Rhys Darby
Cover
The 2008 How To Guide
Continued from page 2...
The thesis of Books You Haven’t Read is that it is far more important to know a book’s place in culture than the contents of each page. Discussing literature needn’t be confined to the ivory tower, and Bayard truly knows (but hasn’t read) what he’s talking about. Ensconced at Paris University, he is a professor of literature who confesses to lecturing students about books he hasn’t even opened.
He hasn’t read James Joyce’s Ulysses (in all honesty, who has?), but Bayard reckons he’s picked up enough through osmosis to hold his own in conversation. He rattles off Ulysses’ salient points: “that it is a retelling of the Odyssey, that its narration takes the form of a stream of consciousness, that its action unfolds in Dublin in the course of a single day, etc.”
In this vein, you can judge a book by its cover, and also by its reviews and public reaction. Gossip about the author is also a good source of conversation roughage. For example: Truman Capote wrote nothing of consequence after betraying his subjects in the writing of In Cold Blood – two murderers sentenced to death – and ended up a sad, lonely alcoholic whose liver gave up on him; Janet Frame was spared a lobotomy to “cure” her schizophrenia only after her short story collection The Lagoon and Other Stories won a literary prize; and Philip K Dick was a rampant amphetamine addict – how else can one write 121 highly paranoid short stories and 48 novels in a career spanning barely 30 years?
So you needn’t have ever sighted an actual copy of Mister Pip to have heard that this New Zealand work made the shortlist for the Man Booker prize and is, therefore, odds-on to be an important book and a splendid read.
And for those who happen to meet Lloyd Jones in the flesh, but haven’t – yet – got round to reading last years’ best-selling novel, Books You Haven’t Read has the following advice on talking about Mister Pip with the author.
“Speak well of it without entering into details.”
After all, everyone loves flattery, and Jones doesn’t expect to discuss plot details – he already knows what happens at the end.
How to … Disguise a bald spot and grey hair
Feted Ponsonby clipper Stephen Marr says men facing the inevitable tag-team of bogeymen – balding and greying – have two options: accept the march of time, or become a fashion icon. Attempting to disguise them with toupees and hair colour is fraught with disaster, he says.
Take dying: “Grey or white hair doesn’t have any natural pigment left to hold colour,” says Marr. “So you put colour on, and in a short amount of time UV light takes hold and the underlying pigment is usually a warm one – the inevitable ginge.”
Marr recently heard of a friend’s father who suffered an “age crisis” and decided to dye his whitish chest hair. “It turned ginger,” says Marr. “A total disaster.”
And if toupees were subtle and effective, Elton John wouldn’t have become a faux fashion icon in dealing with his own bald spot. It’s not a matter of avoiding the cheap varieties, says Marr. “If money could buy a good toupee, he’d have a good one. You just can’t get past the ridiculous rug factor.”
Comb-overs, says Marr, don’t fool anyone. “Without exception, when people try to make balding less obvious, they make it more noticeable.” People have succeeded by drawing attention, intentional or otherwise, to their flawed hair, but Marr can think of only a couple: Andy Warhol and Donald Trump.
“The best course of action is to embrace it or run with it,” says Marr.
His own head is thinning, and the stylist has taken the fatalistic, rather than iconic, approach.
“I don’t bother myself,” he says about trying to disguise his pate. “I just keep it shaved short.”
How to … Become a cult American television fixture
Forget TVNZ and Shortland Street, real stars are made in America. And forget acting school, says Rhys Darby: unshakeable – almost masochistic – self-belief can get you far.
Darby, on the back of his role as the cheerful idiotic band manager Murray on HBO’s Flight of the Conchords, has jumped straight into gigging with Jim Carey on the big screen in the upcoming Yes Men.
“I’ve literally made no short films, nothing, just jumped in the deep end. So you can imagine my first week on the film set in Hollywood – all my scenes were with Jim, all these cameras, 150 extras, the director and producers sitting in their special chairs – and me, thinking, ‘Oh my God, should I really be here?’”
Darby says cast-iron confidence is essential, especially when you face the inevitable knock. Nominated for a Billy T Award, the young Darby lost.
“In the second year I was nominated again. And lost again. At that point I felt angry, bought my air ticket to Britain and thought, ‘Blow this, I’m going straight to the big time.’”
And even back at university in New Zealand, Darby knew his route to the top: “For me, I’ve always had a passion for acting.” Through gigging as a comic in the United Kingdom and at international festivals, Darby says, he figured out acting as he went along: “I learnt on the road.”
