The Diceman Winning

Very occasionally I am reminded that in the past I rather misguidedly considered myself to be a complete genius. This is always under review. At this particular moment, glowing with the pride of a gang of irradiated lions, it seems I may have been right!

Some may have noticed that the singularly greatest method of communication invented by opposable thumbed monkeys is Twitter. The concise brevity required to tweet your song across the world focuses the mind with a trajectory of laser guided pin point accuracy on concept & content.

It also allows those of us possessed by ennui to stalk the more noticed monkeys roaming the planet, and on occasion garner a response from them.

I have been fortunate over the last few months to forge strong (well tenuous and transient) friendships with many of the great & good. Top of my list is the generous & humane @MrMichaelWinner and more recently the cultural icon known as @OfficialDiceMan.

Now these glittering diamonds are probably not the first two names you would expect to see in the same sentence, but think about it…. imagine the possibilities!

Michael Winner, the acclaimed director of accepted classics such as Deathwish, Deathwish III, Appointment With Death, Hannibal Brooks, The Wicked Lady and The Big Sleep (commendable remake with Robert Mitchum). Team this up with Luke Rhinehart counter-culture dicing guru, lord of the random, grizzled supplicant to chance….and what have you got?

Well I think you have the option on the greatest story ever told. You would of course need to marry chance with intent. The script would run like time itself, capable of splitting off into multiple dimensions, infinite possibility. Anything is possible, but we won’t need to worry, we will be insured to the hilt and Captained by a master seaman, possessed of a well used
shaker and almost spherical dice.

I will be hitting my attic soon to dig through my archived library in the hopes of finding my copy of the Diceman. Many years ago whilst at Art School I spent a good part of my second year hiding in the dark second floor corridor that passed as a studio. Holed away with only occasional attention from the teaching staff I experimented with blind-fold portraiture and dice informed process and palette based printmaking.

So, once I have been back through the book I plan to offer my new found friends a treatment for a Diceman movie. I know it won’t be the first filmed option but I’m sure if we get the right people on board we can clean up and get a hand full of the little gold blokes.

I say we put @MrMichaelWinner in charge of the project overall but with modern technology we can achieve an interactive DVD / BluRay release . At given points during the narrative we install a ‘Dice Me’ button. The viewer throws the die and from a list of options the story lurches off in a new direction. We employ a range of Directors (Lynch, Cameron, Almodovar, Von Tier,
Howard, Leigh) who progress their own narrative, and when they reach another chosen point, we throw again and juggle the directors. @OfficialDiceMan gets creative control over the options for the narrative development and the directors are allocated a plot line by….. the throw of a dice. This way it’s all fair so no egos to get out of control.

The soundtrack would of course be started up by Jimmy Page (based on his previous good work with Mr Winner) but with the theory in place he could allocate new chapter tracks to other carefully selected musicians or contemporary beat combo’s.

In theory with enough break points in the story we could produce a moving picture experience that would never be the same no matter how many times it was viewed!

I’m still working on how best to operate the theatre events but it would probably involve making a dice driven selection of audience members in the queue who get to cast the cube at the appropriate juncture in the screening.

Why this has never been attempted before is beyond me. Someday all movies will be made this way. It cuts out the need for pre-release screenings because audience feedback is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who the actors are as the characters they play will be interchangeable (a little like the brilliant ‘I’m Not There’ by Todd Haynes, in fact sign him up as well….).

I think it was Jung that pointed out that there are only seven stories (or was it Dylan that pointed out that there are only seven songs?) …. whatever…..with the will and commitment we clean up in this town and keep vast amounts of directors, actors, production crew and sound track writers
in full employment for perpetuity. If we stick with the archetypes we can’t go wrong.

The world needs an arthouse franchaise and I am here to say that this is it!

So, you read it here first….who’s in?… tweet me….. @adrian4acn