In the spirit of James Joyce’s explanation of how he wrote Ulysses, I will explain some of the writing markers I used in the writing of Out of Competition.
Out of Competition is my reversal of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
In terms of the history – instead of a French coalition force under the leadership of an aging, misguided and infirm Napoleon, making his extraordinary blunders in the 1812 invasion of Russia, Out of Competition tracks the behaviour of some Russians ‘attending invading’ an annual film festival in France on the Cote d’Azur, in the seaside town of Renne-Sur-Mer.
While Napoleon made his misguided way into, then around Russia for nearly six months, from summer going fall heading winter, my characters blunder around a French Riviera film festival for one fortnight in spring.
Out of Competition foresees unfolding history in the 21st century (fortuitously).
In 2010, after reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I decided on a Russian invasion of a French Film Festival as the story basis to my novel. Then in 2014, again in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.
In the writing 2014 onward, my description of street violence appears, with it later mirrored by Black Lives Matter marches. I had no conscious idea of these protests exploding during Trump One. I didn’t know there would be gilet jaune protests in France. I didn’t foresee the current explosion of anger against the French government. My unconscious mind led me to the subject.
In late 2019-20, I completed the first draft of a storyline, based on my proposition that democracy is fundamental to the operation of any enlightened film festival, because in my view if a culture, at all levels, does not meaningfully support democracy then democratic principles and processes are undermined throughout the country.
Writing my novel I never thought American democracy could be so fragile. Bewildered, I have watched the rapid disintegration of it at the hands of an unqualified in all respects president who has already been adjudicated by American Courts of Law as a sex-offender and a felon, with more serious charges against him suppressed because of in my view the Supreme Court’s deliberate ignoring of the American Constitution.
In the writing my story’s denouement, writing it in the year of 2021, one character, Merryl, manages to organise an extraordinary 2 billion dollar worldwide box-office success for her written/directed Reinvasion of the Body Snatchers. At the time, I hadn’t heard of Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s plans to make Barbie. The first I learnt of their film was in 2023.
My novel became a prophecy of their success and other matters on several levels. And if anyone doubts the truth of this, I have digital copies to demonstrate what I am saying.
