Our visit to the Magaliesberg, an area just outside the Joburg/Pretoria megalopolis, was a bit of a disaster. The lodge we ended up staying at felt like a Christian scouts retreat, a spirit-deflating mile or so along bumpy, forgotten tracks from the main road. Our attempts at finding somewhere nice to have a mini-hike during the day were foiled by miles of snarling barbed wire, poor signage, destroyed murram roads and general suspicion and out-of-season apathy.
So we retreated to our dark, echoing rondavel, hoping that the afrikaner Akelas wouldn’t disturb us, and feasted on rusks, dried apricot and warm cans of Windhoek Draught. And watched a bit of telly, inasmuch as we could see the telly, in all its 15-inch glory, from its perch on the other side of the room from us.
But we did manage to watch one of those films whose awfulness ensnares you from the very beginning. A lazy shit sandwich of a movie, 90 minutes of pure life-wastage, about two guys whose paths randomly cross at some point, which we somehow missed, which apparently had some kind of bearing on the rest of their lives, or something. Anyway, it was called – hey! – ‘Crossing Paths’, and was just perfect for our crappy day.
The reason I bring it up though, was that the two main leads – one, a go-getting shit-eating-grinning young salesman on the fast track to success, the other a lecherous, shit-eating-grinning, homophobic young scoundrel, whose real names were something like Dan McDananan and Enrique Musculo III, or whatever – were given the names Brian and Jeremy.
Brian and Jeremy!
How are you even going to start persuading whoever you have to persuade to make this sort of thing worthwhile that your film’s going to be wow the audiences and pull in the crowds when your two main hotties are called Brian and Jeremy? I mean, even Alan Bennett would purse his mouth into a catty moue if you suggested such a thing.
So, yeah. Sorry if you’re called Brian and Jeremy. One of them on their own, perhaps. But together? Fuck’s sake, there’s a reason people called Vin and Shia make it in Hollywood. Now don’t make that mistake again.