I don’t know why I always wake up so early at the weekends. You’d think a healthy mature adult male could learn to control his mind and body well enough to get some quality lying-in time twice a week but it doesn’t seem that this is so. Like some programmed clock radio I wake up every single day at the same time – 6.45am. I think it shows what simple creatures we still are that we can’t achieve a better subconscious understanding of the nature of variety. The timer on my microwave (with its state-of-the-art microchip) isn’t as predictable as my flesh and blood body clock. So now I’m awake what shall I do? No college today, no seminar or open day - no work commitments at all, just a whole weekend to myself. It’s strange because despite that looseness I feel much less free than usual. I feel hemmed in and confused by the wealth of possibilities life can offer me. It’s pathetic really. For some inexplicable reason I look up at my bedroom ceiling for inspiration. I don’t look up at it very often and after a few seconds I realise why. It’s just faded cream paint and a bog-standard light fitting that’s not even centred properly. The wicker lampshade probably came from Habitat years ago (before they went so upmarket) and it might even have been a cast-off from my mother’s house (judging by the style about three redecorations ago). I think of myself as a man of style, a hip bachelor, but really I don’t even have my own choice of interior accessories. I put up with ugly old things because I’m too preoccupied to sort the place out and make some individual style decisions. There’s an East European film theme in there somewhere, you know, struggling to get out. I don’t do much shopping for anything because I don’t enjoy it and to be honest I consider it a waste of my time. I just keep things simple - the same basic uniform year in year out (black jeans, plain shirts, plain sweaters, plain boots). I eat the same reliable meals over and over and a lot of take-aways in between. I give book tokens for presents and I don’t remember many birthdays so that keeps costs down. I’m well aware that my disinterest in shopping may also be connected to the fact that I can’t really afford the kind of things I’d like to buy. I’d like to get a personal designer for the flat, for instance. I’d happily pour over tile catalogues and furniture brochures and not care about the price. And I feel that I should be able to do that – I earn a reasonable living and I have no dependants. But thanks to the state of house prices I spend nearly all my income on this not particularly desirable ground floor bit of a house. It’s in an ordinary road in one of the bits of London that looks more like Ipswich or Stockport or anywhere that doesn’t sound in the least bit desirable. It’s a Victorian dwelling at a very unVictorian price. So I’m not a man of style am I? And calling myself a bachelor is stretching it a bit too because I do have a girlfriend. She’s called June by the way. I’ve been seeing her for just under two years. She often stays over but she isn’t one of those women who like to invade a place and start making you new curtains or anything. I wouldn’t mind if she did to be honest. She may as well find something useful to fill in all the hours she spends here wanting to talk or just ‘be together’. I’m not very good at couply stuff. I’ve never really understood what people are supposed to do when they’re just ‘being together’. It doesn’t seem very enjoyable and I have tried it with other women so it’s not just June. I mainly keep my face in neutral when she’s here and try to think about something completely unconnected like work or work or, I suppose, work. We have a sex life of sorts and we go to boring parties together where we drink wine and both imagine that we are a much more exciting union than we really are. I suppose she may be waiting for an invitation to live here or get married or produce offspring. I can’t say I really feel like inviting her to do more than stay for a Chinese and fellatio every now and again. I can’t even remember now why getting together ever seemed like a good idea. She was a friend of a friend and she doesn’t ask for much. She stops me from feeling like the loner that I really am. She keeps me connected to the world somehow. So what does occupy my mind if it’s not family or love or DIY? You might wonder how work fills so much of my life. You wouldn’t think lecturing could be so all-consuming an occupation and especially in a run-of-the-mill college where the students are more interested in IT and bloody business studies than ever improving their undeveloped minds. Maybe you think small-timers like me switch off at 5 o’clock and rush off to shopping malls and supermarkets and bowling alleys but I assure you we don’t. I’m not a captain of industry or even a well-known expert in the field at one of our better academic institutions but I’m still devoted to my work. I teach film studies and that’s perfect because I love films – watching them, reading about them, talking about them. Just the word ‘film’ puts me in a better mood. I think of my favourite films (I’ll get to them later) and I smile, I strut, I quite literally get a hard on. Yup, that’s not an usherette’s torch I left in the bed. I most definitely do have a hard on. Better do something with that, shame to waste it, after all. So you see I’m in the ideal job. Even if nobody ever paid attention to anything I ever said, even if all the students failed their pointless media degrees, I would still be in the best place for me. And that’s what matters after all. You can only sort your own life out and get to where you want to be. What other people do with their lives is really up to them. Do-gooders can do all the good they like. It never changes anything. Which reminds me - the students. Some of them this year are worth considering whilst I’m in this mood. That girl who sits in the second row on Thursday mornings and never understands what the others are going on about - I like her. Linda I think she’s called. Well, I know she is. She’s innocent and clean and more than a little thick. She wears tight t-shirts (they all do these days, thank you fashion industry) and she likes my classes and takes endless notes that probably don’t make sense to anyone, least of all her. I may offer her some extra tuition time in the Easter holidays and then say I’m too busy just to see the look of disappointment on her face. I never actually have affairs with students - that would be too easy. I like to tease them, get them going. They’re so easy to play with. It’s unbelievable really. The girls who do film are always at least moderately attractive and that’s a bonus. They want to be actresses but think (often mistakenly) that they’re too serious and clever to waste themselves on such an uncreative process. Most of them know they could look great on screen and you can see them thinking about it every time we watch or discuss a film. Even if they’re not aware of it, that’s what they’re thinking. That’s why women’s magazines are full of gorgeous women, and only a token showing of male faces and bodies. Women, young and old, love dreaming ‘I could be Gwyneth Paltrow’ or Jodie Foster or Juliette Binoche. And many of them could of course. Acting isn’t an art, not at all. It’s just a choice. That’s all it is. Ah, Juliette Binoche…I love that bit in ‘Damage’ where Jeremy Irons throws her about his office like a rag doll. She’s just so sexy and foreign and desperate. That’s what I like in a woman. Well, one of things I like. If she came in on a Thursday morning I might have to break my rule about students. I think about Juliette a bit more and it doesn’t take long to get to the crux of the matter in hand. She’s forbidden (that’s always good). She wants to say no. She kind of hates me. It’s disappointing to be over so quickly but then I’ve always been able to turn myself on easily. There’s just so much to think about. It’s one of the few good things about this waking up so early at weekends. I’ll have another go again later and it will last a bit longer. I might not even clean myself up much, I might just stay like this and enjoy the decadence. I might go back to Juliette. I might not. I certainly won’t be lingering on June. I lie motionless carrying on this debate with myself. It’s pleasant, I suppose, not to have to jump out of bed, hit the shower and the coffee machine. It’s really quite civilised to stay here warm and comfortable and easily satisfied and have a bit of a chat with someone who cares. Who needs the weekend papers when you’ve got this kind of relationship with your own mind? I don’t need to read columns and columns of contemporary opinions. I could come up with my own, just like that, talk to myself and then either agree or take up a contrary position, just for the fun of it. It’s such a load of overblown, overpaid crap in the broadsheets anyway. All those celebrity women so-called writers churning our yet more views on men and babies and what they heard at a bloody dinner party. Most of them are so revolting too – if thousands of people were going to see my photo first thing in the morning I think I’d make sure it wasn’t one of me three stone overweight with a ‘why is this garden rake shoved up my arse?’ look on my face. Ha! I might call Mike today. I think I’d rather go for a drink with him than ‘be together’ with June. Mike needs cheering up too because he lost his job a couple of weeks ago. He was deputy editor of some trade publication (‘Marketing Matters’, last I remember) and his bitch of a boss decided he wasn’t looking up her skirt often enough or something and just got rid of him. Stupid cow. I met her last Xmas at their office party and didn’t reckon much to her then. She only got the job because she can charm advertising out of the deluded clients. Mike did all the real work he said. Mike is the nearest I’ve got to a best friend I suppose. We don’t share any deep revelations or hobbies or intimacies or anything. We just go out quite regularly and drink moderate amounts in each other’s company. We see films our girlfriends won’t sit through and we talk about work afterwards whilst we drink proper pints of beer. I can’t even remember Mike’s girlfriend’s name – he doesn’t talk about her much. I know she doesn’t look much like his favourite actress Cameron Diaz. He’s got a real weakness for Cammie and I know that because he insists on making me sit through all her dreadful films. He even asks me (almost every time we meet) whether I could lend him ‘The Mask’ even though he knows it is one of the few films I don’t keep in my extensive video library at home. Jim sodding Carrey – I don’t think so Mike, I say. The students would probably love that of course – a couple of weeks on ‘The Role of the Fool in Contemporary Screen Writing’ and then a short series of classes on ‘The Dumb Blonde – fact or grossly sexist fiction?’ They’d really go wild talking about whether ‘Dumb and Dumber’ was a great work and how Drew Barrymore understood the word irony better than anyone currently residing on planet earth. Maybe I’ll even try those topics in the summer term when attention levels sink and the sun shines harder. Generally I try not to watch too many stupid films. I find they can have a really bad effect on your mind. I like a film (note, I never say ‘movie’, are we all Americans now?)…I like a film that has some depth, some dark secrets, something other than irony on its mind. Genres joking about genres joking about genres…really who cares? I like a film that asks what do men really want, what are we really capable of, what are women really after when they want to ‘be together’ all the bloody time? I like war. I like violence. I like the edges of emotion. I’m not much of a new man now am I? I tried to be one in my twenties but I gave it up as a sad job. I can do quite a good impression of one in class sometimes – taking some of the more know-it-all lads to task about their love for macho gangster, horror or sci-fi classics. I don’t really disagree with them but they’re so young and cocksure - I just have to pick holes in their arguments and show them up in front of the tight-shirted Lindas and Julies and Alisons of our third floor world. The girls like it too when I show up the wannabe Tarantinos for the arrogant young gits they are. They smile and are glad not to be fighting with the lads themselves because no respectable young woman wants to get a reputation as a feminist these days. They’ll wear ‘you go girl’ stretched tight across their attractive features but they don’t want to have to take anyone to task about anything. They want to take their notes and make their friends and get a good job at the end of the course with a chance of some foreign travel. Sometimes I wonder why they bother pretending to stimulate their minds at all. Linda doesn’t even wear the attitude t-shirts. She’s more a tight twinset kind of a girl – old-fashioned like something out of the 1950s or ‘Happy Days’ at least. She’d be one of Fonzie’s hangers-on – cute but too afraid to get on the motorbike and ride away with him at the end of the show. She’d end up at the drive-in with Potsie, sucking on a milkshake, dreaming of shiny kitchen appliances. Speaking of kitchens, maybe I’ll venture out to mine and get some coffee and toast. That early exertion has given me an appetite and it’s nice that there’s no one here so I can walk around relaxed, natural, not aware of June’s eyes on me all the time, trying to work out what I’m thinking. She’d be amazed if she ever did achieve telepathic contact. She’d certainly stop coming round here and she’d more than probably go out on another blind date and find another hopeless case to be together with a few times a week. She works in admin for the Social Services. She loves hopeless cases. You might, like June, be trying to work out if there’s some huge psychological reason for my lack of touchy-feely sensitivity. Did my Mum spurn me, my Dad beat me, my first girlfriend laugh at my speedy performance? Was I ridiculed by a teenage babysitter? Am I a closet homosexual or in the depths of vagina envy? As far as I, the patient, know none of these is the case. I think I’m a pretty normal guy from as normal and uneventful a family as you’ll ever find. My Mum cooks unexciting meals and dreams of exotic holidays in a very Shirley Valentine way (God, that was an appalling film). My Dad hates his work and thus his life (kind of Reggie Perrin, American Beauty without the beauty). The whole set-up is reminiscent of ‘Butterflies’ but even less amusing. I suppose things do happen sometimes in the family circle - people die, fall out, get divorced now and then. I should think even Mum or Dad have had the odd affair – at least I hope that they have. They’ve both been on anti-depressants at some time in the past twenty years (my younger brother Tony is interested in such things and keeps me informed). But then who hasn’t been on happy pills now and again? I got prescription myself once but decided against them in the end. A little misery is not necessarily a dangerous thing. It’s pretty obvious to me now why I ended up asking my hurried, stressed-out, ever so slightly impatient doctor for a temporary answer to all of life’s problems. It was just a bad winter, about five years ago, and I had lost sight of what I was doing with my life and why. I started to dwell too much on why I’d never become a famous film director or just a small-time cult film director (his fame limited to small but lively festivals in Central Europe). I pondered too often why I hadn’t even become a film critic when I could have done that, no problem. It got so I saw black clouds every time I so much as glimpsed Barry Norman’s photo in the ‘Radio Times’ and I couldn’t bear to watch even my most favourite films (‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Taxi Driver’) because all the way through all I could think was ‘Martin bloody Scorsese, that could’ve been me’. It’s amazing how you can get so angry with yourself. I know nothing about Italians or New York or the mafia so how the hell could I ever be Martin bloody Scorsese? Sure, I have ideas and creativity and insight but if I ever did direct anything it’s unlikely it would be ‘Casino’ with Sharon Stone (and that’s not his best anyway). You just have to accept some realities and try and avoid wandering down Bitter Street when you can. It’s such a cliché too…a pointless cliché. In reality I might like the lifestyle – the trips to Cannes, the parties, the girls – but I know I’d never do the job. I like the freedom I have in my own life too much. That sounds like crap but it really is true. OK I’m not revered throughout the western world but then on the plus side I don’t have to answer to anyone that matters and I don’t have to live up to huge expectations. I just show some films, talk some talk, regurgitate some stuff and people-watch the students. The rest of the time I watch films, think and think some more. If you like I’m a true philosopher and my patron is the local education authority. Half the stuff I think (or more) I never use in class. They wouldn’t understand it. They’d think I was crazy. Some of them would report me for breaking some non-existent law. My employers would run for cover and I’d be on the long-term sick quicker than you can say ‘contemporary cultural studies’. And really, I’m quite glad I’m not a film critic in truth. They have to watch all the new films and that must be a right royal pain. Ninety percent of them are rubbish – all those teen films for teens and teen films for adults. Sometimes I wonder if anyone in the States exists above the age of 19. Except Martin Scorsese of course. All those dreadful chick flicks too. Anything with Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Cher or, increasingly, Winona Ryder, I avoid like the plague that they undoubtedly represent. I do not need to be told how great women are and how their skills are undervalued and how important crying is to understand your inner self. ‘The Colour Purple’ – what a load of liberal shite. Give me ‘She’s gotta have it’ if I must do a course on ‘the representation of African Amercians’ (or whatever it’s called now). Spike Lee’s not my favourite director in the world (bit smug for my liking) but that film has its moments. Woody Allen’s another yank I can do without – all that whining. And how he ever manages to attract any women is a complete mystery to me. It proves, if anything, that women have no taste – no taste at all. British films are the worst of the lot. Snotty drama school brats in period costume or snotty drama school brats in amusing tales of modern London life and love. Please. And worthy art – all that gruesome tower block crap by Mike this and Ken that. And don’t get me started on drug ‘culture’. Why do all young people need drugs these days? What’s wrong with a pint of cider, some Benson and Hedges and a bit of good old-fashioned heavy petting? It was good enough for me and most of my generation. In fact I miss those happy, grotty times now and again. Meanwhile you might be asking yourselves some questions. For example, OK, know-it-all, if you’re slagging off so many films what do you rate, what do you watch? What passes the John Tanner, film critic in his own lunchbox, standard? Well, there’s quite a lot you’d never have heard of, for a start. I like a lot of Russian and other European stuff, some Chinese, some Japanese…but I’ll try and think of things you might know. There’s ‘The Usual Suspects’, that’s tremendous, and ‘Citizen Kane’ of course. I like ‘Blue Velvet’ too and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and ‘Falling Down’ has got some great moments. I like anything where society breaks down and people show their true evil, grubby natures. I quite like ‘American Beauty’ while we’re on the subject (though it wimps out at the end) and ‘Fight Club’ is inspirational – despite the Brad Pitt factor. ‘The Thin Red Line’ is interesting, ‘Raging Bull’ is a classic (but then that’s Marty again). Also I can watch anything by the Coen Brothers, Robert Altman, Alfred Hitchcock. I have quite a fondness too for anything starring a young Jack Nicholson or a Marlon Brando of any age. I can’t abide anything that tries to suggest we should just all love each other or be nice to each other all the time. I’d rather watch pornography – it’s more honest and much more interesting than a lot of the moral lectures that pass for art and entertainment these days. In fact I like watching porn full stop. There, I’ve said it, got that over with. If I had my way I’d teach a whole module on it at college. Those kids could do with a crash course in the way the world really works. And they’d all enjoy it. Women like porn just as much as men really -they just can’t bear to admit it. They’ll admit to fantasising about some creep like Mel Gibson or that Di Caprio creature but not that they’d quite like the reasonably attractive, honest, tax-paying guy from the off licence to slip them one and maybe spank them a little bit. It’s a strange world. I like getting students to talk about sex in class if I can. I think it’s the only time they can’t hide behind half-hearted opinions and text book theories. Sex really gets everyone going and they can’t pretend they’re not interested because their shifting eyes and sweaty palms give them away. I don’t just go for nice, friendly erotic stuff either. I like to get them going on rough sex and confused sex and even rape, if I think I’ll get away with it. It’s sort of my specialist subject but I don’t spell that out – they’d just think I was a pervert. Obviously I always look totally concerned and horrified by, say, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ or even ‘Showgirls’ (which is seen as a joke but has a lot going for it). I use ‘Showgirls’ as my favourite example of how Hollywood cannot really cope with sex and squalor in fact. How many lap dancing bars are there in the US, I’d like to know, but they make a film about the subject so absurd that it sinks like a stone. Bring back the romantic comedies and soundtracks full of Frank Sinatra, scream the publicity departments. All of which reminds me just how much I despise Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks and Andie McDowell and all those other cretins who fill our screens with lazy love nonsense. OK, McDowell had her moments in ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ but since then? Four Weddings and a fucking Funeral? Is this not the worst film ever produced in the history of world cinema? It made me ashamed to be British. Much more evil than anything our empire ever accomplished. And there are others - Holly Hunter kind of gets my goat with all those winsome facial expressions…and William Hurt with his meaningful dramas about misunderstood middle America. As for Denzel Washington – what is the fuss about him? I could cast the whole lot of them in another remake of the Titanic but this time I’d have Gary Oldman on the loose as a crazed gunman working for a rival shipping company. There’s be no survivors on my ship – no survivors at all. There’s no bread I fancy risking so coffee made and crumpets toasted (how apt), I move to the sitting room to think about maybe watching something on vid. Last night I watched ‘Boogie Nights’ again and maybe I’ll just flick through it now and watch some of the best bits in more detail. It’s one of the few Hollywood films that dares to look sex in the face. Also Heather Graham’s quite tasty in her rollerboots and thick lipstick. Even Burt Reynolds turns in a good performance. The film is unusual in its honesty and in its dirtiness and it makes me laugh that loads of kids went to see it at the cinema expecting amusing 70s fashions and music and got big dicks, anguish and ‘sex is nasty and people are cruel’ instead. Bet they all went home and had a shag after it though. I know I did. Shame it wasn’t with Heather Graham, but you can’t have everything. I eat my crumpets and enjoy the warm butter running down my lips and chin. You can’t beat a good bit of lubrication and a fine imagination and suddenly there I am in the back of that limo with lovely, misunderstood Heather Graham and I’m feeding her hot baked goods whilst she says ‘no, no, I’m not hungry John, I’m really not hungry.’ Who needs to watch the film again - it’s all here, stored in my memory, waiting to be accessed when the moment is right. And the moment seems to be right right now. I’m back in the zone they call pleasure and this time I might stick around a bit longer. I reach over and take the phone off the hook so that no one can call me and disturb the perfect mood. I leave the curtains drawn despite the rising morning outside and decide that maybe it is good to have no reason to go into college after all. There’s plenty to be getting on with here. I’ll just stay put.
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