Every beginning has an end.
Ah, memories…
OG's BLOG
JOURNAL of ARTIST and WRITER STEVE OGDEN
Archives: January 2005
Extras
If you haven’t seen BBC’s The Office, you should. It’s a mockumentary, in which fictional BBC cameras follow some hapless fictional office employees around and document the fictional but spot-on daily goings on. It’s a great view into real office life. In particular, Ricky Gervais does a horrifyingly accurate job of portraying a dysfunctional boss.
Gervais’ portrayal is shocking in its accuracy. Any manager who sees traces of himself in this character needs to take steps to purge those traits from his routine. PS – Any manager who doesn’t see himself in this character isn’t looking hard enough.
The team that developed The Office is reportedly working on a new comedy for the BBC, in a similar vein, in which Ricky plays a struggling TV extra, “a moaner who bitches about the stars and laughs in the face of adversity,” he says. Although it’s not filmed as a documentary this time, fans of The Office should still like it.
Movie stars are of course falling over themselves for cameos on the show, which is sure to be a hit. It should come out some time this summer… at least in England.
Stand by Me
You know, fondness is a funny thing. You can be fond of something, say, a movie, or a song, and it stays with you long after the last frame dims, long after the last note fades. In your memory, a work of art can become better and better, and sometimes better in your memory than in real life. Stand by Me is not like that. This is a movie I enjoyed 15 years ago, and I enjoyed it the other night just as much. As an added bonus, a friend of mine at work loaned me the original Stephen King short story (“The Body”, in a collection called Different Seasons, a collection of 4 novellas that also includes “Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption” which also became a movie).
I am impressed with “The Body”, or should I say its transformation into the movie. It seems to me novellas are infinitely better suited than novels for adaptation into screenplays. Many of the films’ lines of dialog, narration, and stage direction are taken word for word from the original text. If you haven’t seen the movie, or haven’t seen it in a while, I encourage you to have a look.
I also encourage you to think about the deer for a moment. Extra credit. 10 points.
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