Have always heralded and championed the need for innovation, it is harder but ultimately more rewarding than iteration. I am not against iteration, it has its place and it has its benefit. It was that setting that I entertained this evening when I watched Remains of the Day again. I had the DVD for the longest time, but I had not watched it for well over a decade. And as I was watching an idea came over me and it was specific to this situation. You see, the movie is based on the classic masterpiece by Kazuo Ishiguro. This matters because some film fanatics, some film lovers want more than a DVD, Blu-Ray, or 4K movie. It is of course nice to get a higher resolution, but it is limiting. Why is there not an option to link with it the second screen, or a screen within a screen that allows us to see the script and/or the book that this movie is based on. It is of course not applicable to every movie, and there are stages where people merely want the script, but both have equal desire with their fans. Whether it be the Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Twilight (Stephenie Meyer), and so on. The list is almost without end. Yet there are movies like for example Remains of the Day where both the book and the script would be desired to be seen side by side, and now that screens tend to be over 50”, there is enough space to keep on on the side of the movie. I doubt that this will not happen quickly and it will be overnight, but as the movies go beyond 4K, the storage will increase and someone will ask why there isn’t more about the movie on the disc. It is a fair question and it remains to be seen if it is the stage we will turn to. Perhaps the movie will keep track with the script on a Kindle, or similar device. It is an iterative step, but I reckon it will be an almost unavoidable one. As movies attract fans to the cinema, the makers will see the need to add more to the media disc, to give the people a larger desire to satisfy questions, to satisfy curiosities and not to forget to increase the desire for the media article.
If you want numbers, statistics and data proving this, I will not be able to satisfy that request. Yet as a movie lover I have a fine (and large) collection of movies and I see that there is a growing need. You see as the movie is shown with a script it will remind people that there is a book (at times). The Twilight and Hunger Games fans do not need reminding, but how many have seen the book Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs? This is not an accusation, I got the book after I saw the film, I never heard of Ransom Riggs and the books he wrote. The entire matter comes at a stage where the people need more than the 134 minutes that the movie offers and plenty of movies add making off, specials, bloopers (always fun), ad several other attachments. Yet it is rare that a script is added, it has been done, but merely as an extra, not a an added layer to the movie. Yet perhaps some will push for this and we will see this in a new version or new release of the movie.
We see some moments as epic, but what makes them epic? You see Epic is subjective, it is constrained and defined by what we have experienced. This is not a negative thing, this is an almost liquid setting, what is epic for one is mundane for the other, this is merely how it is. And for me the setting starts with a daydream. This happened this morning as I was enjoying a cup of coffee. I was sitting on a couch in a shopping mall, enjoying a lovely cuppa. My mind wandered away. So enjoy the story for what it is, a mere story to keep thy bones warm this Christmas winter.
I was in some tech corporate place north of Oslo, no idea why. It was the midsommar weekend and some woman in the firm invited me to experience midsommar in her town of Floro, a town 500 km WNW of Oslo. I accepted the invitation, only learning a few hours later that it was an 8 hour drive, actually it was more like 6, she embraced formula one standards of driving and I gained three years of grey hairs in 6 hours, nature does seem to find a balance. Of course being invited I went shopping that afternoon, as we were off next morning. I got a kilo of smart food (lollies), some ice coffees a few bottles of red wine and white wine for the party and I loaded up the car. Apart for her amazing looks and her amazing thrill of speed limits the trip was pretty uneventful. It was Floro that grabbed me more. It as alike a huge village. Every building pristine, every building outspoken traditional and every street clean, lovely and inviting. It one of the loveliest villages I have ever seen in my life. We got to the house and of course she had relatives. They all surrounded her, hugging her and speaking fast in Norwegian, My Swedish allowed for some parts to pick up and they came to me shaking my hand and then they realised that my Norwegian is almost non-existent, many switched to English, a nice surprise too. It had a thick nordic accent, but it was a lot better then some English you hear in London, so I was good. I introduced myself and I introduced myself to the host and hostess (parents of Lotte). I handed over the two boxes of wine, one white and one red. I saw the loud cheers going on, I reckon that French wine is not something they usually had there and I was greeted like an old fashioned hero.
We all had some coffee with something called krumkakes and something called school bread. We sat and I listened for most of the times. Some of the men asked me questions and I answered as best as I could. Yet the corner of my mind was screaming and I did not understand why. Everyone was so nice, but it seems that Lotte had the goods on me. She shushed everyone and told me to take a nice walk, she haded me a thin raincoat to wear over my clothes and she gave me a small direction finder. She pushed a button and it pointed to the house. She pointed to the roof, the direction finder would always point to the house, it seems she had seen this before. I took a nice walk, I saw part of Floro, I walked past shops, I noticed people looking at me, but I was at a loss why, perhaps all foreigners and tourists stand out in this place. I walked on, watching the water and seeing the tranquil waters seemed to quiet the screaming in my head.
As I walked I seem to wonder about the openness of this place and the natural beauty it has. It was about a hour later when I realised I had been walking in one direction, I wanted to turn around when the screaming intensified, I looked up the road, a dirt-road I noticed but it seemed almost invisible. I walked up it only to see a cave. I really did not want to walk into that cave, it screamed bear. And bears are not too uncommon in Norway. I just walked in and with my flashlight I went down the cave. A cave that felt colder with every step I took, it was less then two dozen steps later when the shivering was slightly too uncomfortable for me. I saw the show and the ice and I stopped, but the brakes were suddenly slammed from underfoot, I stepped in ice and slid down a lot further than I was happy with. I slid down a ramp that would make any bobsledder jealous and it was almost two whole minutes until I came to a halt. I saw two men frown in ice. Men, statues, it could be either. The ice was pointing behind them like it was blown over them. Then I noticed two objects. Objects that were covered in ice, I kicked one and it did not break, the ice was tough as steel. I looked around and I saw a stone, a sharp stone, I covered my hands and started hitting the one object, first the ice broke and that took some doing, I continued hitting the object only to see it as some kind of axe, it did not look like a woodcutters axe, it was slightly smaller, more outspoken and a little longer where the cutting part of the axe was. It took almost 5 minutes to get the ice from the axe. Then I looked to the two men, they were still in ice, but I could not tell whether they were men or statues. I used the axe on the other object and ice went flying everywhere with every hit, this axe was nice. That also gave me ideas on how to get out of here. With an axe like that I could chisel steps in the ice in no time, yet that was when I realised that the axe was warming me to some degree. It could have been the exercise, but the cold was gone and a few hits later I saw that the object was a hammer, but not some hammer I had ever seen before. Almost like an oversized blacksmith hammer, actually it was nothing like the hammer of the movie Thor (that maroon man from Queensland) but it resembled those upside down hammers that people wear as jewellery. Like the axe, the hammer felt warm and I decided to hit the ice closest to the man that was next to the hammer. The ice broke like it was nothing. I hit again and ice started to chip from everywhere. Then I saw the ice break off from his arm and the hand looked massively human, very meaty and not a statue at all, was it my imagination? Did the hand move? It seemed to grab towards the hammer and I pushed the hammer into his hand.
The ice broke everywhere. And within a minute he was free. He had a cold demeanour, he looked at me and I looked back, I did not know what to do and then he looked at the axe. I pointed at the other figure, he looked and spoke to me in some nordic language I could not make out. I merely stared. He made a drinking gesture and I pointed at my body and shook my head. It seems he understood me, he was still unable to move too much, but he pointed towards deeper into the cave, he made some reference with his hand that could have been a flask or a bottle. I grabbed the axe and went that way, the ice was all snow covered and not that slippery anymore. I saw a pedestal with a flask, I reckon that this was what he wanted. I looked around and there was nothing else. I cautiously grabbed the flask with my hands covered in jacket. I picked up the flask that as surprisingly heavy and moved back. I handed the flask to the man, he drank a whole heap of it and gestured me to take a sip, I was a little apprehensive but he gestured again, it was seemingly important. I took one small sip and it was like my body was on fire, one sip was like a whole bottle of aquavit (Nordic Gin), I started to sweat. He took a piece of cloth from his top and drenched it, then he put the cloth into the mouth of the other figure. He poured more liquid on the cloth and moved away. H took some leather string, tied the knots around the neck of the bottle and hung the bottle around the neck of the other person. He then gestured me up the hill, I started to cut out the steps. I laughed grabbed my back jumper and coat and before I knew what hit me we went up and a whole lot faster then I originally went down. We were up and at the entrance in less than 30 seconds. He looked at me and I remembered my direction finder. We walked back to the house, even as it seems darker, but with white nights you can never tell, we got back almost 30 minutes later and everyone was staring at me and Lotte looked surprised. The others then noticed the hammer in the man and they all looked star struck, the man stated something in what I can only assumed was some deep Norwegian, he slapped my back and took off, the man walked away. Everyone was cheering and slapping me and I was at a loss what had happened. Lotte merely looked at me like I was an actual alien. It was then that I saw in the distance a chariot with goats? Man, that was some alcohol, let me tell you. So when you get to Floro, be careful what you drink, that stuff they call aquavit is massively hard on the senses.
It was not dark, but the sun was setting. The man looked through the scope of a MTs-116M suppressed sniper rifle. The scope was not standard, the silenced MTs-116M was. The gun was important, it would lead people down the wrong path and that was the intent. He was 273 meters from the gate on a plateau. He saw the 4 men to the left of the house and the 2 on the right of the house. He saw that the men on the right were walking behind one another on a small path. He took aim and the steel round went quietly through both men. The men fell down, nicely in the dark spot of the house. In the mean time the 4 are walking behind each other, but not completely. He saw the path they walked. They were clearly untrained. The man waited another second and then fired one, quickly reloaded and took out the 4th man with the second bullet. They were all down, He saw one man moving his arm, he did not wait and used the third bullet straight through the skull. The outside of the house was now quiet. He switched to thermal, he saw that the window gave a decent view, but not completely. Two guards in the upstairs section seemed to be chatting. He took aim and as the first one got the bullet through the chest, the second one got it in the throat, they both went down. He checked the house again with thermals. No one upstairs, three downstairs, one behind a desk, most likely the target and two man in opposite sides of the room. He set down the sniper rifle, and kept the AS Val ready. He quickly ran to the house. He had made preparations on the right, he quickly moved up, took one more look to see if there were no surprises. He then got down in moved to a door on the right, he had seen the guards come in and out from there. He looked at the door. No surprises, he quietly tried the door, it wasn’t even locked. He entered the house. It has weird smells, which was surprising. Not just tobacco, there was the smell of something he could not place. He checked the rooms with a dental mirror. No camera’s, what an amateurs. The men were still in their corners and as he got closer to the room there was no real movement. He hear the quiet voices of what was the boss, he was barking orders to the other two, there were submissive answers. He was ready, he quickly opened the door, shot the person in front of him, then turned to the left. The second man was quick, but not quick enough. He then looked at the boss. “I was clear, leave me alone or else…” He sized the boss up, a cowardly little shit. “I get it, I get it now”, clearly hoping to talk himself out of this. “Now it’s too late” and he shot the boss three times in the head.
He methodically searched the room and the noticed that the safe door was open. He was wearing a mask, it would have taken too long to find the camera’s. He took the papers and the money. He then took one more look and he walked into the kitchen. He grabbed the newspapers and the vodka. He dropped the newspapers in small stacks in the house and covered the stacks with Vodka. He set the flames and as the papers started to burn, they would ignite more and more of the house. 6 stacks all over the lower floor of the house, the flames that would go upwards would finish the job.
He quickly left the house the same way he came in leaving the door open and the draft would do the rest. He ran back to his sniper rifle, picked it up and left the scene. He has a 15 minute walk to the south and it would take him to his car that would take him back to Edmonton.
It is the one scene that starts it. But what is it I want to start? The Russian hardware implies either spy story or organised crime. And in this there aren’t too many shown to play in Canada. So how will we continue? Is it Taken (Liam Neeson), Foreigner (Jackie Chan), 4th Protocol (governments) there are many options, but for the most they have been done and I like the new the novel and that is where two directions open up. The first is Industrial espionage (the 39 steps) by Alfred Hitchcock and espionage and deception (Eye of the Needle) written by Ken Follet and directed by Richard Marquand. The idea could be to unite the two into a larger story, a story that is not about protagonists and antagonists, but the man would be the antagonist, a new version of Professor Logan (Barry Jones). Whilst the professor has a larger field of view on the great operating stage, we would see that in this day and age it is no longer about governments and what they can do, but how the revenue could be spend. So what happens when the new Logan could walk in with the plans for a new jet, new missiles and the bill that could have been the ‘$768 Billion Defense Policy Bill’, now becomes the setting of ‘$259 Billion Defense Policy and IP Bill’, do you think that ANY government would walk away from such a saving?
Yet to set that story you need a start, you need an incentive (money tends to work) and you need focal points. In Fedora it was the doctor, in I Claudius it was the narration, in too many movies it is the action offered, but the action loses focus as we go from target to target. There is a second issue. Who watched Slum dog Millionaire more than once? You see, like Ellery Queen, when the clue is up the story is merely a steeple chase on numbers. This is why story based suspense is better (like Anna). Yet to get that part we tend to refer to Life of Pi. All movies where the story carries the cast and the movies are better because of it. This gets me to another story. It is Ask me Anything. The movie is weird and prefect, the twist at the end is brilliant. Now I never read the book (still on my list), but the twist at the end made me watch the movie again.
That is the stuff we need and even as this movie does not fit the bill for this script, the setting might work. So I need to check out Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett. I wonder what else might be there. A stage setting needs to be complete. Especially when the antagonist is supposedly the good guy it reminds me (Firefox), but there is wisdom in leaving that revelation until the very end. And in all this, there is a setting that the antagonist could be a woman. I see the person as a man, because I am a guy writing a story. But the choice of antagonist is at present not set in stone
So as I go brooding off into a corner, I just realised I set the foundation of a 4th script. Lockdowns might not be nice, but it clearly keeps me creative.
Yes, that is a setting at times. Art that is truly timeless. We see it in paintings and sculptures, yet we forget that the boob tube and the big screen have these settings too. Take I, Claudius (1978) is one of these pieces. It fulfils the 4 elements. A script, the cast, the directors and the chemistry. With Robert Graves they had the book, it was altered and tweaked for TV by Jack Pulman. Then there was the cast. Derek Jacobi, Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, John Hurt, George Baker, Margaret Tyzack, Patrick Stewart, John Castle, James Faulkner, John Rhys-Davies, and many more. Some will argue that the cast director got lucky and that might be true, several of these people were largely unknown, but not after I Claudius, That much is very certain, and the chemistry between all these actors, all set to the task of making real one of the most illusive books became a reality. When you realise this, it is now time to get you to the real story. You see, this has happened again in 1978, Billy Wilder would give us Fedora (not the hat), an equal amazing piece of work. With Marthe Keller, William Holden, Hildegard Knef, and Jose Ferrer. These people would do something that is close to the perfection we saw in I Claudius. They created a piece of art that is still remembered 44 years later. I would suggest that it is time for a remaster with a new cast, and a female director. The idea that we set the elements of the movie in a new stage (me trying to avoid spoilers) with the view of Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola or Olivia Wilde might make it an interesting journey for the people watching it. Let’s be clear there is nothing wrong with Billy Wilder, but at present he is busy with other projects. And these is something mesmerising on a female view in this setting. Still it will become a tall order. Billy Wilder was a legendary director, the script was really good and so was the cast. Yet I believe that after 44 years and the alterations in real life that we see and those events thrust upon us, some of the elements in the movie might do well with an upgrade and I believe the new movie could be better for it. I am not stating that Billy Wilder dropped the ball, the movie was full on and way beyond interesting in 1978, we merely have more to go on in this day and age. To be honest, it seems that most have forgotten this gem and that is sad. There is no recrimination, there is no blame, it is as it is and perhaps me tossing the ball in the air will give a scriptwriter the inspiration to take this to the next level.
Enjoy the day!
P.S. Enjoy the day as much as you can, there are 744,297 new COVID cases in the last 24 hours, so if only 1% is terminal, there will be 7,000 jobs and optionally up to 7,000 houses and apartments available early next year. And with the US and UK racing for first position, all whilst the UK has 20% of the US population and 50% of the cases that are inflicted on the US the race is wide open towards more affordable living. So you can write a script or start screaming like the other anti-lockdown people. It is up to you. I tend to be as productive as possible and as I do not interact directly with other people I will for the longest time avoid getting this irritating flu, and let’s consider that we can call it the super-flu, just like Stephen King did in the Stand. How did that end again?
Yes, nice and cryptic. Not intentionally, but that is how I roll. But before I get into that, I promised to give something tomorrow, but as it is about 0:01, tomorrow is now. So here goes. As I was (trying to) being clever, I considered that any off looking equipment will get caught soon. It shouldn’t but that is no guarantee. So I needed the valve to disappear. Now, one thing I learned that security staff tends to be lazy. Perhaps technically unobserving is a better term, they are not stupid, so something that looks off will get noticed quickly, unless it looks the same. So I can be as clever as I can, but the valve might get noticed. So as I was considering options I remembered the colour picker app. An Android app that uses the camera to scan a colour and translate it to an RGB tint. So there was a solution, but there is no way we can have all these colours in stock, so I created an adjusted primer spray paint. Primer is white, so I added the design of a dial at the bottom (see below).
Now we can pick the colour, adjust the 10 scale Red-Yellow-Blue-Black dials and insert the pigment, a few good shakes (5-15 seconds) and the colour is ready. Now we apply the paint and the device and its band will look as painted as the pipes are and now, the chance of overlooking is massively larger. So that part was solved and I created a new piece of IP in the process. So spray-paint makers might find this approach an interesting twist. Instead of 187.4 colours, you have one article and let the user fix what they need. No hassle, no ‘not in stock’ issues. All in a days work.
Anyway, what set all this off is that I was day dreaming (at 22:00). And suddenly I had an idea towards the Exhaurire Vitam concept, how it all started. How Anubis and Hades meet each other. All because of a young girl (9) who gets abducted by molesters and her Dachshund (which I affectionately name Kransky) ends up in nowhere land, right in front of the one person that the molesters would never have wanted involved and the carnage is one they will remember for all days. These is a lot more, but let’s not quench your thirst too much at present.
So as Anubis owes Hades and he repays by offering a gift that is useless to him, but he knows that it will benefit Hades, so he repays in this way and opens a door that will shiver and shake New Orleans in ways you might have read earlier. A setting I never thought of, I never contemplated it. It merely came to me, that and the rest of the settings are weird, close to a dozen pieces of new IP, no idea where it is coming from and when it does not impact my IP (5G, TV, selected IP) I will make it Public domain, perhaps I can actually restart some economies making me more electable then whatever is in political office at present. Yet, feel free to ask Meng Po for an opinion and a cup of soup, it’s free.
I have been thinking of a movie, it wasn’t a great movie, it was not something Spielberg made, but for some reason it comes back every now and then. It had an impact and the fact that Jon Cryer was in it makes it an almost instant classic. The movie is called Hiding Out and was made in 1987 by Bob Giraldi. Nowadays with the digital era, new acts that allow organised crime to do almost anything, the cryptocurrency that is all over (and the dozens of alternatives), including OneCoin by Ruja Ignatova. These settings allows for a remake and the main character could still be a banker, the setting is almost timeless. I do hope that if this comes out that the makers will consider hiring Jon Cryer as the federal team leader trying to keep everyone safe.
It is not often that a script that is not the greatest, turns out to be the timeless setting that can traverse technologies and generations, yet I believe that Bob Giraldi did just that with Hiding Out. There are more pieces like this and there is no need to look at them now, but the age of Netflix, DisneyPlus, AmazonPrime, HBO and Google Movies makes these options a lot more important. Apart from the fact that the script is already there, it could save these channels a lot by looking at hat could be great and there are plenty of movies that have a timeless character. There is also a weird situation here. These timeless works will never make the top 100. It is not distinct enough, yet in that These movies will be one time originals and that is fine. Yet movies like Miracle on 34th Street, the Mummy, A star is born and now optionally Hiding out are not the greatest movies, but they were fun to watch and they can be fun again. In the list given there are still two distinct elements. The Mummy was a great remake because technology and special effects allowed for so much more. A star is born is because the stage can be altered to fit a whole number of people and I reckon that (if we are till around) we will see a new version of A star is born in 2050. And I personally believe that 2023 might be the year to give us a remade version of Bob Giraldi’s Hiding out with all the financial bells, whistles and organised crime’s hardware to make it a success.
I believe that movies can be good, great or timeless and it is that third group that the streamers need. Those IP rights are either not there, they are no longer valid or can be gotten a lot cheaper than a complete new work of IP and that is what they will seek, as costs bite, as the competition becomes more fierce, they will all fight over the golden script, but one movie is not enough, they optionally need up to 50 each year and that is where a movie like Hiding out could find itself a second wind. Optionally with an altered Jon Cryer. And this is not limited to Hollywood, pretty much every movie making nation had a group of movies made between 1975-1990 that could easily fit the bill. I look at new IP and create new IP because I am a storyteller, but the stage is larger than me and I recognise that there is more and as such my mind went back to a movie I saw decades ago. I believe there is a setting now that this movie could surpass the previous version in greatness, in suspense and in appeal all elements the streamers desperately want.
We all have these moments when we recollect a movie, a movie that had an impact when we saw it. It might not have been a great movie, but there was something about the setting. In this case I was considering the 1984 movie Runaway. In it was Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons and Cynthia Rhodes. The idea of killer robots (spider edition) was not unique, not new, but there was something about it that had something. I reckon that in todays world, the idea of rogue systems, hacked systems with a killer result is actually a lot less weird than it was in 1984. The movie had more, but consider what this diamond in the rough could contain. Even if it merely holds a reference to the original, the stage of remote killing a person is appealing to a lot of people, and when we consider that in those days the smart bullet was a figment of science fiction, we now have the setting that in 2008 the EXACTO program began under DARPA to develop a “fire and forget” smart sniper rifle system including a guided smart bullet and improved scope. Even as the systems is seemingly not working, or not well enough, we got there or close to it 40 years later. We have zero day issues, we have hacked systems, and in 2019 the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) gave us “In late March, the agency warned that computer hackers can easily gain access to implanted cardiac defibrillators made by Medtronic.” In this we optionally got to the scenario that we saw in movies. In this, there is now a reason to consider that movie as the foundation of something new, whether it is a movie or a mini-series is up to the maker. I merely hope that Gene Simons will get to reprise his role as the evil party in this case, he really was a lot better then I thought he ever would be.
Whether it would be called Runaway (again), Remote by Rogue or merely Zero Day Kill would be up to the makers. Yet anyone in that field should take a look at that movie and see what was a figment in those days and what might be a lot less delusional in this day and age. And when we consider the impact of electronics, the right chip might give us a lot more options in that field and there would be all kinds of people interested in that, as such there are plenty of avenues to walk. I reckon that it might make a decent mini series (in 3-4 parts) but that is merely my view on the matter.
Yet what I didn’t know until today is that the movie was originally reviewed by Neil Gaiman (the man behind Good Omens, American Gods and the Sandman, He gave us “The race to outwit the cybernetic psycho is gripping stuff, mostly, with a terrifying showdown atop an unfinished skyscraper; and as the hero cop with no head for heights, Selleck is fine. In between, he spends too much time just being a heart-throb.” OK, I can see that view and it is in that that there is a much larger stage that could be walked by the right visionary (not me). I will leave it up to others to do this. I merely hope that this Michael Crichton original is not overlooked in a race for mediocre streaming series. There is plenty out there that could make for awesome stories. That is the nice side of what we can do today compared to what was created in the 80’s.
Yes, it is part of a sequel. Yet the stories are not linked. It is a view that grew whilst contemplating the previous story, but it is not linked to that story. It is actually a spy story. In these stories the timeline is important, but the facts can be jumbled to add to the suspense in the story. We can use Anna, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the Night watchman as examples. Of hand I will tell you now that the thought of equalling anything John Le Carre has written is ludicrous from the start, it is the delusion of a lifetime and if the writer did not work for a serious intelligence organisation, any dream of equalling Le Carre is plain folly.
Yet there are a few things we can learn from the master. I loved both Tinker Tailor as well as Smiley’s People. Not in the least for the fact that they were played by Alec Guinness, but the setting of the story was real, it was more than an exercise in nitpicking. Information and in that stage intelligence is about verification. I personally reckon that is why the CIA has failed more than once. We all want the setting of a mind boggling conspiracy, but what if the cogs are small? What if we have a setting with a former president and allegiances with other governments and that becomes a larger hindrance?
You see if the man was indeed a former president, governor or senator there is a larger field. You cannot be certain that the people verifying the information can be trusted, so how to go about it? Smiley took a small team of people HE trusted, but they were in the cold, their allegiance was everything (as well as their love of country). We can mimic this to some degree, but too much makes for a copy and we want our own laurels. So we have two options. We can seek another player, in the light of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yet there is a problem. You see whomever is that person has their own agenda. In this case we can fall back on the Art of War by Sun Tsu and seek the wisdom of applying a setting of Reverse spy, inside spy and a few dead spies. The latter needs to be multiple and all but one get exactly the same story, one gets a slightly adjusted truth. When this is done we create a form of verification, what is the reverse spy playing? What is his or her personal agenda and more importantly how trustworthy is that data. The longer the dead spies are intact, the more reliable the data is seen and that is why one will have adjusted intelligence. In the mean time, the inside spy awaits certain information sources to ring or not ring that becomes the setting. Yet to apply that to a script is massive and time consuming. I reckon that the watchmaker approach is the best (but this is a personal view). We insert cog after cog and adjust the stories for each cog if needed, if a new cog is added we look at the timeline, we look at the interactions and we test the story and even better, if we have a person we truly trust with that story, we ask that person to read and test the logic of the approach. It is a way and if someone tells us that this is not the most efficient way, I would wholeheartedly agree, but re writing a spy story is murder on several levels, as such I personally believe that a slow and steady testing of all elements is the best way, moreover, as we see certain elements fall over, we can decide to add another cog, or perhaps join two cogs into a larger cog. The larger cog tends to need a much larger backstory, yet that is the smallest consideration. Consider the secret agent Demons Jab. What would that agent be without a support and information setting?
Is there a reason? Well consider that there needs to be a reason to off a person (see previous article), the setting could be vengeance, the reason could be spy related, terrorist related or national security considerations? The latter part is often better served through smear campaigns and the media is always up for exclusive information, and they do not always properly vet that information, so there are alternatives. Yet the alternative might not be enough and then that act becomes a cog in the machine we need to build.
Anyway these are the thoughts I had on creating a spy story and perhaps I am no good at it, but I reckon that I might give it a go when the other book is done, at 65000-70000 words I am well over half way at present, so whilst I await certain players to consider a few options (as well as a 5G solution) I might as well remain creative. Personally I would love to write one book in every genre but I am clueless on romance (Jane Austen) scared to death on Horror (Neil Gaiman), too present for Science Fiction (Arthur C Clarke) and optionally a little too dim for intelligence stories (John Le Carre), all masters in their own field and there are so many more fields to consider, but as life goes, I might not be bored until the day I die, which suits me just fine.
That is a stage we find ourselves in. There is no real reason, it was a stage I moved into as I was contemplating a few ideas. You see with any erotic tainted movie it is about how it starts (and for some do they get married at the end). With spy stories it tends to be jumbled, to maximise the impact of the story the movie Anna is a great example. Yet with assassinations it tends to be about timelines, and it needs to start in the middle, a great example is Colombiana with Zoe Saldana.
You see it adheres to a few items. A good assassination adheres to the golden three.
Separation Segregation Isolation
You separate the target from his support system, we do not need to comedy capers to involve themselves making matters worse, the career person likes to get away from it all before it is too late. You segregate the person from the people that know and trust their insight, their family, it is a separate cog in the machine and not always required, but it should always be considered. Isolation is the kill moment. It is best to have that person apart when you perform the deed. I do not believe in the Jason Statham method (the Mechanic), it is nice, it makes for good movie suspense, but too many things can go wrong and they tend to go wrong at the wrong instance.
So in all this when we look at the Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri case, I just have to laugh. 12 people? I am still decently convinced that he got out (with the money) by setting up an attack and warning the US of that attack, but that is me. It matters because now we see (source: Reuters) “A former top Saudi intelligence official who is living in exile accused Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday of targeting him, and made an unprecedented public plea to the Biden administration to help obtain the release of his children jailed in Saudi Arabia”, a larger stage as he is in Canada, so why is he not pleading with Canadian authorities? Did you consider that?
It matters in this stage as we look at ending the involuntary heartbeat of a person. He has to some degree isolated himself, he is decently segregated, but not completely and there is the mere need of isolating him, that never required 12 people and any intelligent person would see that, lets be clear MBS is not stupid, so the entire song and dance that the media gives us does not make sense.
But back to the story. When the golden three are adhered to the decimation can begin. The important first part is information, in case of the person we discussed earlier, he is in Toronto, a city. This means that there are more options to get to him. The opposite is that he got there with hundreds of millions, so he can afford all kinds of security. The second consideration is given by The Star “It is alleged one of the companies, Sakab Saudi Holding Company, “had no operational business” despite receiving $8 billion US in government funding and was used “almost exclusively” as a vehicle to funnel money to the other companies, which did carry out legitimate business, as well as to Aljabri and his co-conspirators”, so in what universe do you get awarded $8,000,000,000?
The stage for any target is to understand what is going on and this implies that he is more than an exile, he is optionally a US intelligence taskmaster (Middle East minder of intelligence). Using him as an example is nice, for a few reasons. He has Canadian protection and he gets American protection, in Canada it will be the CIA, optionally the CSIS is involved. The problem for any target of this size is that the Canadians have their own Navy Seals, they are extremely capable and on a person like this, they are somehow involved. There is no way that stakeholders walk away from a $8,000,000,000 jackpot.
So why does it matter? Well the story is about more then suspense, it will be about realism. So how to get to such a target? Well we could ask Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri and that is where we get to the good stuff. You see, the foundation of this was seen in a comic book in 1978.
It was the first Franka, a comic made by Henk Kuijpers. The researchers researched a crime for a movie, which then was soon thereafter done by criminals. The stage to get the experts to solve the problem for them, simple and brilliant. You see there is nothing wrong with a silenced .50 from the top of any building, but when you see what you are up against, the stage changes soon thereafter. I saw the premise of a c4 loaded drone, which allows for a few settings, but that pesky CSIS. These people get awfully cranky when you trespass on their soil and if you think the CIA is trouble, wait for the CSIS to get creative and nasty. So you need two options. The first is that you were never there. The second is that you need to vanish with a clear path (to your fake alibi) that can be tracked on the other side of the world. Like what they did with the RAF, spending some of their money in a place like Buenos Aires, all whilst the missing people were already laid to rest (mom, dad and the three children). When a large enough pile of cash goes missing people will find you, unless the money is burned (apart from the cash spend in BA) and the bodies can not be found, not in decades, not ever.
That setting when united gives a much larger stage to play and when it is done, I reckon that it is better if the assassin is a she. (Zoe Saldana made good on that in Colombiana). So whilst we wonder what more we can do, I personally believe that simplicity is best. It is the one stage I did not like in the Mechanic. Even it all seemed simple. The air-vent scene showed how things turn sour in an instant. Simplicity is key. What is simpler then flying a DJI drone three buildings away straight into the open window and boom? After that it becomes a mere exercise to vanish, which in Toronto is still a massive undertaking, unless they look for the wrong person, it becomes a little easier then. You could join an Oracle event in Mississauga, or take across lake Ontario and vanish via Rochester, at which point you are in the US.
That script is easy enough to write, it will be about the details and about how the details play out. There is no use if the event results in a global hunt by the CSIS and their seal equivalent giving you less then a 1% to survive for any decent amount of time, a number no career person wants to consider. And these are the thoughts before the script is made. If you can pull it off you have the making of a new Hollywood (or Netflix) blockbuster.
Darn, it is only 06:36, what ever will I do the rest of the day?
I had a decently weird dream last night. It might be a movie, but I think it is not good enough for that. It might be a popcorn movie, merely for streaming and DVD sales and that would be fine too. The setting is that the dream started a few other things and I wonder where we are in less then a year.
It started in Toronto, I was there for whatever reason. There was a lot of chaos, a lot of shooting and a lot of damage. It was primarily in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. It is around February 2022, the US has defaulted on its loans. The people lost almost everything they ever owned and the stage is that ultra right angry people are whipping up the others who are coming to terms that their politicians are as useless as everyone expected them to be. Canada suddenly has to deal with 30-50 thousand invaders all angry and all taking whatever they can, they have nothing left. I saw police officers in Yorkville getting shot, store windows were getting crashed and houses are overrun. The American had turned into rabid dogs. The army was trying to create bottlenecks but an army spread over Canada having to deal with three clearly way to large fire points and a lot more in the rural areas is not an army that can get a whole lot done. And nearly all Americans were wielding firearms. It is then that I see the army starting to shoot to kill and I wake up.
Now, that was merely a dream, but the larger station remains. Everyone is in this ‘lets hope’ phase, but America has been utterly broke for well over three years. And every time the debt ceiling is raised. A political system that cannot take responsibility, that uses the blame game and points at the previous party if it is a different political party. They both failed and they both refused to overhaul tax laws for well over over 25 years. In the 90’s the idea of a trillion dollar firm was ludicrous. Now they have 2, maybe 3. These firms did NOTHING wrong. They adhered to tax laws and they did what the tax laws demanded that they would do. So every time I see another tax the rich, whilst these people look at three parties (ignoring 15 others), I get nervous. The larger station is not that they refuse to overhaul tax laws. It might be that they are too stupid to overhaul them.
And this too is nothing new. What will be new is that the US government will take a look at their patent office and make (forced) deals with any isolated (registered in America only) patent and demand a financial deal with that owner. So lucky my IP is not registered in the US. A setting of grab it whilst you can will start soon enough and whilst the US will be in denial, there will be behind the scene deals with Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft and IBM. All to get a little more use and traction out of the failing US economy. All whilst it has been clear for decades that the tax laws need a complete rewrite, a setting where everyone is taxed fairly. But that will not likely happen. That will upset the large donators and political friends they have and they would lose them, so nothing will happen and the dream that I have will come closer to becoming an optional reality.
Is it a wish or a dream? No one wishes for this. Not when you consider all the innocent lives struck by American stupidity, but the larger station is that a lot of Americans are close to desperate and the default will push them over the edge, I feel certain of that. Even as the news (mainly media) is now flaming their need for digital advertisement, hiding behind the announcement that the US of A could default next week, we also get a mere 16 hours ago that ‘U.S. Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown, sends to Biden for signature’, but that is not the same is it? A shutdown is one thing, a default is something else. There are paths that they could walk, set up a massive loan with JP Morgan, Blackrock or Morgan Stanley, the turnaround will need to be massive and that is how the slippery slope becomes a diagonal sheet of ice. A timeline extended and extended, all whilst the premise of stopping this going from bad to worse is ignored.
It was but a dream, I realise that, but perhaps my brain is working out a few financial items covered in nightmares.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 