Geeks, nerds, and Catriona McPherson

 

HALLIE EPHRON: As you might imagine, Catriona McPherson is one of those people whom the rest of us writers jockey for position next to at the bar. She's smart, funny, endlessly entertaining, and totally endearing. Also, a spectacular writer.

And a thing to be celebrated: Her new book Scotzilla (Last Ditch Boo 7) is just out and today she's visiting us to share her insights into her unique character creations, the cemetery geeks, and the kinds of characters who inspired them.

CATRIONA MCPHERSON: First a couple of definitions: I’ve been using the words geek and nerd interchangeably as long as I can remember. In fact, I only bothered to educate myself about their meanings when I decided I wanted to write this piece.

What I learned and can share with you is that a nerd might well be a loner, happy in solitude, discovering things or arranging things or just knowing things and reveling in the knowledge.

A geek, on the other hand, needs fellow geeks. Geeks like to discuss, argue, compete and egg one another on to greater heights of geekdom.

I’ve always loved geeks and nerds in a story. From Holly Gibney in Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes series (nerd) to the physicists (and one engineer) in The Big Bang Theory (geeks extraordinaires), I find characters who’re intensely focused on things most other people don’t care about endearing and irresistible.

Scotzilla, Last Ditch Book 7, is mostly about – well, a murder, yes – but it’s also about Lexy losing her sanity as her wedding approaches and about the towering travesty that wedding becomes (see above; murder).

But the sub-plot concerns cemetery geeks.

One came at it via local history, one through genealogy, one is interested in the social and cultural shifts recorded on graves, and one is . . . a bit of a weirdo. Together, they tend, boost and research the fictional Cuento graveyard, doing everything from trimming grass to guiding tour groups.

So it’s in honour of Juni Park, Bob Roach, Mitchell Verducci and Linda Magic that I’ve compiled my top-five favourite fictional bands of enthusiasts. I look forward to hearing what obvious geeks I’ve missed, though, because when it comes to listicles I’m a geek, not a nerd.

5. The Station Agent

This 2003 Tom McCarthy film – actually his debut; he went on to direct the Oscar-winning Spotlight – is only at number five because the geek in it wants to be a nerd. It’s one of my favourite films. Finn (Peter Dinklage) is a railway enthusiast, with a deep love and reverence for both model sets and the real thing. He hangs out with other enthusiasts for practical reasons, but he’d always rather be alone. 

As the film kicks off, he thinks his dream has come true. He has inherited an isolated train depot and moves in, with his notebooks and his pocket watch and his melancholy. But he reckoned without the bored and gregarious (like a puppy is gregarious) Joe (Bobby Cannavale), who has found himself marooned at a coffee truck beside the depot and decides that if getting into trains is the cost of making a friend, then trains it is, baby! They pick up another bruised soul in Olivia (Patricia Clarkson) and together-

Well, I won’t spoil it. Watch it. It’s wonderful.

4. Strictly Ballroom

And maybe re-watch this while you’re at it. If you’ve never seen it, but you always thought Moulin Rouge was too austere, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show needed to let go a bit, it might be the movie for you. There are no nerds here. It’s an entire family and a big bunch of friends/rivals/enemies, who learn ballroom dancing, teach ballroom dancing, judge ballroom dancing, legislate the rules of ballroom dancing (and have the power to say what is and isn’t strictly ballroom) and – crucially – compete in ballroom-dancing tournaments, including the Southern Districts Waratah round of the Pan-Pacific Grand-Prix Championship.

The Hastings family – grotesque and glittering – are obsessives of the first order. People like this do exist – the families of elite athletes, some dog-show types, historical reenactors – but Luhrmann magnified their pores, spritzed them with glycerin sweat and (I reckon) told them to make Nicholas Cage look restrained.

It’s joyous and bonkers and it’s still one of Australia’s most successful films ever.

3. “Blink” in Dr Who and “Many Happy Returns” in Sherlock

Now my listicle is going to eat itself somewhat, with a nod to some real-life geeks in fictional contexts (meta-geeks?). The “Blink” script is one of the niftiest pieces of time-travel writing I’ve ever found (and I do love a bit of time-travel). In it, there’s a nerdy geek whose obsession is the half of a conversation hidden as an Easter egg on a random selection of the videos in the rental shop where he works. He is exactly like a Dr Who fan in every particular – even down to having a quote on a t-shirt – except that he’s in an episode of Dr Who where the Doctor lives, instead of in the real world where we live and Dr Who is on the telly.

Even more meta are the geeks in the “Many Happy Returns” episode of Sherlock, who are collectively trying to work out how come Holmes isn’t dead when we all saw him die at the end of the last season. Sherlock fans in real life – me included – really did spend the off-air time trying to work out what had happened. The cyclist, right? Did we see his face at that moment? The ambulance was suspiciously quick . . . It was infuriating. I loved it. The geeks in the episode are infuriated. They love it too.

2. Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity

Finally a book! Although they made a film of it after. Three of Hornby’s novels have geeks and/or nerds in them: it was football (soccer) fanatics in Fever Pitch; obsessive completists on the trail of an elusive former rock star in Juliet, Naked; but in High Fidelity, there is a trinity of vinyl-record enthusiasts I thought for years would remain my favourite geeks ever.

Rob, Dick and Barry bicker about which cover version is better and whether the band name has a “the” at the start and whether you have to be polite to a customer who likes bad music. Customer, by the way, because they run a record shop. Of course they do. It’s a rom-com and it’s got a huge heart, but the three lads compiling their own “Top 5”s are the most fun moments.

1. Detectorists

Detectorists, Mackenzie Crook And then the members of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club came along and knocked the staff of Championship Vinyl off the top spot, en route to the middle of my heart. It’s a sitcom, written, directed and starring Gareth from the British version of The Office (aka the funny-looking one from Pirates of the Caribbean) and meant, in part, to explore comedy that makes you smile and laugh rather than cringe and laugh.

Crook said he wanted to make comedy that was kind. It is kind – and gentle, and quirky, and soothing to look at (it’s often a soft summer’s evening in England) and as fascinated by as it is affectionate towards this band of weekend treasure-hunters, wandering around the fields of Essex looking for Saxon jewels. Or Roman gold. Or interesting bottle-tops and buttons – they’re not fussy.

The pace is . . . Well, put it this way: the frequent close-ups of bees and butterflies alighting on leaves in the hedgerows fit right in. But it is laugh-out-loud funny too. I must have watched every episode four or five times by now and I wouldn’t give the DVD box-set away for a . . . golden quinarius with the Emperor Trajan’s head still clear.

So what do you think of my list? And what are your favourite geeks and nerds? I’m willing to go to a top ten . . .

ABOUT SCOTZILLA
Lexy Campbell is getting married! But in the six months of planning it took to arrive at the big day, she has become . . . a challenge. Friendships are strained to breaking point, Lexy’s parents are tiptoeing around her, and even Taylor, her intended, must be having second thoughts. Turns out it’s moot. Before the happy couple can exchange vows, Sister Sunshine, the wedding celebrant, is discovered dead behind the cake, strangled with the fairy lights.

Lexy’s dream wedding is now not just a nightmare: it’s a crime scene. She vows not to get drawn into the case, but the rest of the Last Ditch crew are investigating a bizarre series of goings-on in Cuento’s cemetery and every clue about the graveyard pranks seems to link them back to Lexy’s wedding day. Will the Ditchers solve the case? Will Sister Sunshine’s killer be found? Will Lexy ever get her happy-ever-after? Not even Bridezilla deserves this.

ABOUT CATRIONA MCPHERSON: Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about a medical social worker; and contemporary psychological standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comedies about a Scot out of water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California. SCOTZILLA is book number seven of what was supposed to be a trilogy. She is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.