This is post #100 for Penetrating Insights & I figured that marks a good time to have a moment of honest self-appraisal here.
The simple truth is that No No Zero, the band (obstentiously the reason for the blog in the first place) hasn't done anything in the past year & doesn't look likely to be doing anything anytime too soon.
We have recording plans for this summer but, as to when that stuff (assuming it happens) might actually see the light of day, your guess is as good as mine. It's a bummer, but that's the way it is right now.
I plan to continue this blog, but the No No Zero aspect of it will likely continue to diminish. As far as what the guys in the band are doing, last May's post on that topic remains up to date AFAIK as to who is in what band.
I'll keep posting what No No Zero updates I do have here, including news from Signed By Force, who of course are selling our (strangely expensive when used) debut record Rough Stuff (now available in Europe and the U.S.).
So what can you expect to see here? Sleaze, disturb & stupid crap, as before; probably lots of scans of paperback covers & whatever else I lay my hands on, the odd essay on this or that, Uschi Digard, porn.
If you've been reading the blog already, it shouldn't be changing much. I'm just clearing the air about this as it's been on my mind.
And now, without further delay, here's some live GFE for you, Youtube style --
I'm not convinced that watching excerpts of feature length films on a tiny computer screen is any better than a crime - and by crime I refer not to illegal copying of flicks, but rather the heinous disrespect for cinema, aspect ratios, and the sheer size at which a movie should ideally be viewed that is inherent in your average monitor-viewing experience.
Having said all that, I can't deny I do regularly visit sites like Asian Horror Movies to watch stuff I would otherwise never see (in the same way I watched bootleg ninth generation videotapes ordered from zines like Gore Gazette in the 80s). It's safe to say then that I am somewhat divided on the subject.
Today I found a sequence on Youtube from one of my favourite films, the seldom seen The Offence (sometimes The Offense). This five-minute sequence is pretty key to the film, and the possibility that it might intrigue someone enough to check out the whole thing... well, I just can't resist.
Released in 1972, The Offence (working title: Something Like The Truth) was based on the 1968 stage play This Story of Yours by John Hopkins (who also adapted it for the screen), and stars SeanConnery - in what I would regard as the best performance of his career.
The story of The Offence is a very bleak one, admittedly short on action and looking a lot like the theatre adaptation that it is, about Detective Sergeant Johnson (played by Connery), haunted by the horror of all he has seen in his decades of police service, driven to the brink of madness by pervasive thoughts of sickening violence and sadism. At the risk of providing spoilers, it's interesting how differently people read what happens next.
The film tackles a brief period in Johnson's life, an investigation into a series of child molestation cases targeting young girls in the community. A suspicious character is arrested, Johnson uses excessive force in his interrogation of same, and this brings to the fore issues the detective has long suppressed. For, as the poster's tagline puts it, "After 20 years, what Detective-Sergeant Johnson has seen and done is destroying him."
The Offence features three central conversations: that between Johnson and his superior, Detective Superintendent Lieutenant Cartwright (played by Trevor Howard); between Johnson and his wife*, Maureen Johnson (played by Vivien Merchant); and 'finally' between Johnson and the suspect, one Kenneth Baxter (played by Ian Bannen) during the interrogation. In each case, the acting is first-rate, and the cumulative effect of these encounters is fairly devastating.
The first time I saw it was the ol' late at night, half-asleep, flipping through the channels situation. I had no idea what I was watching but quickly got sucked in and, by the end of the film, I was really shaken up, unusually affected. The Offence is nothing if not uncompromising and, in my wide-open late night mind, that intensity left scars. I just could not believe this film had been made. I became obsessed with finding a copy of it and ultimately had to wait another couple of months until it ran on TV again.
But back to the Youtube clip -
This dialogue-free sequence gives the audience some insight into Johnson's obsessive thoughts, the images flashing through his mind while he goes about his day. Such a visual montage was of course unavailable in the original theatre production, and it is a tribute to Lumet's gifts that he is able to suggest so much ugliness and pain with so little actually shown onscreen. Here, less really is more.
Several times in the movie we get a taste of what Johnson has gone through. Driving home...we are shown what is going on in Johnson's mind - an almost endless string of crime scenes and accidents he has seen in his career as a policeman, each more ghastly than the next. Lumet emphasizes the horror by showing these scenes in near silence, so our attention is held on the carnage that's displayed. In a way, we are seeing these sights just like Johnson - without any distractions, or hopeful signs. You then start to understand the deep psychological damage he has suffered, and any critical viewpoint you had of him starts to soften.
In the early 1890s, Austrian professor and magistrate Hans Gross wrote the book on investigating criminals -- System der Kriminalistik (or Criminal Investigation). Gross is in fact often credited with creating the very field of criminology, establishing the first institute dedicated to the subject in 1912.
Criminal Investigation, according to The Encyclopedia of Crime & Punishment, "helped to establish the science of forensics, especially in terms of a cross-transfer of evidence; dirt, fingerprints, carpet fibres, or a strand of hair..." The book was considered the bible of criminal investigation throughout the 20th century, and is still used by police forces the world over.
Incidentally, Gross' son Otto was a friend of Franz Kafka (Kafka was also a former student of Professor Gross) and it is said that Kafka made use of Criminal Investigation in writing his classic novel The Trial. Police kudos aside, I don't think there could possibly be any higher recommendation than Kafka cribbing your book for notes. Except basing a character in his novel on you as well, I guess.
That said, it is none too surprising that much of Criminal Investigation might strike the reader all these years later as quaint or otherwise amusing. In any case, Gross. To wit:
"It is often stated, especially in continental treatises on the habits of criminals, that the wrongdoer deposits excrement at the scene of a crime, believing that by doing so he tends to ward off discovery. Whilst this may be, on rare occasions, the explanation of such behaviour it is explicable in many instances by the fact that sheer nervousness and fear render the criminal incontinent so that he leaves traces of this kind at the 'scene' because he cannot help himself."
And here I figured it was for kicks.
Included here are some scans from the 1962 5th edition of the book.
I also have a gallery up at flickr featuring one of the book's highlights, Chapter 8: Slang Expressions Commonly Used By Thieves. So head's up you gymers! Quit sucking the monkey and check it out!
