While out hunting in west Texas Llewelyn Moss finds the drug deal gone wrong, then discovers the “last man standing” dead with the brief case under a tree. Llewelyn removes the trace, buries it at the feet of the man and goes home to tell his wife it’s time for a new life in a new state, where they go and live a wonderful life happily ever after.
The Fugitive
Doctor Richard Kimble is charged with murder by a DA who didn’t do his homework. Kimble’s defence counsel proves to the court (and the jury) that Kimble didn’t it and had no motive to kill his wife. Case is dismissed, leaving the police to DNA trace the one-armed man, which they do, who leads them to Dr Nicholls. They both go to jail for life
The Godfather
Michael Corleone at the marriage reception of his sister decides life as a mafioso is not for him. His father at a loss out buying oranges is shot and dies in hospital, apparently by suffocation. Sad but resolute Michael marries his girlfriend joins the Democrats, goes into politics and is elected to Congress. The Corleones divide their father’s fortune between family members and decide on a side by side middleclass Condo existence down in Florida.
Grifters, sharks, wannabes, liars, creativors cruise the seaside Promenade as an enfranchising of an entire festival grows out of protest, taking voting from annual juries and giving it to the fans, without whom the festival would not be.
When I was writing this the second invasion of Ukraine hadn’t happened. When I was in the the final draft oligarchs lived only in Russia. Now they’re hard at gaming America. When I was in the final draft, political sycophancy was in its infancy now it’s fully grown.
When I was in the final draft there was still an operational Democratic Party, now a couple State governors are performing CPR on its seemingly lifeless body. When I began writing this most of America believed in habeas corpus, personal and civil rights, accountability and independence of the judiciary.
When I was writing this novel it wasn’t clear how much damage the right wing of the Supreme Court could inflict on America.
My current novel’s main theme was always Democracy from the earliest days I began to write it, but several years ago, deep in the writing I didn’t foresee how important Democracy would become in this era.
I decided early, writing ‘Out of Competition’ set in a film festival, that it would be comic because while I believed all processes of democracy could be better promoted everywhere I never foresaw democracy facing a serious existential threat.
Democracy has always been a major part of my life. My father was in the second world war so democracy always figured in my consciousness, and while I have never experienced totalitarianism I understood it wasn’t the way of the west, or a real threat, until now.
I never thought not even after the murder of John F. Kennedy that a U.S. president, however he got into power would try to destroy democracy in order to cling to power.
Democracy has never been perfect. It’s been manipulated, not just in the United States but its demise in the US, UK, France, Canada, Australia, or any western European nation is unthinkable. Democracy remains fundamental, especially in America.
The world is watching. Everything American was once received well. Cultural power is real. John F. Kennedy understood this.
We live in a digital, post-automated mechanical world, when once many centuries ago books were written and bound by hand.
Then with some ingenious reworking by Gutenberg and others in reimagining winepress and jewellery making techniques and technologies, metal type was created and off we went to the mass-printing races. So we thought. Because it only took a few centuries to really perfect the “mass” part of it all.
It makes me treasure the hardcover more, because it is the closest we still have to the wholly hand made book. Don’t get me wrong, I too saw a lot in the 1990s advent of the digital book, for its democratisation of information potentialities, which somehow could have brought to light many texts that publishers couldn’t be bothered thinking about re-printing. Only it didn’t happen for reasons we know. Free and fair and open competition is simply a myth, with publishers even sighing and throwing withering side glances at the “damnable” used book market.
I am a writer, novelist, living and writing on the south coast of France, where I swim and continue renovating my apartment.
I am very close to finishing a novel set in 1963. My recently published novel Out of Competition, published by JEF Books, Illinois, October 1, 2024 won the Kenneth Patchen Award for the Innovative Novel.
Humorously subversive. It goes so fast I read it in two days. A must for anyone with a love of cinema and its festivals. And the most irreverent novel written about the South of France
5 OUT OF 5 STARS
Ten Years is Enough!
Read-fest UK, 9 September 2025
A sharp satire about democracy set in a Riviera Film Festival facing collapse as young cineastes demonstrate against privilege and lack of transparency in the annual voting shakedown, the novel opening with the kidnap off the streets of a desperate bankrupt Hollywood producer cadging money wherever he can
“Let us fight to free the world to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all people’s happiness.”
“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people… liberty will never perish.”
These films are not the best perhaps, or even the best 63 films I have seen, though they would be very close to that.
I simply laid them down without prior thought of ordering or listing them in any kind or categorisation of this or that.
The only change was to add Gosford Park by Robert Altman, and to do that I dropped Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! which should not be left out, but I kept Monsoon Wedding which I adored when I first saw it and still do.
So the filmmakers and films are all great and in no way am I listing them in order of best – first to worst. There are no second-best or best here. They are simply all magnificent for all their own reasons and appeared as I remembered them and wrote them down.
Tell me what you think – offer suggestions – i.e. if you wish to.
Swimanög 