia. The narrator and his partner are to view accommodation there. There is little or no tension. It could be mistaken for a straight memoir, particularly as there are so many photographs accompanying the words. Without pleasure or discomfort, the reader can follow the litany of precise natural details provided by the narrator – oak trees, Scots pines, a grassy graveyard, a thick shrubbery of hollies, Portuguese laurels, dry, rustling leaves. One expects it to lead somewhere, and a story of sorts does get told eventually. Howev- BUY W.G. Sebald books online from and er, once it is, these details seem excessive. In the end all we are told is of the narrator’s brief acquaintance with the melancholy Lithuanian emigrant Dr Henry Selwyn, and the curious coincidence that emerged later. In summary (though this is barely any shorter than the original) Selwyn lost his Swiss mountain guide in the early years of the century; he went missing on the Aare glacier. Selwyn, we’re told, remarked on how deeply this loss affected him, even more than separation from his wife. The fact doesn’t take up much space in the book. But 70 years after the loss, when visiting Switzerland, the narrator sees a news report of a body being given up by a glacier. It turns out to the same mountain guide. Selwyn could not be told of the discovery because, by then, he had killed himself with a hunting rifle. In fact, his suicide is a footnote. It is not presented as a great tragedy. There is no speculation on what he was thinking as he prepared to pull the trigger, or even why he chose to end his life. The narrator’s journey to Switzerland isn’t detailed either. It’s tacked on the end without the precise details provided at the beginning, while 431 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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