We're coming to the end of our Desert Island Books series now, just time for a couple more contributions before we finish...this week from Chris Buxton, Lecturer and Senior Research Assistant in the School of Fine Art,
Photography & Film and CIRIC (Creative Industries Research and Innovation
Centre), Dynevor Campus.
If you were stranded on
a desert island which 4 books would you like to have with you and why?
So, here's the thing, I rarely read novels. A shameful
admission for a long time journalist and screenwriter, I know, but there you
go. I blame my deeply tedious afternoons in 'O' Level English Literature.
Actually, I did enjoy William Golding's Lord Of The Flies - hopefully, not the
desert island experience you have in mind - but it was Thomas Hardy's Far From
The Madding Crowd that really soured me. In my defence, hearing it read aloud
by a bunch of disinterested Bristolian teenagers for months on end is probably
enough to steer anyone away from the delights of the classics.
Still, I am an avid reader and have a huge number of books, lots of
non-fiction, lots about films, filmmakers and filmmaking. I was and am an
autodidact and, in the days before the internet, books gifted me the secret
knowledge I was seeking. And so, my first choice of book is one I bought as an
undergraduate studying History and Sociology, David A Cook's A History Of
Narrative Film. Until then, film for me was just the movies, whatever was on in
the cinema or out on VHS. Cook's text book weaved a spellbinding story out of
films, some that I knew and many I didn't. It drove me to investigate the many
films within and sparked the passion that has driven my life ever since. I
didn't really know about things like directors, auteurs, the studio system or
national cinemas, before reading Cook - movies weren't something anyone I knew
took remotely seriously, let alone saw as a potential career - so this was a
revelation. It's hard to think of a single book that has had a bigger impact
upon me than that chance purchase in Waterstone's in Bath one summer afternoon.
A similar early inspiration is Ian Christie's book, Scorsese
On Scorsese, a series of interviews with the director, whose film Taxi Driver
had shocked me with its power when a school friend hired it from the video
library a few years earlier - on a fake ID, naturally. In Christie's book, the
story of Scorsese was told in his own words. Here, I not only encountered his
other work, the sublime wonders of Goodfellas, Raging Bull and Mean Streets,
but discovered that he went to something called a film school and studied to be
a filmmaker. Why didn't they ever tell us these sort of places existed when I
was in school? And Scorsese was from a working class background, like me, so if
he could do it, why couldn't I? As a one-two punch, Cook and Christie's books,
both bought in the same summer, transformed my life. I still have them to this
day, and their creased, dog-eared states are a testament to the profound effect
they exerted over me.
I rarely read novels but I do read graphic novels. As a
small child, I would read comics like The Beano and The Dandy, then progressed
to British sci-fi stalwart, 2000AD. British comics of the day were inky, smudgy,
black and white affairs, with just the cover and centre pages in colour,
colours that usually bled into each other. American comics were a different
beast, all colour with glossy covers and filled with adverts for things we
could only dream of like Sea Monkeys, Crackerjack Popcorn and Hostess Twinkies.
The very first American comic I bought from the local newsagent was Daredevil
#168, a self-contained tale of love, tragedy and revenge. By complete chance, I
had stumbled on to one of the highpoints of Marvel Comics' history, Frank
Miller & Klaus Janson's run on Daredevil. Miller was yet to create his
more-lauded The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300, but these works' adult
themes, noir cityscapes and spectacular violence were already there in his Daredevil,
collected in the mammoth Daredevil Miller-Janson Omnibus that's replaced the
comics now consigned to my Dad's attic.
Now, I feel I should have a proper novel, so I will go for
one of Ian Fleming's James Bond stories. Pretty much any one will do, although
I particularly enjoyed Casino Royale and From Russia With Love. The Bond of the
books feels a bit stiffer than Sean, Roger, Daniel et al, but he's more of
bastard too, and can drink, smoke and take various pharmaceuticals for Britain.
I read them all over the space of a few months, mostly on trains as I went to
and from hospital visiting my mother as succumbed to ever more illnesses
towards the end of her life. She was a huge fan of the Bond movies, had them on
video, and when I was little, would take me to them on school holidays whenever
a new one came out. So, whilst the Bond books remain thrilling page turners,
there's always that sentimental link for me, that adds a further resonance.
If you could bring one
of the characters to life, for company, who would you choose and why?
It would have to be James Bond, wouldn't it? If he couldn't
get me off a desert island, who could? If Bond couldn't help me escape, though,
Casino Royale Bond girl Vesper Lynd would be a far preferable, if potentially
treacherous companion.
You can have one luxury
item on the island with you…what would it be?
I would have my cat, Willow, with me. She's a pedigree
Ragamuffin, bred to be affectionate playful companions, which she most
certainly is. And she's certainly a luxury as she's no good as a mouser, is
afraid of visitors and needs pretty much constant combing and brushing. Still,
she's incredibly entertaining, very relaxing and a great listener - we all talk
to our pets, right?
You are rescued and can
only take one book back with you…which one would you pick?
For sentimental reasons, it would have to be my old copy of
Cook's A History Of Narrative Film, even though I could probably recite whole
passages of it from memory.
Today is National Black Cat Day, which was established to
draw attention to the plight of black and black and white cats in rehoming
centres round the world. Black cats often take much longer to rehome than their
more colourful counterparts, though no one is sure why this is. You can find
out more on the Cats Protection website. 
