Moving Pictures - Discworld Reading Challenge

Published: 1990

Plot Summery: The alchemists of the Discworld have invented moving pictures. Many hopefuls are drawn by the siren call of Holy Wood, home of the fledgling "clicks" industry – among them Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little."), a dropout from Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University and Theda "Ginger" Withel, a girl "from a little town you never ever heard of", and the Discworld's most infamous salesman, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, who introduces commerce to the equation and becomes a successful producer. The business of making movies grows rapidly, and eventually Victor and Ginger become real stars, thanks to the help of Gaspode the sentient dog

 

Meanwhile, it gradually becomes clear that the production of movies is having a deleterious effect on the structure of reality. Ginger is possessed by an unspecified entity and she and Victor find an ancient, hidden cinema, complete with portal to the Dungeon Dimensions. Back in Ankh-Morpork, during the first screening of Blown Away which the senior wizards of the Unseen University are also attending, a creature from the Dungeon Dimensions breaks through, and Victor fights it having found out that with a camera pointing at him in real life works out the way it does in the movies.

 

The end is..... well lets just say, that's show business folks

Adaptations: None known

  

Favourite Quotes:
"Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So fresh the pig h'an't noticed they're gone!"

 

- "I thought swords had to be straight."
- "Perhaps they start out straight and go bendy with use. A lot of things do."

 

In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few minutes. That's the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.

Reading Time: Started Monday 27th April 2015 - Finished Friday 1st May 2015