Director's Chair

This month, he gives us his take on Zach Helm's's wierd and wonderful take on writers' block - Stranger Than Fiction - so read ahead for our Indie director's Indie choice!

So, you've brushed your teeth (counting the strokes), rushed to the busstop (counting the steps) and there's this massive VOICE narrating your life and foretelling the future and GETTING IT RIGHT.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with a little surreal brain-on-brain action. This is Stranger Than Fiction - written by Zach Helm. Maybe not up to the electifying hypnotic power of Ten Free Minutes on Red Hot TVX (have you really explored those double-digit Freeview channels yet? It's not all about shopping and repeats of House, you know). As the film ends, Hedgehog stirs slightly in his sofa position next to me, contemplates his Pad Thai (extra chilli). "Maybe Charlie Kaufman first opened the door," he opines thoughtfully, "but a man still has to walk through it. And that man is Zach Helm."

Let me get back to the plot.

OK, you're Harold Crick (aka Will Ferrell - yes, I know, but bear with me here - it gets better) and you are totally obsessed with numbers, as all tax auditors are, doncha know, and work for the IRS auditing the tax returns of people like sexy patissière Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal - see, I told you it'd get better). You can even calculate very difficult sums in your head (so by Hollywood rules you must be (a) clever and (b) a total failure in any kind of meaningful relationship). Meanwhile, your life is being narrated by Emma Thompson - who plays Karen Eiffel, a chain-smoking, acid-tongued depressive of a novelist - spot on.

Trouble is (one) you fall in love with anarchist-socialist Gyllenhaal, who is way, way out of your league, both politically and sexually; (two) Ms Thompson/Eiffel has the most desperate writer's block; and (three) you begin to suspect you are a character in her latest novel, which can only be finished by killing you off.

It could have been dreadful, right up our man Zach's fundament, but in fact it works. Somehow. I mean it's still bollocks, but it's fun, witty, engaging bollocks which survives on being remarkably fresh, well-observed and sharply-written bollocks. There's also a sly jab of a part for Queen Latifah as the publisher's bumptious executive assistant, sent to "help" Eiffel solve her writer's block with a repertoire of platitudes and half-assed advice straight out of every How To Write book on the planet.

"Belief," said Hedgehog eyeing the next plate of Thai fishcakes. "If you go surreal, you got to believe. Cast, writer and director. You can't bullshit when you're writing bullshit."

Mrs Director's Chair nods in agreement, having remarkably remained awake for once throughout the whole screening.

"It's a meditation on Plato's theories of love partners," says Colleen, Hedgehog's soul-mate, sipping a vodka and pomegranate juice in the corner, as she touches in highlights for Marie from down the road. "Combined with a self-referential take on the impossibility of the impartial observer in a post-quantum universe as refracted through the medium of literature."

Myself, I just thought it was an entertaining way to spice up an old-fashioned RomCom with a touch of wit and satire. Have fun, but don't listen to the wall-socket if it starts talking to you.

Charles Harris 2008