nixsight

Warren Ellis posted this, with the byline that the Morris camp asked for it to be sent out to ten people each. I’m fairly certain that at least ten people read this blog, so here you go:

Many people have asked us exactly what the Four Lions project is.Clearly we can’t launch the film before its been shot, but I’ve pulled together a few paragraphs from the paperwork that’s been flying around.It’s shameless hype but its accurate – unlike almost everything you will have read in the press. No one who has read the script could disagree with a word here.

In three years of research, Chris Morris has spoken to terrorism experts, imams, police, secret services and hundreds of Muslims. Even those who have trained and fought jihad report the frequency of farce. At training camps young jihadis argue about honey, cry for their mums, shoot each other’s feet off, chase snakes and get thrown out for smoking. A minute into his martyrdom video, a would-be bomber looks puzzled and says “what was the question again?” On millennium eve, five jihadis set out to ram a US warship. They slipped their boat into the water and carefully stacked it with explosives. It sank.

Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five a side football teams. There is conflict, friendship, misunderstanding and rivalry. Terrorism is about ideology, but it’s also about berks.
Four Lions is a funny, thrilling fictional story that illuminates modern British jihad with an insight beyond anything else in our culture. It plunges us beyond seeing these young men as unfathomably alien. It undermines the folly of just wishing them away or alienating the entire culture from which they emerge. It understands how terrorism relates to testosterone. It understands jihadis as human beings. And it understands human beings as innately ridiculous. As Spinal Tap understood heavy metal and Dr Strangelove the Cold War, Four Lions understands modern British jihadis.

It’s a bit rambling for a press release, but it sounds almost exactly my cup of tea. And if the Guantanamo Bay sitcom that J and I were determined to make is never going to see the light of day, this will certainly do.

Who am I kidding, it will be fucking awesome. Everything Morris touches is by extension touched by genius, even when it’s flawed… The man has a fire in his belly and a multi-dimensional monster in his mind.

Course, most of those ten Nixsight readers I mentioned probably already read Ellis’ blog. Hm.