Exploring Poetic Objective, with Paula Aamli.

Download the Mp3 here.

Access in browser below or on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, Audible or Google Podcasts or Stitcher.

INTERVIEW

Helen: Hi, Paula, welcome to the show.

Paula: Thank you very much. It’s lovely to be here.

Helen: We’re going to be speaking largely about poetic objective today and how your new collection really leans into that. But before we get into that, I wondered if you could, first of all, tell people who are listening, how you found poetry or how it found you.

Paula: Sure, thank you. I found poetry as a teenager, and thankfully, none of those poems exist anymore. And then I came back to poetry much later. So, for me poetry originally was something that my dad was keen on. He, you know, he was from a generation where, if you pass the 11 plus you went to grammar school. And I sort of liked to imagine that the school he went to was a little bit like the one in Dead Poets Society, although I suspect it really wasn’t. But he used to have to learn poetry by heart. And for some reason, despite being put through that he really enjoyed it. And so when we were kids, every now and again, we’d get snatches of, you know, the boys stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, or, you know, my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, that sort of thing.

And the thing I think, is quite sweet about my dad’s relationship with poetry is that he is to poetry, what all dads are to dad jokes. I mean, he’s, I suppose the polite way to put it would be to say that he’s a comic poet. When he writes poetry, like he lives in Cheshire, he uses the name doggerel Banksy. So that’ll give you a sort of sense of the kind of person. And he’s what you might call an occasional poet. So, he’s always got a poem on the go for any occasion. And most of the time, it’s very in that sort of did do, did do, did do, did do, did do did do. I thought that’s what poetry was as a teenager, and then sort of left it behind for about 30 years, and actually came back to poetry and a very different kind of poetry when I was studying organizational change.

So, I was working for a bank, I was interested in organizational change. And I was really interested in difficult change processes and how we respond to them. And the reason I started getting interested in poetry was because of the way that I discovered that I felt like poetry gives us a sort of a landscape to go into where we can, we can sort of process some of those very difficult very ambivalent, ambiguous emotions. So I started using poetry as a as a tool in a totally, totally different context. But that’s, that’s my second relationship with poetry.

Helen: That’s so interesting, because they’re so very different. Obviously, Pam Ayers has made a very good living out of the kind of occasional poetry that you’re talking about and that sort of doggerel.  I have visions of you and your family sitting around the dinner table and just rolling your eyes in the way that people do at a dad joke, you know, he’s gonna tell that one again. That’s entertains me quite a lot. But isn’t it interesting, I think at different points in our life, poetry can look different to us, can mean different things. And it’s interesting that you took so much time away from it. I wonder if that was, in part, because you heard it so much in the home setting and you wanted a break?

Paula: Yeah, and I think because understandably, because of my dad’s influences. And I guess it was the way that poetry is taught in English as well. Many, many years ago when I was at school, poetry was presented as something that had a very fixed form. And that it was almost it was almost like a particular kind of crossword puzzle where you were trying to to make the rhymes work at the end. So, it seemed like quite an artificial thing. And, so I suppose when I left school poetry didn’t come with me. It didn’t seem to have a use beyond a sort of intellectual exercise.

And it was really when I was running out of road in my day job, in my ordinary life, you know, I had questions I had had a go at answering them using, you know, spreadsheets and business techniques and logic. And I was getting somewhere in terms of information, but I wasn’t getting very far in terms of psychological insight or emotional connection. So, it’s a very, very, very different kind of poetry. And to start with, I was talking to someone about this the other day, I’ve absolutely resisted the idea that I could be that I could be considered, or I could consider myself a poet. So I was using poetry to achieve something. But it was a couple more years before I started to think, coming towards, towards objective, this poem can be a thing for its own sake, it’s not just a tool to help me vent my confusion about why the world is the way it is, or my grief or my curiosity, whatever.

Helen: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I think almost all poets do have that resistance, at first, to claiming the space of being a poet. I certainly did. And I think most people have a defining experience or a period in their writing, where they suddenly can step into that. And it’s interesting what you say about the questioning of these difficult problems and kind of exploring them through poetry. I know, you’ve got a series of pamphlets coming out. And the first one is a locked down London life. And that’s the one that we’re largely discussing today, with regards to poetic objective, but I wondered what your poetic objective was, with the collection, and maybe the series, but particularly with this collection, what it was you wanted to say?

Paula: I sort of love the fact that I’m grateful that this is the one that’s come out first, in a sense, I had a sort of a pile of poetry from a period of time. And these poems, in some ways, were the ones I was writing at the, at the end of the process of coming back to poetry. And so maybe they were the first poems that I was confiden, could stand alone, if you like, and the others that are coming later needed a little bit more thinking about and a little bit more rework. And so they slotted in a little bit later into the process. But to answer the question about the objective. So clearly, the title of the collection refers to a very particular moment in time, and it’s a moment that feels like it’s disappearing very rapidly into the rearview mirror.

I’m not suggesting that COVID has gone away, sadly, I wish that was the case. But just the intensity of that first six months of experiencing living with it. And, you know, before we had medical solutions, you know, all that sort of thing, a very intense moment. So, even at the time, I had a sense that my memory was going to fade very fast in what it was like to live through that, but I was going to lose touch with it. And so I was writing, you know, obviously, I had a fair amount of time on my hands, because we were all trapped at home. So, I was writing quite a lot in that period, trying to pay attention. And specifically, starting to come to appreciate my very local part of London in a way that I hadn’t before.

There’s something about being in a place and really starting to pay attention to it. That makes me start to fall in love with it as well. I went from being quite indifferent to where I lived to and not interested and really treating it as a sort of place to depart from, all the interesting stuff happening in other places, to really appreciating the streets and the parks and the urban foxes and the sort of tangle of weeds that were growing in various places. And I gradually have grown into the challenge to, to the simple idea that pretty countryside is where we find nature, and that towns are nature free zones. I mean, sure, it’s, it’s clearly true that in a city, there’s a narrower range of plants and animals that you might encounter. But, an incredible number of species of things, creep into towns and make their lives there, and you can start to notice them. But also, for me, it attacks or addresses this idea that as humans, we have a bit of a tendency to think of ourselves as over here, and nature is over there. But the reality is that, that we’re also, at least in my view, of the world. Humans emerged from nature we are nature’s creatures, who also have this crazy wonderful thing called consciousness, and urban environments are created by us.

So, in some ways, they are a kind of nature life as well. Yeah. So that was I what I was trying to do in the collection was a little bit of a love poem to my neighbourhood, but also to ask questions about who am I in relation to this, to the nature that lives in towns? Who am I, as an urban dweller, but also a nature creature?

Helen: I think that makes so much sense. And especially having read the poems themselves? I think that comes across really strongly. And you do definitely raise all these questions. And I spent the first lockdown in London, myself a different part of London to you just, you know, a little bit further north in London, I think, but what a lot of people commented on is that there were barely any cars around and like barely any buses, or barely any, you know, kind of public transport of any kind. It felt like the birds, you could hear them again. It felt like they were in greater numbers. And there was a lot of things you saw in the headlines about very rural places were kind of, you know, goats overtaking a Welsh village, etc. But in London, there was still some of that. Nature really did see it as its own playground, again. And so it’s interesting, the way you explore that theme, that thread through your poems, and these poems do have very strong poetic objectives, each and every one of them or so it feels as you read them. I wondered if that was something you had from the outset, what was the process with that?

Paula: Yeah, thank you. It actually depends, across all of these pamphlets, I suppose, I would describe them as as cousin poems. And what I mean by that is, they were all written over the course of about two years, but in the London lockdown in particular based on material out of that particular six months. So there was a kind of a chronological connection to them. But I think more importantly than that, and I can see that now because, you know, I’m continuing to move on and what I’m writing is continuing to shift as well, I suppose. I feel like the poems in this collection come out of a period where I had particular curiosities or particular things that I was interested in or sort of obsessing about, I guess. So, they do feel like there they are facets in of me trying to answer the same question. I like to think that they explore it in a range of ways. I don’t think they are just one note in that way, but they’re certainly from a particular period when that was my big concern. So the things I was talking about, how do I relate to nature? On a kind of meta level, I’d spent the previous couple of years sort of processing the news about these emerging issues that we were having with climate, and sort of trying to process the effects of the industrialized, urban lives we’re having on the planet. So all of those same questions. Were kind of brewing in the background.

Helen: Yeah. And I think that really comes across and it’s interesting. And I do think that often with poets, our poetic objectives often come from our fascinations. I mean, you mentioned the word obsession. I do think that that plays a part, I think a polite term for it is fascination, you know, is the sort of never-ending fascination with a particular topic or aspect of life, aspects of history, whatever it may be. Aspects of politics, it just depends on what kind of poetry you’re writing. But I think that it is very difficult to write a pamphlet or a collection without really leaning into that fascination. And that is often where the poetic objective sort of springs from, or is kind of underlying by I think. That seems to echo your experience.

Paula: Yeah, I just wanted to say on that as well, because it occurs, to me. As I’ve come back to this collection, I’ve had a look at it again, just now. I find myself wondering whether I would write it again, like this now. And I mean, of course, on one level, that’s sort of a ridiculous question. Because now that these poems exist, they don’t need to be written again. So clearly, I would write something different. But also, the, the threads that I’m following have moved on as well. So I’m quite interested coming back to this, this this pamphlet, to see to see what shows up in it, and what’s missing from it, as well. And I think sometimes it’s okay, and maybe this is relevant to having a clear poetic objective, that we are not trying to talk about everything all the time. I don’t think my relationship turns up in this or my family. If it turns up at all, it’s very much at the very edges of what’s going on. But in the last six months, I’ve been writing a lot more into the experience of being a woman at my stage of life. So I’m in my late 40s. And, the kind of the lens has, turned from the sort of the world out there to the world inside me. That’s a much more introspective kind of poetry. And I sort of love this idea that we that we follow one thread. And then there’s a moment that we think, yeah, I think that’s good for now. And then we follow the next one. And it may be that we, that we cycle back, but it doesn’t surprise me when poets shift quite significantly, if anything, I think maybe this comes back to my dear dad and his doggerel that if you’re going to do the same thing over and over again, for a lifetime of poetry, it’s going to be a pretty predictable. Yeah, it’s in the best way dad in the best way. Predictable can be good.

Helen: I think you’re right. My first pamphlet was about water. And there was a point where I thought I was never going to write another poem about anything else except water. I was like, how am I ever gonna get off this subject? I just I didn’t know what was up with me. And there were so many strands I didn’t even touch on because it was only a pamphlet. But I still felt like I wrote so many poems about that and when you’re in it, you sometimes wonder, am I ever gonna write about anything ever else ever again? And then, of course, six months later, as you say, you’re writing about something completely different. And that’s great, because it gives you a completely new focus, it opens up new forms and new structures and new vocabulary and all kinds of things for you to toy with.

And when I think about poetic objective, I think about how it informs the whole poem. So not just what said in the poem, but the title and the form of it, and the rhyme scheme, and if there is one, etc. And I just wondered if, as you were writing this, the poetic objective that you had informed any of the forms, in particular, because people ask so much about form, it is one of those questions, it just never goes away in poetry about how to grapple with form, how to manipulate it, how to explore it. So you have this very particular thing that you want to say and explore? Did that inform any of the forms that you selected?

Paula: Yeah, it did. And I guess first of all, to say, specifically, for this pamphlet, I find myself wanting to say that these poems were quite conversational. That feels very consistent with the idea that I was trying to explore: avery mundane, everyday life, and in a period of time where really nothing much was going on, except for going for these walks and seeing London. So, I mean, if you sort of contrast it, I didn’t really have the material to be writing some sort of epic, I know that sort of long epic poems are not really in fashion at the moment. But I’d find it very strange to be fashioning some sort of Gilead type, noble, heroic, out of this material.

The other thing is that the poems are a little bit episodic. So towards the end, there are there are fragments, which are not quite Haiku, but they’re that short. There’s a poem in the middle, which is modelled on a poem by Billy Collins. The form there is that it follows the same number of lines and the same shape as his original poem. And that feels sort of appropriate for a collection, which is fundamentally shaped around wandering around in a city, if you think about the way a city, I mean, I know some cities are very planned. But even in the planning, there’s, an element of chaos, and you might find yourself in a square with a very grand building, and then you might find yourself in a shopping center. And then you might find yourself in a very rundown bit, you know, hopefully not at night or in any danger. But there are lots of different environments in an urban context that could be right up against each othe. So a little bit of inconsistency felt, felt sort of right. And I think the final thing I’d like to say, sorry, now, I’m banging on

Helen: No, it’s great, great material.

Paula: But there’s also a question that I can answer in the negative in the sense. so I’ve mentioned already that, you know, I’ve been writing my way into understanding I was becoming a poet because I was writing poetry. But because I was very slow to see myself as a poet, I wasn’t really doing anything with the poems so I wasn’t trying to submit them, they weren’t going out into the world anywhere. So I had this quite large reservoir of material. And, for quite a lot of that period of time, I had been writing in very formal structures, although not really rhyming poetry, I write a little bit of rhyming poetry, but I do find it hard. Again, no offense, dad to write something that rhymes, but the rhymes, you know that you give up some of the truth of the poem in order to meet the rhyme scheme. But I was using a lot of structures. And I made a decision quite early in dividing up my material that I would devote what I thought was going to be one pamphlet, it turned out to be two pamphlets, to the quotes, you know, structured poems. So there’s a pamphlet, which is mostly written using pantoums, which is a repeating plaited structure where the lines kind of weave in and out of each other. And then there’s another pamphlet, which is sonnets. And so I sort of pulled those formal structures out of play. And then when I looked at the rest, actually, that sort of verging on the edge of prose poetry, with one or two excursions into something slightly more recognizable, as a poetic form that felt appropriate to this to this context,

Helen: I think that’s something that we do have to be prepared for that sometimes we may go for those really formal structures, where you’ve got like a pantoum, for example, and it does require you to think carefully about where you’re placing your lines and placing your rhymes and your words, etc, etc. And, and in other places, we may be a little bit more freeform, and that is going to be part of the process. For us, it’s going to be part of the exploration of the topic, and the exploration of what we, you know, want to do in terms of rhyme just to pick up on that, you know, because it does fall in and out of vogue. And it depends on what kind of a writer you are, whether or not you’re a performance poet, you’re more likely to write in rhyme, so you can remember what you’ve got to say next. But the trick with it is always making sure that you’re in control of the rhyme and not the other way around. I think when the rhyme starts to control you in the poem, that is the moment where it can feel really forced. And as though that word was just put there because it rhymes. And as you say, you feel like you lose some of the truth. And that is because it feels far too forced,

Paula: I I enjoy attempting to write rhyming poetry. I think I would have to say I’m disappointed by my rhyming poems more often than by my freeform poems. But, but one thing that I’ve really, really enjoyed, I think you and I have talked about this before, in another context is bringing half rhyme. It’s such a fun, releasing thing to do. And again, I know tastes differ. And I suppose the danger that you always run with a half rhyme is that the reader reads it and thinks, Oh, dear, you didn’t get that quite right, that doesn’t actually rhyme.

Helen: I don’t know. Like, I know, there’s only a couple of things in the English language that nothing rhymes with that all. I mean, I think give it a go. I, you know, sometimes that can be a nice surprise for the reader if they get something that kind of almost, but doesn’t quite properly half rhyme. And again, it’s serving a purpose within your poem or, you know, certainly that’s the aim. I find, unfortunately, that half rhyme is more useful because often we’re writing about difficult social situations, difficult relationships, difficult political situations. I mean, poetry is a place where you can really explore those grey areas. And doing that in perfect rhyme doesn’t really sit well most of the time. So it’s not to say you can’t do it, of course you can. And people can do whatever feels right to them in their poetry. But half rhyme tends to be a very useful tool to poets, just because we’re usually exploring those really ambiguous questions or difficult issues. And to write a poem in perfect rhyme under those circumstances can feel not only forced, but sometimes completely inappropriate.

Paula: That makes so much sense. Because thinking aloud a little bit here the perfect rhyme has this inherent promise that everything’s okay. Really resolved. So of course, if we’re trying to write things where we don’t know that we believe that or we actively don’t believe that things are going to resolve, it’s very boring. It’s glib to suggest that it’s all going to be alright.

Helen: Yeah, and another thing I enjoy with half rhyme is that it can surprise you, you know, if you’re, there are certain words, that you can sort of feel coming from a long way off.  There are certain words, and the half rhyme can just turn and take you in a different direction, you have the benefit of the benefit of surprise,

I suppose the most successful poets do that with doggerel The ones who do rhymes that flip between what you are sort of hoping the rhyme will be amusing, or something completely surprising that you weren’t expecting, even though it’s perfect rhyme. That is a real challenge to poets, I think, to write a poem in perfect rhyme where you do not expect any of the rhymes. Because with half rhyme, a little bit of the work is already done for you. But with perfect rhyme, you have to work hard to think well, what word may they not expect? If the last end of the last line was a particular sound? So it’s a very interesting one.

I ask all guests to share a prompt for the listeners. And I’m thinking because of our theme, like if you can think of something particularly that might work in terms of them exploring poetic objective, or getting in touch with their poetic objective, some kind of writing activity or poetry activity, do you have anything that you could recommend?

Paula: Yeah, I do. The the actual prompt itself is really simple. And there’s a little bit of, let’s call it pre work, as well. But what I’m going to describe is pretty close to the way that I was getting myself started with the pieces I wrote for this year, during this period, and for this pamphlet. And so the first part of the prompt is not about writing, the first part of the prompt is go outside, if you can go for go for a walk, let’s say let’s say go for a 10 minute walk. It doesn’t have to be some huge hike. Or if you’re not able to get outside, maybe do some breathing or some yoga do some sort of activity. For me it would be walking. And then the second part, which is also pre-work is having done that don’t spend any time thinking about it, just get on with your day. And the poetry prompt starts let’s say later that same day. So let’s imagine that you went for a walk in the morning, you’ve lived your day, and then it’s early evening and you’re ready to get writing poem. So come to your notebook or your your laptop. Open it up, sit down, and at this point let your mind wander. So you’ve sort of forgotten the the details of the activity that you were doing. But as you sit there waiting, little bits of pieces and fragments will come back to you. And write down, let’s say, write down five fragments, not full sentences, just phrases. And again, part of the prompt here is, it might be about the physical experience that you had. So you might be writing down, rained heavily, but it might also be was in bad mood. So whatever the things are, or that what, what most comes to mind is the fact that your mind had wandered onto the TV you were watching, or the argument you’ve had with your boss or your brother, or, you know, so. So although you’re sort of casting your mind back to the activity, it doesn’t have to be an account of the activity, but just five fragments. And then once you’ve got, well, if you want to give yourself some leeway, more than five, but once you’ve got your fragments, then use them as the starting point, to write a poem that references all five of those fragments in some way. And if you’re feeling like it was very difficult to reengage, then your poem might be called, My mind is blank today. And that might get somewhere quite interesting. So yeah, that’s my that’s my suggestion.

Helen: Yeah, that’s really great. And it sounds really as though it could be any activity just for anybody who is listening and has mobility considerations, it sounds to me like you could do it with almost any activity for you, it’d be walking, put just a change of activity from what we normally for ten minutes, and then sit down after other distractions, and try and create five phrases that kind of link to that experience. Yeah, I think that would work really, really well. And I guess out of that, you will probably then, you know, explore that activity, what it means to you, you know, what, what you felt about it? And from that, of course, sparks sparks your objective. So I think that’s such an interesting idea. I’m definitely going to do that. And what it’s so interesting, linking back to what you’re saying there about this task, which is a good one, because it gets you observing things. And talking about the observation you did, you said you’re you know, you’re trying to pay attention. I keep getting told in all the poetry classes that I do that being observant is like one of the most important things for a poet, and I am terrible at it. I am really bad. I’m always just thinking about other things and not what’s going on right in front of me. And I think that’s just a sign that I take too much on, but it’s just always entertaining in poetry classes, when it’s my turn to, you know, we do an observation activity. And they’ll be like, remember something that happened? And what did you observe? I think what I’ve learned is that I’m not very good at observation. But that’s okay, I’ll work on it. So it’s a really good skill to flex.

Paula: I also think it’s quite interesting too, because I did a version of what I’ve just described to you I did as a kind of a practice for, let’s say, some weeks at a time. So I was sort of doing an activity, getting on with my day, and then writing these fragments down later. And then try and use those, those fragments or those phrases to, to write a poem. But actually, some of the things I learned, were also about paying attention to the moments when my mind wandered. Because say for example when I first started walking, I picked a route so that I could walk through one of London’s Royal Parks, so parks with these very big, gorgeous trees in them. And to start with every day I was just really overw

 

helmed by these trees and how amazing they were. And then there was a day when I realized that oops I hadn’t noticed trees at all, they just became background. When you’re at the beginning of something, you can think it’s going to be the only way it’s ever going to be. So when I was at the beginning of noticing nature, I was like, I will never not notice nature again. But noticing not noticing can be quite interesting, right?

Helen: Yeah, exactly. And it’s so funny how so quickly things can become background to us. So the more we flex those observation skills, the better I am not a model poet in that respect, far from it. Far from it in many respects, but I do think that is a particular weakness of mine. It’s not how I work generally as a poet, but it’s a very good habit to get yourself into as a poet. And I did see somebody say something on Twitter a few weeks back now one of my old tutors, she wasn’t saying it to troll me, she was just saying, you know, something along the lines of no matter how boring you think, a task or activity is, if it’s well observed, then it’s interesting. That’s something I want to work on. But I do think that there’s a lot of truth to that, that if something is well observed and observed in an interesting way, then it’s gonna spark things. So I think it’s really important that that sort of comes across from, you know, the kind of observational nature of some of the poems in a lot of the poems in this pamphlet, and in the ones that you’re going to release. It’s just a good thing for listeners to remember.

And the last thing I’d like to ask is where we can find more information about you and these other pamphlets that will be coming out.

Oh, thank you. So I am active on Twitter. You can find me there. I also use link tree to keep all my links in one place, because I’m sort of scattered across social media. So maybe, if you don’t mind, we could put a link into your show notes.

We will put a link in the show notes. The link tree for sure. Thank you so much, Paula. It’s been absolutely fantastic speaking to you.

Paula: Oh, thanks for having me. What a great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you.

 

Access the video of episode three on Youtube.

The audio version of this podcast is available on: Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher and iTunes.

For a free, downloadable PDF of the show notes, click here or scroll through the transcript below.

SHOW NOTES

Season one, episode three of the Genre-rama podcast is titled: Writing
Lessons Learned from Superman 1978 and features an interview with
comic book script-writer and award-winning filmmaker James Peaty.

To access the free creative writing starter library mentioned in the show,
click here.

The fake sponsor for this episode is a fictional real estate service called
Villas for Villains.

This is #NotARealProduct. Anyone who tries to sell you a subscrption is an
agent of evil and thus not to be trusted.

CAST

Host: Helen Cox

Guest: James Peaty is an established scriptwriter for publishers including Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Dark Horse Comics, Titan Comics and Rebellion Publishing. He’s written titles including Batman, X-Men, Green Arrow. Supergirl and Doctor Who as well as Diamond Dogs and Skip Tracer for 2000AD/Judge Dredd Megazine. In addition he’s also an award winning filmmaker who has won prizes both at home and abroad for his short films Appraisal and Maureen.

Jingle Performance: The One Man Barbershop Quartertet

Date the Cape Voice Over Artist: Eli Harris

 

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Helen: Hi, James, thanks so much for coming on the show.

James: That’s alright, Helen, how are you?

Helen: I’m good. Thank you. How you doing?

James: Not too bad. I’m enjoying my time in the TARDIS.

Helen: I’m very impressed with this.

James: This is on brand. I’ve got Dalek mug as well.

Helen: Definitely a theme going on here a little bit. So, for those of you listening on audio, James has got a background of the TARDIS and a TARDIS mug. It’s very impressive. So we’re gonna be talking today about writing lessons learned from the Superman movie from 1978. And I know you’ve written for a lot of different comic books and with a lot of different characters. So it’ll be great to get your insight on the different elements of this story and how they used. Because it was, to my best of my knowledge, it was the first superhero movie, is that correct?

James: I think it was for Hollywood, there was a Batman movie in the 1960s. But it was based on the TV show. So the first pure film?

Helen: Yes. First pure film from Hollywood, maybe?

James: Yeah.

Helen: Great. And so the first thing I’d like to talk about really is how the writers in this movie make the most of setting.

James: Oh, setting. Well, what do we mean by that? Well, I don’t know if you thought about this when you watched it again, it’s like three films together?

Helen: Definitely.

James: There’s definitely sort of there’s an identity to this three distinct parts. The stuff on Krypton the stuff in Smallville, and the stuff in Metropolis. And they’re very, very distinctly different. How do they use the settings? Well, I think they kind of make them very, they commit to them. I think that’s the crucial thing. The opening the first line in the film, I’ve got it written down here, we should be able to remember it. But I have written it out just in case. ‘This is no fantasy, no careless product of wild imagination.’ I mean, and that’s kind of, although technically, that’s not the
first line the movie, the first one movie is it begins with…

Helen: That little Metropolis bit.

James: Well, it’s that little Metropolis bit but it sort of goes from one of those old style movie theatres, doesn’t it? In the curtains, to a comic book, to a kind of depiction of the Daily Planet, Metropolis in the 1930s, late 1938, obviously, which is the Action Comics number one was published. So I think that there’s an element of them, setting up the tone, I think that’s the thing I would say more than one setting. And I think this is one of the biggest sort of things from the film is the tone that they set right from the start, you’re kind of going into a world that’s already sort of defined in some respects. I think, because of the film thing, the comic thing, it’s a world that we’ve already experienced, because Superman was a comic book. But Superman was also a movie serial very early on. I think 1940/41, they did the first a live action, very cheap Superman. And Superman was then a TV show so that it’s not while it is the first one. There’s a kind of already a sort of textual thing going on with the whole Superman thing by the time you get to 1978. I mean, by 78 he’s 40 years old as a character. So he’s not unknown. He’s well known. It’s a reason the film was made. But I think it’s very interesting that when you finally get past that kind of little opening narration that the first line of the film is that this is no fantasy. And it’s interesting, it’s done in a very kind of, even though that’s all very big, I think it’s quite stripped down. I don’t know, what you think we’re looking at. It’s very simple. It’s very stark, blacks and whites, and you’ve got all these big thesps, you know, obviously Marlon Brando, but not just Marlon Brando, you’ve got Terrence stamp, you got Trevor Howard, you’ve got all these other kind of famous film actors of another generation from the past actually, kind of rooting the film.

Helen: Yeah, you’re right about it being stripped back in on Krypton. It’s not the same as but it’s akin to the black and white transformation into Oz in terms of that it’s so starkly contrasted in Krypton and then when we go to earth, we’re bursting into this colour, because everything’s very colourful. So I feel like it’s a complete, sort of almost Through the Looking Glass transformation.

James: It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because it’s always I think it’s like the reverse of the Wizard of Oz, because where they land is in a very bucolic kind of countryside. And I think the first thing you really see of these fields, isn’t it as the ship kind of comes through, earthy and very alive and Krypton very austere, so they use that. Yeah, I think the contrast between the two worlds is, really quite clearly done and very cleverly done visually.

Helen: And I think that that’s something I speak to my creative writing students a lot about, the fact that variation in terms of setting can really help to keep the reader’s attention. And I think it works in this movie, because you do, as you say, you have sort of three separate backdrops, three very contrasting backdrops, and within those, even within those really contrasting interiors, and exteriors. So, even when we get to metropolis, there’s the city streets and the hustle and bustle of that, and then there’s being up in the sky without anybody else they’re flying around you the
Statue of Liberty. So, I think something that writers do definitely need to think about when they’re creating any story, but particularly, perhaps when they’re creating a story with larger than life characters, is to make those contrasts, really draw them really quite sharply, to create variation for the reader and to really clearly distinguish between, for example, one world and another.

James: Hmm. Well, I think it’s interesting when you get to Metropolis because I think you start off in kind of, basically, you’re in you’re in heaven, in the kind of the spheres, you know, you’re in some way or other. It’s not really a science fiction film, it’s kind of fantasy. Sort of science fantasy, sort of science romance. There’s not really any science fiction in it at all, because, you know, they operate through crystals. It’s like just the most woo woo thing going.

Helen: Hey, I like crystals. But yes, I’ve never really thought about it that way. It’s really interesting. I’d just sort of latched on to the spaceship, but you’re absolutely right. They are powered through, and that never occurred to me.

James: It’s magic. There’s no kind of like, well, how does any of it work? It’s like, says you discovered the eternal void. It’s sort of semi Shakespearean as well. It’s got that kind of pseudo Shakespearean I should say, it’s got that kind of thing going on. But I think you come to you come to Smallville, it’s all that kind of Norman Rockwell. Andrew Wyeth, I think, was the other guy. That’s a big influence on the way they shot it. They shot it in Canada, didn’t they? Even though it’s not America, the wheatfields and all the rest of it. It’s got these very wide open spaces. It’s done in a very kind of mythic way. The America of that is as mythic as the Krypton stuff. So small town America. But I think the interesting thing is when you go to Metropolis, you’re introduced on ground level in the back of a cab. I think that’s the first shot, isn’t it?

Helen: I think so. Yeah.

James: So it’s not you’re not in the gods, you know, that’s the language of it, that you’re there and in amongst the people. And I think that’s a really interesting thing. And there’s not a lot of background actors. I mean, it’s interesting. I think you look at it from the point of view of the way Richard Donner sort of directs it. And I think if you want to look at the success of this film, it’s the way that Richard Donner sort of marshals the tone of the whole thing, and also manages to get life into it. Because if you made a film that was beginning, on Krypton and a film that had the tone then of Smallville, it would be a flat tire of a film, It’s also interesting is the thing about humour. There isn’t a single joke in the film, until you see Superman for the first time when he comes back. He’s in his full costume and flies from the Fortress of Solitude, you cut to metropolis. And then it’s like gag central for the next hour and a half.

Helen: Almost like humour did not exist before we reached the city.

James: But I think it’s a really interesting thing. Because what that does as well with the setting is the fantasy is reality. They play the fantasy, very straight, both forms of fantasy, small town America and outer space. And then when you get to reality, it’s a total fantasy. It’s totally kind of, you know, sort of fast talking, snappy sort of version of, you know, like a Howard Hawks film from the 1940s, or something like that sort of screwball comedy, but it’s, I think that’s very interesting is that the humour in that allows you to kind of buy into this kind of ridiculous figure of superman.

Helen: It’s sort of interesting to think about Mario Puzo working on something like this, you know, given some of his body of work. It’s really interesting to think about that influence on the screenplay.

James: I mean, I think Puzo’s work on it was really the structure, wasn’t it? I kind of the shape of what is the first two films? I would suspect the dialogue is pretty much all Tom Mankiewicz because is it Robert Benton and Leslie Newman, David Newman are quoted on the credited screenplay, they wrote the Camp 60s Superman musical for Broadway. Which is I guess why they were given the job, and working with Robert Benson. But it’s really Mankiewicz because I think the other thing you can see very clearly by the time you get to Metropolis and the rest of the film is the influence of James Bond. because Mankiewicz wrote Diamonds are Forever, he wrote Live and Let Die. He wrote Man With a Golden Gun and I’m pretty sure he did uncredited script doctoring on both The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. So if you look at the the humour in this is very, very similar. Particularly the way that they write Lex Luthor and the way that Lex Luthor is kind of introduced is very, very similar to the way he does the villains in those in the first two Bond films in particular Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die. You’ve got the underground bases and then there’s the real world that’s kind of inverted. So you’ve got all this Fillet of Soul restaurant in Live and Let Die. And then you have the whole thing with Las Vegas and Blofeld in in Diamonds Are Forever and Gene Hackman’s Lex Luther is very much like Charles Grace’s Blofeld, my favourite Blofeld. I have to say Diamonds are Forever is probably… I’m not saying it’s the best Bond film but it is probably my favourite Bond film.

Helen: And it’s so interesting to draw comparisons between those two, because they, they both do have elements of action, obviously. And a villain who is sort of a supervillain. So I think it’s completely natural to draw from something like a Bond film where the villains are larger than life a certain extent. And I think you’re right about Mario Puzo with the sort of structural element and something that I noticed. And it’s sort of obvious, really, again, it really follows closely almost to the letter, Todorov’s theory of narrative. And if you’re not familiar with that, in the audience, I’ll make sure it’s linked to in the show notes. It’s just the posh term for it. You’ve got your equilibrium. And then you disrupt it, essentially, all the steps in the story that go around. So you have the equilibrium, on Krypton, was then disrupted, and then he gets an offer on this adventure. And then what happens to that character is that by the end of it, they create a new equilibrium. And that’s a fairly traditional standard mode of storytelling. We could have been brought in in Smallville, we could have been brought in in Metropolis, but we weren’t, we were brought in right at the beginning of that disruption just before it, in fact. So it’s a very traditional way of writing. And it works for this film, I think, really, really well. I tend to now writing for an audience that’s got more of an understanding of filmic storytelling, I would normally cut to starting where the disruption happens. So you’d get a sense of what the equilibrium was by how the disruption affects the characters rather than showing the equilibrium First, there’s so much interesting, almost backstory given in the opening of this movie, really setting up the world around, you know, this strangely topical destruction of the planet that’s going on the introduction of characters that we’re not even going to see till the second movie that gets in the Phantom Zone. A lot of that and I think for this film, it completely works. But writing in 2021 I, as a writer, might be tempted to find another way on the page of a putting that together.

James: I think this is always interesting, on the page, because the thing about Superman the movie there was a lot of page. I think the script was like about 300 pages long or something for the two movies mean like things like the ending of the first film was originally meant to be the ending of the second film. And they kind of lopped it off the end and they had to stop. The makers are filming the two films together, back to back, and then they were never gonna finish it. So they just decided to finish the first one first and get it out because it was already late. And they didn’t have a particularly strong ending. They just had a tease for the sequel. So all that stuff with the nuclear bomb, turning the earth backwards, that’s what I was gonna say, is that stuff was originally meant to be the end of the second film, and they just kind of moved it to the end of the first film. And it’s so much better in the first film. It gives you all of that you must not interfere with human history and all that kind of stuff, which obviously they’d have added in, post production, I’d have thought to make the ending work. I think the thing with a movie I mean, movies are living things. Your script is, people say it’s a blueprint. It’s more than that. It’s a foundation. You dig the foundations, if it’s a good script, which this is, it allows you to go off into other directions and I think also as well in terms of the performances

I think one of the reasons why this is so totally certain is because Richard Donner is a was an actor before he was director. You can see the actors completely trust him. And what he’s got a great radar for is what’s phony. So what he does if he’s playing this the serious stuff on Krypton, it’s serious. If they’re doing the kind of bucolic kind of myth on in Smallville, the Bobby Soxers, you know, and all that stuff, it’s truthful. The stuff in Metropolis is truthful. You know, when Lex Luthor is being flamboyant, that’s truthful, because he’s wearing a wig, you know, it’s all a performance. And then when he turns you know, that’s truthful. So I think you’ve got… he was building from a very good base, but how have they’ve kind of manipulated that in the in the making, in the postproduction of the film, I think is a great. I mean, you can’t overstate Richard Donner on it. I think Richard Donner’s tone in this is perfect. And I think if
you look at the subsequent films, they’re never the same. They never have that tone.

Helen: Yeah. So that’s something we’ll come on to definitely. And I always encourage people, because some people will be writing scripts, you know, listening to podcasts, and some people were writing in a different form. But I think if you’re writing as a novelist, say, or a short story writer, I always try and get people to think about themselves as almost like the director of a movie when they’re describing things on the page. So where, if you imagine the point of view or perspective is a camera, where you’re going to focus the attention of the reader. And so even looking at movies and scripts is a really good way of learning how to write prose. In fact, a lot of the best lessons I’ve ever learned about writing novels has come from screenplays and so somebody like Donner who’s like a really, impressive presence on a project like this can be almost a masterclass in knowing where to direct the readers or the audience’s attention at particular times. So just moving on to characterization, because I have to, you know, hold my hands up and say I’m completely in love with what would be classed as the two central characters in this story. Lois and Clark,
but you know, particularly performances by Reeve and Kidder… I saw this at a very young age and I just absolutely wanted to be her and adored him and I just feel like since I’ve grown older, I’ve learned about the chemistry they had as friends and how they like looked out for each other, or you know, how their relationship developed. And I feel like that chemistry comes across, but some of it is through the writing as well. So when you’ve got a character like Superman and Lois Lane how do you decide which elements of that characterization to bring forward and make sure you serve the viewer?

James: Well, I’ve written both characters never in the same scene, I have to say, I’ve written Lois Lane when I wrote Supergirl for DC, probably about 10 years ago. I had her in it quite a bit. She’s a great character, Lois Lane, she’s really good character to write. I’ve written Superman in Justice League, only the once in a Justice League comic I did for DC and Superman is very difficult. Because he’s, you think that Superman is about creating obstacles, and it’s about delaying the use of his power, stymieing use of his power. That’s one of the great things about the second Superman film is that he loses his powers. So for a large chunk of the film, it’s that and I think in the first film in this, he’s kind of he’s learning about himself and his powers. So, he isn’t really like the fully embodied Superman. He isn’t really that until the end of the second film, when he comes back and he’s been, he’s been purged of such human failings and he stops you know, General Zod and all the rest of them. So I think he’s very, he’s really hard to write. Clark Kent isn’t hard to write, you know, but it’s difficult to write Clark Kent and make him nice, because at the end of the day is always lying. Superman says, You know, I never lie. Superman’s whole life is a lie. The way he’s projecting it, so you kind of have to sort of get the tone right with them. I think they get it perfectlyright in this because it’s romance. It’s romantic comedy. It’s light. But there’s a lot of adults subtext to it as well. I mean, she’s great. She’s never been better cast than Margot Kidder. You know, people talk about Superman being perfectly cast with Christopher Reeve, which he is he’s magnificent in a way that you know Sean Connery’s Bond in everyone’s mind, Christopher he will always be Superman. Lois Lane has never been better than Margot Kidder. And I think what they
get absolutely right and which is what when you listen to the Donner talking about it, while they cast her, she kind of fell into the room and was all over the place and had to kind of teach her be a bit more sort of refined, which she isn’t at all. But she’s totally human. And you completely buy why Superman would love her because she’s, she’s everything that he’s not she’s chained smoking, she’s, you know.

Helen: She can’t spell. Which I love that, you know, it’s, yeah, I love it. Because it’s just like, I’m a journalist and I’m not gonna let a little thing like spelling hold me back.

James: It’s alive. I think that’s the thing about it. It’s alive. She’s alive as a character. She is she is exploding with, you know, things all the time as a character. She’s like a ball of energy. And he’s always kind of restrained because Superman has to restrain himself because, he can knock you over and kill you, you know. So there’s an element of restraint with him and she’s completely, you know, over the top all the time. And he’s so big. She says, you know, that she’s so small. There’s this kind of weird sort of alchemy that’s there. But it’s never been as good in any other kind of incarnation. I suppose Teri Hatcher kind of played Margot Kidder when she did the Lois and Clark thing on TV and that might be the best version at outside of this one on screen.

Helen: We did revisit the whole of Smallville some time ago, but actually I really thought the actress did a really great job and of course her name completely escapes me. But taking on a role like that when it’s such an iconic role and I think it takes you a little while to warm to her after being such a fan but actually it by the end of the series you’re like you know she did a really great considering the everything that was attached to that role and she took it on but I agree that I think when you have an admiration for that 1978 film that those characters definitely you know, sort of almost the epitome of those characters

James: but also but you believe it’s like the scene on the rooftop you believe them it’s like when he meets her she’s in a light negligee. And he doesn’t need to use his X ray vision because he can see what’s there.

Helen: and I love that because it’s the element of fantasy that you were talking about earlier. She says something along the lines of ‘Clark says that you’re like Peter Pan’ and she’s stood there in this basically adult Wendy Darling outfit about to jump off a roof and fly.

James: There’s things about dreams about flying encoded in, you know, dreams about sex. They have sex together. But that’s basically what happens in that scene.

Helen: Absolutely. Yeah. After they talk about what colour underwear is.

James: She actually says something before: do you eat?

Helen: Yeah, yeah. Well, she takes a long time to say eat. Do you..,? So we have all that subtext going on. So I think that’s a really interesting way of thinking about framing those more adult themes within the superhero
context. But it’s also interesting what you say about Superman being difficult to write, because I think with any kind of magic, or superpower, actually, its limitations that allow you to write conflict, it’s not what someone can do. It’s what they can’t do. And so in the second movie, for example, where he loses all these powers, all of a sudden, he’s unable to do all these things. And that’s what causes the conflict. If, if he could go around all the time, doing anything, anytime, and just magically, always get there, etc. For example, in the first one at the end it’s really a race against time, you know, and that’s where the conflict lies, that he’s got limitations. And then he decides to obviously reverse time. So I think those limitations that really make character and you totally nailed what’s going on with Lois Lane. She’s so full of life. And he’s so restrained. And again, it’s that contrast. And so people writing or listeners writing characters that are going to go together. Again, it’s this element of contrast, that’s going to bring the spark, I think, for a lot of time, when you’re writing characters that are either romantically involved or involved in an intense friendship, or the sidekick or whatever it might be, the conflict tends to come from there, and the spark comes from there.

James: And in their case, they are all of those things.

Helen: Yeah, exactly. Which is lovely that embodies so much and it’s just not one thing. And, and so that we’ll move on to theme because I think there’s some really interesting themes in this movie. We have the introduction where Jor el and his wife having this conversation about, he’s going to send him to earth. And this is a slight disagreement between them, you know, she’s talking about all the emotional impacts about him being different about him, you know, never being able to connect with anyone, and he’s talking about all the physical benefits. So he’ll be stronger than anyone else, he’ll need that advantage, etc. And so the sort of really cool conflict setup in that opening sequence, about physical strength versus emotional strength, which I think is a huge theme running all the way through this. I wondered what you thought about other themes, perhaps, that were brought to the fore and worked really well?

James: Well, I think it’s the you can’t sort of look at Superman without the immigrant myth, the immigrant fantasy. It’s a Jewish immigrant myth. If you go back to Siegel and Schuster, it’s there. It’s Moses, you know, in the boy, but they always make the point about Superman being Jesus. He’s not he’s actually Moses. It’s kind of the Hercules as well, isn’t it? He’s kind of cast out, he’s put in the rocket, and he sent down the river. And he’s found I think, even, you know, take the house of El, you know, Jor El. It’s all drawing from that. So I think it’s interesting, Jor el he’s the kind of biblical father, isn’t he? Which gives him the law. And then you’ve got Jonathan, who is giving him the heart, the moral code. So Jor el says, You must do this, you mustn’t do that. And there’s all this information and encoded in this is this, and you mustn’t do this. And I think that’s it, there’s the two mothers obviously, as well. But there’s also the two fathers. And I think the thing with Superman as well is it’s everyone says it’s an origin story. It’s not, it’s a rite of passage story. Because Superman doesn’t have an origin really, he’s born a Superman.

Helen: Yeah, that’s why I enjoy it more than most superhero origin movies, I’m not a big fan of origin movies.

James: There’s only two good origin movies, the two superheroes that have got the best origin stories, Batman and Spider Man, Batman has the perfect one, as a child, his parents killed before him, and he dedicates his life to making sure that never happens again. Spider Man, if you look at Spider Man, Spider Man story is Batman and Superman, mushed together, Uncle Ben is killed. You know, he even has all these elements of the Superman story woven into him, you know, he’s got they can’t really see what I’m really like underneath it. There was the great power, great
responsibility. There’s an element of Superman there. He works at a newspaper. He’s a more proletarian version of that. But it takes those two kind of origin stories and pushes them together. And you get Spider Man, and I don’t really think anyone else has got one that’s certainly not as emotive. But also there’s the thing about loss. I think that’s the thing about Superman, he loses something he’ll never have and he loses his real father. He loses his connection to the farm. Really. By sort of learning who you are, you can never go home again.

Helen: And these are really core like fundamental themes about people’s identity and their place in the world. You know, who am I? What’s my place in this world? Why am I here? These are all you know, fundamental questions.

James: I’ve always thought the reason Superman is harder to write is because Superman is a much more complicated and more adult character. If you deal with Batman, loads of people can play Batman loads of people can write Batman. It’s like James Bond is a plastic fantasy. It’s male. It’s boyhood fantasy. It’s male, kind of his untrammeled, masculine kind of boy fantasy. I mean, take Batman, he doesn’t even have to do his own laundry does it? I mean, he’s got an endless supply of money. He’s got no women around to kind of really annoy him during the day, he’s got this butler that kind of tidies up after him. He gets to play with his toys all day, at night, go out and have some fights and he gets to hang out with like women dressed as cats or whatever, you know. It’s a total fantasy. I think one of the things when you when you adapt Batman to the screen, I think that’s one of the things that Christopher Nolan did really well, was to make Batman and much more sympathetic character. Because I don’t think by nature he is particularly.

Helen: it’s hard to identify with someone has that much money even if they have lost the parents tragically.

James: Yeah, whereas Superman, he comes from somewhere else he’s adopted, he finds his place in the kind of working people of America. And then he becomes a different type of working person, but has to kind of hide who he is as well to assimilate into the broader culture. And there’s a price to be paid for that.

Helen: Yeah. And I think it’s from a writing perspective as well. It’s you need to question whether or not you are looking for relatable, a relatable character and a relatable theme at the core of what you’re doing. Or like you’ve just said, with sort of the Batman narratives, you’re going for something that is more pure, escapist and fantasy, and sort of decided picking a lane between those two will often help you with, with tone. So onto the next question about how the dramatic and comedic elements are blended in this film, and you started touch on this already. But I don’t think that the later movies beyond two, really get the tone down. They seem to have conflicting ideas of what the tone should be as the film progresses, and so it can feel a bit patchy. Whereas actually, even though you’re right, that there aren’t really any jokes before they get to Metropolis, I don’t feel the same lurch in this film.

James: No, well I think the thing is, the story obviously is, Richard Donner films 75% of Superman two before they stop filming it. They finished Superman one, he’s due to come back to finish it. And they fire him and they replaced him with Richard Lester. And Richard Lester is a very talented filmmaker. You know, you look at the Musketeer movies, you look at stuff in Flash, The Beatles films in the 60s, The Knack but he’s a totally different filmmaker. His whole thing is based on quirk, and it’s based on there’s an element of cynicism in there. I mean, I think those things are there in Superman two, but they can’t really um, they’re building around a film that was mainly finished, like all the scenes with Gene Hackman were filmed by Richard Donner. Nothing with with Gene Hackman is filmed by Richard Lester. But their stuff at the honeymoon getaway in Superman two is, was filmed later and not written by Tom Mankiewicz, it was brought in by the Newman, the guys that worked the people who worked on the musical in the 60s,
there’s a cynical kind of… it’s slightly shrill? And it’s kind of caricature, like small town America in that that creative team is then given carte blanche to do Superman three, and Superman three is just like, totally wildly, inappropriately all over the place. You know, the humour’s wrong, Superman’s a drunk, you know, at certain points, and he’s hitting on Pamela Stevenson. And so what we’re doing a parallel Stephenson on top of the Statue of Liberty.

I think the fundamental thing is that Richard Donner believes in Superman, and he believes that it’s a worthwhile American myth. He is not slumming it. He believes in the story that he’s telling. He believes in the character as well, and I think you have to place it within the context of the time. In 1978. You are, what, four years away from Watergate, Vietnam, and the kind of fallout of that has only just ended, you know, mid 70s, you’re talking about Woodward and Bernstein the people have broken it. So, to be a journalist is a great thing. Then truth, justice in American way, the journalist is that. Superman is someone who has returned from the 1940s basically, even down to the way that they dress, Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent. And Superman is a character from an innocent time transplanted into that 1970s world. And all of the cynicism and nastiness is embodied in Lex Luthor.

Helen: And I think there’s so many lessons to be learned from everything you just said there when we’re actually writing these sort of stories for ourselves. So first thing if you don’t believe in what you’re doing, I think it’s wholly apparent to the reader. I don’t know exactly how they do seem to have some kind of Spidey-sense where they just know that something isn’t gelling here, that you don’t really believe in this project. I know it’s difficult because writers at the end of the day are employees as well as creative people. And we all have, sometimes we have contracts to fulfil, but as much as possible to believe in those characters and to believe in that world and really go for it in order to create something that feels real to the people reading it. Or feels escapist, whatever you’re going for. But also having a clear creative vision. How do I want the reader or the viewer to feel as they watch this? Because what’s happened with this particular franchise is you’ve had a mix of people coming in to take the helm. And that’s left it with a very uneven end swayed by a lot of different influences. And people are just Well, you know, by the time you get to the
third movie, it’s great for internet gifs, but not much else. Because it’s not all over the shop.

James: Let’s not mention Superman four.

Helen: Exactly. I mean, so there’s all kinds of things going on there. And it’s partly because it’s such a mix of influence. Whereas if you are trying to create something, especially in a complicated world in which perhaps there’s some element of fantasy, magical realism, superpower, or mythology to uphold, is really important to have a clear, creative vision. And although that might change a little bit over the course of a series, say, just be really clear about what it is you want people to feel throughout. And be aware that if you do dramatically shift away from that, you’re going to lose some people.

James: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think also that superheroes full stop are very difficult to do. Outside of a comic book, where you’re doing an ongoing kind of narrative. Even then, I think, you know, , there are very few really great extended runs on comic books. I mean, there are some, but not compared to how many comics are actually published. Not that many. But I think that it’s hard to do stories with these characters over a long period of time. I mean, James Bond’s, the obvious one that you just don’t really have any continuity from film to film, you just sort of put them in an
adventure. And that’s it go off and have it, audiences don’t want really want that now. I mean, look at the way James Bond has been reconfigured to kind of make it a kind of cumulative effect that, you know, over the course of the Daniel Craig films, that’s been the case. But I think there’s been a problem with Superman, in when they’ve tried to revive Superman as well, on screen. I mean, Superman Returns is a very interesting film school exercise in trying to deconstruct Superman. But it doesn’t work as a living, breathing experience. Because it’s all it’s all too precious. And then, I think Man of Steel was interesting. They can’t even bring themselves to call it Superman. They’re so sort of like embarrassed you know, it’s not Superman, it’s a first contact alien film, all rest of it. Even though it’s a Superman movie, next, Superman two with a heavy dose of like, Transformers at the end as well. But even then, you know, you don’t really get that they believe in Superman. And there is something super simple and magical about the character, which is, if you go into those areas that are more serious, quote, unquote, then you break your fantasy,

Helen: I wouldn’t mind so much, but my big problem with those movies, where they do go serious with it is it just always dissolves into a 20 minute CGI punch fest. And that, to me is not particularly compelling,

James: And it’s not very serious as well. It’s actually more ridiculous.

Helen: Yeah, exactly. And so I often say this, again, to my students, I say, you know, the thing about action is, if you’re not careful, it’s really boring, because all you’re doing is describing a fist meeting a face or, you know, a foot, kicking some objects. And what we really need is to blend intellectual and emotional content through that fight scene. Otherwise, it’s just a description of one person’s fist meeting something for a whole page. And that’s not as engaging as it could be. And that’s what happens with these movies. This is just punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, and nothing in between no dialogue, no, you know, sense of perhaps jeopardy creeping in, someone’s getting tired and emotional, and they can’t really deal with the fight. It just goes on for so long before any of that is even
introduced. And I think that that’s something that the first movies back in 1978 onwards, at least managed to avoid to a certain extent, they made it as you know, an interesting challenge for him to overcome at the end of the movie, and there wasn’t just 20 minutes of you know, fighting

James: Technologically they couldn’t do it then as well so I think you’ve got you’ve got a kind of issue there with they couldn’t do that stuff. But they did the two different things. I mean, it’s interesting, the first film, you do the classic thing, which is that it’s not about Superman punching anyone, you put Superman in the middle of a thing where he’s trying to save people. But can he actually save everybody entirely? Even if he’s Superman, which is a kind of, which is a great way to do it? And obviously, you’ve set it up in the first one for the second one, you’ve got three super villains they’re all as powerful as Superman, and the human being. And again, he’s trying to protect the people, he cares. That’s what the villains say at the end. He cares, he actually cares about these people. And that’s where they start to
turn the tide rather than punching each other. They start to hurt the people, whereas in you know, Man of Steel, they’re just, you know, they’re just collateral damage. I mean, that’s not really Superman. That’s Miracle Man.

I don’t know if you’ve ever read Miracle Man, but the Marvel Man it was originally called. But the end of that, it’s one of the last few issues, you have a superhero battle between Miracle Man and Kid Miracle man who both got the same
power, kind of like Zod and Superman. And the city’s destroyed, laid waste people’s limbs torn off, you know, it’s like Hiroshima. And the take on that is really interesting in the way it’s done. And then the story afterwards, which is like how they rebuild society from that kind of point. And so they kind of did that big smash up thing, they ripped it off at the end of the third Matrix movie where they have the big fight. But there’s no people in the city, because they’re all just they just Agent Smith, that doesn’t really matter. So it’s just it doesn’t mean anything.

Helen: And that’s the point just shoving it in for the sake of it to fill ten minutes of the story isn’t the way to do violence any more than it is the way to do sex.

James: The story has to support the spectacle, otherwise the spectacle is nothing I’m not the biggest fan of it as a movie but I think the end of the first Avengers movie, works very very well because you’ve set-up all the characters who then have to work together to avert this thing. So that’s a very well done piece of engineering. Or if you go to the end of The Dark Knight Rises, where there’s a big city-wide thing as people try to get off the island, people are fighting on the steps of Wall Street, someone else is trying to stop a bomb from going off. But all of that’s set up as well. The geography is well-defined but at the end of Man of Steel it’s just two CGI creatures tearing buildings down, and it’s like, so what?

Helen: So it’s really about foreshadowing and using narrative to support the spectacle.

James: But you look at Superman two as well, the big battle is not the end. They then have the character battle back in the ruins of Krypton.

Helen: Yes, so thinking about what the climax of the story is – in this film it’s in a different place to what we’d perhaps expect now. So just to round off, I really feel like this film blends a range of different genres almost seamlessly. I know you write a lot of different superheroes and other characters. Do you have any tips on how to blend these different components because it is quite a mishmash sometimes?

James: You’ve got to be very careful it depends if it’s your own thing or a company character and what version of those characters you’re writing. If you’re writing Superman and you don’t have humour in it or character dynamics, you’re probably not writing Superman. I think in terms of superheroes, Superman is not unique in this, it perhaps does it better, but if you look at the trajectory of the blockbuster over three films. 1975 you’ve got Jaws – people think it’s just about a shark attacking an island and eating people it’s a horror movie. It’s not that at all. It’s a blend of a disaster movie, an element of the Exorcist with the evil coming to a small community and the third act of that movie is an adventure film. It’s like Moby Dick. Star Wars in 1977 does the same. It’s a comedy, it’s a western it’s a fantasy or a bit like a foreign language movie, like the Hidden Fortress that it’s riffing off. And then it becomes The Damn Busters and then it becomes a fairy story. Superman, maybe does it with a bit more grace. It’s maybe less frenetic,
less jarring. I don’t know.

Helen: I think it also gives itself permission to change tone very early on. So we have the opening on Krypton which doesn’t last very long. And then it’s almost like the signal of moving to a new setting allows it to shift in tone so then by the time we get to Metropolis we expect a shift in tone because it’s already happened from Krypton to Smallville.

James: Well they’re like different movies, aren’t they? You can see that Geoffrey Unsworth shot 2001, when we’re doing that bit of it. And then when we move to Smallville there’s a little bit of Rebel Without a Cause in there. The way Clark’s dressed he’s like James Dean in that. By the time we get to Metropolis we’re in a much more normal urban kind of environment. But you’re right they have very clear lines of markation whereas the other films don’t but I think that’s a thing with the blockbuster is it should never be one thing. If you look at successful blockbusters they’re not. Ghostbusters. Back to the Future, they’re a lot of different things.

Helen: And I think all of those films, and it’s present in Superman, they not only give themselves permission to change tone using this really short segment and then completely changing where we are but they foreshadow it so his parents talk at length about how different things are going to be on earth. In Smallville, we know his destiny is to go off to somewhere bigger and different. Metropolis is foreshadowed in the beginning so the writers set it up but it’s not heavy-handed. It’s just through the character interactions we understand that this central character we follow from being a baby to an adult entering Metropolis is going to go through a number of phases and that’s really how it ties together as a rite of passage.

James: And the character of Jor El is really the only character that shows up every phase. The Fortress of Solitude is kind of this inbetween place, which is part of the comics as well. He’s like Miss Havisham when he goes back to the Fortress of Solitude. A place that is frozen in time. But the first part of the film has a sealed cast. The second part is also sealed. The third part is a different film. I wonder if there’s an element of Kubrik in there because he’s obviously the big filmmaker of that period and he talked about films being eight submersible units, eight chunks of story that connect, maybe obtusely, but together you make a film and in those eight sections you have a movement. But then together there’s a cumulative effect. I’m not saying Superman is that, but there is an element of that. You could share those bits on their own and have an experience with that piece.

Helen: Yes, I think there’s an arc isn’t there in each piece. The polarity changes from a more positive to a negative place in Krypton and Smallville. But cast is interesting from a perspective of writing prose. When we’re writing prose we tend to want to stick with characters all the way through the story. Whereas if you are writing something that blends a few genres it could be useful to think of the book in phases and have a different cast of characters surrounding the central character on each phase of the journey. And then you’ve always got them to go back to if it serves the story, like we do with Jor el. Well I think we’ve given people lots of think about which is of course the point so thank you so much for joining us and for all your wonderful insights.

James: Well it’s been fun to revisit, so thank you.

WRITING QUESTIONS AND PROMPTS

I hope you enjoyed that discussion and found it useful. Superman is a bit of a cultural touchstone for me so I don’t think I could ever tire of talking about it. In terms of writing questions that come out of that discussion however, here are a few to consider:

1. What are the different phases or acts of your story and how might you use something like setting to transition between them?

2. How will you make your superhero relatable? What human qualities do they possess or human dilemmas do they facethat will help the audience connect with them?

3. How will you create contrasts between your supporting characters and your superheroes? Something that will make the characters spark and keep their interactions interesting in the same way they are between Superman and Lois in this movie?

4. How many different genres are you blending within your superhero story? Romance? Action? Coming of Age / Young Adult? What proportion of the story should you give to each element? Which one dominates and why?

5. How will you ensure moments of action have an emotional core to them that helps the reader understand the stakes