Dream 21/11/15 – "Of Premonition and Consequence"

Last night I dreamt I watched this amazing short film called "Of Premonition and Consequence" that I discovered on YouTube. I was like, "I've got to tell everyone to watch this!" and was so gutted when I woke up and realised it was just a dream, I decided I had to make it.

It was all about this kid called Nicky who's at high school in this small town in the late '70s/early '80s and is the singer in this hard rock band that is already really successful and is playing massive arena shows. He is signed to a major label and has this real roguish, rockist manager who has paired him with two older, more experienced session musicians for his rhythm section. The band's main draw is its two guitarists, sexy identical twins called Elizabeth and Shannon who are classmates of Nicky and who have long, wavy, jet-black hair. Nicky's dad hates the whole rock 'n' roll thing and thinks that he should give it up in order to focus on his studies. He is concerned that Nicky is going to get into hard drugs or break his neck stagediving or something.

The story hinges on some sort of supernatural being that can take the form of anyone it wishes. It takes the form of one of the twins. It is perhaps a vampire or some other sort of life- or soul-sucking creature. It uses sex to lure its victims and of course Nicky is lured by it, thinking it is Elizabeth wanting to shag him. He gets gradually drained of life à la Lucy in "Dracula". People think he is on drugs. He always goes to the school's third-floor broom cupboard/chill-out room at lunchtime but finds it is shut or verboten now, so goes to the second floor and finds there is a whole massive bar there, dimly lit, all made of weathered dark wood, real fire burning in the grate. This is where he meets "her". It's kind of a magic place, like it feels as though it shouldn't really exist. Other people are also affected, like the two old rocker rhythm section guys and maybe the manager. There is farcical confusion over who shagged Elizabeth or not.

He probably dies at the end. The being should be exposed but not destroyed. It escapes or vanishes back into the woodwork. The final scene is a big close-up of Elizabeth's face (or is it her?), tears trickling down her cheeks, reciting the words of one of Nicky's songs which encapsulates the plot perfectly (it's akin to "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac, but more melancholy, with the word "dreams" in the lyrics). There's a sense that perhaps the creature has fallen in love with Nicky as well. The last shot pans away across a field, autumn trees, a shiny, curved-front, steel-and-smoked-glass building prominent, some local business. The whole thing has a colossal Liz Hand/Anne Rice vibe.

Dream 20/10/2015 – "Net"

Last night I dreamt in incredibly fine detail a Canadian sci-fi horror series called "Net", created by David Cronenberg and starring Kevin Bacon as a Pop Tart-eating lawyer. It was all about this boy genius who, back in the '70s, creates this incredibly powerful artificial neural net that instantly became self-aware and so powerful it can alter the laws of time and physics, make people age 40 years instantly, bring the dead back to life, make you travel in time, etc., and he and his brother use it as a toy until the FBI get involved, then the kid goes missing, never to be seen again, and the machine disappears, presumed destroyed, and all the schematics are lost. Then, years later, the kid's brother, played by Bacon, gets sucked back in when all the weird shit that happened years ago starts happening again and he realizes that the machine, and possibly his brother, are still out there, and he spends the rest of the series looking for it as it travels through time wreaking havoc.

There's loads of old green-screen BBC B computers, grainy antique film stock, men in suits, 50s FBI agents, bodies with cataract eyes, scenes of the kid aging 40 years in 30 seconds (truly disturbing). There's also a female character who is disabled in some way. When we first meet her she's dragging herself through the snow on an old-fashioned 70s skateboard, putting electronic tags on lost dogs in the wake of some sort of disaster (an earthquake?). Voiceover: "I felt it was the only way I could atone." She works with Bacon, who keeps trying to get her to eat Pop Tarts. Her mother sends her to work with Frosties. Perhaps she is a cop or a lawyer too. There was even a behind-the-scenes featurette about how Cronenberg came up with the whole idea but had no money so just went to the place in rural Canada where the guy from Starz was filming another series and shouted across the road at him does he want to give him some money to make this amazing new show. It was partially shot in Gary, Indiana, the home of a huge special effects house.

In the title sequence, all shot in grainy dim tones of red, curtains open on a dark stage. We see legs sitting in a theatre box, hands holding a crystal ball. It starts to glow and a woman's screaming face appears. It slips from the hands onto the knees. Printed circuits are visible around the inside of the ball.