Dear Jeff Buckley Biopic Producers

Dear Jeff Buckley Biopic Producers,

OH THE HORROR! THE HORROR! OH THE HUMANITY! OH GOD NO, PLEASE NO, I’LL CUT OFF MY RIGHT ARM WITH A FUCKING SPOON TO STOP YOU PUTTING EDWARD FUCKING CULLEN IN THIS MOVIE! I’ll do it I swear. I think you kind of get the gist of this letter, I could probably stop now, but I’m going to extrapolate on this theme just a little longer until you actually internalise the point I’m trying to fucking make.

First of all, let me clarify that, due in large to the fact I think Twilight is some of the most pungent shit I’ve ever been forced to watch cement its place in popular culture, I realise that there is a difference between Edward “the Sparkly Vampire” Cullen, and the unfortunate actor required to play him. I’m pretty sure that dear old Robert Pattinson thought of this piece of shit as a pay cheque and was unaware that as a result of baring his crystal encrusted chest to a multitude of prepubescent girls and their emotionally retarded elders, these hoards of hormone filled masses would literally be attempting to hump his legs every time he goes out in public. I’m sure he’s an okay guy, and hell, I don’t know maybe some credit should be given to his acting skills given that he managed to make the worlds’ most annoying fucking vampire marginally attractive to, it seems, every woman on the face of the planet bar me. Personally, if I met a vampire that didn’t kill or fuck and who spent his days listening to Debussy and I don’t know, learning fucking French or some shit, I’d cut his goddamn head off, no matter how pretty a face was attached. But I digress. It happens. The point is, I can distinguish between Mr. Pattinson and Edward Cullen but 99% of the female, and hell a good percent of the male population fucking can’t. And that, my friends, is a major freaking problem when you are making a movie about Jeff Buckley.

Now I understand that you have at least two valid arguments for casting Mr. Pattinson in your movie. First, he’s a draw card. But honestly guys, have you done any fucking research at all about Jeff Buckley? Any? At fucking all? So you’re going to cast in your movie a man who will whip teenage girls into orgasmic frenzies as he strums and broods. But this won’t have anything to do with Jeff’s music; it will have everything to do with their inability to distinguish between fiction and reality. You are going to turn this movie into Twilight the fucking musical. I’m sorry Rob, this ain’t your pretty self’s fault. But it’s my fucking problem. If you must make a movie about Jeff Buckley, and honestly I’m not convinced this is a good idea in the first place, then centre stage must be taken by his goddamn music. If this is overshadowed by the audience’s unwillingness to make a distinction between the actor playing him and a fictional character that same actor has played previously you’re shaming Jeff’s memory and his legacy. You are shaming Jeff Buckley. And that pisses me right off.

Second, I hear Rob can sing pretty well. Good for you Rob. But no one, and I mean no one, can sing like Jeff Buckley. And I don’t want to listen to someone trying to sing like Jeff Buckley. I want to listen to Jeff fucking Buckley. See I remember the first time I heard Jeff sing. I remember it well, because it was the day they pulled his body from the waters of the Mississippi. I remember the long note held in Hallelujah, I remember the notes hit that should have been missed, I remember the goosebumps, and I remember the tears. No song, no voice, has ever had a bigger impact on me than his. So I don’t want to hear someone pretend to be Jeff Buckley; no amount of emulation will ever, ever come close to meeting that ethereal perfection. I don’t think we even need to try, and I don’t really think that we have the right to either.

I now have this recurring nightmare. It’s horrible. I shake as I attempt to relay it to you in all its horror. Trembling fingers. No shit. In this nightmare I am at a CD shop. Just your average CD shop, nothing special. I am rooted to the spot, unable to move, paralysed as it were, by sheer and complete terror. All around me are teenage girls, their developing bodies cloaked in too-tight t-shirts splashed variously with slogans: “Team Buckley” reads one, “I kissed a Jeff and I liked it” reads another, “There’s a Flaming Red Horizon” on yet another, a picture of a perfectly coiffed Edward Cullen- garishly distorted by the heaving breasts underneath it- staring at me from a black and red background. The air is so laden with rushing hormones it is almost wet; it leaves a shiny, metallic taste in my mouth. Still I can’t move. The girls all hold in their hands an object that turns my legs to rubber, an object, the very sight of which dries my mouth in an instant, palpitates my heart, fills my eyes with tears that overflow and wont stop, not for a second, not even for a moment. Because of this object a dam has been burst inside my chest and it feels, it truly feels as though my heart is literally breaking in two. When I open my mouth to beg for reason no words will come out, none at all, just a sound, so deep and low, so despairing it is beyond explanation; it is primordial, it is uncontrolled, it is beautiful and it is the perfect articulation of a heart that is broken. I fall to my knees, and that is when I see that I too hold in my hand this same object. A CD, innocuous at first, but it reads “Jeff Buckley: The Soundtrack”, and when I turn it over I read the words that stop my heart: “all songs performed by Robert Pattinson”.

Sincerely,

Helenahandbasket

What happens when you shoot someone, then run them over with a tank?

You may be surprised to learn that I actually do have some limits on what I am prepared to make funny. Not many. But Tiananmen fucking stumps me. Somehow I just can't seem to keep up the irreverence when considering hundreds or thousands of unarmed civilians being mowed down by tanks and guns. Crazy huh? Who would have thunk it? Surely there's a joke in there somewhere? So here is some decidedly unfunny shit about Tiananmen. Consider it my commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
What Happened? When fearless leader Mao Zedong- you know him, he had that great idea about melting down pots and pans to make steel, guess how that ended? no seriously, guess- died in 1976 the Communist Party took on a new policy of opening up China economically. They failed to realise that maybe, just maybe, this might open the country up to other influences. An obvious oversight, you'd think, but hey, they were pretty much a bunch of uneducated peasants. Anyhoo. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing perestroika and glasnost- google that shit people, I don't got time to explain it- which inspired young Chinese to aspire for more liberal reforms. In shorter terms, the situation leading up to June 1989 can be described thus: weeeeeeeeeee! unrest! reform! crackdown! weeeeeeeeee! Or something more eloquent. Whatever. In China the shit was a fucking tinderbox waiting for a spark. The death of reformist Hu Yaobang in April 1989 provided said spark.
After Hu's death tens of thousands of students took their protest to Tiananmen Square. Protests continued through April and May. China's fearless leaders pretty much twiddled their thumbs and wrung their hands. What to do? What to do? Kill them all? Hmmm, maybe. But they had this pesky little problem of having invited the international press to Beijing to cover Gorby's visit which was set to culminate in a ceremony at, you guessed it, Tiananmen Square. And that, my friends, is probably the only reason we know about this; any other month and the international press would not have been allowed in the capital. Ah fickle chance.
Fearless leaders were determined to clear the square before Gorby arrived, and so, and this is totes logical, I'm sure you'll agree, started blaming the US and declared martial law. The PLA started clearing the area, and by that I mean shooting unarmed civilians and running them over with tanks. Cos, you see, when you shoot someone with high calibre ammunition from a semiautomatic weapon at close range you can never really be sure that they're dead. They might have that special skin, you know the one, which deflects bullets. That why you need to run them over with a tank just to be sure that they're not going to get back up and beat you to death with a cardboard placard. It's only when you've squished someone flat that you can be certain that their unarmed arse is no longer a threat to you. But you already knew that. It's common fucking knowledge.
We don't really know how many people were murdered. Obviously official Chinese estimates are low (250is). Many who survived were later tracked down and sentenced to death, or sent to labour camps (you know the ones where they don't feed you until you die- super fun!). What we do know is that these people protested and died for freedoms we take for granted, abuse, or ignore every day.
We treat democracy like a right, something we are inherently entitled to by virtue of being Australian, but it's not a right, it's a fucking privilege. That I can write as I do without being arrests is a privilege. That you can google without censorship is a privilege. That you get to cast your vote to choose your shitty government is a privilege. Every free step you take, every choice you make to determine your own future, every time you choose your degree, where you live, who you fuck, what you eat, what you read, what you say, that is a privilege. And it is a privilege we need to honour, and honour every day, if for nothing else than out of respect for the millions all over the world who have lost their lives asking simply for that which we take for granted, abuse, or ignore every day.
So Tiananmen, we remember.
Sincerely,
Helenahandbasket.